The Fractured Republic

Yuval Levin is an Israeli-born American political analyst and former member of the Bush White House domestic policy staff, whom New York Magazine's Jonathan Chait once called "the most influential conservative intellectual of the Obama era." Three years ago, Levin published The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Left and Right, a study of the historical and philosophical roots of our modern Left-Right political divide, the kind of illumination of present political debates by engaging the great tradition of political philosophy that I was once schooled in and taught to try to emulate. Interestingly, Levin was born in 1977, the same year I finished my academic graduate study in political philosophy. That makes him not only almost 30 years younger than me but a member of the subsequent generation and thus able to look back at my mid-century era with both familiarity and distance. This he does very well in his latest work, The Fractured Republic: Renewing America's Social Contract in the Age of individualism.

Levin is unabashedly an intellectual of the Right. He is, to my mind, much too fond of "federalism" and much too distrustful of what Progressive politics has accomplished in the last century and, with certain caveats, I believe can yet accomplish. He seems to share the conservative disdain, for example, for Medicare, which continues to be an electoral albatross for the political Right. (Witness, therefore, the rise of Donald Trump and the decline of Paul Ryan). That said, Levin makes a powerful case for the need to reinvigorate the middle layers of society, the network of mediating structures and institutions of families and communities where we live most of our lives and which must flourish if we are really to thrive. This is not a new argument. It has its roots in Alexis de Tocqueville's masterful analysis of the Ancien Regime (The Old Regime and the French Revolution, 1856). Peter Berger addressed it in 1974  in Pyramids of Sacrifice, a book I once assigned in one of my courses when I was teaching. It has been a staple preoccupation of communitarian-oriented thinkers in this era of extreme social fragmentation in which increasingly isolated individuals find themselves bereft of traditional communal connections and are connected only to the centralized, administrative state.

None of that is particularly new. Nor is it new to notice that both sides - Right and Left - have equally contributed to this. The Right's economic libertarianism and the Left's moral libertarianism have - over roughly the same period - collaborated in undoing many of the social supports people need to depend upon, notably the family. What stands out in Levin's analysis is his historic perspective.

His premise is that both Right and Left look back nostalgically to the post-war era as a kind of Golden Age. And that nostalgia, he believes, blocks both sides from engaging effectively with the new society that has developed in the interim. 

He rightly recognizes the post-war era as one of successful consolidation. It rested on "an extraordinarily stable and cohesive social foundation" and "exceptionally limited diversity in every area of American life." It was in important respects "a corporatist,, cartel-based" economy" that sustained and was sustained by cultural conformity. Of course, as we all know, a sustained process of cultural liberalization began during that period. But, for a time, it all continued to work so well, because "the culture being liberalized was highly consolidated and constrained."

Back then, "the Left was fighting the cultural constriction while reveling in the economic consensus; the Right was fighting the economic constrictions while reveling in the cultural consensus. Both sides today therefore recall that time as offering a stable foundation for a satisfying struggle for necessary liberalization, even if each side has a different idea of what the foundation was and what needed to be liberalized."

Since then, consolidation has given way to de-consolidation - both economically and culturally. Ours is a diffused and fragmented society in both arenas and is becoming more so all the time. Levin analyzes both processes of diffusion - the fragmenting of a once concentrated economy (a development he seems to see on balance as more positive than negative) and the breakdown of traditional religious and cultural structures, most notably the family (a process he recognizes as much more problematic).

So today we have a situation in which "the Right wants unmitigated economic individualism but a return to common more norms. The Left wants unrestrained moral individualism but economic consolidation. Both will need to come to terms with some uncomfortable realities of twenty-first century America."

The resulting challenge for liberals is to recognize "that cultural liberation has real costs, especially fro the most vulnerable. And it means they must look at our mediating institutions not as threats or as relics of prejudice and backwardness, but as partners and as constructive means of change." Conservatives, on the other hand, have to come to terms with a much more diverse and culturally fractured society and "should think about preserving the preconditions for moral living in terms of building cohesive, attractive, moral subcultures in those mediating layers of society." That requires that conservatives shift from a vocabulary of "radical individualism" to one of "middling communitariansm." As a conservative, Levin inevitably values markets. But he also values "families, communities, charities, religious congregations, fraternal groups, unions, and countless other institutions."

Unsurprisingly, there remains some distance between Levin's economic prescriptions and what I would favor. I remain much more convinced of the necessity of a strong modern national community than he seems to be. He dismisses President obama's statement in his Second Inaugural Address - Now, more than ever, we must do these things together, as one nation and one people - as an "emaciated understanding" that leaves no room for "meaningful middle layers of society" between the individual and the nation. I admit that there is such a dangerous dynamic in contemporary progressivism - notably in the increasing hostility to religion. The challenge, I believe, is to strengthen both the bonds of our national community and the mediating structures of family, religion, etc,, within which we live most of our day-to-day loves. An unbalanced conservative emphasis on society at the expense of the state, may be less harmful than the unbalanced conservative emphasis on the individual at the expense of both society and the state which has largely reigned up until now. But it is still unbalanced and still fails to appreciate the singularly necessary role of the sovereign national community in the modern world.

I resonated more with Levin's recommendations to religious institutions and communities - to which I shall shortly return in a separate post.

Leaping for Joy

The Visitation of of the newly pregnant Virgin Mother of God to her also pregnant, but older relative Elizabeth has long been an event of singular fascination. Luke's account highlights Elizabeth's uniqueness in having already been let in on Mary's secret in time for Mary's arrival, thus making them at that moment the only two people on the entire planet aware of what a wonder God was doing in the world. That gave their meeting a unique intimacy - as suggested, for example, by the beautiful statue (photo) at the supposed site of the Visitation in the ancient village of Ein Karem, which is now a neighborhood in modern Jerusalem.

A feast of medieval origin, the Visitation was happily celebrated for centuries on July 2 (to connect it closely with the feast of Saint John the Baptist), until the Paul VI calendar transferred it to today. German Catholics, however, continue to celebrate the Visitation on its traditional date - as do Anglicans and Lutherans.

The Visitation is also the 2nd Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. It invites us to meditate on Mary's rapid response to the prompting of the Holy Spirit in her readiness to offer direct personal assistance to her relative in need. But there is also another dimension highlighted by the feast - the sanctifying action of divine grace in the (as yet unborn) John the Baptist, whose "leap for joy" then graces his mother, making possible her greeting of Mary. In the intimate interaction of the two pregnant mothers, their sons are already at work - Mary's Son bringing grace, Elizabeth's announcing it. And their mothers - alone at that moment among the human race - respond with some of the most famously eloquent words of prayer and praise ever uttered, prayers repeated daily in the piety of people and in the liturgy of the Church.

Thus, the Venerable Bede called it "an excellent and fruitful custom of holy Church that we should sing Mary's hymn at the time of evening prayer." In our over-familiarity with the sacred words, we routinely recite the Magnificat (and even more so the Hail Mary), almost unmoved by the mystery at work in what is being recalled. Such routinization is inevitably inherent in our familiarity with the sacred. 

But such familiarity is in another sense what the Incarnation intends to accomplish. The encounter between Mary and Elizabeth and the spiritual energy it generated actually highlights how mystery penetrates the mundane - and challenges us to be alert to respond to it in the ongoing Ordinary Time of daily life.

Memorial Day

Many of us are old enough to remember Memorial Day's original name - Decoration Day. The holiday began as the day to honor the dead from the Civil War by decorating their graves. Eventually, it became the day to honor the graves of all veterans, but for a long time the emphasis remained on visiting and honoring the their graves. Even today, when Memorial Day has become just another day for shopping, sporting, and picnicking, volunteers still visit cemeteries to put flags on veterans’ graves – a reminder of the importance of remembering and of the special places of memory we call cemeteries.

In Italian, the word for cemetery is campo santo – literally, “holy field,” or, as we would say in common English, “holy ground.” Cemeteries are special places for us – special not just because they are blessed by the Church and marked by beautiful monuments. They are special places because this is where we remember those who have died, who have gone before us in life, our cherished past to whom we owe our present. Remembering is one of the things that especially makes us human. To remember those who have died, as our nation does today and as we do whenever we visit a cemetery, is to acknowledge the importance of their lives - and the common humanity, which we share with them in life and in death. Remembering is also one of the things that especially makes us Christian. To remember those who have gone before us in faith, as we do especially here today but every day at every Mass, is to celebrate the multitude of ways in which the grace of God touched and transformed each one of them in life - and the hope we still share with them in death.

So it is good that we gather together today, to remember and pray for our brothers and sisters whose bodies lie here in this holy ground. It is, as the author of the book of Maccabees has reminded us, a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be purified from their sins and welcomed among the saints, as we too hope someday to be welcomed with them forever.

Homily, Memorial Day Mass, Calvary Cemetery, Knoxville, TN, May 30, 2016.

An Ordination in the City

Once upon a time, ordinations were commonly celebrated on Ember Days - penitential days that occurred (until 1969) four times each year. In Rome in those early centuries, the Ember Saturday in December seems to have been the major ordination date. The Ember Days are a mere memory now, of course, and the ordination rite has lost any trace of its onetime connection with penitential liturgy. Ordinations are now festive occasions par excellence. It is almost as if, as the number of ordinands diminishes, we all appreciate them all that much more! One consequence is certainly the large number of priests who turn out for ordinations nowadays, which makes the ceremony longer, but that much more moving!

Saturday, I went home to New York for the ordination of a former Saint Paul's parishioner, a veteran of the parish Young Adult Ministry in the 2000s, who was ordained for the Archdiocese of New York - one of 14 ordained by Cardinal Dolan in a truly festive celebration. It was actually the first of three ordinations I will be attending on consecutive Saturdays. This coming week will see the ordination of a new priest for the Diocese of Knoxville, followed the following week by the ordination of some 24 new permanent deacons, one of them a parishioner at Immaculate Conception.

It was hot in New York and crowded, and I was truly tired out by the end of the day. But it was a beautiful and joyful celebration not just of the sacred priesthood but of the Risen Christ's continued presence in his Church - a sign (notwithstanding everything to the contrary) of a future for he Church full of promise!

Corpus Christi

In the calendar of the Universal Church today is Corpus Christi, the Church's annual recollection of the joyful side of Holy Thursday and a celebration of the ongoing centrality of the sacrament of the Eucharist in the Church's daily life. Like Epiphany and Ascension earlier in the year, Corpus Christi is postponed in the United States until next Sunday. But today is its proper day. And in Rome the Pope will celebrate it in suitable splendor with Mass at the Piazza San Giovanni Laterano followed by an outdoor eucharistic procession to Santa Maria Maggiore for Benediction (See photo above from 2015). 

The symbolism of Thursday for this feast is obvious, which is why it has historically been assigned to this Thursday after Trinity Sunday (until 1969 the first Thursday after the Easter season). The historic (pre-Paul VI) liturgy for this feast was ostensibly composed by Saint Thomas Aquinas in 1264. Pius Parsch famously called it "a perfect work of art," in which "we constantly uncover new evidences of structural grandeur." A prime example of such grandeur if, of course, the magnificent sequence Lauda Sion.

At the contemporary papal liturgy and traditionally throughout Christendom, Corpus Christi's distinctive characteristic has been the eucharistic procession. The procession is a public witness of the Church’s belief in and popular devotion to the sacrament of the Eucharist. Here in the United States, such processions are a relative rarity, though they do occur here and there. 

The most magnificent such Corpus Christi procession that I ever saw took place in Montreal, Quebec, in 1984, where we followed the Blessed Sacrament through the narrow streets of the Old City to the historic basilica of Notre Dame. But perhaps the most impressive, certainly the most moving outdoor eucharistc procession I’ve ever attended was not on Corpus Chrsti but the one that takes place every summer afternoon at the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in southern France. After being exposed all day under a tent, the Blessed Sacrament is carried at the end of a procession of sick pilgrims and their caregivers to the massive underground basilica. Empty, the basilica (the only structure large enough to contain the vast number of pilgrims present on any given day) resembles an ugly underground parking lot. Crowded to capacity for afternoon Benediction, however, the experience is – as my British friends would say – “brilliant.”

A more traditional word might be”awesome” – a word which really used to mean something before it became a contemporary synonym for “nice.” Thus, we used to start the Mass for the Consecration of a Church with the words of the Patriarch jacob in Genesis: How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven; and it shall be called the court of God [Genesis 28:17].

But back to 1984. That summer, as a seminarian stationed in Toronto, I was assigned to visit Catholic patients in the local hospital. (It was a dreadful old place, that has since been torn down) One day, as I was doing my regular hospital visit, I found myself trying to communicate with an elderly, totally non-English-speaking, Hungarian woman, whose name was on my list, but who clearly had no notion who I was or why I was visiting her.

Such experiences, of course, contribute to feeling inadequate, which, in turn, further fosters frustration. And frustrated was exactly how I felt. Frustrated and impatient with the whole situation, all I wanted to do was get out of there as fast as possible.  But I was also – or at least wanted to be - conscientious about my duties, one of which was to bring Holy Communion to the sick. So, I took out a Host and held it up for her to see. Suddenly, her confusion about who I was and what I was doing there no longer seemed to matter. I no longer mattered. The sight of the Host resulted in instant recognition. She made the Sign of the Cross - and began to pray.

In all these intervening years, I have never forgotten my meeting with that devout old woman in that otherwise depressing place - and what that experience impressed on me about the power and importance of the Eucharist, whose minister it is now my privilege to be as a priest.  Experiencing her response to the Real Presence of the Risen Christ – the real, body-and-blood presence of our living and loving Lord, present and active in his Church - impressed on me the meaning of those familiar and seemingly simple words of St. Paul: The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? [1 Corinthians 10:16].

In both good times and bad, in sickness and in health, Christ is present in the Eucharist, and we in turn experience his presence and share in the new life he offers the world through his Church.