Washington Deal-Making

Senator Everett Dirksen's collaboration with President Lyndon Johnson in passing the 1964 Civil Right Act is justly famous and a staple of historical TV drama. But those of us who are old enough to remember that are also old enough to remember when that was the way government generally functioned. Of course, political parties campaigned against each other, although then still more or less at set intervals. Meanwhile, in between those campaigns, congressmen and presidents did what they had been sent by the voters to Washington to do. They governed - more or less successfully, more or less effectively, more of less, in the country's long-term interest, but they governed. And it surprised no one when leaders of both parties worked together to craft legislation, when members of both parties voted to pass bills, and when some members of both parties voted in opposition. All that, of course, was before the late-20th-century, early-21st-century resorting of the American electorate and the corresponding transformation of political parties into competing teams, for whom policy differences are merely mascots for the main purpose of each party which is to reflect its constituents' hatred and disdain for the other half of the country.

All this is on display again today in the hysterically vile reaction of Republicans and conservatives to President Trump's "deal" with the Democratic congressional leadership to accept their proposed timetable to continue funding the government and to raise the debt ceiling in conjunction with Hurricane relief. To listen to the hysterical reactions of Republicans and conservatives one would think that the President had endorsed higher taxes for millionaires, legal status and a path to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants, and (while at it) maybe also single-payer Medicare for all!

In fact, the deal at issue is on a relatively small matter - something that not that long ago would simply have been a matter of legislative routine.  That the timetable the Democrats proposed might give their party some strategic advantage when these issues resurface in three months (something President Trump may or may not have realized or cared about) is plausible proposition, which Republicans and conservatives might reasonably be expected to be upset out. But the nature and intensity of the reaction goes way beyond such strategic and tactical considerations, which themselves might actually suggest some serious interest in legislating.

On the contrary, however, what the hysterical reactions really suggest is an aversion to any negotiation or compromise with the other party, which, of course, makes perfect sense if the purpose of our contemporary political parties (or of one of them at least) is simply to serve as a megaphone for hatred and disdain for everyone else.

I wish we would abandon the commercial language of "deal-making" in favor of the more traditionally political and hence more morally uplifting language of legislating and governing. But if our transactional president's desire to make a "deal" can more us however slightly in the direction of at least some legislating and governing, then so be it!

Labor Day

Today is Labor Day, our national holiday that honors the American labor movement.

Last June, Pope Francis addressed delegates from the Italian Confederation of Trade Unions. He began by speaking of the social significance of work: “Person and labour are two works that can and must stay together. Because if we think and talk about labour without the person, labour ends up becoming something inhumane, which by forgetting the person forgets and loses itself. But if we think of the person without work, we are saying something partial, incomplete, because the person is fully realized when he or she becomes a worker: because the individual becomes a person when he or she opens up to others, to social life, when he or she thrives in work. The person thrives in work. Labour is the most common form of cooperation that humanity has generated in its history.”

The Pope proceeded to identify “two epochal challenges” facing unions:

“The first is prophecy, and regards the very nature itself of the union, its truest vocation. The union is an expression of the prophetic profile of society. The union is born and reborn every time that, like the biblical prophets, it gives a voice to those who have none, denounces those who would “sell the needy for a pair of sandals” (cf. Amos 2: 6), unmasks the powerful who trample the rights of the most vulnerable workers, defends the cause of the foreigner, the least, the discarded. …

“The second challenge is innovation. Prophets are sentinels, who watch from their lookout. The union too must keep vigil over the walls of the city of work, like a watchman who guards and protects those who are inside the city of labour, but also guarding and protecting those who are outside the walls. The union does not carry out its essential function of social innovation if it watches over only those who are inside, if it protects the rights only of those who already work or who are retired. This must be done, but it is half of your work. Your vocation is also to protect those who do not yet have rights, those excluded from work who are also excluded from rights and democracy.”

The Holy Father concluded:

“The capitalism of our time does not understand the value of the trade union, because it has forgotten the social nature of the economy, of the business. This is one of the greatest sins. ... The economy has forgotten the social nature that it has as a vocation, the social nature of business, of life, of bonds and pacts. …There is no good society without a good union, and there is no good union that is not reborn every day in the peripheries, that does not transform the discarded stones of the economy into its cornerstones.”

(The Pope’s entire Address to the Italian Confederation of Trade Unions can be read at: http://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2017/06/28/170628a.html.)

Happy Labor Day, one and all! And let us not forget what we observe today!

Thinking as God Does

Today’s gospel reading [Matthew 16:21-27] is a direct continuation of last week’s [Matthew 16:13-20] and should really be read in conjunction with it. Last Sunday, we heard how Jesus took his disciples into Gentile territory, to the region at the foot of Mount Hermon near Roman city of Caesarea Philippi and the shrine to the pagan god Pan near the source of the Jordan river. It was there that Jesus asked his disciples, “who do you say that I am?” To that, the leader of the 12, Simon Peter, replied, correctly, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Jesus, in turn, praised Peter for his answer, made possible for him by divine guidance (“flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father”), and gave him what we now call the power of the keys - hence the image of the crossed keys on the Pope’s coat of arms. But, as we just heard, the story then continues with Jesus’ first prediction of his forthcoming passion and death. And how does the newly appointed Pope Peter respond this time? He rebukes Jesus, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” So this time, instead of praising Peter, Jesus rebukes him and even calls him Satan! “You are not thinking as God does,” Jesus says to him, “but as human beings do.”

We are – or ought to be – familiar by now with this aspect of Simon Peter’s character. His heart belongs to Jesus, who inspires him to say and do the right thing. But, notwithstanding his heart being in the right place, he often thinks as human beings do, which is hardly totally surprising, since he is, of course, a human being, as all of us are

And yet this is the person Jesus put in charge of his Church, investing the otherwise ordinary and wrong-thinking Simon with the uniquely special office of Peter, the rock upon which Christ’s Church will be built – an office that continues in the Church in the office of Peter’s successor, the Bishop of Rome, the Pope. As Peter spoke for all the disciples, so the Pope, as Peter’s successor, speaks for the Church. In more formal language, we say that, by virtue of his office, the Pope possesses supreme, full, immediate, and universal ordinary power in the Church (CIC 331).

But, in every age the office of Peter must be filled by another Simon. Today it is Jorge Bergoglio. Before him it was Joseph Ratzinger, before him Karol Woitiyla, etc. - in human terms all very different individuals with different personalities, strengths, and weaknesses, this one wise in one way, that one in another. Yet, strange as it may seem, in this weird world we live in today, this celebrity culture with its obsession with personalities, the point is not Simon the person but Peter the office. In establishing Peter as the rock upon which Christ’s Church will be built, Jesus provided the papal office for the Church to unite us across time and space, secure in our common faith. At the Last Supper, Jesus commanded Peter to confirm and strengthen the rest of us in that faith, which the Pope continues to do when he teaches doctrine formally and officially, so that the entire Church may adhere unfailingly to the truth that has been revealed.

And where does faithfully adhering to the truth take us? Truth, after all, is often inconvenient., it may even hurt our feelings!

All summer, we have been making our way, Sunday-by-Sunday, through Saint Paul’s letter to the Romans. In the passage we just head [Romans 12:1-2], Paul’s well-argued doctrinal teaching turns into exhortation - how to live here and now. I urge you, by the mercies of God to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.

Thanks to what God’s mercy has accomplished on our behalf, we can now be different people from whoever we would otherwise have been, living differently from how we would otherwise have lived, differently from the pagan world Peter could see everywhere around him when he responded to Jesus, whose death and resurrection have revealed the truth about life and how to live it. Peter’s mission would be to guide and guard Jesus’ Church from Simon’s own very human impulse – our impulse – to resist being transformed by the truth of who Jesus is, to resist the perennial challenge to be transformed by him ourselves and so to transform the world.

Homily for the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, September 3, 2017.

Three Cheers for England and Wales!

     From the Catholic Church in England and Wales' website:

 "With effect from the 1st Sunday of Advent 2017, two holydays of obligation are being reinstated. This decision was made by the Bishops of England and Wales, and has been confirmed by the Holy See. The days are:

• The Epiphany of the Lord — 6 January (transferred to the adjacent Sunday when it falls on Saturday or Monday)
• The Ascension of the Lord — Thursday after 6th Sunday of Easter."

   Since September 16, 2011, the Church in England and Wales has restored the venerable Catholic tradition of Friday abstinence. Having already courageously led the way there, it is now leading the way again in restoring two of the Church's most important annual holydays to their meaningful, historical dates. Still in force is the practice (adopted in 1984) of transferring all holydays (except Christmas) to Sunday when they fall on a Saturday or a Monday. (Maybe that will go next!)

    So, apart from that holdover practice from 1984, starting next year the traditional holydays of Christmas, Epiphany, Ascension, Saints Peter and Paul, Assumption, and All Saints will all be kept on their historic dates. Only Corpus Christi will continue to be permanently transferred to Sunday. Of course, a case could be made for returning Corpus Christi to its traditional Thursday date as well But, while Thursday has obvious symbolic significance for Corpus Christi, it is not quite the same as the strong New Testament significance of the 40th day after Easter for the Ascension or the historical and cultural resonance of "the 12 Days of Christmas" beginning on Christmas and ending on the eve of the Epiphany. It is hard to imagine what possible religious benefit it was once thought would derive from abandoning the date of the New Testament Ascension account or the  still popular, not yet forgotten tradition of "the 12 Days of Christmas." 

    Reforms like these are small things. Obviously, they will not address - much less solve - the pressing problems of the Church in the modern world. But they do help to anchor our liturgical life, reconnecting us with the religious practices of centuries and generations of the Communion of Saints that have gone before us in faith. That is no small thing.

September

Thanks to our peculiar contemporary custom of using numbers instead of the names of our months, we all know that September is the 9th month of the calendar year - although the name "September" still obviously means that it is the 7th month - or at least was when we recall the original Roman calendar that began with March. This disconnect between the numerically inspired name of the month, based on its position in the original Roman calendar, and its actual number in the current year in the calendar we use now is one of the odd features of these final four months of the year. 

September is also back-to-school month in man places - except, of course, in those places where school already started the month before! Perhaps that is really just another argument for year-round schooling!

In the Eastern Orthodox Churches, September 1 (which occurs on Gregorian September 14 for those still following the Julian calendar) marks the beginning of the new year. Presumably this references the Jewish calendar, which numbers its years from the 1st day of the 7th month (Rosh Hashanah). Celebrated in the diaspora for two days, Rosh Hashanah this year will begin at sundown on Wednesday, September 20, and end at sundown on Friday, September 22. It will mark the beginning of the year 5778.

September 1 has also been designated by Pope Francis as the Annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. In his message for the first Annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation in 2015, Pope Francis wrote:

As Christians we wish to contribute to resolving the ecological crisis which humanity is presently experiencing. In doing so, we must first rediscover in our own rich spiritual patrimony the deepest motivations for our concern for the care of creation. We need always to keep in mind that, for believers in Jesus Christ, the Word of God who became man for our sake, “the life of the spirit is not dissociated from the body or from nature or from worldly realities, but lived in and with them, in communion with all that surrounds us” (Laudato Si’, 216). The ecological crisis thus summons us to a profound spiritual conversion: Christians are called to “an ecological conversion whereby the effects of their encounter with Jesus Christ become evident in their relationship with the world around them” (ibid., 217). For “living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience” (ibid.).

The annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation will offer individual believers and communities a fitting opportunity to reaffirm their personal vocation to be stewards of creation, to thank God for the wonderful handiwork which he has entrusted to our care, and to implore his help for the protection of creation as well as his pardon for the sins committed against the world in which we live. The celebration of this Day, on the same date as the Orthodox Church, will be a valuable opportunity to bear witness to our growing communion with our Orthodox brothers and sisters. We live at a time when all Christians are faced with the same decisive challenges, to which we must respond together, in order to be more credible and effective.

(Photo: September from the famous Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, an early 15th-century prayer book, which is generally considered perhaps the best surviving example of medieval French Gothic manuscript illumination)