The Americans' Finale

For much of the past six seasons of FX's The Americans, I have harbored a hope that the series would end with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War and with Philip and Elizabeth - their entire life project now gone (and its utter moral and political bankruptcy definitively revealed), - having to adapt to being in reality what they had for so long been pretending to be, a plain ordinary American couple, parents of ordinary American children. I wondered how that would play out in their varied relationships. To me, the more interesting side of the series has always been less about the spying, the sex, and the violence that littered so many episodes and more about their relationships - as a couple, as a family, as neighbors, workers, and putative citizens, as well as with their handlers and fellow spies - relationships all tainted by their duplicitous lives. 

As the show moved into its sixth and final season, with doomsday approaching it was obvious that the series would not quite end that way. The question then became what particular apocalyptic scenario would the series go with, and how many loose ends would it try to tie up? From way back, there was always the hint of the possibility (just a possibility) that Philip might perhaps defect. Now that Elizabeth, after a life devoted to murder and mayhem, was also beginning to reconsider things, might that be one scenario? All they had to do, after all, was walk across to their best friend and neighbor's house in order to defect! Or would one or both of them go down in a violent, suicidal battle with the FBI? Or would they really just get away, with no price paid for their crimes except that of giving up their comfortable suburban American lifestyle? And would they really go "home" or try to make a new life somewhere else in the US or Canada? And what about all the minor characters whose lives have been ruined, like Oleg and Martha? The show has had so many interesting characters - even the minor ones have been interesting and sympathetic figures - that it would seem hard to tie up all the loose ends. And in fact the finale didn't really try to do so - concentrating instead almost entirely on the principal characters, the four Jennings and Stan. (We never even really find out for sure if Renee was a spy or not.)

The finale may actually have been one of the very few episodes with no one getting killed (despite the tense scene centered on Stan's pointed gun), with no violence at all in fact. The violence was all emotional - the heart-wrenching separation for Philip and Elizabeth from their American lives and their American children and Stan's comparably heart-wrenching realization about his best friend.

I admit I have generally found Elizabeth hard to like (unlike Philip who always seemed more human and sympathetic). So it was somehow humanly reassuring to realize at the end that she really did love her son Henry and was somewhat broken up by her having to leave him behind (although she quickly came to agree with Philip that that would in fact be best for him). In the end, of course, all Philip and Elizabeth were left with was each other - having had to abandon their home of so many decades and their children. Their marriage, originally part of their deception, but which had grown more serious and was even solemnized some time ago by a Russian priest, ends up being their only reality, the only thing they get to keep.

Along with giving up their children, they  had to give up their one real friendship in America. The series was as much about the male bonding between Phiilp and Stan as it was about the work of either of them. Both were essentially lonely men, made so by the demands of their work. Both had comforted each other in their times of marital troubles. The amazing way Philip somehow talked Stan out of arresting them and letting them flee highlighted the talents he had honed as a well trained and accomplished liar through a lifetime of deception, one last instrumentalization of other people. But it also revealed his sincere feeling for Stan (whom he calls his "only" friend, and probably means it) and almost (not quite but almost) a kind of repentance for his horrible life. In letting them go, Stan in effect undermined everything he had devoted his career to, prioritizing friendship over patriotism and ideology.

So Philip and Elizabeth really returned to Russia. Even almost at the last minute, as their car pulled up to the border crossing, I wondered if they might turn around and try to start a new life elsewhere. But in the end they did what was probably at that point their only seriously viable option - at the cost by then not only of their son but of their daughter as well. They are safe now, but scarred. Their punishment is to grow old without the one good thing they ever produced - their children - and (as the audience knows but they do not know yet) to do so in a society which will soon turn its back on everything they had sacrificed for.

I always sort of held it against Elizabeth that she had tried to turn Paige into a spy. I liked the motif of "ordinary" American kids as a counterweight to their parents. And it had to be obvious that, whatever else happened, the Paige plot could not end well. Consistently determined to understand what she was doing and make informed decisions, Paige was the motivation for that final phone call to Henry (although she proved unable to talk herself). And at the last minute, in what had to be either irrational impulse or great courage, she got off the train at the Canadian border and returned to DC. Will she turn herself in? Or will she try to rebuild a life in hiding? How? The latter seems almost impossible. Philip and Elizabeth at ever stage in their careers had been enveloped by handlers and other contacts. Paige is a strong personality, but she would be moving on with her life alone without any of those supports. Her final scene, sitting alone in Claudia's now abandoned apartment drinking vodka, does not seem very promising. But then the story has not been kind to any of the secondary or tertiary characters who have been caught up in this tangled web.

It is one of the characteristic strengths of great drama - whether Shakespeare or Netflix or even Cable TV - to cause the audience to identify with and feel something even for characters who have done appallingly evil things. For all the harm Philip and Elizabeth and their historically evil cause have done to so many people over the course of their long careers as "illegals," it was hard not to feel for them watching their final, poignant phone conversation with Henry, watching their faces as they saw Paige abandon them at the Canadian border, watching them make the irrevocable decision to drive across the border into the Soviet Union, watching them look at their old/new homeland from the side of the road and contemplate who they are and what they have lost.

The Restless Wave

The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great fights, and Other Appreciations (Simon and Schuster, 2018) is Senator John McCain's latest (and presumably final) political/personal memoir, co-authored with McCain staffer Mark Salter, who has collaborated with McCain on several books. (The book's title is taken from the Navy Hymn: Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave.) 

I have never voted for McCain and can't imagine any circumstance in which I would likely do so. Nor have I ever read any of his previous books. In our present, polarized, hyper-partisan political culture that would normally be a reason not to read such a book.  It is a tribute, perhaps, to McCain's personal and political impressiveness, to what his personal and political character have represented - or at least to what he has at his best wanted to represent - that this is just the sort of book that one should be reading right now as a partial antidote to our poisoned, hyper-partisan political culture. Whatever his other qualities or faults, McCain, in terms of his personality and character, manifestly represents the antithesis of Donald Trump.

For McCain, "among the few compensations of old age is the acuity of hindsight," and it is in that spirit that he tries to recount key chapters in the last decades of his career. Of course, there is the story of the 2008 campaign. He still defends Sarah Palin and her selection as his running mate (a choice some would argue helped move his already problematic political party even further along the destructive road to where it is now). Even so, he highlights his original preference for Democrat Al Gore's 2000 running mate, fellow Senator Joe Lieberman, who was both a friend and "shared the same worldview and concerns." Having been dissuaded at the time from choosing him as a running mate for fear of dividing the Republican party, he says he still wishes he had done so, still believes "that a McCain Lieberman ticket would have been received by most Americans as a genuine effort to pull the country together for a change." 

That more or less captures much of the book's spirit - a flare for independence (his famous image as "maverick"), his ambivalent relationship with his own party, his openness to working with Democrats, and his commitment to a politics that is different from what we have now (but in some ways more reminiscent of what it once was earlier in his career). He emphasizes his opposition to torture, his advocacy of the "surge" in Iraq, his take on the problematic "Arab Spring," his fight for campaign finance reform (and his negative view of Citizens United and the Court that unwisely decided it), his commitment to comprehensive immigration reform, his strongly interventionist foreign policy positions (so different from both Obama and Trump, both of whom represent the  semi-isolationist wings of their respective parties), especially regarding Vladimir Putin and Russia's "nostalgia for empire," the importance of long-term commitment to what he understands as fundamental American values in foreign affairs, and finally his own battle with cancer.

Of particular interest are his assessments of Hillary Clinton, whom he had gotten to know and work with in the Senate and whom he calls his friend, Barack Obama, whom he respects on various levels but whose foreign policy he found flawed, and Ted Kennedy, with whom he had an almost model, bipartisan relationship, personally and politically.

Those personal relationships reflect his commitment to a more traditional congressional style. Speaking of the Senate's 2006 immigration bill, which passed with 62 votes (38 Democrats, 23 Republicans, 1 Independent), he says: "It was major legislation passed the only way most major legislation is ever passed: with a broad bipartisan majority built on compromises both sides could live with and good faith on the part of the senators most involved." He believes that the current political dysfunction is "getting little done for the country, which exacerbates voters' alienation from Washington, which encourages them to elect more people to Washington determined to stop any compromise, and block genuine progress on anything." 

On immigration specifically, he attributes the failure to achieve comprehensive immigration reform "to the misinformation and downright lies that enflame opponents, which have only gotten more pervasive and more inflammatory over the last decade."

The public is already largely familiar with McCain's positions on bipartisan cooperation and getting things done through "regular order," but his insistent advocacy of them at this point as part of his final legacy may be his most significant contribution to that cause. 

in conclusion, he celebrates " a happy life lived in imperfect service to a country made of ideals, whose continued success is the hope of the world."

At the Cemetery

Many of us are certainly old enough to remember Memorial Day's original name - Decoration Day. It began as a day to honor the dead from the Civil War by decorating their graves. Eventually, it became a day to honor the graves of all veterans, but for a long time the emphasis remained on visiting and honoring their graves. My own generation grew up in the aftermath of World War II, and visiting the cemetery on or near Memorial Day was part of that war legacy. Even today, volunteers still visit cemeteries to place flags on graves – a reminder of the importance of the special places of memory we call cemeteries.

So we celebrate this Mass today in a cemetery established by Knoxville’s first Catholic community, committed and devoted to doing their Christian duty to all the dead of the parish.

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 place. 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 for Memorial Day, Mass at Calvary Cemetery, Knoxville, TN, May 28, 2018.

Photo: Memorial Day Mass at Calvary Cemetery, 2016.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit

With the end of the Easter season, the Paschal Candle has been banished to the Baptistery, and the Resurrection icon’s place has been taken by a 15th-century portrayal of the Holy Trinity [photo]. Its theme is the familiar story in Genesis of the patriarch Abraham’s three angelic visitors, a visit subsequently interpreted in Christian tradition as an image of the three persons of the Trinity. In it, the second Person - the Son, the Word, who reveals God to the world - is portrayed prominently in the center, pointing outward into the world. The Father seated to one side, looks lovingly at the Son, who in turn looks lovingly at the Father, while the bright-robed Holy Spirit is seated on the other side. The three Persons gaze at each other in mutual loving communication, into which we in turn are also meant to be drawn by the Son.

Well, you might say, that’s all very nice, but what of it? For so many (maybe most) of us, the Trinity sometimes seems somewhat abstract – a doctrine duly believed in, of course, but not something otherwise given too much thought to.

But this is in spite of the obvious fact that we were all baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. On that occasion, we – or our parents and godparents - all made a profession of faith in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one which we repeat regularly when we sing the Creed at Mass. Meanwhile, our sins have been forgiven in the sacrament of Penance, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Those of us who are married have exchanged wedding rings in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The principal prayers of the Mass are mostly addressed to the Father, through the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. And we have all, over and over again, been blessed in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. In short, our entire religious lives, both individually and collectively as a Church community, have been defined, formed, shaped by this awesome Trinitarian mystery of who God is, that defines God’s ongoing relationship with us and ours with God.

Admittedly, the words we use to talk about the Trinity, words like one “nature” and three “persons,” used not as we use them in ordinary language, but as technical terms of philosophical language, may seem somewhat abstract.

The so-called Athanasian Creed, which used to be recited the Church’s morning prayer today and on many other Sundays as well, uses rather repetitive, dense-sounding, liturgical language to speak of the Trinity, for example:

The Father is made of none; neither created, nor begotten. The Son is of the Father alone; not made, nor created; but begotten. The Holy Spirit is of the Father and of the Son; neither made, nor created, nor begotten; but proceeding. So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits. And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal.

And that is just one small excerpt! Even so, however abstractly or densely we have learned to talk about the Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity remains our fundamental – and uniquely Christian – insight into who God is.  Created in God’s image and likeness, we all have a built-in, natural, longing for God. But who God is - who God is in himself - is something we could never have come to know on our own.  That had to be revealed to us by God himself. And God has done so, revealing who he is in himself – one God in three distinct Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We do not worship three gods, but one God – a unity of Persons in one divine nature or substance. Each of the three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is truly God, each distinctly God, but existing eternally in relationship to each other: the Father to the Son, the Son to the Father, the Holy Spirit to both.

At the same time, the Trinity also expresses something fundamental about how God acts outside himself, how he acts toward us. Who God is in himself is how God acts; and thus how God acts in human history reveals who God ultimately is. Already in the Old Testament, God was revealing himself – as Moses testified in today’s 1st reading [Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40] as one who repeatedly reveals himself in how he acts toward us.

It is, of course, the Son, consubstantial with the Father, who for our salvation came down from heaven, and who, seated at the right hand of the Father, has sent the Holy Spirit upon his Church, making her the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Led by the Holy Spirit – as Saint Paul told the Christians in Rome [Romans 8:14-17] and through them tells us - we have become true sons and daughters of God the Father and joint heirs with Christ.

The Holy Spirit unites us with the Father in the Body of Christ, the Church. Through the sacraments, Christ continues to communicate the Holy Spirit to the members of his Church. Filled with the same Holy Spirit, we who receive Christ’s body and blood are transformed into one body in Christ, participants in the mission of his Church.

That mission is nothing less than to make disciples of all nations - in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit [Matthew 28:16-20].

Homily for Trinity Sunday, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, May 27, 2018.

Praying the Creeds

I was happilyy impressed several weeks back when the congregation at Barbara Bush's funeral was invited to recite the Creed together as part of the funeral service. One of the many wonderful things about Anglican worship is the prominent inclusion, as a consistent practice in Anglican services, of one or other of the traditional creeds.

The imminence of Trinity Sunday reminds me that this feast was traditionally not only the end of Easter Time but also the day most associated with the so-called "Athanasian Creed," which used to be recited at the Office of Prime on that day (and until 1955 also on many other Sundays of the year). Properly entitled the Symbolum "Quicumque Vult," the "Athanasian Creed" was ascribed at times to Saint Athanasius (c.296-373), but was actually composed in Latin, probably in Gaul, perhaps a century after Athanasius. Ascribed to him because of its strong affirmation of Trinitarian belief, it was Western in both origin and usage. Authorship aside, it remains a remarkably resonant creedal proclamation, fittingly associated with Sundays. (Verses 1-28 are focused on the Trinity; verses 29-44 are primarily christological.) 

The "Athanasian Creed" is just one of the three creeds traditionally used in the Western, Latin liturgical tradition. The creed commonly called the Apostles Creed (Symbolum Apostolicum) used to be recited daily at Prime and Compline. That medieval usage continues in the Anglican daily offices of Matins and Evensong. (I remember how, when I was at Windsor Castle on sabbatical in 2005, we would always turn to face the altar when reciting the Apostles Creed during those daily offices in Saint George's Chapel.) The inexplicable hostility to the liturgical use of creeds on the part of 20th-century liturgical reformers resulted in the Apostles Creed's complete disappearance from the Divine Office in 1955. 

The third creed, sadly now the only one still used in the liturgy, is, of course, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed (photo), composed originally in Greek and thus the only creed used in both the Western and Eastern Churches. In the Eastern rites, the Creed remains a regular part of every Divine Liturgy. In the Roman Rite, however, its usage has been much diminished. Formerly used on all Sundays and very many feasts, it is now confined solely to Sundays and "Solemnities." Traditionally one of "the parts of a Sung Mass," the Creed is nowadays more widely recited rather than sung, even in otherwise "sung" celebrations, a dramatic rejection of centuries of liturgical practice, inexplicable except as one more consequence of 20th-century reformers' dubious legacy of hostility to the traditional prominence of creeds' in the liturgy. (Not long ago, it was even worse! For example, in the 1980s I can recall attending Sunday Masses at which the Creed was routinely omitted!)

Lex orandi, lex credendi. Liturgy has always been at the heart of what we do as a Church. Increasingly it may well become the only thing we do - the only experience of Church and religion most people will have in their lives, as an ambient Catholic and Christian culture and the cultural institutions that in the past shared responsibility for forming individuals, families, and society as Catholic Christians continue to weaken and disappear. . The proclamation and profession of an articulated faith in the liturgy, something previous centuries could perhaps take for granted, will therefore be that much more important a part of whatever liturgical experiences people have..