Room Enough for All

Jealousy - as Britain’s Queen Alexandra famously said in 1910 - is the source of so many problems in life.

Well, you hardly need me to tell you that – or that there is plenty of jealousy in the world, or what its causes are. Evidently, there was plenty of it in the Gospel story we just heard [Mark 9:38-43, 47-48] – as illustrated by the apostles’ angry reaction to the unnamed “someone” they had caught casting out devils in Jesus’ name – as well as in the Old Testament story of Joshua’s jealous reaction to Eldad and Medad prophesying in the camp [Numbers 11:25-29]. I think we can all recognize some of ourselves in the behavior of both Joshua and Jesus’ apostles – the first Bishops of the Church. Jesus’ startling response – like that of Moses before him – seems to go against what we should all recognize as one of our most ordinary and deeply embedded patterns of human behavior, being part of a group.

As we have been hearing now for the past several Sundays, Jesus had, for some time now, been instructing his followers about what was going to happen when they got to Jerusalem – and what that experience should translate into in terms of their own attitudes. Yet the impression one gets over and over again – in the Gospels as in ordinary life, when things get repeated over and over, there is usually a reason, an instructional purpose – the impression one gets is that the future first Bishops of Jesus’ Church just didn’t get it. On the contrary, we see them again focused on themselves, on being insiders, on being important members of a prestigious and powerful inner circle!

Like members of any adolescent prep-school clique, college fraternity, or any other exclusive group at any age, the apostles seemed obsessed with distinguishing who’s in from who’s out, who’s up from who’s down, who’s rich from who’s poor, who’s smart from who’s dumb, who dresses well from who doesn’t, who’s cool from who’s not - and equally obsessed with having it all without having to sacrifice anything, let alone a hand, a foot, or an eye. That sounds a lot like us, like our American society today, doesn’t it?

Of course, in the world we human beings have built for ourselves, our world works best by building barriers, something we are forever doing at every level. That is who we are. It expresses what we want and determines how we act – in our families, in our relationships, in our careers, in our country, in our churches, whatever.

The good news of the Gospel is that by his life - and above all by his death – Jesus has liberated us from this deep-seated, but ultimately enslaving and self-destructive, need to be forever comparing ourselves, to be forever in competition, to be forever keeping score, counting our possessions and calculating our coolness. Jesus challenges us to free ourselves from this unending universal human obsession about ourselves, and about our group, which is just a collective version of our obsession about ourselves.

And, of course, all those things that we want so much all come in limited quantities. That presumably is a big part of their appeal, what makes them so attractive and desirable. To the extent that I get a lot, someone else gets less, little, or nothing at all. That is the heart of our economic and political life, which is why economic and political life are so largely about conflict, because the reality is that there really is never enough of all the stuff we want – certainly not enough for everyone! And, as today’s 2nd Reading [James 5:1-6] reminds us, those at the top of the economic pyramid tend to try to guarantee that it stays that way.  So the perennial task of economic systems and governments is to figure out how most satisfactorily to allocate all those scarce, limited benefits that we all so desire, which can only work when people are willing to limit their desires and allow others to get their share.

The kingdom of God, however, has no such limits. It has room enough for all of us. It’s the ultimate (and perhaps the only) genuinely “win-win” situation. But it also entails a completely novel and completely unique notion of what winning means, enabling us to accomplish mighty deeds in God’s name, transforming our “lose-lose” world into something we would otherwise never have been able even to imagine.

Like the apostles, our natural inclination is to spend our energy vainly competing to accumulate more and more – tangible goods like wealth, power, security, and status, and those equally elusive if less tangible ones like affirmation, respect, and love. Jesus, however, is challenging us, as he challenged his apostles (and as only he can), to feel, to walk, and to see our way through life with his hands, his feet, and his eyes – and so to feel, to walk, and to see things the way God does.

Homily for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, September 30, 2018.

"Defend Us in Battle"

In 1957, as a nerdy nine-year old, I chose Michael for my confirmation name, because I was attracted by the bellicose militaristic image of Michael the Archangel in the prayer then regularly recited as part of the so-called “Leonine Prayers for Russia” recited after Low Mass: Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. 

The origin of those so-called Leonine Prayers dates from 1859, when Leo's predecessor, Blessed Pope Pius IX, faced with the growing prospect of Italian unification and its imminent threat to the papacy’s temporal power over the central Italian Papal States, prescribed certain prayers to be recited after Masses celebrated in those territories. In 1884, in the context of the continued conflict between the Holy See and the now unified Kingdom of Italy, Pope Leo XIII ordered that those prayers be recited throughout the world. Two years later he added the now familiar Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel. The Papal States were never really recovered, of course, but in the 20th century Benito Mussolini managed to solve the long-festering conflict to the satisfaction of both sides. So, after the 1929 reconciliation between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy, Pope Pius XI directed that the prayers should continue to be said but with the new intention for the Church in Russia. 

Those "Leonine Prayers" were required to be recited only after Low Mass. In the United States at that time, however, Low Mass had de facto become the most commonly experienced form of Mass for most lay Catholics. With the effective end of Low Mass after Vatican II, however, the 1964 Instruction Inter Oecumenici suppressed the obligation to recite those prayers. Even so, the Prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel has remained popular and is presently experiencing a certain resurgence in its popularity and usage.

Today, of course, is the feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel, traditionally known in the English-speaking world as Michaelmas.  (In our contemporary calendar, Michael shares the feast with the other two biblical archangels, Gabriel and Raphael, which effectively only diminishes the attention actually given to those other two, who previously each had a feast of his own.) 

Michael is mentioned three times in the Old Testament Book of Daniel, which identifies him as Michael the great prince, the protector of your people. According to Jewish tradition, Michael acted as Israel’s advocate and defender against the guardians of other nations and particularly against the evil angel who was Israel’s accuser. That tradition is reflected in the New Testament Book of Revelation, chapter 12, which describes a war in heaven in which Michael and his angels defeats Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. Jesus himself, without mentioning Michael, seemed to be referring to this when he said that he had watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightening (Luke 10:18).

According to Revelation, Satan and the other fallen angels, having been cast out of heaven and thrown down to the earth, continue there to make war on those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus .The New Testament Epistle of Jude recounts another Jewish tradition according to which Michael fought the devil when he tried to claim the body of Moses, and said to the devil The Lord rebuke you!

Catholic tradition celebrates an apparition of the Archangel Michael on Monte Gargano in Italy at the end around the year 490 and used to commemorate that liturgically in another feast of Saint Michael on May 8.  Michael was also said to have appeared in 708, asking for a church to be built on what is now known as Mont Saint-Michel, which remains a pilgrimage site to this day. Most famously, he is supposed to have appeared with a sword over the Roman mausoleum of Hadrian in 590 during a devastating plague. To celebrate that event and the end of the plague, Pope Saint Gregory the Great renamed the building Castel Sant'Angelo, the name by which it is still known today (photo above, taken by me in 2012).

So it is hardly surprising that this great Archangel should continue to be invoked throughout the Church, especially in times of trouble.

The Elephant in the Room

I didn't catch all of the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing yesterday, but I saw quite enough of it. In some ways it was like watching two different hearings. In the first, Professor Blasey Ford told her story and answered questions calmly, firmly insisting on her harrowing account of what allegedly happened to her years ago, in a way that certainly seemed believable, while she herself certainly came across as sincere and honorable. She asserted her "100 percent" certainty about the identity of her attacker, invoking her scientific expertise as a psychologist to clarify why that particular memory is so certain. Her account of her attackers' laughter was particularly powerful. However uncomfortable and unhappy she may have been about being there and having to testify publicly, she seemed to succeed in effectively making her point, in spite of the awkward committee procedure which chopped up her testimony into 5-minute segments and caused the questioning to alternate awkwardly between the hired Republican prosecutor and the sympathetic Democratic senators. (At times I felt as if I were watching an aristocratic Edwardian dinner, where at a periodic signal from the host everyone would have to turn and switch conversation partners!)

Then came Judge Kavanaugh's turn to testify. Expressing both personal anger (justifiable if he is innocent) and partisan Republican rage, Kavanaugh appeared to be behaving as his White House mentor may have wanted him to. If so, it seemed to have worked, when the President tweeted in response: “Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him.” Kavanaugh's aggressive behavior also seemed to liberate some of the Republican Senators to speak more aggressively in turn. I could hardly help wondering, however, what would be the reaction if Professor Ford, or any other woman or, for that matter, any poor or otherwise non-privileged person of either sex were to talk that way to the committee?

Of course, instead of all his histrionics, Kavanaugh, if he is innocent as he claims, could have served his cause much better by asking for - calling for, indeed demanding - an FBI investigation. This not only has he refused to do, but he seemed to go out of his way to avoid answering directly every time that question was posed. There is no better illustration of the committee majority's bad faith, of their determination to impose Kavanaugh on the Court no matter what the facts, than this suspicious reluctance to seek a normal investigation.

This is indeed the proverbial "Elephant in the Room," this Republican unwillingness to ask for a fuller investigation, and in particular the refusal to subpoena the one witness whose testimony could actually make a difference one way or the other - Mark Judge, Kavanaugh's classmate and friend (and memoirist of hedonistic preppy culture), who is alleged by Professor Ford to have been present.

The 25th Amendment and Democratic Contituionalism

President Trump should take some comfort in the fact that, for all the foolish talk and Washington gossip suggesting some rash, high-level scheming about invoking the 25th Amendment, that Amendment itself is actually very scrupulous about protecting presidential power. It would, in fact, be more of a challenge to employ the 25th Amendment against a healthy and functioning president than it would be to impeach him. And that is as it should be in our society. Adopted in the 1960s to address a real, if thankfully usually only hypothetical, problem, the 25th Amendment was never intended to become a vehicle for subverting democratic constitutionalism.

The Twenty-fifth Amendment was submitted by Congress to the states on July 6, 1965, and was adopted as part of the Constitution on February 10, 1967. Those dates tell us a lot about the amendment's historical context and intended purpose. In the wake of the Kennedy assassination (and in the anxious context of the Cold War with its assumed need for permanent readiness), there was renewed concern about the vacancy in the office of Vice President, highlighted by the old age of the then Speaker and Senate President pro tem (the two next in line for the Presidency according to the 1947 Presidential Succession Act), The circumstances of Kennedy's assassination also highlighted concerns about possible presidential disability, a concern already on the table thanks to President Eisenhower's health crises in the 1950s and the memory of Woodrow Wilson's even worse health problems in 1919 and after. Those examples illustrate the kinds of situations the framers of the Amendment (and the general public) had in mind when worrying about presidential inability.

Section 1 of the Amendment settled the old debate (dating back to John Tyler's assumption of the title of President in 1841) and declared that the Vice President becomes President (not just Acting President) if a President dies, resigns, or is removed from office. Section 2 provided a mechanism for selecting a new Vice President whenever that office might become vacant. That provision has been invoked twice since - replacing the resigned Spiro Agnew with Gerald Ford in 1973 and then, after Ford's assumption of the Presidency upon Nixon's resignation, filling the vacancy with Nelson Rockefeller. Obviously no one anticipated Watergate in the mid 1960s, but it proved a stroke of luck that this provision was adopted, making the Watergate crisis somewhat easier to resolve.

Section 3 and Section 4 deal with the potentially much more confusing situation of presidential disability. Section 3 allows a President voluntarily to transfer  his powers to the Vice President temporarily until the President is again able to resume them. (Fans of The West Wing will remember President Bartlet invoking that provision after his daughter had been kidnapped.) Section 4 provides a mechanism for the Vice President and the Cabinet do do this in a case where they believe the President is genuinely disabled in some way and cannot or will not do so himself. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President. It then goes on to specify how the  President can challenge this and get his powers back and how Congress is to adjudicate such a dispute.Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Section 4 has never been invoked. and, for all the persistent chatter about invoking it, I doubt it ever will - apart from the rare kind of case it was obviously intended to apply to, i.e., a President physically or mentally disabled as Woodrow Wilson may have been after his stroke or John F. Kennedy might have been had he physically survived his shooting. To invoke it in any other case would suggest a situation in which the President's own chosen Vice President and Cabinet (all of whom, except for the Vice President, he could legitimately and freely fire at will at the first hint of their opposition to him) would gang up on him in what might best be termed a Cabinet Coup. What extreme level of political dysfunction would be required for such apocalyptic disloyalty on the part of the Vice President and the Cabinet? And, assuming such an unlikely development, wouldn't the President fight back? The Amendment requires a two-thirds vote in each house of Congress to support the Vice President and the Cabinet in such a conflict with the President. That is, of course, a higher threshold than the majority vote required for the House to impeach a President and the two-thirds in the Senate to convict. Apart from evident physical or mental illness, the obvious and appropriate avenue to remove a seriously misbehaving president  (not just a president one disagrees with) is that provided by the original constitution - impeachment in the House, and trial and conviction in the Senate - difficult but easier both procedurally and politically.

Impeachment and Trial is a seldom used but comprehensible political process, properly reserved for the most serious situations. A misguided, politically motivated impeachment such as that attempted by the Republicans against President Clinton twenty years ago was rightly rejected by the voters who recognized its political impropriety. A misguided 25th Amendment Cabinet coup would, if anything, be infinitely more problematic. And imagine its effect upon the President's supporters, who are already alienated from a political system they perceive as stacked against them and in favor of Washington elites?

Several federal judges have been successfully impeached and removed from office, and it is not hard to imagine that even more may be in the future. They are, after all, unelected potentates with life-long tenure against whose misbehavior there is no other legal recourse but impeachment. A president, on the other hand, is elected for a limited term. Apart from "treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors," for which impeachment is appropriate and apart from obvious physical or mental disability for which the 25th Amendment is indicated, the appropriate answer to a problematic president is electoral defeat if he runs for re-election and in the meantime maintaining a strong and powerful opposition in control of Congress. The occupant of the White House and the composition of Congress are ultimately in the people's gift. They are decisions that ought to rest with the voters, not with bureaucratic cabals however well-intentioned. That is what democratic constitutionalism demands of its citizens.

Demon Alcohol

Whatever the Republican Party's candidate for the Supreme Court did or didn't do during his rich, privileged, elitist education, one consistent theme that runs through all these sad stories is the widespread abuse of alcohol in such settings. With so much at stake in this controversy, thinking about the plague of alcohol abuse (including and especially underage alcohol abuse) is obviously only one of many more pressing concerns. Even so, and setting aside for the moment all the other important issues and the personalities involved, I keep wondering how and why have we as a society gotten to such a place where being drunk can be thought of as common and routine among many young people? Whatever else did or didn't happen in all these stories, drinking and getting drunk seems central - for the alleged attacker, for the alleged victims, and for whatever witnesses were present. 

Admittedly alcohol abuse is nothing new and has always been a major problem in many societies. A century ago, Prohibition was an ill-conceived - and ultimately unsuccessful - extreme attempt to address this issue in the United States. Some societies seem more successful than others in fostering more balanced cultural attitudes about alcohol usage. It does seem to help somewhat when alcohol usage is predominantly associated with home and meals and when public displays of drinking and drunkenness are socially scorned. Part of our contemporary problem may be that, while we have made such significant strides in some areas, out-of-the-home drinking remains a widespread epidemic in certain age groups and social situations - while no longer receiving the appropriate amount of public scorn necessary to counteract it. At present, all sorts of behaviors that were once more common and socially accepted are no longer socially accepted and so have become less common. Do we need a comparable social re-evaluation of public drinking?