Billionaire Fantasies

As if Tom Steyer hasn't done enough mischief with his ill-advised campaign to promote another 1990s-style, partisan impeachment of a president, now we have Howard Schultz of Starbucks fame proposing himself as a plausible "independent" candidate for president. What fantasies are generated when one has too much money! Schultz's "candidacy" highlights at least three contemporary problems with how we purport to govern ourselves.

First and most obvious is the excessive and hence dangerous role that money plays in our politics. Having money has always been an advantage, although not necessarily a decisive one. John Kennedy could probably never have risen to the presidency without his (that is, his father's) money. On the other hand, his contemporary Nelson Rockefeller still couldn't achieve his goal, for all his millions. Schultz's millions won't elect him president anymore than Steyer's wealth will win him the impeachment effort he so craves. But both can throw their money around, get lots of attention, and so seriously distort the political and electoral processes.

The second, not unrelated, problem is the furtherance of the strangely popular notion that business success qualifies one for political success. There is a reason, of course, why prior to President Trump all his predecessors had had some political or military experience prior to moving to the White House. Even if Trump had really been the successful businessman he presented himself as, that would not have provided him with relevant experience to prepare him for the job of governing. Honestly, even if a candidate has had a successful business career, why should that qualify him or her for political office? Business is about the pursuit of private gain. Politics is about the public interest, the common good, even at the cost of private individuals' private interests. Besides the peculiar American admiration for successful businessmen, this also reflects the problematic notion that an "outsider" can fix things. By now we have elected enough such "outsider" candidates that we should know better!

The third problem is the persistent fantasy that "independent" or third-party candidates can actually win - or that they even represent a serious constituency. Most such "independent" or third party candidates are marginal figures who represent hardly anyone and thankfully have no substantive effect on the election. On the other hand, there have been candidates who have impacted the election by taking too many votes from one major candidate and thus throwing the election to the other. Theodore Roosevelt effectively elected Woodrow Wilson in 1912, something he certainly lived to regret. In Florida in 2000 Ralph Nader's curious candidacy is generally thought to have elected George W. Bush, and we all know how that turned out!. The fact is that, in our presidential as opposed to parliamentary system (in which coalitions are only possible within parties before the election rather than among parties after) and where the vote is significantly distorted by the winner-take-all system (especially in the electoral college), it is almost impossible for an "independent" or third-party candidate to win, but it remains quite possible for him or her to affect the outcome.

A personal confession: almost 40 years ago, in my earlier career, I voted for an "independent" candidate, Congressman John Anderson, in the 1980 presidential election. Since at the time I was a professor of political science, presumably I knew better. In fact, I knew perfectly well that such candidates cannot win but can distort the election so as to elect the candidate they are most opposed to, which is of course exactly what happened. Although I knew better, it was a typical - typically foolish - case of voting one's heart over one's head. I had voted for Senator Ted Kennedy in the primary and was so angry that Carter had won the nomination that I could not bring myself to vote for him in the general election. So I wasted my vote. (As it happened, the election was a landslide and Anderson's quixotic candidacy had no real impact.)

An "independent" Schultz candidacy is premised on the morally dubious notion that because one has money to spend one should do so and the equally dubious notion that being a successful entrepreneur and/or an "outsider" constitutes some sort of qualification for office. It is also premised on the factually questionable notion that there actually exists some sort of "independent" constituency somewhere out there, whereas in fact we know that most so-called independents - if and when they actually vote - effectively lean toward one party or the other. If anything, there are probably fewer genuine "swing" voters today than in earlier elections, as evidenced by the obvious decline in ticket-splitting.

Of course, it is possible that there are voters not completely at home in the party of their choice, who in some alternate universe would prefer a more centrist party. There is evidently considerable popular support for more left-leaning economic policies. What gets in the way of the party that (sometimes) advocates for them is that party's accidental association with certain extreme social and cultural  policies. If the electoral system would accommodate it, a centrist party that advocated significantly higher taxes on the rich, more extensive healthcare for all (e.g., "Medicare for All"), and similar policies, but which was decidedly less extreme on social and cultural issues, might well have a real chance. (Subtract the personality issues and the rhetorical bombast, and one could argue that Trump campaigned in part as such a"centrist" alternative candidate in 2016, although he has obviously not governed as such a "centrist" president since taking office.) Ironically, however, Schultz seems to want a centrist party that advocates almost the exact opposite - a very liberal social and cultural stance combined with pro-rich economic policies - a combination for which there seems to be little or no really significant constituency.

I like Starbucks coffee a lot, and wish its former CEO all the best in his personal and professional life, but I hope he spends his money on better projects than a quixotic quest for the presidency that would likely accomplish little good and could run the risk of causing considerable mischief!

"The State of the Union is not Good"

If President Trump had had any prior political experience, and if he knew anything about how government works, and if he had behaved himself the way a president is supposed to behave, he would be most likely be giving his State of the Union tonight as originally scheduled, solemnly addressing not just Congress but a TV audience the size of which would be every attention-seeking celebrity's dream. 

After 35 days of pointless posturing at the expense of thousands of ordinary citizens, the President surrendered to political reality. The Government has now reopened, and soon the President will belatedly get to give his Sate of the Union Address. 


Unfortunately, such speeches (complete with all the jumping up and down that accompanies them) are so spectacularly predictable that the most interesting thing about this year's State of the Union may be precisely the fact that it is not happening on schedule.

Obligated by the Constitution from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient, recent Presidents have happily informed Congress that the State of our Union is "good" or "strong" or some other such platitude. I can only remember one exception, which is memorable for precisely that reason. 

On January 15, 1975, President Gerald Ford - thanks to Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal an Accidental President since the previous August - addressed the 94th Congress. He recounted how 26 years earlier as a freshman congressman he had listened to President Harry Truman announce, "I am happy to report to this 81st Congress that the state of the Union is good. Our Nation is better able than ever before to meet the needs of the American people, and to give them their fair chance in the pursuit of happiness. [It] is foremost among the nations of the world in the search for peace." Ford then continued: "Today, that freshman Member from Michigan stands where Mr. Truman stood, and I must say to you that the state of the Union is not good." He then went on to list some of the various problems then besetting the country - among them unemployment, recession, inflation, the deficit, the national debt, energy dependence, and "politics as usual" in Washington.

Well, we survived the seventies, but that decade's political failures culminated in the disastrous election of 1980 election and the consequent undermining of what was left of the post-war political, social, and cultural consensus that from 1945 to 1970 had supported what was probably the most broadly and equally shared period of progress in American history. And now we have reaped the whirlwind caused by our retreat from the ethos of that era, of which the mid-1970s crises President Ford acknowledged have proved to be but a harbinger.

Right now our country could really use a serious State of the Union speech - not the usual platitudinous performance punctuated by predictable congressional jumping up and down. Right now our country could really use an honest assessment of the political, social, cultural, and moral mess we are in, honestly assessed so as to invite some serious attempt to address our collective failings and somehow start over again.

Fulfilled in Our Hearing

The Gospel [Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21] we just heard took place in the otherwise ordinary setting of a Sabbath service in the synagogue in Jesus’ hometown, and it was as an ordinary member of the community that he took his turn reading the scripture (just as members of this congregation did here moments ago).

The passage Jesus read was familiar enough.  They had probably heard it many times, and had no reason to suppose that this time would be any different – any more than many of us, coming to Mass Sunday after Sunday, expect anything extraordinary to happen. The surprise was not what Jesus had read, but rather his unexpected announcement that the prophet’s words were being fulfilled then and there: “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Our reading today ends on that somewhat cheerful note, but the rest of the story [Luke 4:21-30] (which we’ll hear next week) tells how Jesus’ audience were first amazed at his words, but then turned against him and, filled with fury, drove him out of the town, and tried to throw him off the hilltop on which Nazareth was built. But Jesus, we are told, passed through the midst of them and went away.

Jesus’ audience’s amazement really shouldn’t surprise us, since surprise is one thing we usually least expect. And, since human history probably produces more bad news than good news, genuinely good news (if and when it comes) usually comes as a surprise. It doesn’t fit our ordinary expectations, and it is those ordinary expectations that govern our reactions most of the time. For the congregation at Nazareth to have expected Isaiah’s words to be fulfilled in their hearing, that would have been surprising. Hence their amazed reaction to Jesus’ surprising invitation to them to change their expectations!

For us today, too, the contrast can be quite as upsetting between Jesus’ amazing message and our present situation – natural disasters, climate change and our collective failure to face up to it, partisan fighting and political dysfunction, economic inequality, social conflicts, scandals and mutual recriminations even (sadly) within the Church itself.

Hence the understandable skepticism of those who have a hard time reconciling the good news the Church proclaims with the ordinary old news of our day-to-day world. We all know people who, tragically, are no longer actively involved in the life of the Church. There are many reasons why this happens – getting married, moving away, boredom, indifference, personal quarrels, national politics, and increasingly in our sadly post-Christian society not having really learned what being Church is all about in the first place, having heard the good news in a way that sounded like bad news or often enough like no news at all..

Then again many active, faithfully practicing Catholics may experience similar doubts, difficulties, conflicts, and questions. In that sense, there might not be a whole lot of difference between the two groups – any more than there was between those who spoke highly of Jesus in the Gospel story and those who were all filled with fury at him. If anything, the story seems to suggest they were really the same people – speaking highly of Jesus one minute, then all filled with fury the next – just as any one of us can be very committed and enthusiastic one day, but then something happens to make us angry or indifferent.

Ultimately, for us now, as for them then, the difference comes down to Jesus himself – Jesus who clearly made himself the issue, setting the stage for everything that followed. Ultimately, what solidifies our commitment and makes the Church effective in the world is how our expectations of life have been changed by Jesus himself, who in turn challenges us to share those changed expectations with the world he has chosen to be a part of and so remains with us in his Church, where life’s ordinary old news has become God’s good news.

In that Church, we are all, as St. Paul says [1 Corinthians 12:12-30], baptized into one body – Christ’s body – Christ’s face for the world to see, God’s word for the world to hear. The Church’s mission is a communal effort, as in different ways and at different times we come together with our many different experiences and needs, our joys and sorrows, our hopes and anxieties, to form a community of faith, hope, and love to continue Christ’s life and work in our world. We all share in that mission – from which we benefit and to which we contribute according to our circumstances.

Contributing to the mission of the Church is about much more than money, of course; but (as long as we live in a world in which resources are limited and things cost) money is inevitably a part of it. And so, as your pastor, my special task today is to ask you to make a pledge next week to this year’s Annual Bishop’s Appeal. 

Abruptly put that way, it may seem like a change of subject - but not really. Doing our share, both individually and as a community to support the mission of the Church has always been part of being the Church. In Saint Paul’s letters, for example, there are a number of references to the collection he was taking up to support the Mother Church in Jerusalem.

In the excerpt from his 1st letter to the Corinthians, from which we just heard, Saint Paul stressed the importance of unity – that there be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another. Later on in the same letter, Paul wrote: Now in regard to the collection for the holy ones, you also should do as I ordered the churches of Galatia. On the first day of the week each of you should set aside and save whatever one can afford [1 Corinthians 16:1].

Saint Paul was doing two things. The Jewish Christians in Jerusalem were in real need, and Paul wanted his somewhat better-off Gentile Christian converts to help them out. But he also wanted the different local communities to understand that they were all part of one Church, all on the same journey together, all caring for and supporting one another, and in the process spreading the kingdom’s frontiers farther out into the world.

Paul took this responsibility very seriously, as an essential expression of what it means to be a Church community, what it means to be diverse and different people all united in one Church, one Body of Christ. That is the same spirit in which we need to approach our annual Bishop’s Appeal, which is our annual opportunity as individuals and parishes to unite our efforts as one local Church here in East Tennessee to meet the multiple needs of the diocese for mission, education, charity, and service to so many people with so many needs.

Our parish is where we experience Church most intimately, and that is why we all love our parish and support it in so many ways, not just financial. But our parish is but one part of our local Church in East Tennessee, the Diocese of Knoxville, apart from which our parish would not even exist. So we all have to come together as a local Church, as a diocese, to make possible the things the Church needs to do. Your participation in the annual Bishop’s Appeal will help support the essential (but expensive) work of training seminarians along with the next generation of deacons and other parish leaders. It will enable essential diocesan programs for sacramental preparation and religious education, and will continue to make possible the Church’s vital social outreach to the thousands of clients served each year through our Catholic Charities, which responds to so many human needs in our communities. None of this happens automatically. It’s all ultimately up to us to make it all happen.

The Bishop’s Appeal is not just another “special collection.” It is at the heart of who we are and what we are called to do in the world.

Many of you have contributed in the past and have already received a letter in the mail. Maybe you have already sent in your pledge. If so, thank you. If you haven’t yet, you’ll have a chance to pledge next Sunday. Once again, our assigned parish goal this year will be $52,200. So please give it serious thought this week.

The Paulist Fathers have been privileged to serve the Church in Tennessee for over a century, starting with 50+ years of mission outreach in Middle Tennessee.  For another 50+ years, the Paulist Fathers maintained a major mission parish in Memphis. And, since 1973, we have been busy here in Knoxville, sharing the good news of Christ and the life of his Church in this city’s downtown and at its university, through our commitment to the life and mission of the Church here in East Tennessee in the Diocese of Knoxville. So I invite you to be attentive and generous in your response when our Bishop, carrying on the same tradition started by Saint Paul, makes his annual appeal to you next week.

The Bishop’s Appeal is obviously not the only thing we do as the Catholic Church in East Tennessee. But it is an important part of making all those other things we do possible.

Homily for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time and the Annual Bishop's Appeal, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, January 27, 2019.

Preacher of the truth to the whole world

In 1954, the Commission for the Reform of the Liturgy seriously discussed abolishing today's feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul. Considering that the final outcome of the calendar reform, we should probably consider ourselves lucky that it somehow survived when so many other even more ancient observances were pointlessly obliterated.

Of course, most saints are celebrated on the anniversary of their death; and, if the saint was a martyr, that itself is often his or her principal claim on our attention. Paul was in fact martyred in Rome along with the Apostle Peter, and the two are indeed celebrated together every year on June 29. But then, every January 25, there is this atypically additional celebration of St. Paul – focused on the event in his life that we now commonly call his “conversion.” That great event transformed Paul into a disciple of Jesus and put him on an equal footing with the others to whom the Risen Lord had appeared, highlighting for us what it means to be converted to Christ, to become a disciple of Jesus, his witness in the world, and an apostle sent with mission to evangelize, to make disciples of all peoples - Predicator veritatis in universo mundo (Preacher of the truth to the whole world).

Until then, Paul had been, first and foremost, a devout Jew, well educated in the Law, a Pharisee, that is, a member of the group most zealous about religious observance. But he was also a Greek-speaking Jew, from what we call the Diaspora, those living outside the land of Israel. He grew up in what is today Turkey, in a Greek city, and enjoyed Roman citizenship.

All of this was very important, because one of the critical issues which confronted the apostolic Church was figuring out how Jews and Gentiles were connected in God’s plan for the salvation of the world through Jesus Christ – and how Jews and Gentiles should relate to one another within the one community of the Church. The way this issue was eventually resolved (thanks in no small part to Paul) helped transform what would otherwise have been a small Jewish sect into the biggest and longest-lasting multi-cultural institution in the world - the Roman Catholic Church.

What Paul experienced when he met the Risen Lord on the way to Damascus was a revelation of God’s plan to include all people in the promises originally made to Abraham and his descendants and now being finally fulfilled in Jesus. The God who revealed himself to Paul in the person of Jesus was the same God whom Paul had always served so enthusiastically as a Jew. What changed was that now Paul recognized Jesus as the One, though whom all people are included in God’s plan of salvation.

And because the newly converted Paul now understood that it was Jesus that ultimately mattered, he also recognized no conflict between Gentile culture and faith in Christ. For the pagan peoples of the Roman Empire, that was good news indeed. It’s easy to see why Paul’s mission was so successful among different types of people and why he continues to serve as a model. The world has changed a lot since Paul’s time, but the Church’s mission - our mission - remains the same.

Paul was not one of the original 12. He wasn’t there when Jesus said to his disciples: go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.  But he absorbed those words as surely as if they had been initially addressed to him – as we also must do.

Photo: Papal Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, Rome.

Outrage! Outrage! OUTRAGE!

I suppose that, in an ideal world, everyone would be content and so there would be nothing to protest about and hence no demonstrations in the streets. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world and, this side of the eschaton, are not likely to do so. Hence, people will be discontented, and some will protest and demonstrate - as in this society they have every right to do. By inclination (and perhaps also as a consequence of having previously studied and taught political science), I am more biased in favor of political action (starting with voting) and less inclined to symbolic and expressive political gestures. But symbolic and expressive political gestures have their legitimate place; and, in any case, we live in a free society where symbolic and expressive political behaviors such as protests and demonstrations are every citizen's right.

So let us stipulate at the outset that everyone who participated in the now famous events at the Lincoln Memorial last week, events that have sparked so much predictable outrage on both sides of our great national political divide, everyone who participated had every right to be there protesting and demonstrating for his or her cause, whatever anyone else thinks of that cause. Of course, that does not absolve any of them from reasonable expectations of proper behavior, standards of which, however, continue to decline in this age of social media and mass-produced outrage And therein lies much of the problem. Twitter, for example, as John Gehring recently wrote in Commonweal has become "a performance space where we showcase our polished outrage and virtue."

Not having been there, I must, like most Americans, rely on conflicting accounts of the incident. It seems fair, however, to infer that the acute confrontation began with the provocative behavior and language of the "Black Hebrew Israelites," which at some point led to Nathan Phillips getting involved, which resulted in the widely viewed image of his apparent personal confrontation with one of the high school students. Accounts differ and continue to confuse about what exactly transpired, who said or did what, and who was provoking or reacting to provocations. As is often the case, there may be plenty of blame to go around. Meanwhile, the Diocese of Covington has wisely pledged an "independent, third-party investigation," and should be lauded for doing so.

The high school students may or may not have been engaging, as the Commonweal article insists, "in a form of harassment." Yet clearly some questions need to be raised. Obviously, a lot has changed since I was their age, but now as then there must be some expected standards of appropriate behavior to which students are expected to conform -  at least on occasions such as this when they are publicly representing their institution in a very visible way

In the long sweep of human history, adolescence is a newly invented concept. It cannot be construed to absolve adolescents of any and all responsibility for their actions. But it does diminish responsibility - certainly in our society and certainly when they suddenly find themselves far from home in a strange situation that must have been bewildering at best and likely frightening as well. But with that diminished responsibility comes increased responsibility - remote as well as proximate - on the part of relevant adults. I think Gehring's Commonweal article somewhat overstates its case on several points, but I echo his obvious question: "Where are the adults chaperoning these students? Teachers or parents are nowhere to be seen. If a few clear-headed grownups had moved the students along, the situation could have been defused." This question is so obvious that I am amazed it has not been everyone' first reaction. 

Adult responsibility in such a situation is remote as well as proximate, however, which brings us inevitably to the matter of the MAGA hats some students seem to have worn and which may have helped trigger the initial hostile reaction to them. What kind of preparation, instruction, guidance, or (since this was a Catholic school) catechesis did they receive before their trip to Washington? Certainly students are citizens with a personal right to express themselves, but they were there as the representatives of their school, and the adults remotely as well as proximately responsible for their behavior should have known better than to permit wearing MAGA hats to the March! 

At minimum, someone in a position of responsibility should have recognized how provocative such hats would be. It is one thing for a student personally to choose to identify with the despised policies of an unpopular president. It is quite another thing for him to act in a way that identifies his entire school with such policies and with a president opposed by the majority of Americans. If such a student was ignorant of this, that only raises more questions about what those responsible have been teaching or failing to teach.

And, given the dramatic disconnect between the president's policies and the moral values one would like to think they are being taught at such a school, the issue of adult responsibility for their preparation, instruction, guidance, and catechesis seems that much more significant.

Of course, the students were in Washington to participate in a political demonstration. But they were there to participate in a very specific political demonstration - the annual March for Life. They were not there to advocate for Trump's border wall, and had no business identifying their school - much less the March itself - with Trump's border wall or any other administration policy. By doing so, they not only hurt the image of their school but they also did damage to the March for Life and insulted those of their fellow marchers  who believe as passionately in the human dignity of immigrants and other victims of the policies represented by those  hats. And, if they didn't understand that, where again were the adults who should have taught them?

Sadly, so far at least, the main thing we have learned from this horrendous episode is that we as a nation are increasingly divided into two teams and that, whatever happens, it is all about being outraged at the other side, about real or suitably simulated outrage, outrage, and ever more OUTRAGE!