"The Kingdom of God is at hand"

Exactly 161 years ago today, on July 7, 1858, Father Isaac Hecker and three other priests – Augustine Hewit, George Deshon, and Francis Baker – founded the “Society of Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apostle,” known ever since as “The Paulist Fathers.” Three days later, the Archbishop of New York assigned them the care of a new parish on Manhattan’s west side – placed, like the Paulist Fathers themselves, under the patronage of Saint Paul the Apostle. 

In addition to serving as Superior of the new missionary community, Father Hecker also became the first pastor of the new parish, which gave him the opportunity immediately to start implementing his vision for the Paulists in a pastoral context.  Hecker’s vision of the mission of The Paulist Fathers was a monumental one – the conversion of America to the truth of the Catholic Faith.  He envisioned his Paulist parish as simultaneously a vibrant Catholic parish reaching out to evangelize locally and a center from which the Paulists would reach out in mission to the entire country.

As part of his religious mission to evangelize 19^th-century America, Isaac Hecker consistently sought to identify important points of contact between the Catholic faith and its understanding of society, on the one hand, and the political culture of the United States, on the other. While humanity’s truest fulfillment is ultimately to be found in the kingdom of God, Hecker recognized that being a citizen of God’s kingdom has implications in the more mundane and immediate responsibilities of citizenship in society.

In a time of terrible social conflict and political polarization in the United States, Hecker expressed his confidence in what Catholics had to offer to America. Already at his very first audience with Blessed Pope Pius IX, in 1857, in response to the Pope’s concern about factional strife in the United States, “in which,” as the Pope put it, “parties get each other by the hair,” Hecker confidently replied that “the Catholic truth,” once known, “would come between” parties “and act like oil on troubled waters.” [From a letter to the American Fathers, Rome, December 22, 1857]

Hecker’s hope that we act like oil on the troubled waters of a conflicted and politically polarized society remains as relevant today. Unfortunately, economic trends and social and cultural changes have all combined to make society and the social bonds that are its glue that much more brittle. Meanwhile, corrective action in the form of effective public policy has become more and more difficult to achieve.  In turn, these trends may further encourage apathy and cynicism on the part of ordinary citizens and increased ideological intensity among the most politically active. The moral and public policy consequences of framing political choices in this way are alarming for the future of our society. As the former Bishop of Knoxville, now Archbishop of Louisville, said several years ago: “When we fail to see the difference between our enemies and people of good will, we lose a part of who we are as people of faith. Policies of fear and inflammatory rhetoric will only offer extremists fertile soil and pave the way toward a divisive, fearful future.“ [Archbishop Joseph Kurtz, December 14, 2015]

This same concern also applies to the moral and political judgments and choices which we make about the wider world beyond our national borders, where we must likewise guard against what Pope Francis has called called “our fear of ‘the other’, the unknown, the marginalized, the foreigner” [Message for 2019 Day of Migrants & Refugees].

Jesus’ action in today’s Gospel [Luke 10:1-12, 17-20] in sending the 72 disciples on a kind of practice run for what they would later be doing full-time after his ascension reminds us that evangelizing (as Pope Paul VI expressed it so well) “constitutes the essential mission of the Church” – in every age and in every society.

Note that Jesus sent the 72 in pairs – not as solitary individuals, but in pairs. Ours is a culture which places a lot of emphasis on our private, individual lives and private, individual freedoms. But the Gospel reminds us that we are not isolated, solitary selves, but a community of faithful people, formed by the Holy Spirit into one Church, the body of the Risen Christ, to continue his mission in every town and place.

“An individualistic spirit,” Pope Francis has reminded us, “is fertile soil for the growth of that kind of indifference towards our neighbors which leads to viewing them in purely economic terms, to a lack of concern for their humanity, and ultimately to feelings of fear and cynicism” [Message for 2019 Day of Migrants & Refugees].

But Jesus commanded his disciples to make a difference in their world. So, if we really mean what we say we believe, then what we do in our many relationships and multiple commitments – in our families and among friends, at work or at school, in civil society, and in the wider world – must make a difference and be recognizable as such. Jesus expects us to be on the same side with him – on the side of God’s kingdom. Being on God’s side, having (as Jesus says) our names written in heaven, frees us to join Jesus in making a real, recognizable difference in an always challenging, sometimes very welcoming, but also sometimes sadly inhospitable world. It frees us to tell – and retell –the story of Jesus, to speak his word to any and all, so we too can say to this world we love: “The kingdom of God is at hand for you.”

I’ve long been especially fond of this Gospel which was read at my ordination as a priest 24 years ago. In founding his community, Isaac Hecker sought to imitate the 72 disciples in the Gospel in announcing : “The kingdom of God is at hand for you.”

As a result, all of us now share the mission of the Paulist Fathers in the mission of the Church. This includes a commitment to evangelization in all its forms, a mission both within and beyond the parish community to draw people of all ages and backgrounds to Christ and his Church, especially those without faith, or with fragile or minimal connection with Church, or who have withdrawn from the community of the Church, perhaps because they feel unwelcome or rejected by it – all of whom need to hear Jesus’ message: “The kingdom of God is at hand for you.”

Homily for the 14th Sunday of the Year and the Anniversary of the Founding of the Paulist Fathers, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, July 7, 2019.

An Inglorious Fourth?

Actually, it was a fine Fourth.  Americans, as they do every year, held parades and picnics, ate hot dogs, attended outdoor concerts, and watched fireworks. And, for all the angst that preceded it, the President's holiday show had no discernably diminishing effect on any of that. At the other end of the Mall, Washington's traditional "A Capitol Fourth" went on as usual. As the saying goes, a good time was had by all.

The celebration on the Capitol's West Lawn looked like more fun, and the audience looked a lot more like all of America, and it sounded genuinely inspiring as all present sang together Irving Berlin's glorious God Bless America. But the less inspiring presidential show was not the apocalypse some seemed to anticipate. There is nothing per se wrong with patriotic displays that include impressive military hardware and airplane flyovers and the participation of politicians. Any serious society requires rituals. If our society has become ritually impoverished, that is a problem, not progress. Rituals both bind us together and link us with our past, which we forget at our peril. And in peril we are, when it comes to remembering our history. Thus a July 4 Politico article highlighted how much less visited our historical sites are now. (Colonial Williamsburg, for example, gets about half as many visitors as it did in the 1980s.)

That said, there was something jarring about last night's presidential event. Perhaps that is an artifact of this particular presidency and the way almost everything in American life has become hyper-politicized because of it. In fact, the President's speech was not particularly partisan. It was hardly the best written account of American history, but there was about it nothing overly offensive or objectionable. But, because of how he and his party have governed, the event just could not help seeming somehow poisoned. That says something about the President, but it also says a lot about us, about the kind of country we have become.

Then too it was jarring, less because of anything that happened there than by contrast with what we conventionally associate with celebrating the "Glorious Fourth." For all the flags and patriotic music that appropriately decorate the day, this holiday has always had a somewhat relaxed and communal character. We may salute the flag as it passes in parade, but meanwhile we may be munching on a hot dog. There is nothing wrong at all about the famous French parade on Bastille Day that so impressed President Trump, but that just is not how we typically celebrate July 4 in cities and small towns across America.  It is a uniquely American holiday, and we celebrate it in a uniquely American way. July 4 has a character all its own, which says something significant about who we are, who we have been, and who we hope to be.

Ultimately July 4 - like the Declaration of Independence it celebrates - is an aspirational holiday. For this is an aspirational country, as generations of immigrants past - and present - have repeatedly demonstrated. For all the fireworks and good old-fashioned fun, July 4 is our celebration of and our recommitment to those aspirations - something this president and his party have sadly proved themselves incapable of.

Independence Day

Independence Day, John Adams famously wrote to his wife, “ought to be commemorated ... by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” I doubt too many "solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty" will characterize the holiday this year, but there will certainly be plenty of "Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations." 

Whatever else, Independence Day is a day (the day, par excellence) for celebrating who we are as a society, a nation, and a national state.

Like all good things, social solidarity may be subject to distortion, deformation, and perversion. This is widely recognized especially in regard to that particularly modern form of social solidarity, nationalism. Modern nationalism may well be the most effective form of social solidarity actually available in the era of the modern nation-state.  But in the 20th century it also manifested itself in seriously distorted, deformed, and perverted forms and expression. 

In his latest book, The Second Mountain, David Brooks makes a somewhat artificial but still very helpful terminological distinction, between community and tribalism. "Community," according to Brooks, 'is connection based on mutual affection. Tribalism, in the sense I'm using it here, is connection based on mutual hatred. Community is based on common humanity; tribalism on common foe. Tribalism is always erecting boundaries and creating friend/enemy distinctions."

That distinction can, I believe, be applied to every form of social solidarity - including nationalism. Every authentic form of social solidarity contains within it both elements, and it is the interplay of the two (and which becomes predominant and when) which is significant. In this it is not unlike the common saying about religion - that religion both brings out the best in people and the worst in people, that religion both brings people together and drives them apart.

We see this very much at work in our present predicament as a society, a nation, and a national state. .All the more reason then, on this Independence Day, to look back to the beginning. 

The Declaration of independence was an attempt to express a new national solidarity among 13 English-speaking, British Protestant colonies in North America. The longest part of the Declaration is a tribalist attempt to forge an new national identity by identifying a new enemy. That part of the Declaration - the part that begins The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states - sought to summon a new social solidarity in opposition to the rebellious colonists' British brethren across the Atlantic (who until then had been their fellow-countrymen). Historians may argue about the accuracy and fairness (and anti-Catholicism) of the accusations against George III's Government. What is clear, however, is that - even on this day - that is not the part of the Declaration that most inspires.

Rather, it is the uplifting, communitarian rhetoric  of the first one and one-half paragraphs that we are much more likely to hear and celebrate.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. 

Over the centuries, the Lockean language of the Declaration has been widened and appropriated by others to whom it did not originally apply - so much so that the 1976 Bicentennial celebration in New York City seemed to me at the time to be more an evocation of our diverse immigrant history than of that earlier colonial rebellion. 

Likewise, the language of individualist Lockeanism, while pathologically powerful for much of American history, has never been the whole story. The Declaration itself, after all, was written in the plural and professed "a decent respect" for pre-existing social bonds. The civic nationalism which tamed and transformed the competing ethnic nationalisms of immigrant communities created new and more expansive communal bonds which, while never quite strong enough to eradicate Lockean individualism, did produce a coexisting alternative in a more complex lived experience for the nation and made permanently available a coherent communitarian critique.

So, by all means, let us celebrate tomorrow together - complete with all of John Adams' "Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations," and, better yet, not neglecting "solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty."

The Religious Road to Trump

John Fea is "a historian who identifies as an evangelical Christian." He is the author of Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump (Eerdmans, 2018). 

Initially shocked by the results of the 2016 election, Fea concedes that he "should have seen it coming." For him, 2016 was "the latest manifestation of a long-standing evangelical approach to public life," rooted in an even longer history of white evangelical fear." For Fea, "white evangelical Christians have engaged in public life through a strategy defined by the politics of fear, the pursuit of worldly power, and a nostalgic longing for a national past that may never have existed in the first place. Fear, Power, Nostalgia."

To this one-time political scientist, that triad of Fear, the pursuit of Power, and Nostalgia captures much of American religious-political history surprisingly well.  After all, I am old enough to to remember when what eventually came to be called the Religious Right helped to defeat an authentic, church-attending, Sunday-school-teaching, evangelical Jimmy Carter in order to elect a rarely church attending, divorced and remarried, formerly pro-choice Ronald Reagan. Religious hypocrisy in pursuit of political power pre-dated the rise of Trump and is much more systemic than any focus on Trump's uniqueness or the 2016 election's singularity suggests.

Indeed, it is Fea's walk through American religious history that makes this book worth reading.

For Fea, American evangelicalism is "the story of Christians who have failed to overcome fear." And he traces that fear (especially of others, especially of Catholics) all the way back to colonial New England. From fear, follows the pursuit of political power - regardless of cost. "The court evangelicals have decided that what Donald Trump can give them is more valuable than the damage that their Christian witness will suffer because of their association with the president." 

Nostalgia (as in making America great again) likewise follows from fear. "In times of great social and cultural change, the nostalgic person will turn to a real or an imagined past as an island of safety amid the raging storms of progress." For Fea, such nostalgia becomes a form of "tunnel vision," which "fails to recognize the complexity and breadth of the human experience - the good and the bad of American history, the eras we want to (re)experience (if only for a moment) and those we do not."

Fea wonders whether "it may be time for those Christians who want to influence public policy to think about what it means to face the future from a position on the periphery rather than from 'a seat at the table'." For this he argues for an "evangelical politics" which replaces "fear with hope ... the pursuit of power with the cultivation of humility ... nostalgia with history."

Fea acknowledges, however, that Trump's call to "'make America great again' transcends the concerns of his evangelical base." In the end, I think, the religious significance of the Trump electoral phenomenon may be more significant as a symptom of the rise to power of a post-Christian populism. Prior to the evangelical rise to prominence after 1980 (and until 2016), the not particularly religion-focused libertarian and pro-business elements in the Republican coalition really ran things in the Republican party and in the  so-called "conservative movement." They relied on ostensibly religious conservatives (consisting largely of evangelicals and some non-Hispanic Catholics) for the necessasry votes, but pursued an agenda of primarily pro-business economic policies (e.g., de-regulation, tax-cuts for the wealthy, opposition to universal health care, etc.). Trump's campaign empowered a different group - this time, the increasingly post-Christian "populists" - to hijack the "conservative movement" from the old libertarian and business elite, while relying once again on the predictable votes provided by right-wing Christians.

Look Ahead!

Burying people properly – or the equivalent in other cultures that have other practices for taking care of the dead – is a very important thing for most people in most of the world. That is one reason why we Christians consider it one of the seven corporal works of mercy. Nowadays, of course, cremation competes with traditional Christian burial, and after-the-fact memorial services and so-called “celebrations of life” often replace real funerals. So Jesus’ strange words, Let the dead bury their dead, might not sound quite so shocking to some people today as they would certainly have sounded to people in Jesus’ time.

In the ancient world, being properly buried was something people worried a lot about, and providing a proper burial for one’s relatives was an absolute never-to-be-neglected social and religious responsibility. And even hardened, post-modern hearts can still be moved by the famous episode near the end of Homer’s Illiad, when King Priam of Troy sneaks into the Greek camp to beg Achilles to give him the body of his son Hector, so he can be given a proper funeral. So maybe Jesus’s harsh words still have their capacity to shock even us!

Of course, it’s not as if the potential disciple Jesus was talking to had just lost his father that day. In pleading, “Lord, let me go first and bury my father,” what he probably meant was something like “Yes, I’ll follow you – when I’m ready, when my affairs are all in order, someday, but not right now.” 

But things don’t always go according to plan. Who knows when one’s life will be in order and one will finally be ready? God’s call comes when God calls – whatever plans we may have made and whether we are ready to respond or not. I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying about the problem of planning one’s political career in advance – surely all the candidates who were on the debate stage last week have heard it  - that there is no timing in politics, just time. Well that’s the way it is with God. It’s not our carefully thought-out and well-planned timing that counts, but God’s time.

Jesus’ exaggerated-sounding, shockingly over-the-top statement is saying that this is the moment and now is the time to respond. God’s call, when it comes, is always now – always in the present, pointing us forward, never looking backward.

Even Jesus’ closest disciples sometimes seemed much more intent on looking back than ahead. Hence, their preoccupation with the old quarrel with the Samaritans – a typical example of forgetting everything but one’s grudges. Of course, Jesus understood the power and pull of the past, its hold on us, the way it can constrain us. But he was free enough to live in the present, and he wanted his disciples to do the same.

Looking back to what was left behind risks turning one in upon oneself. Our self-absorbed society encourages that – with legions of therapists and counselors and advice columnists and life coaches and personal trainers and spiritual gurus for those who can afford them. But becoming a disciple is all about getting outside of oneself. Living in the present pushes us forward to the future – free for the fullest possible involvement in God’s great plan for the salvation of the world.

For freedom Christ set us free, said Saint Paul. We are being invited to live in a new kind of freedom, free to join ourselves to God’s great plan for the salvation of the world – free to reduce our emotional dependence on all those things that keep us stuck in ourselves, all those things that keep us so anxious and inhibit us from moving ahead. As Pope Francis has written, “the Lord is calling us to conversion, to be set free from exclusivity, indifference and the throw-away culture” ” [Message for 2019 Day of Migrants & Refugees].  The fact is, when it comes to what matters most, we can’t look back and move ahead at the same time. We have to choose between what holds us and frightens us here and now and the freedom to follow Jesus into the future.

Homily for the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, June 30, 2019.