An Ancient Miracle for a Heating-Up World

More than half a century ago, for a few months in 1967, I occasionally attended Mass at Our Lady of the Snows Church in Glen Oaks, Queens. It would be yet another 20+ years before I would get to visit the original Our Lady of the Snows, the Papal Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, the anniversary of whose dedication the Church celebrates today. Annually on this day, a shower of white rose petals drops from the ceiling of that Basilica to commemorate the legendary miraculous snowfall that appeared overnight on this date sometime in the mid-4th-century on Rome's Esquiline Hill, at the height of the hot Roman summer, to signify where Our Lady wished the Basilica to be built. In the Middle Ages (prior to the Tridentine Reform), there was even a special collect for this feast, which referenced the snowfall in the heat of summer and petitioned for a corresponding cooling of desire.

Rome, Europe, and the United States are all a lot hotter now than they were then, thanks to the climate change so many of ur politicians still find it politically advantageous to deny.  How much more does the world need an even bigger miracle of the snow today! How much more do we need to cool not only the external temperature of out world but our increasing consumerist desires which have fed it!

Whatever happened on that hot 4th-century August night in Rome, we have a fairly clear idea of what is happened now in and to our heating-up world - the more temperate, life-friendly world which we are rapidly destroying and the hotter, less life-friendly world we are in the process of replacing it with.

Photo: Painting by Masolino da Panicale (1383-1447) depicting the miraculous snowfall and Pope Liberius (352–366) tracing in the snow the ground plan for the future basilica, with Jesus and Mary in a circular halo supervising the event (Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples).

Losing Our Religion

 

More than once in these pages, I have quoted Russell Moore's famous observation that the religious right has turned out to be the people the religious right warned us about. Moore previously served as the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the policy wing of the Southern Baptist Convention, and has since become the most prominent evangelical voice in opposition to Donald Trump. Currently, Moore is editor in chief of Christianity Today. Now, in his latest book, Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America (Penguin, 2023), there is an analogous memorable phrase, referring to young people "walking away from evangelicalism not because they do not believe what the church teaches, but because they believe the church itself does not believe what the church teaches."  The problem Moore identifies "is not that people think the church’s way of life is too demanding, too morally rigorous, but that they have come to think the church doesn’t believe its own moral teachings."

Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America is largely a personal reflection on this experience (Moore having been until recently an insider in Southern Baptist circles), and a sort of spiritual diagnosis of the problem, a problem which, I suspect, applies to a greater or lesser degree to much of American Christianity. Much of that phenomenon has obviously been associated with the political effect of the evangelical alliance with Donald Trump, and Trump does indeed figure in this book, as he has in Moore's public posture since Trump's appearance on the political scene. But Trump is more the symptom than the cause of the problem Moore seeks to analyze and diagnose.

"Losing my religion," the idiomatic southernism which gives the book its title, has to do with losing one's patience, "when politeness gives way to anger."

In Moore's analysis, "confidence in the kingdom of Christ" ought to enable us "to stop looking for substitutes for him."  But, in their panic "about rising secularism and what they fear will be hostility to the church," some "act in ways that tie the witness of the church to forms of power that actually fuel secularization."

In Moore's case, he has increasingly recognized "a dread deep within me that Christianity might just be southern culture of politics, with Jesus affixed as a hood ornament."Whether the concern is "political idolatry or populist demagoguery or white nationalism or toxic masculinity" or whatever, the fact is "that as awful as all of those horrors are, they are made worse when they are framed as badges of religious identity."

The wider context for all this is the rapid decline in American religious affiliation - from some 68% of American affiliated with a church or other religious body some 20 years ago to just 47% now. Moore seems to agree with those studies that suggest "that the politicization of American religion is a key driver of people away from religious affiliation." He cites political scientist Daniel K. Williams, who calls, “Iapsed evangelical Protestants" the largest religious body in the South.” Williams has shown that these de-churched “evangelicals” are  "liberalizing, to be sure, but only on the specific sins they want to commit." Having left the Church, "they retain the moralism—at least insofar as it pertains to other people—but lose the sense of self-sacrifice and trust in others,” They also "lose whatever willingness they had to care for other people in community.” This is part of a larger phenomenon, in which almost any disconnection "from organic community leads to extremism and anger—no matter the place on the ideological spectrum." (He illustrates this on the Left by recalling how leadership of leftist movements by labor unions and of civil right movements by pastors has given way to "de-churched Protestants," who "are far more hyper-individualistic, cynical, and distrustful of others," and are  "also much more likely to be lonely, disconnected, suspicious of institutions, and angry."

One of the dimensions of the crisis which Moore diagnoses is that "it is not just that we are divided about what we value about the way things should be, but what we are allowed to say about the way things actually are. Now, notice, what I wrote here is not what we see about the way things are, but what we are allowed to say. This is because we live in a time in which 'truth' is seen as a means to tribal belonging, rather than as a reality that exists outside of us. And that’s true even among, sometimes even especially among, those who spent the last twenty years arguing about the dangers of postmodern relativistic ideas of 'truth' and the rejection of metanarratives'.” Against all that, Moore reminds us "that bearing false witness is a sin, and that lying distorts not just the truth but us."

Prescriptively, Moore makes recommendations aimed at recovering American Christianity's evangelical heart. He reminds his readers that, while they're a multiple experiences of legitimate authority, some revealed as embedded in creation, "Scripture is the final authority, the norm that norms all other norms." This, of course, contrasts, with the contemporary phenomenon which political scientist Christopher Freiman calls the “monopolization of our identity by politics.” Moore also cites the research of Tobias Cremer in the use of Christianity in populist movements, in which otherwise unchurched people display Christian symbols, all of which represents “extreme form of a secularized Christianity” in which such concepts can serve as symbols of an imagined “white and masculine past.” (Here Moore specifically references "the Jesus Saves sign and other Christian symbols at the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.")

Moore characterizes such phenomena as "not a politically enthusiastic version of Christianity, nor is it a religiously informed patriotism. Christian nationalism is a prosperity gospel for nation-states, a liberation theology for white people. ... Christian nationalism cannot turn back secularism, because it is just another form of it."

One wholesome counter to all that lie sins he recognition that authentic Christianity is always global in its orientation. "White American Christians" Moore notes are neither a “moral majority” nor a “silent majority” nor "any majority at all, unless we define our primary culture as that of the United States of America. If, instead, our first identity is part of the global Body of Christ, then white middle-class Americans are a tiny sliver indeed, and the driving force of Christian orthodoxy and spiritual energy in the world, and even in the United States, is not white and middle-class. And where there is evangelistic energy within American evangelicalism, such is often centered in immigrant churches, whether Dominican or Cambodian or Nigerian or Iranian." Much the same could be said of other Protestant denominations and of the Catholic Church.

In recent years, Moore has become perhaps the primary internal (i.e., within Christianity) critic of the tragic trajectory of much of  American Christianity. This book is another valuable contribution to that much needed critique. His work serves as a wholesome reminder of the true means of evangelical. To evangelize, as Pope Saint Paul VI reminded Catholic Christians in 1975, is the essential mission of the Church. When Christians are evangelical in the true sense, they see their fellow countrymen as neighbors with whom the good news is to be shared. The choice to recognize America as a locus for mission is a religious choice. The choice to recognize America as a locus for culture war - and our neighbors as enemies in that war - is a political choice.

 

Spirituality for Our Time and Place

Servant of God Isaac Thomas Hecker (1819-1888), the founder of the Paulist Fathers, who was received into the Catholic Church on this date in 1844, was no Saint Augustine, of whom Saint Isidore of Seville is supposed to have said that anyone who claims to have read all of Augustine's wirings is a liar. That said, Hecker is certainly up there in the pantheon of religious authors who have written much, and about whom accordingly also much has in turn been written! Recently, I encountered another book-length study of Hecker, of which I had been hitherto unaware: The Spirituality of Isaac Thomas Hecker: Reconciling the American Character and the Catholic Faith, by Martin J. Kirk, CMF (NY: Garland, 1988).

In my Ascension Thursday homily, last May 18, at the Mass for the opening of the Paulist Fathers' Hecker Symposium: Servant of God Isaac Hecker and the Church of Our Age, I highlighted Hecker's love for the Church as the continuation and expansion of the body of Christ in time and space.  So I was very happy to find this volume in which the author places so much emphasis on Hecker's devotion to the person of Christ and the centrality of the mystery of the Incarnation. For Hecker, according to Kirk, "the central event of the Christian experience was the incarnation, understood as a new creation, restoring to its original destiny the first creation" (p. 144). Already by the time of. his conversion, Hecker had become convinced that "the Church was the source of Christ's life in the world today" (p. 169), the she "is the body of Christ living in the present world" (p. 170; cf. also Hecker's Diary entries for November 15 1843, and May 10, 1844). 

In terms of Influences on Hecker in this direction, Kirk identifies Orestes Brownson, Möhler's Symbolik, and the Oxford Tracts. For Möhler, the rationale for the visibility of the Church was to be found in the Incarnation. I have been less attentive in the past to the influence of the Tracts on Hecker, but Kirk highlights Hecker's frequent references to them in his 1843-1844 letters. And "the belief in the Church as the living body of Christ was common to all the Tractarians" (p. 173).

Kirk's subtitle is Reconciling the American Character and the Catholic Faith, but in treating that commonly emphasized aspect of Hecker's thought the book dives deeply into such central issues as the significance of Hecker's own experience - social and political as well as religious - for his thinking, Hecker's personal appreciation of the relationship between "active" and "passive" virtues (an issue which would prove important in the context of subsequent controversy after Hecker's death), and his emphasis on the experiential nature of spirituality. Kirk stresses how Hecker "found reconciliation where others found opposition," emphasizing "the harmonious relationship between nature and grace, between God's kingdom and the world,  between faith and reason, between the interior life and man's responsibility for the social order, between doctrine and experience." And "the key to his view of all these realities was the reconciliation between God and man that he saw symbolized in the Incarnation" (p. 372).

Along the way, Kirk offers some interesting insights into the important part played by Saint Francis de Sales on Hecker - as early as 1844 and as late as 1873 when he visited and said Mass at Saint Francis de Sales' tomb. Kirk also adds to our appreciation of Hecker's spiritual debt to the great Jesuit authors Lallemant and de Causade and to Lallemant's disciples Rigoleuc and Surin. He also discusses the influences of three non-Jesuit authors, Saint Catherine of Genoa, Saint Teresa of Avila, and Saint John of the Cross. Kirk's treatment of Hecker's approach to spiritual direction is especially rewarding to read. (One interesting aside is the fact that a spiritual director Hecker recommended to Brownson in 1851 was his fellow Redemptorist, later Bishop of Philadelphia, now Saint John Neumann.)

Personally, I think Kirk might have been a bit more critical of Hecker's very 19th-century way of talking about national character. Kirk does, however, propose some very useful critique in his conclusion that "Hecker's thought can be criticized on both the internal merit of his argument, at least in regard to the harmony between Catholic anthropology and American democracy and on the attitude or stance he takes which is not only open to the American culture but almost entirely non-critical in its acceptance of the American way of life" (p. 379). 

Regarding the first, Kirk notes the familiar argument that the American political system was founded on a more pessimistic view of human nature and a certain suspicion of political power. Regarding the second point, Kirk worries whether there may be "no room in Hecker's thought regarding the relationship of Catholicism to America for a prophetic stance, or for a stance which disengages itself from culture ignorer to critically evaluate it in light of the Gospel" (p. 381). The latter issue he sees as part of a larger historic problematic that the Church in the U.S. "has not been, in general, and effective source of healthy criticism of American society" (p. 382). These are useful critiques, an important contribution to the task of retrieving Hecker 19th-century spirituality in a very different 21st-century America.

Treasure Found and Cherished

 

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sell all he has and buys the field.

It may be one of the most fought over pieces of real estate in the world; but, as anyone who has ever been there can attest, much of Israel is relatively arid desert – basically a bunch of rocks. Working such land is hard and exhausting work. So just imagine the surprise and excitement and joy of the ancient farmer or field hand who, having turned over hundreds of rocks in his life, suddenly sees something completely unexpected, something with the potential of totally transforming his life for the better!

Obviously, we are supposed to see ourselves in these parables. Like the field hand and the pearl merchant, we too have found something we neither earned nor could have expected. Like them, we have the opportunity to take advantage of the gift – buying the field or the pearl – in other words, responding fully to the opportunity, recognizing that it is an all-or-nothing decision on our part. In life one either takes advantage of an opportunity, or one misses the opportunity.

But we can also imagine these parables from God’s point of view. Like the farmer, God has been tilling the rocky unresponsive soil of this unpredictable world – and has found us in the soil of the world. We are the treasure, which God has found for himself in the midst of the ordinary life of the world – a treasure for which he has invested his most precious possession, his Son, Jesus, in order that we might become God’s permanent treasure and so be treasured by him forever. In order that this precious treasure should not remain buried and hidden, God gave us his Son and filled his Church with the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Of course, a treasure found in a field inevitably requires careful care and cleaning. And so do we. But a God who is willing to get involved in our world from the inside – by becoming one of us and living our life in our world – is not going to shrink from this necessary work of nurturing and perfecting his treasure in his people, by means of our grace-filled life together in his Church..

Whether we picture him as farmer or merchant or fisherman, God has always been busily involved in our messy, mixed-up, unpredictable world. The work God has begun by finding us for himself, that same work continues in our daily life as his people, his Church, where the messy, mixed-up, and unpredictable is gradually being cared for, cleaned up, and transformed – or, to use St. Paul’s words from today’s 2nd reading, called, justified, and glorified.

Whether we think of ourselves as having been dug up from under a pile of rocks or fished out of the sea, we are God’s people in whom God has invested so much – invested himself, in fact – and we are now in the lifelong process of being transformed into God’s treasure - called, justified, and glorified.

The more we give in to what God is doing with us, the more we will identify ourselves fully with what God is doing in our world and so become co-workers ourselves in the mission of farming – or fishing – the world for God’s kingdom of heaven.

Homily for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, July 30, 2023.

 

Vichy Retold

What is it about World War II that it still resonates and fascinates, now still after almost 80 years? My generation, of course, grew up in the aftermath and under the long shadow of that war. We were surrounded as kids by veterans of the war and by a seemingly endless supply of war-related movies. Yet, even as the "Greatest Generation" has faded from the scene and as we Boomers begin our own fade away, interest in World War II continues. One factor, I suppose, is that it was not only the largest great power military conflict of all time but also the last of its kind. One of the evident benefits of nuclear weapons is that they have successfully deterred another World War II style conflict between the great powers. There is also the idea that World War II was "the good war," perhaps our last unambiguously good war, the last war the U.S. actually won.

Yet, even when it comes to World War II, popular fascination focuses on certain familiar times and places while others, where the war did not seem to go as well, tend to get less attention. One of those other times and places is the French collaborationist Vichy regime and the United Stats' perplexing relationship with it. Stepping into this gap, distinguished 20th-century military and war historian Michael Neiberg has written a history of the relations between Vichy (led by Marshall Petain and Pierre Laval) and the western Allies, When France Fell: The Vichy Crisis and the Fate of the Anglo-American Alliance (Harvard U. Pr., 2021), which I have just finally gotten around to reading.

The fall of France wa unexpected. France did, after all, have the largest army in Europe at the time. The British, obviously, were traumatized by France's quick defeat and ignominious surrender. So too was the United States, whose isolationism (or, more accurately, non-interventionism) had largely been premised on the benefits of relying on the British navy and the French army. All of a sudden, the latter was gone, and the U.S. seemed much more exposed (especially from the proximity of French territories in the Americas).  

From the start, the U.S. tried to maintain good relations with supposedly neutral Vichy. The British had inevitably alienated Vichy by its apparently necessary attack on the French fleet. The British had also recognized Charles de Gaulle, whom Vichy, of course, considered a traitor, as leader of the "Free French." The U.S. was not encumbered by the baggage of the conflict between Britain and Vichy about the French fleet. Moreover, the U.S. for as long as possible stubbornly - obsessively, one might suggest - refused to recognize de Gaulle. Instead, it made every effort to remain on good terms with Vichy, in spite of Vichy's increasing unpopularity in the U.S. and the increasing popularity of and respect for de Gaulle among the American public.

In addition to this basic error, the American response to the French situation was plagued by a failure to appreciate the importance of their empire to the French. Continued French control of North Africa and the rest of the French Empire was important to all the otherwise competing factions among the French.

Neiberg's account gets even more detailed and interesting when it is time in the narrative for Operation Torch, the American and British invasion of French North Africa in November 1942. Operation Torch forced the ostensibly neutral Vichy French officers in North Africa to choose sides. The most significant one to do so was, of course, the infamous Admiral Darlan, whose decision to cease fire and make a deal with the Americans certainly saved many lives. It was,  however, a collaboration with unsavory Vichy types that American (and British) public opinion was increasingly horrified by. It was a marriage of extreme convenience, which had the advantage for the Allies of avoiding having to settle the rivalry between the two competing non-Vichy French Generals - de Gaulle (favored by the British) and Giraud (favored by the Americans). Again the Americans backed the wrong horse. 

By this time, of course, the Americans - at least the American military - understood that there were no perfect choices. Neiberg quotes Eisenhower as saying of the French, "all of these Frogs have a single thought - 'ME'." 

Meanwhile, fate intervened with the Christmas-Eve assassination of Admiral Darlan. Neiberg recounts the unrealistic expectations of the royalists that killing Darlan would clear the way for the Comte de Paris to come to Algiers and establish a unity government as King Henri VI. Needless to say, that didn't quite work out either!

In deference to the absent Soviets (preoccupied with Stalingrad), the January 1943 Casablanca Conference was supposed to focus on military matters only, but France post-Darlan had to be dealt with. According to Neiberg, "policy on France came to symbolize American missteps as much as it reflected an inability to force the British to hew to American desires. It may also have reminded [U.S. Secretary of State Cordell] Hull of American inexperience on the world stage." The British saw the Americans' continued backing of Giraud as a continuation of their support for Darlan and, before him, Pétain, and the British continued to back de Gaulle.

Eventually, of course, de Gaulle outwitted Girard and the Americans, and by the liberation  of Paris in August 1944, he was clearly the leader of a post-Petain France. Meanwhile, Petain. Laval, and what was left of Vichy were taken to Germany. "The morbid and bizarre scene of the French government that the United States had once recognized being a virtual prisoner of the Nazis in a castle run by the Gestapo revealed what a broken reed America’s Vichy policy had been all along. Although Cordell Hull and his historian William Langer continued to defend the policy as the best of a bad set of choices, the events of 1944 revealed the leadership of Vichy France as the German prisoners they had been all along."