America's Crazy Addiction to Guns

Among the multitude of enormous evils inflicted upon our country by the Supreme Court - along with Roe v. Wade, Bush v. Gore, and Citizens United - must surely also be numbered the horrendous, five-to-four, 2008 decision District of Columbia v. Heller, which upended established jurisprudence and nullified the plain and obvious meaning of the 2nd Amendment to re-interpret that amendment to create an individual right to bear arms. That was followed two years later by McDonald v. Chicago, which extended that new interpretation of the 2nd Amendment to the states. As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in dissent: "The Second Amendment was adopted to protect the right of the people in each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia ... Neither the text of the Amendment nor the arguments advanced by its proponents evidenced the slightest interest in limiting any legislature's authority to regulate private civilian uses of firearms."  

Neither history, nor the intent of the framers, nor plain-old common sense seems to carry any weight anymore when it comes to our crazy American addiction to guns. It is a source of perpetual amazement to people in other civilized societies that we as a country continue to endure the scourge of widespread, private gun ownership. Yet we do. And, for all the grief guns have brought and continue to bring and for all the hand-wringing every time a terrible mass shooting occurs, we as a society seem stuck, seemingly unable any longer even to address the problem, let alone effectively resolve it.

Nothing can restore the lives that have been lost or heal the hurt left in those who have lost children or loved ones. But society's self-inflicted wound could be bandaged by some serious grappling with this problem of widespread private gun ownership.

I can well remember when smoking in public was the norm, when smoking was considered cool and seen as sexy. It is now widely recognized for the filthy, disgusting, harmful habit that it is. That would not have happened had people not spoken out courageously and consistently against the entrenched power of tobacco and gradually but effectively changed minds and eventually behavior.  Perhaps someday our society will grow up enough to abandon its romance with an idealized Wild West and think of guns the way we have come to think of cigarettes.

Picking a Party

R.R. Reno writes for First Things, a rightward-oriented journal, founded by the late Rev. Richard Neuhaus, which provides a platform for conservative cultural criticism, conservative-oriented politics, and conservative Catholic and Protestant religious views. These represent, of course, at least three different world-views, which are not necessarily always in harmony (despite the common invocation of the "conservative" label). When they get mixed together (almost always driven by a political agenda), the mixture can get even more problematic.

Thus, in his journal's January 2013 issue, Reno recommends to Catholics that they support the Republican party. There is, of course, nothing wrong with recommending that someone support a particular political party. The problem arises when one's recommendation is based on ostensibly religious grounds. In 19th-century Imperial Germany, there was the Catholic Center Party. In Europe after World War II, there were Christian Democratic parties. The United States has never really had anything quite like that. If, historically, particular denominations identified more with one party than the other, it was more likely an ethnic association rather than a religious one, more a matter of socio-economic status and the group's social and economic interests than religious doctrine. Reno reconginizes this - sort of - in his claim that a century ago American Catholics were encouraged to identify with the Democratic party "not necessarily because it was an ideal or even reliable vehicle for the Catholic vision of a just society, but because it was the political force that would defend them and their flocks." 

It would seem reasonable, therefore, to apply that same test to today's politics. Catholics have prospered in America, and undoubtedly there may be some in that top 2% that might expect to benefit from the Republican agenda. Most, however, are either middle class - increasingly squeezed by an economy increasingly stacked against them - or recent immigrants - more likley to be poor (and possibly undocumented). If Reno wants to sway such groups to the Republican party, he needs to show how their needs and interests would be better served by such an allegiance. Merely asserting it is insufficiently persuasive.

Reno himself recognizes his problem. "It's not going to be easy," he admits. "The Republican party is a coalition tempted by libertarian dreams and dominated by interests that act as though keeping down the top marginal tax rate is the great moral issue of our time." The President could hardly have said it better! If Republicans want to make a pitch for middle class and immigrant allegiance, by all means they should try to do so - by advocating policies that are in those constituencies' interests. When (and if) they start doing that, their party, the two-party sytem, and American politics in general will be better off.

Meanwhile, trying to argue a particular poltiical preference should be religiously necessary remains problematic - and in the end not much more likely to succeed than the view that supporting the restoration of the Bourbon monarch in 19th century France was a religiously necessary (as opposed to a poltiical or social or cultural) strategy.

As a practical matter, American voters have seldom responded well (at least not over the long term) to primarily religious partisanship.  Perhaps, as Reno suggests, at one time American Catholics were encouraged to identify with the Democratic party. I wonder about that. When I was growing up, almost everyone I knew as a Democrat, but I can't recall anyone every framing his/her party affiliation in religious terms. In any case, that was then,and now is now. While I think there are multiple factors contributing to and/or explaining the decline in religious identification among the young, there certainly seems some credible basis for believing that the politicization of religion is at least one of those factors. 

More fundamentally, the reality is that both political parties have embraced and are increasingly identified with policies which have contributed to our contemporary trajectory of moral and cultural decline. The contemporary crisis of marriage and family life, for example, is certainly due in part to the liberalization of divorce laws and the philosophical transformaiton of marriage from primarily a social institution for the forming of the next generation to a private relationship between two persons. But it is also a consequence of economic changes which have increased inequality and radically reduced opportunities for lower socio-economic status young people, making it much more difficult for them to establish stable families. In fact, it can be argued that, absent the social and cultural destablization caused by a market economy and economic individualism, lifestyle changes embraced by the "left" (like no-fault divorce) would never have happened.

R2: An Advent Prayer

In the old translation, the 2^nd Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation (“R2” on the Missal Tabs) ended with an attractively inviting, eschatological sentence: In that new world where the fullness of your peace will be revealed, gather people of every race, language, and way of life to share in the one eternal banquet with Jesus Christ the Lord. (This is perhaps one of the very few places where I really rather liked the old translation over the new one, but that is another discussion!).

The whole prayer was exceptionally well written and inviting, one reason, I suppose for its popularity – and one reason, perhaps, why R2 tended to get used a lot at the church where I served as a deacon in the early-mid 1990s. When I returned there in November 1995 for my 1^st Solemn Mass as a newly ordained priest, I used R2 – in part because of its known familiarity for that congregation, in part because in the circumstances its Preface in particular seemed to speak suitably healing sentiments that especially seemed to fit that occasion.

In the years since, I have often returned to R2 – especially during Advent. If R1’s reference to Christ’s crucifixion as the lasting sign of God’s covenant makes it especially appropriate for Lent, R2’s – we bless you through Jesus Christ your Son who comes in your name – resonates well with the themes of the Advent season. So I have often employed it as my preferred Eucharistic Prayer in Advent. Last year was something of an exception. Focused as I naturally was last year on learning the words of the new translations, I stuck with Prayers I and II and III. This Advent, however, I have started using R2 again. I especially like the way R2 speaks of Christ’s unique and outreaching mediation – as the Word that brings salvation, the hand you extend to sinners, the way by which your peace is offered to us – not as someone who does those things but as someone who is those things, no as someone who does reconciliation but as someone who is reconciliation.

In the same vein, R2’s post-consecration, anamnesis-offering prayer proclaims the Christ being offered to his Father as the Sacrifice of perfect reconciliation. We routinely talk today about reconciliation, but our efforts inevitably fall far short of perfect reconciliation. To speak of the Eucharist as the setting through which the Christ’s Spirit takes away everything that estranges us from one another expresses in an earnestly vivid image the undoing of the alienation at hear to human existence – Adam estranged from God, Adam estranged fro Eve, Cain estranged from Abel.

One can, of course, speak the language of reconciliation anytime. What makes R2 so right for Advent is the way it so well captures the perennially Advent-like character of our existence in this interval (as I like to say) between Christmas and the end. Its expansive language - those of every race and tongue who have died in your friendship - highlights what we hope that end will be like but also focuses on what (with that end in view) we are supposed to be about in the here and now, which makes it thus a truly evangelization-oriented prayer. As the present Pope (when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger) wrote: "The Church ... has a task to perform for the world ... her disappearance would drag humanity into the whirlpool of the eclipse of God and thus, into the eclipse, into the destruction, of all that is human. We are not fighting for our own survival; we know that we have been entrusted with a mission that lays upon us a responsibility for everyone" (Pilgrim Fellowship of Truth: The Church as Communion, ed. Horn and Pfnur, tr. Henry Taylor, 2005, p. 287).

Prepare the Way

I’m guessing everyone here knows that Knoxville had its annual Christmas Parade this past Friday evening – complete with Santa Claus. So the Christmas season is certainly now in full swing here – as it is in most places. Earlier in the week, the Church celebrated one of its most popular saints, St. Nicholas, the 4^th-century Bishop known for his generosity, who became the historical model for Santa Claus. In some parts of Europe, St. Nicholas still comes to bring gifts on the eve of his feast day. Here, Santa has already arrived, but we still have to wait another couple of weeks for his presents.

Of course, Santa Claus isn’t the only figure whose annual appearance heralds the coming of Christmas. As she always does on this 2^nd Sunday of Advent, the Church introduces us to the mysterious figure of John the Baptist, who comes out of the desert each Advent proclaiming: “Prepare the way of the Lord” [Luke 3:4; Isaiah 40:3].

John the Baptist is indeed a most mysterious figure, appearing briefly at the beginning of Jesus’ public life, then quickly getting himself arrested and executed. All four Gospels mention John in connection with the beginning of Jesus’ public life, but Luke’s Gospel  links John and Jesus not only as adults but at the beginning of their lives as infants. So far, I have found only one reference to John the Baptist in Isaac Hecker’s published writings. Eight months after becoming a Catholic (so long before he founded the Paulists), Hecker wrote in his Diary [April 2, 1845]: “We have much to learn before we know all that union with God means … Alas how few live solely for God – Mary – John the Baptist – these from their birth were consecrated to his work alone.” That’s the emphasis in Luke’s story of John’s consecration as priest and prophet from Day 1 - how John was by birth a Jewish priest, summing up and fulfilling all that the Old Testament was about, and a prophet, going before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah to prepare a people fit for the Lord [Luke 1:17; Malachi 3:23-24].

But how to prepare a people fit for the Lord? How do we prepare for the Lord?

The Church this year reserves the specifics of John's teaching for next Sunday. The focus today is on John himself and the spirit of his message. What one notices immediately is the special solemnity of the Gospel's language - the style of an official imperial proclamation, complete with the names of the reigning emperor and his representatives. That's Luke the historian, telling us who, what, when, and where - situating John's story in the larger sweep of human history.

All of this suggests that, however out-of-the-way the Jordan Valley may seem to us (despite its regular prominence in the news of the world), the real stage on which John's solemn pronouncement is being proclaimed is not some far-off desert oasis but at the very center of society - symbolized in the Gospel by that list of names of the emperor and his representatives. As Hecker famously said, years late in 1863: "Our age lives in its busy marts, in counting-rooms, in work-shops, in homes, and in the varied relations that form human society, and it is into these that sanctity is to be introduced." [The Saint of Our Day]

Apparently, the geographical desert was just John's starting-point - as it had been Israel's starting-point way back when. Rather than remain in the wilderness, the word of God takes John out of the desert and into the world. God's word wants to be heard - by everyone, where people actually are. In the words of the prophet Isaiah that Luke quotes: all flesh shall see the salvation of God  [Isaiah 40:5].

For most of us, preoccupied as we inevitably are with our busy day-to-day lives and our here-and-now concerns, John the Baptist reminds us what Advent and Christmas are all about - God's word's active movement into our world. Isaiah said all flesh shall see the salvation of God, but in John that future is already happening in the present. And, as in Isaiah's day and as in John's, there are certainly plenty of valleys to be filled and mountains and hills to be leveled in our lives.

Advent, as we are always being told, is all about waiting and eager expectation. But waiting for what, exactly? Surely not just for Santa Claus! For Christ? Yes, for Christ - but surely not for Christ to be born! That happened a long time ago in Bethlehem. Otherwise, we wouldn't be praying here in this church today! For the third time today, let me quote our Paulist founder Isaac Hecker: Christ has come. Christ is here, now upon earth. Christ ever abides with men according to His word. What the age promises men is the rending asunder the clouds of error which hinder them from seeing that Christ is here. What the age promises and men most need is the light to enable their eyes to see that the Incarnation involves Christ’s indwelling presence in His Church acting upon man and society through her agency until the consummation of the world. [The Church and the Age, 1887]

Like the first coming of Christ, which John proclaimed way back then, the day-in, day-out, here-and-now, coming of Christ, which the Church lives all year long, invites a convinced and committed response on our part. That kind of response can only be sustained when we become convinced, as St. Paul so clearly was, that the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus [Philippians 4:7]

Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Advent, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, December 9, 2012.

Conceived without Sin

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee!

When I was in grade school, that invocation and response were a regular part of our school prayers. Although I dutifully responded pray for us who have recourse to thee, in fact for many of those years I had no clue what the word recourse really meant. Given the high quality of religious instruction then, my guess is that I understood the meaning of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception before I ever got around to understanding the meaning of the word recourse!

When, in 1858,  the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous in a very cold and wet, little town of Lourdes in the Pyrenees Mountains, she identified herself with the words, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” Bernadette did not recognize the reference or understand its meaning. No surprise there! Intellectuals had been arguing about their meaning for centuries. In 1497, the University of Paris had even decreed that no one should be admitted to the University without first swearing to assert and defend Mary’s Immaculate Conception! (Presumably that requirement is no longer in force at the Sorbonne!).

In 1846, the U.S. bishops unanimously chose Mary, under the title of her Immaculate Conception, as Patroness of our country. Eight year later, in 1854 Blessed Pope Pius IX finally infallibly defined the essence of the Church’s belief about Mary’s Immaculate Conception – the Church’s faith that, thanks to the salvation Jesus accomplished on our behalf, Mary was preserved from sin, from the very beginning of her existence, and so was from the very start completely holy. She is, as the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth [1770-1850] famously called her “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast.” Meanwhile, two months after Pius IX’s dogmatic definition, the small and struggling Catholic community in Knoxville, TN, purchased a lot on Summit Hill outside the town’s northern limits intending to build their first parish church there. At its dedication later that year, the church was named for the Immaculate Conception.

The story we just heard from the Old Testament [Genesis 3:9-15, 20] highlights the serious damage done by Adam and Eve to themselves and to the rest of the world - and the damage all of us have continued to do to ourselves and to our world, through our alienation from God. Mary, however, holy Mary, represents the healing effect of God’s far-greater power, empowering Mary to say Yes” to God where Eve had said “No” – God’s powerful plan to save us from ourselves.

The story calls Eve the mother of all the living. In spite of sin, human life continued – the very first sign that God was not going to give up on us. Of course, the serpent still lives and continues his mischief, but his doom is already certain. Eve’s greatest descendant and Mary’s Son will strike at the serpent’s head and crush him.

When Our Lady appeared to St. Juan Diego in Mexico in 1531, she spoke in the Aztec language, Nahuatl (just as later on at Lourdes she would later speak not in fancy French but in the local Pyrenees dialect). The Nahuatl word, which to the Spaniards sounded like an already familiar title, “Guadalupe,” literally meant “Who crushes the serpent.”

God’s great plan for our salvation, the mystery decided upon from all eternity and hidden for so many centuries, has been realized in Mary’s Son, Jesus, and is now revealed in the life and mission of the Church. Mary’s holiness at the very beginning of her earthly life is also the Church’s holiness at its beginning and invites us to look forward to the Church as it will one day be in the perfect holiness of God’s kingdom.

O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you!

Homily for the Solemnity of the Immaculae Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Immaculate conception Church, Knoxville, TN, December 8, 2012