The Surveillance Society

In yesterday's New York Times, Ross Douthat ("Your Smartphone Is Watching You") argued that  Americans "understand the essential nature of life on the Internet pretty well. The motto 'nothing to hide, nothing to fear' — or, alternatively, 'abandon all privacy, ye who enter here' — might as well be stamped on every smartphone and emblazoned on every social media log-in page. As the security expert Bruce Schneier wrote recently, it isn’t that the Internet has been penetrated by the surveillance state; it’s that the Internet, in effect, is a surveillance state." 

Douthat is legitimately concerned about the effects of this - an atmosphere in which. "radicalism and protest will seem riskier, paranoia will be more reasonable, and conspiracy theories will proliferate." But he also recognizes that "genuinely dangerous people will often be pre-empted or more swiftly caught," and he accordingly concludes that many will find this "privacy-for-security swap" to be reasonable, "especially when there is no obvious alternative short of disconnecting from the Internet entirely" (certainly something most of us are obviously ill-disposed to do).

For all the noise about infringements to our "privacy," the fact is that my phone records are not my private records but the business records of a commercial entity. My credit card companies keep track of my purchases. So does Amazon and any other company that has my credit card number on file. When we debate (as we rightly ought to) the implications of the growing surveillance state, we have to start with the realistic recognition that ours is already a surveillance society - something which is an inevitable by-product of the technologies our society has created and most of us have largely embraced. 
Of course, the State has police power. So allowing the State access to all sorts of "private" information is not exactly the same as banks and other commercial entities having such access. Still, it is this surveillance society that makes the surveillance state possible - and much more acceptable to people.

Add to that the concern - both legitimate and exaggerated - for personal and national security. It's probably true that we crave more security from life's misfortunes than we can realistically attain. An ongoing New York Times discussion "Risk and Legal Fear in Schools" addresses the increasing contemporary obsession with creating a perfectly secure environment, something which is probably impossible and probably would be somewhat unhealthy were it actually achievable. The fact is that life is risky, and no matter how hard we try to be totally safe bad things do sometimes happen. The absurd effort to hype last September's tragedy in Benghazi into some sort of scandal presumes a context that suggests that somehow governments can be expected to guarantee total security from any bad things happening anywhere anytime. 

On the other hand, government's principal responsibility is national defense and security. Striking the balance between a robust pursuit of our national defense and domestic security in this time of terrorism and unrealistic expectations of total safety is a preeminently political discernment (an adult activity our current political culture is ill equipped to undertake, but which must be faced).

I don't know the answers to  all these questions. If ever deliberation and debate were called for, this would be an instance. It doesn't help, however, when, on the one hand, every example of something bad happening is treated as a failure to be corrected by increased limits on liberty, or, on the other hand, our constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties are automatically invoked in ways which do not respect citizens' legitimate fears and legitimate desire for some reasonable level of security.

Two Widows

When St. Paul wanted to make his case to the Christian community in Galatia, he felt the need to introduce himself, to talk about his background, and to make the case for his authority in terms of how he came to be an apostle [Galatians 1:11-19]. The same was true with many of the Old Testament prophets – but not with the prophet Elijah. One of the most famous and important prophets in all of Israel’s history, Elijah just appeared on the scene so to speak, with not much introduction, to reprimand the wicked King Ahab. His arrival coincided with a severe drought, which led him to seek the hospitality of a certain poor widow. Then, after a year during which Elijah’s presence had been a blessing for the widow and her only son, suddenly the son got sick and died [1 Kings 17:17-24]. Not much repayment for her hospitality!

Nowadays it is divorce, which is more often the ticket to poverty for women and children. In the ancient world, being left a widow without a man to provide for her often led to poverty and destitution – as it often still did in our own society before Social Security and Medicare. So no wonder the widow was angry at Elijah and Elijah’s God! But, instead of reacting defensively when challenged by the widow’s grief and anger, Elijah seemed to take her side. He called out to the Lord, “will you afflict event he widow with whom I am staying by killing her son?” And the Lord heard his prayer, and Elijah was able to return the boy alive to his mother.

Elijah is remembered for many things. One of them is this story of his compassion for this widow. Jesus mentioned it in his hometown synagogue in one of the early episodes of his public life [Luke 4:26].Unlike the story of Elijah and the widow, we don’t know what in particular may have brought Jesus to a city called Nain [Luke 9:11b-17],where, lo and behold, he was greeted at the city gate by another grieving widow, mourning her only son (to borrow St. Augustine’s famous phrase, misery meeting up with mercy). Jesus had no prior connection with her, had not received her hospitality, didn’t owe her anything so to speak. But that didn’t block his compassion. It was that compassion, in fact, which created a connection. Moved with pity for her, he touched the coffin, and said, “Young man, I tell you arise!” The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother.

Both these events were revelations of God. In Elijah’s case, the widow declared: “The word of God comes truly from your mouth.” At Nain, the crowd exclaimed “A great prophet has arisen in our midst”and “God has visited his people.” These incredibly miraculous events identified Elijah and Jesus as true prophets, great prophets, who embodied God’s word, and revealed God’s power. But more than power, they revealed God’s presence. “God has visited his people”!

In those otherwise unimportant places, God visited his people – unimportant people, poor people, widows with no source of support, sons whose lives were being cut short way ahead of time. God didn’t just visit. He connected. Elijah and Jesus connected directly by touching the dead, which, of course, risked ritual impurity from contact with a dead body. Elijah and Jesus didn’t just speak God’s word, they acted it out, by touching, by becoming one with the dead, and thus bonding with all grieving and suffering people there and everywhere.

Both Elijah in anticipation and Jesus in fulfillment were revealing the kingdom of God – not just talking about it as an abstract theory, but making it happen in our lives by bonding with us. And, like the widow’s son, our only response to the surge of new life within us must be to get up and speak. Like the grieving widows and the people in the crowd, we too must recognize God’s word at work in our world, God visiting his people.

And not just visiting, but staying with us – in his Church! Our human lives are created by the power of God, but they are maintained and sustained by his incredible compassion. We are witnesses as well as beneficiaries of that compassion and are called upon to continue to express it and share it in our lives together as a Church, embodying God’s new kingdom in our world.

Homily for the 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, June 9, 2013.

D + 2

One of my few family heirlooms, one that travels around with me when I move, is a map my father made tracing his wartime service in Europe as part of the 186th Field Artillery Battalion, V Corps Artillery, from June 8, 1944 ("D-Day + 2") to May 9, 1945. Historical attention has rightly emphasized the heroic exploits of the initial landings on D-Day, but the landings continued as artillery and other units came ashore in the days that followed the first assault. My father illustrated his map with military markings whose meaning is now lost to me. But it clearly traces his route from the D+2 landing at Omaha Beach through Normandy (Caumont, St. Lo) and on to Paris. From Paris, the map marks my father's route into the Rhineland and the Ardennes and the defense of Monschau-Eupen-Liege. (My father did not talk overly much about his war experience, but when he did the Battle of the Bulge usually loomed large in his recollections). The route continues through Germany to the Elbe, then down into what is now the Czech Republic, where the war ended for my father in Pilsen.

I see the map on my wall every day. I don't look at it - i.e., study it carefully - that often, but its lessons are never lost on me. Born in 1919, my father grew up in the Depression, in a large immigrant family, in a densely populated neighborhood - with all the economic and cultural deprivations and social and cultural riches that went with that life. It's a life that was still recognizable in the world I grew up in, even as as new world was being born in which my generation would have access to different riches (and experience different deprivations). For my father and so many of his generation it was that overseas war that was most fully formative. That we now aptly call them "the greatest generation," is a testament not only to the world-historical impact of their war service but to how it defined them. And, of course, its legacy defined us, the greatest generation's "baby boomer" heirs.

Next year's 70th anniversary of D-Day will undoubtedly inspire perceptive reflections on the greatest generation's larger historical accomplishment. On this 69th anniversary of my father's landing in Normandy, however, two considerations emerge as foremost in my thinking. The first is one of appreciation for the greatest generation and gratitude for giving us boomers a far better world than the one they had been left. The second is the sense of regret that we have not done the same for the generations after us.

Good Pope John

Fifty years ago today - June 3, 1963 - Blessed Pope John XXIII died. By the time he was beatified by Blessed Pope John Paul II in 2000, today's date in the Church's calendar was already claimed by the Ugandan Martyrs (canonized by Paul VI in 1964). So Blessed John XXIII is commemorated not on the anniversary of his death but instead in October on the anniversary of the Council he had convened in the hope of what he fervently called "a new Pentecost."

It was in fact Pentecost Monday (which we still celebrated in 1963 in the as yet unreformed calendar) when Pope John died. To an impressionable 15-year old with a perhaps more than average interest in religion, it seemed as if the whole world were assembling in a vigil at his deathbed. That evening, a special Mass was celebrated in St. Peter's Square for the assembled crowds, and it was shortly after that Mass's end that the Pope died. (Earlier, he had received the sacrament of Extreme Unction from Bishop Peter Canisius Van Lierde - the same Bishop who had confirmed me six years earlier).

The Pope's death set in motion the traditional rituals of ecclesiastical mourning. Those rituals were augmented by an unprecedented degree of popular interest and participation. I remember watching the evening news with a high school classmate as the Pope's body was brought out of the basilica into the square at the end of his lying-in-state to give the huge crowd a chance to pay its respects. I recall how the news commentator commented that in the early Church this would have amounted to "canonization by acclamation." Not quite - but at least he's finally been beatified and now lies in honor unde an altar in St. Peter's!

John XXIII's legacy is simultaneously simple and complex. His down-to-earth, human saintliness was what made him so popular with ordinary people and is still remembered by those of us who are old enough. Think of the continued appeal of his 1962 Discorso della Luna! His Journal of a Soul still merits reading even if the language - and the spritiuality - seem somewhat dated. At a time when the papacy had finally fully re-emerged from its post-1870 isolation, John gave the Church a remarkably attractive human face. Who knows how many may have been more disposed to hear the Church's message because they had come to like the messenger? The modern media-driven emphasis on personality and charisma has likely done the Church and the world more harm than good overall, but it is undeniable that an attractive personality who can lovingly project the joy of disicpleship is great gift not to be minimized.

That simple side of his legacy is what, I suspect, accounts for his continued popular appeal. And that appeal has survived the complex and conflicted history he inadvertently set in motion with his Council. Pope John was a true traditionalist, who loved the Church and its liturgy, and who knew its history well. His northern Italian background and historical study had disposed him to appreciate the accomplishments of the Council of Trent and the reforming zeal of the likes of St. Charles Borromeo (whose heart he went to venerate in preparation for the Council's opening). He had great hopes for the spiritual renewal the Council would facilitate. Neither he - nor, for that matter, the Council Fathers - could have anticipated the moral and cultural revoluton that was just around the corner in the late 60s and how so much of the Council's promise would get derailed by the spirit of the age. It is almost impossible to separate one's evaluation of John's successor, Paul VI, from one's evaluation of that tragic time in the Church. But John died in time to be spared that fate and can be remembered and admired for what he personally embodied without reference to the chaos that came about during his successor's reign. (In that regard, he resembles John F. Kennedy, who died less than six months later, and who can sitll be invoked by anyone who wishes to do so - on whatever side of the late-60s battle lines).

Immediately following his election in 1958, the new pope experienced being carried aloft on the sedia gestatoria for the first time. He reminisced about how as a child he had been carried on his father’s shoulders. Then he added: “The secret of everything is to let oneself be carried by God, and so to carry him to others.”

Sacrament Among Us

The custom most associated with Corpus Christi is the procession in which the Blessed Sacrament is carried in a monstrance through the local streets with great solemnity and communal festivity. The procession is a public witness of the Church’s belief in and popular devotion to the sacrament of the Eucharist. Beginning with Blessed John Paul II, recent popes have revived the custom at the papal level, celebrating Mass at the Papal Basilica of St. John Lateran (Rome’s Cathedral), and then going from there in procession with the Blessed Sacrament up the Esquiline Hill to the Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major, where the procession concludes with Benediction outdoors. That was on Thursday, the traditional day for Corpus Christi. Today, Sunday, at 5:00 p.m. Rome time (11:00 a.m. our time), the Holy Father will preside over a special hour of Eucharistic adoration extended all over the world. The world’s cathedrals will be synchronized with Rome and will, for an hour, join the Pope in Eucharistic adoration.

In 1984, I got to attend a particularly impressive Corpus Christi procession in Montreal, Quebec, where we followed the Blessed Sacrament through the narrow streets of the Old City to the historic basilica of Notre Dame. But perhaps the most impressive, certainly the most moving outdoor eucharisitc procession I’ve ever attended was not on Corpus Chrsti but the one that takes place every summer afternoon at the shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in southern France. After being exposed all day under a tent, the Blessed Sacrament is carried at the end of a procession of sick pilgrims and their caregivers to the massive underground basilica. Empty, the basilica (the only structure large enough to contain the vast number of piolgrims present on any given day) resembles an ugly underground parking lot. Crowded to capacity for afternoon Benediciton, however, the experience is – as my British friends would say – “brilliant.”

A more traditonal word might be”awesome” – a word which really used to mean something before it became a contemporary synonym for “nice.” Thus, we used to start the Mass for the Consecration of a Church with the words of the Patriarch jacob in Genesis: How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven; and it shall be called the court of God [Genesis 28:17].

We build and maintain churches to be “awesome,” so that “awesome” things can happen there - so that the community of faithful we call the Church (with a capital “C”), can assemble to pray, to hear God’s word, and to celebrate the sacraments, especially the Eucharist in which Christ is present in a unique way in his Body and Blood. Prefigured by the bread and wine offered (as we just heard) by the priest and king Melchizedek [Genesis 14:18-20], the Eucharist was established as a sacrament (as we also just heard) by Christ at the Last Supper [1 Corinthians 11:23-26], and now is celebrated daily on our altar and  permanently reserved for adoration in the Taberancle. Today’s celebration is meant to highlight all of that, all the while inviting us to a deeper devotion to the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It is that Real Presence which is so vividly celebrated in the tradtional Corpus Christi procession, in which the Church ritually acts out the reality of Christ coming into our world, walking our streets, so to speak.

In the Eucharist – and in the life we share together as Christ’s Church united by and through the Eucharist we celebrate – Christ comes among us. And he remains with us, blessing the streets we and he walk together, nourishing our ordinary and sometimes somewhat messed up lives with the real, felsh-and-blood presence of God himself, who invites us – like the 5000+ people in the Gospel [Luke 9:11b-17] – to eat until we have more than enoough.

Homily for Corpus Christi, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, June 2, 2013.