Labor Day 2015

For many of us, labor Day has long come to signify the imminent end of summer. As such it is eagerly welcomed by people like me who dislike summer's heat and lamented by those who rather revel in it. Be that as it may, some sort of "end of summer" final fling seems to be called for - a post-modern replacement for the autumn harvest festivals that were once ubiquitous when people were still connected enough to the land and to the rhythms of the natural year for such holidays still to make sense.

As a civic holiday, however, our American Labor Day originated in the 1880s as an affirmation of the American labor movement and a celebration of the economic, social, and political achievements of workers and their essential contribution to the prosperity and well-being of our country. (The photo, shows the Labor Day parade at New York's Union Square in 1882). Labor Day is thus an appropriate occasion to reflect upon the social teaching of the Church and its application to our present economic, social, and political situation. 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes some of the elementary principles of Catholic social teaching that are particularly relevant to recall on Labor Day. 

The Church’s social teaching comprises a body of doctrine, which is articulated as the Church interprets events in the course of history, with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, in the light of the whole of what has been revealed by Jesus Christ. … The Church’s social teaching proposes principles for reflection; it provides criteria for judgment; it gives guidelines for action [The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2422-2423].

The development of economic activity and growth in production are meant to provide for the needs of human beings. Economic life is not meant solely to multiply goods produced and increase profit or power; it is ordered first of all to the service of persons, of the whole man, and of the entire human community [CCC, 2426]

Economic life brings into play different interests, often opposed to one another. This explains why the conflicts that characterize it arise. Efforts should be made to reduce these conflicts by negotiation that respects the rights and duties of each social partner: those responsible for business enterprises, representatives of wage-earners (for example, trade unions), and public authorities when appropriate [CCC, 2431].

Access to employment and to professions must be open to all without unjust discrimination: men and women, healthy and disabled, natives and immigrants. For its part society should, according to circumstances, help citizens find work and employment [CCC, 2433]

A just wage is the legitimate fruit of work. To refuse or withhold it can be a grave injustice. … Agreement between the parties is not sufficient to justify morally the amount to be received in wages [CCC, 2434].

These basic principles and others have been developed and elaborated especially in the modern social encyclicals – from Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum (1891) to Pope Francis in Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home. 

Consider, for example, the following from 50 years ago - from Gaudium et Spes, 68 (The 2nd Vatican Council's "Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World"):

In economic enterprises it is persons who are joined together, that is, free and independent human beings created to the image of God. Therefore, with attention to the functions of each—owners or employers, management or labor—and without doing harm to the necessary unity of management, the active sharing of all in the administration and profits of these enterprises in ways to be properly determined is to be promoted. Since more often, however, decisions concerning economic and social conditions, on which the future lot of the workers and of their children depends, are made not within the business itself but by institutions on a higher level, the workers themselves should have a share also in determining these conditions—in person or through freely elected delegates.

Among the basic rights of the human person is to be numbered the right of freely founding unions for working people. These should be able truly to represent them and to contribute to the organizing of economic life in the right way. Included is the right of freely taking part in the activity of these unions without risk of reprisal. Through this orderly participation joined to progressive economic and social formation, all will grow day by day in the awareness of their own function and responsibility, and thus they will be brought to feel that they are comrades in the whole task of economic development and in the attainment of the universal common good according to their capacities and aptitudes.

When, however, socio-economic disputes arise, efforts must be made to come to a peaceful settlement. Although recourse must always be had first to a sincere dialogue between the parties, a strike, nevertheless, can remain even in present-day circumstances a necessary, though ultimate, aid for the defense of the workers' own rights and the fulfillment of their just desires. As soon as possible, however, ways should be sought to resume negotiation and the discussion of reconciliation.

It will be interesting to hear how the Pope will proclaim some of these once familiar truths during his visit to the United States later this month. This will be his first-ever visit to the United States. As an article in yesterday's NY Times, pointedly put it: "Something of a homebody, preferring to hang out with the poor than the rich and powerful, he has waited until 78 to visit the economic giant that likes to think of itself as the center of everything."

So it will be very interesting indeed to hear how the Pope will proclaim some of these once familiar truths during his visit and to experience how his visit will in turn help our American Catholic community retrieve these somewhat neglected but fundamental truths as criteria for judgment and guidelines for action.

Hear and Proclaim

Whenever a baby is baptized, after the actual baptism itself come a series of rituals that symbolically amplify the full meaning of baptism. The last of these is called the Ephphatha - the Aramaic word Jesus used in today’s Gospel [Mark 7:31-37]. The fact that the actual Aramaic word was remembered years later and repeated in its original language in the Gospel (which was written in a different language) suggests that what Jesus said and did on that occasion must have made quite a memorable impression on his followers. 

 

At a Baptism, in imitation of Jesus, the priest or deacon touches the newly baptized baby’s ears and mouth, saying: The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak. May he soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.” In other words, in opening our ears to hear God’s word and our mouths to proclaim his faith, Baptism introduces us to a genuinely new way of life, just as the life of the man Jesus healed in today’s Gospel was totally and irrevocably transformed.

Who was this man, forever immortalized by Jesus’ healing touch that day? Apart from his disability, we know next to nothing about him. He could have been anyone. Apart from his disability, the only other thing we can assume about him is suggested by the geography lesson at the beginning of the story. Jesus, we are told, left the district of Tyre and went into the district of the Decapolis.  In other words, Jesus has gone beyond the borders of Israel into Gentile territory. So the salvation promised by the prophet Isaiah (so familiar to us from Handel's musical version) - Then will the ears of the deaf be cleared; then the tongue of the mute will sing – is coming true. And one of the first to benefit is a deaf Gentile, whose ears have been opened to hear God’s word, a pagan, whose mouth has been opened to proclaim his new faith!

The story highlights not just a man and a miracle, but what happened next. The man spoke plainly, and the people were astonished. Sometimes astonishment silences us. In this case, however, the people proclaimed the good news. So this is a story about change – not just the dramatic healing of one individual in need, but the total transformation of his life and the creation of a community of disciples who have suddenly experienced something new and different made possible by Christ. 

So what might such a transformed way of life and such a transformational community actually look life?

The letter of James, which we are reading this month, reminds us that our faith cannot just be something somehow incidental in our lives. The exhortation we heard last week, Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves, gets “unpacked” in a series of practical exhortations today [James 2:1-5] to judge, value, and treat people according to completely new and different criteria from those predominating in secular society – a tall order, to be sure, in any time and place, certainly in a society such as ours where we all seem so enamored of the rich and famous, a society in which a CEO earns several hundred times what his or her average worker earns, fostering an economic, cultural, and moral gap of a magnitude that would have been almost unimaginable just a generation ago.

As members of Christ’s Church, who hear his word, we are now witnesses of the change God is effecting in us – and through us in the world. Like the bystanders in the Gospel, we will have no viable authentic alternative but to proclaim his faith, to proclaim what we have heard and seen, something we do by becoming new people, something that should show in our behavior towards one another, and especially to strangers – those society seeks to throw away but whom we are called upon to welcome and embrace.

The same Jesus is present among us today in his Church to open our ears and mouths – really open them, open them up all the way, as dramatically and as permanently as was that unforgettable 1st-century Ephphatha.

Homily for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, September 6, 2015.

Peace Comes of Age - To What End?

The anniversary of the definitive end of the Second World War, when Japan formally surrendered 70 years ago this week on September 2, 1945 (see AP photo) seems to have come and gone with little or no fanfare (except perhaps in China). But back in August 1966, when the war was a more recent memory for many, I can well recall reading an article by British historian A.J.P. Taylor in The NY Times Magazine entitled “Peace Comes of Age; 21 years after World War I, World War II was already 2 months old; now, 21 years after World War II-- Peace Comes of Age.” (I couldn't find the text of the article on the The NY Times  site, but I was able at least to find its complete title!)

"Coming of Age" at that time still meant 21. Hence 1966 was when the post-World War II peace was said to have at last come of age in contrast to the post-World War I peace which never quite made it to 21. Both post-war experiences of peace were, of course, conflicted. The Cold War was still raging in 1966, and a series of smaller armed conflicts had occurred or were yet to occur in various regions of the world. But - in my opinion, largely thanks to the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons - not only had there not been a nuclear war between the two opposing superpowers, but no conventional war had broken out between them. Absent the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons, I personally have always been convinced that the US and the USSR would  almost certainly have gone to war - a conventional, land war in Europe which would likely have equalled or exceeded the European disaster that had been World War II. And like World War II it would surely have devastated other continents as well.

In 1966, the dominant values and worldviews of Western political elites and policy makers were still recognizably rooted in 1945. By then, Western Europe's post-war recovery was fairly complete, a prosperity which would make possible new internal challenges, the social and cultural "revolution" of the later 1960s and after. But it would take some time before the inherited post-1945 outlook would completely give way. It would take the unexpected end of the Cold War and the surprising success of the so-called European project (itself a post-war reaction to the experience of two world wars) to change that.

But there is, of course, another kind of coming of age. Seventy is the sum of our years, or eighty, if we are strong; Most of them are toil and sorrow; they pass quickly, and we are gone (Psalm 90:10). If coming of age at 21 heralds the era of adult fulfillment for which the previous years had been preparing, coming of age at 70 heralds the end of that era. And so it seems to be with the post-World War II European "peace." 

The fractious over-extended Europe of today, stifled by the hubris of its anti-democratic EU institutions unmoored from their Christian cultural roots, seems poised to turn its back - to the extent it hasn't already done so - on the aspirations and accomplishments of the post-world War II "peace," as ancient conflicts within states (Belgium, Spain, the UK) and regions (the Balkans, the Ukraine) and the challenge of the historical "other" (Islam) reassert themselves with a force and power few would have predicted when peace was just turning 21. 

The post-war peace has indeed come of age, but to what end?

Creating a Christian Civilization

Today the Church commemorates Pope Saint Gregory the Great (c.540 - 604), who became Pope on this day in 590, and who is buried in Saint Peter's Basilica (photo). Gregory came from a wealthy and prominent aristocratic Roman family and in 573 became Prefect of the City. He eventually became a monk, turning his family villa on the Caelian Hill into an urban monastery. One of the four great Doctors of the Western Church, Gregory profoundly influenced  the Latin Church's both theologically and liturgically. Gregory's combined Roman and monastic heritage highlights his formative role in the creation of the new Christian civilization of Europe which replaced the Western Roman Empire.

Gregory's rome was a desolate, depopulated city whose best days seemed behind it (perhaps a bit like the Bronx in the 1970s), reduced to a distant western province of the Eastern roman empire based in constantinople ("New Rome"). "In and around the Forum," wrote Peter Brown (The Rise of Western Christendom), "the occasional crash of falling masonry showed that Rome, the Rome of the pagan past, had not been levelled by invading barbarians. It had simply been allowed to fall down through neglect."

Gregory emerged from his monastic retreat to be ordained to the more public, civic responsibilities of a cleric, and was sent to the Imperial court in Constantinople as papal envoy in 579. While there, he wrote his famous Moralia, a book of spiritual guidance in the form of an allegorical exegesis of the old testament book of Job.

His immersion in worldly socio-political affairs became complete when he became pope and became responsible for feeding the ancient capital and helping to finance the new capital. Early in his papacy, his weighty new responsibilities produced another book, Regula Pastoralis, in which he sought to navigate the challenges of spiritual office's worldly responsibilities. Gregory's ideal pastor would be thus close to people in compassion while still somehow above it all in contemplation (Regula Pastoralis, 2,5). Peter Brown called Gregory's Regula Pastoralis his equivalent of the Rule of Saint  Benedict - a rule for bishops - and considered it "decisive for the entire future of Western Europe," a model lay as well as religious governance.

Gregory straddled the end of an ancient classical order and the birth of a medieval Christian civilization, as surely as he straddled the physical boundaries between the Eastern Empire and the patchwork of old and new social structures  and political regimes that was redefining Western Europe. Like the householder in the Gospel who brought both old and new from his storeroom (Matthew 13:52), Gregory drew on t he best from our roman and byzantine past and amalgamated it with what was actually in the making at the time to bring to birth a new, post-ancient Christian civilization.

The spirit of that impressive civilization served humanity very well for over a millennium until it too fell down through neglect in the dark age known as the enlightenment and the bloody wars and tyrannies that have been the Enlightenment's lasting legacy.

So, once again, the world awaits with anxious expectation post-modern Gregorys, rooted in the spiritual life of contemplation of the Truth and overflowing with compassion for a suffering humanity, in order to recreate a new civilization out of the human and cultural wreckage produced by modernity..

Something for Everyone

Earlier this week, the Holy Father, in a letter to the Archbishop President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, announced the Jubilee Indulgence for the forthcoming Extraordinary Jubilee year, the Holy Year of Mercy. The celebration of God’s grace and mercy is, of course, central to the celebration of every Jubilee. And so a key component of the ritual of a Holy Year is that one goes on pilgrimage and passes through the Holy Doors of the papal basilicas – either actually or equivalently – and receives the favor of the Jubilee Indulgence. The Pope provides in his letter for those able to make this traditional pilgrimage - and also, as was likewise the case during the last Jubilee Year, for those who make their pilgrimage closer to home at the local cathedral or some other specially designated church. Pope Francis also makes appropriate provision not only for “the sick and people who are elderly and alone, often confined to the home,” but also for “those incarcerated, whose freedom is limited” and whom he will allow to  “obtain the Indulgence in the chapels of the prisons.“ For Jubilees, the Pope reminds us, have “always constituted an opportunity for great amnesty, which is intended to include the many people who, despite deserving punishment, have become conscious of the injustice they worked and sincerely wish to re-enter society and make their honest contribution to it.” Now that’s a message of mercy that seems especially apt for our obsessively incarceration-oriented American society!

But what has attracted the most attention is not the traditional provisions for the indulgence nor his moving invitation to heighten the practice of the works of mercy during the Holy Year, but two other issues the Pope addressed in his letter. The first concerns those involved in the sin of abortion, his treatment of which reveals a lot about Pope Francis' particularly personal approach and so deserves more complete quotation.

“One of the serious problems of our time is clearly the changed relationship with respect to life. A widespread and insensitive mentality has led to the loss of the proper personal and social sensitivity to welcome new life. The tragedy of abortion is experienced by some with a superficial awareness, as if not realizing the extreme harm that such an act entails. Many others, on the other hand, although experiencing this moment as a defeat, believe they they have no other option. I think in particular of all the women who have resorted to abortion. I am well aware of the pressure that has led them to this decision. I know that it is an existential and moral ordeal. I have met so many women who bear in their heart the scar of this agonizing and painful decision. What has happened is profoundly unjust; yet only understanding the truth of it can enable one not to lose hope. The forgiveness of God cannot be denied to one who has repented, especially when that person approaches the Sacrament of Confession with a sincere heart in order to obtain reconciliation with the Father. For this reason too, I have decided, notwithstanding anything to the contrary, to concede to all priests for the Jubilee Year the discretion to absolve of the sin of abortion those who have procured it and who, with contrite heart, seek forgiveness for it.”

Of course in a world in which the media (and many Catholics) are clueless about such matters, this has been presented as some radical novelty. In fact, while church law does indeed attach an automatic penalty of excommunication to abortion (provided certain stringent conditions are met) and generally reserves the removal that penalty to the local bishop, it is quite common here in the United States for bishops to grant the faculty to do so to all priests. If this is not also the case in some other jurisdictions, then the Pope’s action will universalize this possibility for everyone, everywhere, at least during the Holy Year. That is certainly a tangible benefit.  That said, the more practical import of this in the United States, I think, is in how it shifts the focus of attention from the public policy battle about abortion to the painful and difficult circumstances and pressures which so often surround the decision for abortion and so emphasizes the Church’s commitment to meet people who suffer from their involvement in this evil.

The other thing the Pope did in this letter that has gotten banner headlines (at least in certain circles) was his decision – in one sense more radical than his action about abortion - to extend the faculty to hear confessions to priests of the schismatic Lefebvrist Society of Saint Pius X. The prospects for their ultimate reconciliation with the Church have long been bogged down in theological disputation. Meanwhile, as the Pope notes in his letter, “an uneasy situation from the pastoral standpoint” has been created for those who sincerely seek the sacraments from priests of that society. The theological issues which are at issue in that society’s irregular situation and in the choice of some to seek the sacraments in that environment are not insignificant. But the Pope is again reminding us that “mercy excludes no one,” and that the good of souls must always be the Church’s priority in the policies it adopts.

And who knows if this bold move may be yet another step in healing the wounds so tragically opened in the Church by post-conciliar factionalism? A Church that thinks of itself as - to use Pope Francis' favorite image (inspired very likely by Alessandro Manzoni's novel I Promessi Sposi) - of the Church as a "field hospital," will want to find ways to get everyone inside and keep them there.