Proclaim Thanksgiving (1)

As Americans all over the country (myself among them) go on pilgrimage this week to visit family and friends, far and near, for our great and uniquely American Thanksgiving holiday, I have been reading and thinking about some of the more noteworthy presidential Thanksgiving proclamations issued these past 200+ years.

Actually, the very first national Thanksgiving proclamation came from the Second Continental Congress after the victory at the Battle of Saratoga, setting aside Thursday, December 18, 1777, for "Solemn Thanksgiving and Praise." Then, as the War for Independence was coming to an end, Congress proclaimed November 28, 1782, as another Thanksgiving Day. But it was George Washington who began the tradition of occasional presidential proclamations of Thanksgiving in 1789. John Adams and later James Madison followed suit, but then the tradition lapsed completely until revived by Abraham Lincoln during our Civil War. Since Lincoln, it has become an annual tradition, which every president has continued.

In his 1789 Thanksgiving Proclamation, President Washington designated Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have shown kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally, to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

Quite an agenda! But, notice, not one word about football, or Christmas shopping, or Thanksgiving as the eve of "Black Friday"!

Has "Thanksgiving" changed so much? Or is it we, the nation George Washington 'fathered," who have changed? Changed almost beyond recognition? Changed beyond even the possibility of repair?

(Photo: President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first president I have any really serious memories of, carving a Thanksgiving turkey.)

King

In case we had forgotten and needed to be reminded, our world is constantly reminding us just what an unpredictable place it is - and how much malice and evil there is in the world. But none of that is new and should not surprise us. 

89 years ago this week, a 36-year old Mexican Jesuit priest, Miguel Augustín Pro, was executed on the orders of Mexico’s President. Educated abroad because of the Mexican revolutionary government’s persecution of the Church, Pro had returned to Mexico, after his ordination in 1926, to serve in the underground Church. On November 23, 1927, as the firing squad pointed their rifles at him, Padre Pro extended his arms in the form of a cross and proclaimed: “¡Viva el Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the King!”)

With those powerful words and his martyrdom, Padre Pro reminded the world that there is a something even greater than worldly human power.

The 1920s were a turbulent time not just in Mexico, but all over, as the world unsuccessfully tried to recover from one world war and was already creating the conditions that would inexorably cause a second one. That was the world in which 2 years earlier, Pope Pius XI had anticipated Padre Pro in an encyclical letter on the kingship of Christ, which established this feast of Christ the King, which we are celebrating today.

Of course, the image of Christ as king was not some novelty of the 1920s. On the contrary, it is actually quite ancient – reflected, for example, in early Christian depictions of Christ on the cross, dressed in priestly vestments and wearing a crown, as if the cross were his throne, which, indeed, is precisely what today’s Gospel reading seems to suggest.

Coming at the end of a truly turbulent year in our country, characterized by a bitterly fought, angry, and divisive national election, this feast comes as a good reminder that, while politics may be important, it isn’t everything, and that worldly human power has in fact already met its match in a very different kind of King.

Most modern monarchs – like the 10 currently reigning European ones we are most familiar with – have ascended their thrones rather peacefully, usually as a matter of inheritance according to established constitutional rules, ritualized by suitable ceremonies. Once enthroned, a king or queen acts as a kind of social glue that binds a people together and helps create a powerful experience of political unity and community.

For King David, the tribal chieftain who successfully unified Israel around its new capital, Jerusalem, a little over 3000 years ago, the process (reflected in today’s 1st reading) was less predictable – except in retrospect. In retrospect, David the king personified Israel’s new national identity. His royal rule was a sort of earthly manifestation of God’s presence and power, binding separate tribes into one unified nation and creating a unique new national and religious community.

This Sunday celebrates Jesus, David’s descendant, as the ultimate messiah-king, complete with all the religious and symbolic resonance the word “king” conveys – a king, however, who became king, not by shedding his rivals’ blood (as David did), but by shedding his own, making peace (as we have just heard Saint Paul say) by the blood of his cross.

In today’s Gospel, the title “king” is initially applied to Jesus not as an honor but as an insult. The title is just one more mockery aimed at Jesus. Throughout his entire public life, Jesus had been challenged about the nature and the significance of his power. Nobody doubted that he did powerful deeds – driving out demons, healing the sick. The question at issue was always the source of his power and its significance, whether it was a good power or a bad power, a saving power or a threatening power - a question our modern world still seems to be struggling with. On the cross, however, Jesus must have appeared about as powerless as any person can be, a complete loser. Even so, he seems serenely confident in his power as he unlocks the kingdom for one of the two criminals executed with him, thus revealing himself as king of a new kind of kingdom, a kingdom of mercy.

A fitting image on this day when the Church marks the conclusion of an Extraordinary Holy Year focused entirely on God’s mercy – on how we experience it ourselves and how we share it with others.

Mercy, of course, has traditionally been one of the virtues considered particularly proper in a king. It is, as Shakespeare famously said, enthroned in the hearts of kings. Jesus on the cross has gone even further and has revealed that mercy is, in fact, what his kingdom is all about.

The repentant criminal, of course, here represents all of us, whose ultimate hope lies in God’s mercy, as we recognize our need and dependence and accept the crucified Christ as king. All of us must continually make our own the prayerful plea: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Saint Paul speaks powerfully of how we have been delivered – just as the criminal was – from the power of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins, and share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light.

Like earthly monarchs, Christ the King binds his people together and creates a powerful experience of unity and community. What makes this community so uniquely powerful, however, is that the whole point of this kingship is that it be shared – and shared widely. Christ is most completely a king in conferring a share in his own crown on all who seek salvation in the power of his cross and who acknowledge his kingship for all the world to witness – and experience.

Christ’s kingdom of mercy is continually being revealed in the world by means of his Church – all of us who have been anointed to share in his kingship and live as members of his body. So, if I may end by quoting Shakespeare one more time:

We do pray for mercy,

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

Homily for Christ the King, Saint Anne's Church, Walnut Creek, CA, November 20, 2016.

After the Election - Whither the Republicans' Three-Legged Stool?

I first encountered the eminent Anglican cleric and theologian Richard Hooker (1554-1600), whose view of the origin of government and law drew upon that of Saint Thomas Aquinas, when I studied John Locke, whose Second Treatise of Civil Government (1689) favorably cited "the judicious Hooker." Locke's references to Hooker have guaranteed that even secular-oriented students of philosophy have at least heard of him. For students of theology, however, Hooker is even more justly famous for his treatment of the sources of authority in the Anglican Church. He identified three - scripture, tradition, and reason - referred to (not by Hooker but by subsequent generations) as Anglicanism's "three-legged stool."

That image of the "three-legged stool" has long seemed an apt one to describe the Republican party - at least up until this most recent election. 

The first leg of the Republicans' "three-legged stool" has hitherto been a commitment to the free-market and limited government. Within that leg of the party, those who label themselves libertarians have been its most extreme wing, but lots of conventional Republicans have identified economically as adherents of the free market and politically as adherents of limited government, without buying into the extreme of libertarian ideology. This leg of the Republican party's stool has largely favored free trade and been open to immigration.

The second leg of the Republicans' "three-legged stool" has been a commitment to a robust foreign policy, in which the United States - as  the primary, if not indispensable, world power - maintains and sustains the international order. From the 1940s through the 1960s, this view represented a bi-partisan consensus in the context of the Cold War and the threat to the United States and the entire international order posed by the Soviet Union. The collapse of that consensus during and after the Vietnam years made the Republican party the more congenial home for this approach to international relations - although it never disappeared from the Democratic coalition. For example, Hillary Clinton came much closer to representing this view than the Republican candidate did this year.  

The third leg of the Republicans' "three-legged stool" has been a commitment to a range of issues generally labelled as "cultural conservatism" - a commitment to roll back or at least arrest the social and cultural changes (especially in regard to human sexuality and the family) that are associated with the 1960s and subsequent movements. While not all cultural conservatives are religious, this leg has been largely associated with the "religious right," a coalition of conservative white Evangelicals and conservative white Catholics.

Of course, the three legs  are not completely complementary and coherent. Both the second and third legs call for an activist government, which in theory is not that compatible with the first leg. Neither the first nor the second leg logically requires any commitment to the other, and neither requires any commitment to the third. Even so, since the "Reagan Revolution" swept the Republicans into power in1980, this "three-legged stool" has been a serviceable image to describe the principal constituencies that have animated the modern Republican party - somewhat in tension with one another, but allied nonetheless at election time. 

In the Obama years, a shared hatred for President Obama and a common obsession with taking away health insurance coverage from 20 million Americans has dominated the public face of the Republican party and has overshadowed - but never eliminated - these internal differences. 

But then came Donald Trump, whose campaign explicitly rejected the accepted Republican orthodoxies associated with the first and second legs and largely ignored the third. Regarding the first leg, he explicitly rejected the party's traditional commitment to free trade and openness to immigration. He campaigned as a caudillo-like strongman ("I alone can fix it"), and seems to favor a Democratic-style, big-government, infrastructure program. Regarding the second, while he has committed himself to a strong military and increasing defense spending, he seems to represent the more "isolationist" wing of the party, seems indifferent to the global alliances, etc., that have been associated with activist American leadership throughout the world, and - most  unsettlingly of all - seems somewhat sympathetic to Russia and its autocratic leader, Vladimir Putin. Regarding the third leg, he has dutifully paid some lip service to culturally conservative concerns, but nothing in his private or public life up until now suggests he has any commitment to, sympathy for, or even interest in the concerns of cultural conservatives - especially religious conservatives.

Presumably, as constituent components of the Republican coalition, each of these constituencies will be able to to get something they want - tax cuts for the rich, increased defense spending, a Justice (or two or three) on the Supreme Court. But each is likely also to be somewhat disappointed. How seriously disappointed will be the million-dollar question. 

Of course, traditional Republicans control Congress, and President Trump will have to reckon with their power. But, having gotten this far - and humiliated the Republican establishment - with his populist style and his intimations of a populist program, it is hard to believe that he will easily abandon all of that and contentedly govern like a quaint chamber-of-commerce Republican, let alone a neocon or an Evangelical!

Again, only time will tell.

Not Yet!

In the 1750s, the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau famously threw away his watch, later calling it the most liberating moment of his life.  Most of us, of course, don’t have that luxury. I would feel lost without my watch. Like it or not, deadlines dominate my life, and clocks control my activities.

And then, of course, there is that distinctly modern consequence of globalization, the time zone! Years ago, when I was stationed in Canada, a country with 4½ time zones, I used to enjoy hearing the radio announcer proclaim: It’s 6:00 in Vancouver, 9:00 in Toronto, 10:00 in the Maritimes, and 10:30 in Newfoundland.  That last time zone was the inspiration for a famous cartoon of a man holding a sign in big letters, “CHRIST WILL COME AT MIDNIGHT,” and below in small letters, “12:30 in Newfoundland.”

Well, sooner or later, Christ will indeed come, that awesome judgment day, that dies irae, when, as we say in the Creed, Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. But when that day will come remains uncertain , despite that cartoon and many others, and despite what many Christians throughout history have believed or wanted to believe – going all the way back to the very first generation of Christians.

Some of them, apparently, had gotten so enthusiastic about Christ’s coming that they expected him to arrive any day – or even thought that he had already arrived. And so, they figured, routine stuff - like working – didn’t matter anymore. It fell to Saint Paul to tell them they were wrong – and should go back to work.

Now to us that all may seem obvious. But there have always been those to whom the opposite has seemed obvious, people preoccupied with prophecies and revelations about the end of the world or some other imminent catastrophic event – as if the world doesn’t have enough problems of its own making, without looking for phony prophecies and special private revelations to explain them!

Jesus’ earthly life coincided with a period of peace in the Mediterranean world, which had been completely conquered by the power and might of imperial Rome. That pax romana - “the whole world being at peace” (as we say in the Christmas proclamation from the Roman Martyrology) – didn’t last, of course. First-century Israel had been relatively peaceful in Jesus’ time, but a few decades later it was the scene of a catastrophic rebellion, leading to the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple. Followers of Jesus – eager for his final return – naturally saw that calamity as a portent of even greater woes to come.

Something similar happened when the Latin Roman Empire itself collapsed in the 5th century. In 410, when the city of Rome fell to a foreign enemy for the first time in almost 800 years, a traumatized Saint Jerome lamented, “The brightest light of the world is extinguished.” I don’t know if he was consciously channeling Saint Jerome, but in 1914 it was the British Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey who famously warned as World War I began, "The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time." He was right, of course, about the civilizational suicide that was World War I, as was Jerome about the fall of Rome. But in neither case was it the end of the world. That means that, as his Church, we must continue to wait, with hope, for Christ’s final return.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus sought to assure his disciples that Jerusalem’s impending destruction would not signal the end of the world. But his words were addressed to all centuries. When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for such things must happen first, but it will not immediately be the end. As with the pax romana, untroubled, peaceful times have been the exception rather than the rule in human history. Hardly any period has lacked its share of wars and insurrections. The pre-World War I generation believed in peaceful progress. But the last 102 years – among the bloodiest and most destructive in all of human history – have surely falsified that belief.

And, no matter how much we may want to control time by ascribing special significance to our calamities, Jesus warns us not to make that mistake. Such things happen – for ordinary human reasons – and are not necessarily signs of anything else.

Jesus seems to be saying that we cannot know when the end will come and should not obsess about it. Instead, we have plenty of work to do in the meantime – and not just the ordinary working for a living of which Saint Paul spoke.

We do the kingdom of God’s work when we live as Jesus’ disciples, despite difficulties and even opposition. And, rather than obsessing about the end of the world, the kingdom of God’s work here and now commits us to care about the world and one another in the world.

Over the centuries, the Church has incorporated in her approach to the challenge of daily living in the world an understanding of how human beings are social and political by nature, how human beings are naturally intended to live and thrive in close cooperation with others and in association with others as fellow citizens. This results in many benefits, which we would not otherwise enjoy, and also challenges us with serious responsibilities and obligations to one another and to the wider community. It challenges us to respond to one another and the world we live in seriously in a way that transcends simplistic slogans and emotional appeals.

Far from being signs of the end, Jesus suggests that the challenges we experience call us to perseverance, to go on believing and hoping and loving in the present no matter how far away the future coming of God’s kingdom may be. Whatever will happen at the end of history, we are invited to trust already now in the sun of justice, whose healing heat, as the prophet Malachi suggests, warms rather than burns.

Ultimately, what being a disciple is all about is that God has given us his divine Son, the sun of justice, Jesus, sent to save us and thanks to whom God is now near and not far, here not just there. Hence the cares and concerns that characterize our daily lives and the crises and calamities that impact our society and the world at large – far from being obstacles to our experience of God or a stumbling block on our way to God’s kingdom – are really where God is actually acting and where he can be found.

Meanwhile, like Saint Paul, we need to focus on the present, getting ready for the future by who we are becoming by how we live, what we do, and how we do it.

Homily for the 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, November 13, 2016.

After the Election - The Media

In my two previous posts I said nothing about gender. Yet the fact that the first female candidate for president of either major party was defeated by an overtly misogynistic candidate does highlight the different standard to which she was held, which naturally lead me to today's discussion of the appalling way that the mainstream media covered the campaign. (The perverse contribution of social media is another important area, which I will leave it to others to discuss.)

Not for the first time, the media covered not the election but the campaign. That is, the focus was almost entirely upon the "horse race" - reflected primarily in polls (which in the end were not even accurate). Like nuclear weapons, polls are now a part of the world's arsenal and cannot be wished away.  In fact, good polling might be sociologically informative and interesting. but it tells the voter nothing about who would make a better president. it gives the voter no useful information on which to base his or her vote. Yet that is exactly what voters need. They don't need (however interesting it may seem at the time) to know which candidate is more popular on some particular day months or weeks before the election, but they do need to know what difference it would make to choose one over the other.  

Along with this "horse race" obsession, the media tend to focus a lot on "inside Beltway" things that journalists like to care about - for example, changes in campaign managers and staffs - issues that again are not uninteresting or unimportant but which minimally assist voters in making their choices.

Worst of all, that "inside Beltway" mentality combined with a desire to make news leads to an obsession with missteps, "gaffes," and real or supposed scandals. So Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server as Secretary of State, a relatively minor matter on which most voters had long ago formed their opinion one way or the other, remained a permanent obsession with the media, which could never let it go - an injustice both to her and to the voters.

The thing that was most unique to this race was, of course, Donald Trump himself. Early on, the media did not seem to take his candidacy as seriously as it deserved to be taken. That was bad enough, but the media also awarded him enormous free media time and focused on him way more than on the other primary candidates. The lust for sensationalism may have been a factor, but it is hard to escape the impression that Trump was good for ratings, and that that was also a major factor. When the Chairman of CSB said, back in February, "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS," he confirmed what many of us suspected was a factor motivating the over-the-top coverage of Trump's candidacy. Once again, we see the sad consequence of the evolution of TV news which was once seen as a public service, but is now just another profit-making entity.

As always, journalists typically continued with their standard approach of "balance," treating Trump's lies and scandals and Hillary Clinton's occasional questionable statements and behavior as morally equivalent. But, since the public clearly did not hold Trump to such traditional standards, that only made Hillary seem to many to be as bad a character as Trump - or even worse. Late int he campaign, the media began to call  Trump's falsehoods what they really were - lies. But it was too little, too late.

The media's belated fact-checking of Trump also played into a narrative of media bias, which was further fueled by the Trump machine. Media Bias is a complicated concept to assess. What is undoubtedly clear, however, was - is - the media's cultural disconnect from at least half of the country - the half that voted for Trump. People in the media are largely educated and urban and apparently secular. Almost unreflectively they seem to take for granted the prejudices of their class - whether in support of the EU or of transgender bathrooms. The media seem oblivious to the real lives and serious concerns of downscale rural, "working class," and religious Americans and - intentionally or not - often seem contemptuous of them. The resulting disconnect was part of what fueled the resentment that so many have against "elites" - a resentment tht finally found a vehicle for effective expression in voting for Trump. Indeed the disconnect was so bad it seems to have blinded most of the media to the reality on the ground. Hence the almost universal shock and surprise at the election's outcome.