A Crisis Decades in the Making

Former Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, who now lives in the United States, was recently quoted in The New Yorker as fearing that for the first time "it seems we have the same kind of people on both sides - in the Kremlin and in the White House. ... It's probably why they like each other. ... They care less for democracy and values, and more for personal success,however that is defined."

Kozyrev is quoted in an article by Evan Osnos, David Remnick, and Joshua Yaffa, "Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War: What lay behind Russia's interference in the 2016 election - and what lies ahead?" (March 6, 2017 Issue). The authors quote Kozyrev, but then add this caution: "Although the evidence for Russia's interference appears convincing, it is too easy to allow such an account to become the master narrative of Trump's ascent - a way to explain the presence of a man who is so alien and discomforting to so much of the population by rendering him in some way foreign. In truth, he is a phenomenon of America's own making."

(Reading that, I couldn't help but recall how for years Trump and his Republican pals scored success upon success by rendering President Obama "in some way foreign" to those who eventually propelled Trump to where he is now!)

The lesson, in any case, is not to suggest that Kozyrev might not be on to something, but more basically to beware of any seemingly single analysis of phenomena which are so multi-dimensional.

I thought of this today as I read Jason Blakely's America article, "Why Bannon's pessimism won't protect the Judeo-Chrisdtian tradition" - http://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/03/01/why-bannons-pessimism-wont-protect-judeo-christian-tradition.

Blakely regards presidential adviser Stephen Bannon as providing the Trump White House with "a coherent political theory," which, quite unlike traditionally optimistic American conservatism (William F. Buckley, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush), is a European-style "vision of pessimistic decline." Bannon believe, Blakely argues, "that the United States has lost confidence in its values, turning to secularism and self-absorbed materialism." He puts Bannon in the tradition of Nietzsche, Spengler, and the contemporary French novelist Michel Houellebecq (whose novel Submission I would recommend even more now than when I first read it last year).

But Blakely doesn't buy Bannon's narrative of decline because he reasonably recognizes elements of contemporary progress, and because he rejects (from the moral high ground of contemporary values) Bannon's idealized image of mid-20th-century America as the "Golden Age" from which have fallen.

My problem with Blakely's analysis is that his single focus on the narrowness of Bannon's alleged analysis of recent history gets in the way of the larger historical picture Bannon (and others) have depicted and are, to a considerable extent, reacting against.

In defense of contemporary democracies, Blakely notes how "Americans for at least the past half-century have sought and found great joy in their families, friends, pets, food, nature, travel and small acts of charity. Perhaps no period in history has been as marked by the identification of ordinary people and ordinary pursuits as sources of profound value and dignity." He seems not to notice or care that all those nice "ordinary pursuits" characterize individuals as consumers more than as citizens. They are primarily private, largely unconnected with any concept of a community beyond the preferred "ordinary pursuits" of individuals - no common social bond, no common good, no shared common purpose. It is thanks to that lack that all those detached private individuals with all their nice "ordinary pursuits" have come to constitute a perfect breeding ground for our disordered world, with its secularized, greedy, global elite utterly detached from would-be fellow citizens.

Moreover, the fact that mid-20th-century America was not a "golden Age" (even by the moral standards of that time) does not negate the claim that America - or the West or Christianity - lost confidence in itself and inits values in the 1960s and after. One can acknowledge all sorts of progress in all sorts of areas even while recognizing that that progress has been accompanied by a radical turn toward an amoral global secularism. That amoral global secularism is not only at the root of so much of our post-modern malaise, but also accounts for political progressivism's electoral decline, thanks to the damage done to so much of what ought in theory to be political progressivism's popular constituency. Trumpist populism as an alternative to the best in our American progressive tradition has emerged from the social breakdown induced in large measure by amoral global secularism which has been the dark side of contemporary progressivism.

Blakely is surely correct in that Bannon's dark vision is a dead end. His solutions have nothing positive to offer, let aloe anything consonant with either our values or our long-term security and well-being. But that should not blind us to the calamitous consequences of our decades-long American loss of confidence in American values, more generally Western civilization's loss of confidence in Western values, and most disastrously Christianity's loss of confidence in Christian values.

An Unforgettable Lenten Pilgrimage

Five years ago, I got to spend the first half of Lent in Rome and so had the privilege of joining many others in the early morning tradition of Mass at the Roman stational churches, an experience I wish everyone could have and one certainly not to be forgotten. 

As I wrote at the time: There is something so very special about going to these venerable Roman churches in the early pre-dawn darkness, walking literally in the steps of centuries of Christians who have visited those same churches on those same days, celebrating Mass surrounded by the relics and memories of martyrs, then emerging in the early morning light to continue one’s daily work. It is a true experience of the communion of saints! As the Italian Humanist Petrarch (1304-1374), describing his experience as a pilgrim in Rome in the Holy Year 1350, wrote: “How inspiring for a Christian to journey to that city which is like a heaven on earth, sanctified by the remains of martyrs beyond number, drenched in the precious blood of those early witnesses to the Truth.”

At that time, I was in Rome for three months taking at course at the Congregation of the Causes of Saints. My class met daily from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., which left my mornings free for visiting churches, general sightseeing, and (once Lent had begun) the early morning Lenten stational Masses. One of our Paulist novices was also in Rome at the same time for his Lenten experience. So he and I would catch the bus at around 6:15 each chilly dark morning to go to that day's assigned church. 

That meant we got to see a lot of churches that are seldom seen by tourists (or even by Romans, since some of them are seldom open to the public except on their stational days). For example, the second Lenten station, on the Thursday after Ash Wednesday, is at the Church of San Giorgio in Velabro, one of those wonderful ancient Roman churches that I would certainly never have gotten to see the inside of, were it not for the tradition of the Lenten stations. Located in a section of the city associated with the mythic infancy of Romulus and Remus, Rome's founders, the church itself has been associated with the soldier saint and martyr George since the 8th century. (The photo above was taken there after the early-morning English-language station Mass five years ago.)

The connection with the soldier and martyr Saint George may account for what was the traditional Gospel account for today - Matthew's story of the Roman centurion in Capernaum who entreated Jesus to heal his seriously sick servant and whose famous words, Lord, I am not worthy, we recite at every Mass before Communion. The Missal of Paul VI, in its eagerness to dump 1500 years of liturgical tradition, broke with the ancient Lenten lectionary and assigned different daily readings to many of the Lenten weekdays, without regard to the traditional stations. So today, instead of Matthew's story of the centurion, we will be hearing Luke 9:22-25 - Jesus' first prediction of his passion, which is certainly also appropriate at the beginning of Lent (and one whose image of spiritual combat the soldier and martyr Saint George himself would likely identify with at least as much as with the story of the centurion). 

One of the many misfortunes associated with Paul VI's Missal was this loss of the connection between the ancient Roman station churches and the texts, which had often been originally very thoughtfully selected with the station church in mind. In fact, the stations themselves are no longer even mentioned in Paul VI's Missal! 

Nonetheless, there has been a genuine revival of interest in the Roman stations.  In addition to the principal (Italian) celebration each afternoon, other language groups also celebrate station Masses, at least on the weekdays. Hence the opportunity for me in 2012 to concelebrate at the English-language Masses, celebrated daily at 7:00 a.m., organized by the seminarians at the North American College. Not only priests and seminarians, but many other English-speakers living or working in Rome (including some ambassadors) participated and formed a uniquely vibrant congregation of several hundred Lenten pilgrims.

The end of my course and my responsibilities back home brought me back to America before the end of Lent. So I never completed that Lenten station journey. But just being there for the first half of Lent was still more than most people ever get to do, an opportunity for which I will always remain grateful.

(For further information about the Lenten stations, see the special section about them on the Pontifical North American College's website:
https://www.pnac.org/station-churches/the-roman-station-liturgy/)

Ash Wednesday

There is no island, no continent, no city or nation, no distant corner of the globe, where the proclamation of Lenten Fast is not listened to. Armies on the march and travelers on the road, sailors as well as merchants, all alike hear the announcement and receive it with joy. Let no one then separate himself from the number of those fasting, in which every race of humankind, every period of life, every class of society is included.

So said Saint Basil the Great (330-379) preaching about Lent in the 4th century, at a time when the Lenten Fast was taken much more seriously than we do today. 

Perhaps, because we no longer observe the traditional fast of earlier times, Lent may have acquired a bit of an identity crisis. hence our obsessive preoccupation with what to do differently, or special, or extra, or less of, for Lent.

Ash Wednesday didn’t even exist yet in Saint Basil’s time.  The custom of everybody flocking to church to get ashes was a relative latecomer to Lent. But, unlike the fast, it has survived – and thrived. It seems almost everyone wants ashes on Ash Wednesday. 

For many of those who come to get ashes on Ash Wednesday, it is a deeply, religiously spiritual experience. For many others, who can even guess what multitude of complex meanings and imaginings the reception of ashes may have? On the other hand, who can deny the power of God's grace that must surely be at work in drawing so many to church to get those much desired ashes?

The use of ashes, the Church reminds us, “symbolizes fragility and mortality, and the need to be redeemed by the mercy of God.” Remember, The Church tells us today, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. What is it about having dirt smudged on one’s face and being reminded that we are going to die that is so amazingly attractive?

Every year, I ask that question, and always come up with the same answer: because it is TRUE. In this “information age” when we are all bombarded on all sides with images and words we cannot even begin to process, in this politicized age of “alternative facts” and “fake news,” for once we are actually being told something that is simply TRUE.

We live in a therapeutic age which prizes comfort and feeling good about oneself.  Yet somehow, Ash Wednesday with its sobering message of the reality of human limits and its solemn challenge to repentance somehow still cuts through the poisonous political platitudes and psychobabble of our age to speak spiritual truth against the powerful lie of our self-affirmation.

Today, the Church invites us to break our routine and do something we usually seem so reluctant to do – to take an honest and critical look at ourselves - at where we are, where we are going, where we would like to be going, and how hope to get there.

Homily for Ash Wednesday, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, March 1, 2017.

Getting Ashes

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. That Lent itself would survive the 1960s liturgical demolition of the Roman Rite was probably never seriously in doubt, but Ash Wednesday's fate was evidently much more so. For some, the fact that the archaic Roman Lent once-upon-a-time began on Quadragesima Sunday (as it still does in MIlan, where the ancient Ambrosian Rite still holds sway) counted strongly against Ash Wednesday's retention. Popularity - and an obvious point of connection with the intersection of popular piety and contemporary secularity - had obviously not been enough to save Saint Valentine's Day, but they did thankfully suffice to salvage Ash Wednesday, which remains certainly one of the most popular - and best attended - days in the Church's entire calendar. 

The day's popularity is obviously an enormous pastoral advantage, although an advantage that is not without its challenges. Thus, for example, in a recent pastoral letter New York's vicar general called Ash Wednesday "a valuable opportunity to set a tone for the entire season, as well as to reach out to people, some of whom are usually not often found in our churches," while at the same time recognizing the enormous challenges this creates "to catechize the faithful on the penitential character of Lent and the value of their Lenten practices.”

In my 10 years as a priest in midtown Manhattan, Ash Wednesday was assuredly one of our best days. Ashes were distributed, more or less non-stop, from 6:00 a.m. until 9:00 p.m. Perhaps 2000+ people passed through the church that day to get their ashes. I remember once when the parish office got a call asking whether we would start giving ashes at midnight, which made me wonder whether the caller was confusing Ash Wednesday with Christmas! From a marketing point of view, I suppose, offering ashes at midnight might be a great attraction. Who knows how many might respond to the chance to be the first on one's block to get ashes?

For many of those who come to get ashes on Ash Wednesday, it is a devoutly religiously spiritual experience. For others it may be a badge of a still somewhat important (but possibly fraying) Catholic identity or maybe just an exercise in annual nostalgia. For still others, who can even guess what multitude of complex meanings and imaginings the reception of ashes may have? On the other hand, who can deny the power of God's grace that must surely be at work in drawing so many to church to get those much desired ashes?

Ash Wednesday is but the beginning of Lent. The common contrast between the multitudes coming to church on Ash Wednesday and the typically much more modest attendance at Mass on the Thursday following speaks volumes both about the popularity of Ash Wednesday and about its limitations. According to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments: The use of ashes is a survival from an ancient rite according to which converted sinners submitted themselves to canonical penance. The act of putting on penance symbolizes fragility and mortality, and the need to be redeemed by the mercy of God. Far from being meant as a badge of Catholic identity, the reception of ashes is intended to serve as a powerful external sign of the Lenten season’s serious challenge to each of us to re-examine our own familiar patterns of life in light of Christ’s call to repentance and a new life of holiness.

Lent Beckons

Today we enter upon the keeping of Lent, coming round again as it does every year; and every year too I owe you a solemn exhortation. That was how Saint Augustine began his homily for the First Sunday of Lent (Sermon 205) in his African diocese of Hippo, 16 centuries ago. 

I once knew a priest who professed to be surprised that we still observed Lent, that it had somehow survived the post-conciliar period. (Actually, the Council explicitly endorsed Lent. Of course, it also endorsed all sorts of things - like Latin and Gregorian Chant - the the post-conciliar period breezily jettisoned anyway.) Lent's survival in the inhospitable terrain of ahistorical post-modernity's triumphant secularity says something about its staying power, rooted in its inherent appeal to something deep in human experience. 

The result, as Augustine so matter-of-factly noted, is that Lent keeps coming round again as it does every year. So once again here we are on the cusp of Lent. In many parishes this is perhaps the busiest and most satisfying season. More "extra" things are done, with greater hope of popular interest and response. More effort may even be devoted just to doing non-extra things better. And, just as parishes plan Lenten programs and devotions, all sorts of people pause and consider what to do for Lent - what to do differently, or special, or extra, or less of "("giving up") for Lent.

It seems safe to suggest that Lent in Augustine's time was a somewhat serious season with demanding expectations, more so than it has since become in my lifetime. And, even in my own lifetime, my parents' and grandparents' Lent, was still a whole lot more serious and demanding. But, by the time I turned 21 - the age at which the Lenten fast (even in its more relaxed modern form) would have become mandatory - the Lenten fast itself had just recently been entirely abandoned, except for a vestigial token fast of Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Growing up familiar with the texts of what Pope Saint Pius X had once called those most ancient Masses of the Lenten season (now also largely gone), I was well aware - from, for example, the ferial Preface and so many of the ancient ferial collects - of the historical centrality of fasting for Lent's self-definition, its very identity. The diminished prominence of fasting in Lent has accordingly saddled the season with an identity crisis of sorts, which takes the form of that now common question - what to do differently, or special, or extra, or less of -  for Lent. 

And here again, as so often happens, Augustine actually offers an answer that challenges us as powerfully today as it did Augustine's audience 16 centuries ago.

For Augustine, Lent mystically signified the essence of our earthly life. So what has to be done throughout the whole of life, how much more during these days of Lent? And what, above all, has to be done throughout the whole of life? Before everything else, brothers and sisters, fast from quarrels and discord. ... These are the two wings of prayer, on which it flies to God: if you pardon the offender what has been committed, and give to the person in need.