Caring for our Common Home

Tomorrow is the 5^th Annual World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, established by Pope Francis in 2015 as an opportunity to reaffirm our “personal vocation to be stewards of creation, to thank God for the wonderful handiwork which he has entrusted to our care, and to implore his help for the protection of creation.as well as his pardon for the sins committed against the world in which we live.”

As Pope Francis has warned in his 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato Si’ On Care for Our Common Home (202, 204):

Many things have to change course, but it is we human beings above all who need to change. We lack an awareness of our common origin, of our mutual belonging, and of a future to be shared with everyone. This basic awareness would enable the development of new convictions, attitudes and forms of life. A great cultural, spiritual and educational challenge stands before us, and it will demand that we set out on the long path of renewal. … When people become self-centered and self-enclosed, their greed increases. The emptier a person’s heart is, the more he or she needs things to buy, own and consume. It becomes almost impossible to accept the limits imposed by reality. In this horizon, a genuine sense of the common good also disappears. As these attitudes become more widespread, social norms are respected only to the extent that they do not clash with personal needs. So our concern cannot be limited merely to the threat of extreme weather events, but must also extend to the catastrophic consequences of social unrest. Obsession with a consumerist lifestyle, above all when few people are capable of maintaining it, can only lead to violence and mutual destruction.

Beginning with Pope Benedict XVI and continuing with Pope Francis, the Holy See has taken a real lead on this issue, serving as a strong voice for the moral imperative of caring for our common home.  But the challenge "to change course" is an imperative for all at every level in Church and society.

Photo: “Earthrise,” the famous photograph of the Earth, taken from lunar orbit by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, called "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken,” by Australian photographer Galen Rowell.

"A Deep and Boiling Anger"

In this Stephen Lam/Reuters photo, counter demonstrators and supporters of President Trump fight for a U.S. flag during a March 2017 rally in Berkeley, CA. The photo appears at the head of an August 25 "NBC News/Meet the Press article about the latest NBC/Wall street Journal poll, which found that a majority of Americans "are angry at the nation's political and financial establishment, anxious about its economic future, and pessimistic about the country they're leaving for the next generation.

The complete article can be accessed at https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/deep-boiling-anger-nbc-wsj-poll-finds-pessimistic-america-despite-n1045916. (The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted August 10-14 of 1,000 adults — more than half reached by cellphone — and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.)

“Four years ago, we uncovered a deep and boiling anger across the country engulfing our political system,” said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt. “Four years later, with a very different political leader in place, that anger remains at the same level.”

That anger and dissatisfaction remain widespread - at what once upon a time might have been considered alarming levels - is evident to the most casual observer of the contemporary American scene. What may be even more interesting in the poll results may be what they reveal about some significant shifts in important values. Thus, for example, whereas 20 years ago 70% said patriotism was very important, now only 61% do. The number citing religion as very important  decreased even more, from 62% in 1998 to 40% now. The generational difference regarding these important social values is also significantly stark. Among those 18-38, only 42% consider patriotism very important, while, of those over 55, 79% do. Regarding religion, among those under 38, only 30%  regard religion as very important, compared to 54% of those over 55. Also, ominously, only 32% of those under 38, say having children in very important. Ideological factors aside, that is less surprising given that majorities of all groups - adults under 35 (68%). seniors (64%), poor and working class (71%), high income (64%), white (67%), black (73%), and Hispanic (64%) - "all say they are not confident that their children's generation will be better off."

“There is an emerging America where issues like children, religion, and patriotism are far less important,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “And in America, it’s the emerging generation that calls the shots about where the country’s headed.”

None of this sugests a particularly promising future!

Debate Deadline Day

Yesterday was the final day for candidates to qualify for the September 12 Democratic presidential candidate debate to be held in Houston, TX. Conveniently, it appears 10 have qualified – convenient because that is the maximum number that can debate at the same time according to the rules of the Democratic National Committee and the debate’s sponsor ABC. The lucky 10 are Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Julián Castro, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang.

Obviously, not everyone is pleased with this outcome - notably those who didn't manage to make the final cut. Of course, if they are able to persevere, they still have a chance to make it into October's debate, since the requirements will be the same (which means that everyone who has qualified for September has already qualified for October, and others may yet join them).

The whole thing is a bit of a mess, all of which makes me even more nostalgic for the good old days when people waited until election year itself to announce their candidacies. (John F. Kennedy, for example, announced his candidacy on January 2, 1960). Of course, for that to work we would have to be willing to wait for the voters (or at least that privileged minority of voters who participate in the early primaries and caucuses) to register their preferences. Instead, we want to start the winnowing process way before any actual votes are cast. Hence, our dubious reliance on polls and fundraising as measurements of a candidate's worthiness. A more "democratic" system that prioritized the votes of actual voters in the primaries and caucuses would have to treat this pre-election-year noise with a lot less attention and not try to sort out the candidates by pre-political means. But, since politics has become entertainment, there is obviously no chance of that happening.

Of course, if you are going to have debates this early, some sort of criteria have to be set for who can qualify. Otherwise the "debates" would be an even more disorderly shambles than they already actually are. Who can blame the DNC for "fighting the last war" and trying to avoid the sorry spectacle the Republicans served up with their debates in 2016? The problem is that every reform, every change in process almost invariably involves "fighting the last war" and results in unintended consequences that are objected to in the current context.

The candidates who failed to qualify remain free to continue their campaigns. They can still campaign the old-fashioned way, by asking people in Iowa and New Hampshire to vote for them in 2020. Who can predict any outcome with certainty? Maybe one of the candidates who failed to qualify for the September debate will surprise the pollsters, fundraisers, and pundits in Iowa or New Hampshire.  That might or might not produce the best possible president, but it would probably be good for the democratic process overall.

The one really good thing about the September debate is that, for the first time, all those generally thought to be major contenders will be on the same stage debating each other. Having 10 people competing on one stage is still procedurally too many and not the best format for picking a president, but it does at least offer the public an opportunity to compare them in that unique setting, which certainly is better than relying on the comparisons fed to us exclusively by pollsters, fundraisers, and pundits..

One Heart and Mind

The New Testament Acts of the Apostles famously describes the original apostolic Christian community in Jerusalem as one in heart and mind (Acts 4:32). That image came back to me yesterday at Sunday Mass as I prayed the Collect: O God, who cause the minds of the faithful to unite in a single purpose, grant your people to love what you command and to desire what you promise, that,, amid the uncertainties of this world, our hearts may be fixed on that place where true gladness is found (literally: Deus, qui fidelium mentes unius efficis voluntatis, da populis tuis id amare quod praecipis, id desiderare quod promittis, ut, inter mundanas varietates, ibi nostra fixa sint corda, ubi vera sunt gaudia.) This collect is ancient and used to be that for the 4th Sunday after Easter in the traditional (pre-1969) Roman Rite. 

In Acts, the implications of the faithful's unity in heart and mind were clear. No one claimed any possessions as exclusively one's own, and they shared everything in common. While that specific arrangement didn't last, it anticipated the various approximations to it throughout the Church's history and recalled the traditional Christian concept of the universal destination of goods. "Solidarity," as Pope Francis has recently reminded us, "is a spontaneous reaction by those who recognize that the social function of property and the universal destination of goods are realities which come before private property" (Evangelii Gaudium, 189)

All of which led me to wonder while contemplating yesterday's Collect: Is it because we are so divided (despite the Collect's wishful thinking) that we are so in the grip of "possessive individualism," to use C.B. Macpherson's famous phrase (C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke, 1962)? Or is it because we are so stuck  in "possessive individualism" that we are so divided? That we are divided - not just within the Church but throughout society - is obvious to any observer. And it seems increasingly evident that more and more people are tailoring their religious beliefs to conform to their political ideologies, thereby reinforcing and compounding such divisions. So much for having our hearts fixed on that place where true gladness is found!

That is hardly a novel phenomenon; but in our era it seems to have attained new salience, as, for example, journalist Tim Alberta recently wrote in American Carnage (p. 456), "students of a faith that stresses the eternal, not the ephemeral, pledged their uncritical allegiance to an earthly leader in exchange for political gratification." How often has that happened?

Political power may be just one more, particularly insidious, form of worldly wealth (also very useful for guaranteeing long-term possession of other forms of worldly wealth). All of which brings one back to Acts' normative, if idealized, image of the apostolic community's unity in heart and mind rooted facilitated by their detachment from possessiveness.

The Time Is Now

Since the 1870s, the Paulist Fathers have had a summer vacation home in the Adirondack Mountain Region at Lake George, NY, where Isaac Hecker and the early Paulists would go for relief from the summer heat of the city. Our seminarians still go there each year after they finish their summer assignments and before going back to school. In the late 19thcentury, before the local parish church was built, the Paulists used to celebrate Mass for the local community in a public building in the village. One Sunday, so the story goes, some unfriendly neighbors locked the door to prevent Father Hecker from getting in. Hecker, however, found an unlocked ground-floor window and climbed in – followed by the entire congregation. He then used as his sermon theme Jesus’ words we just heard: “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.”

For several weeks, the Sunday gospels have highlighted Jesus’ instructions to his disciples about their new life and the choices it requires. “Strive to enter through the narrow gate,” Jesus says. Strive suggests struggle, commitment, focus, intensity of effort. Even more, in a conversation in which most of the verbs are in the future tense, Jesus speaks specifically in the present, do it now, Jesus says. The time to enter that narrow gate is now. There is only just so much time.  Time is that one absolute constraint on our human freedom that we cannot overcome or transcend. Time – that is, the limited amount of time – challenges us to focus our lives on what matters most in human life. When it’s over, we may wish we had used our time better, used it to focus on the things that should have mattered more to us. We may wish we had entered when the door was still open, but by then the door will be locked, and it will be too late to change our minds.

The point, of course, is that however narrow the gate may be, as of now it is still open - open for us, for all sorts of people to squeeze through, from the east and the west and from the north and the south, as Jesus says, echoing Isaiah’s image of the Lord coming to gather nations of every language. Imagine Gentiles being transformed by God himself into priests and Levites!

Isaiah’s image invites us to hear today’s Gospel in its fullness. The fact that gate is narrow is indeed a challenge – but not a menace. Sure, the gate is narrow – too narrow for me to squeeze through on my own. But, of course, it’s not about me. It’s about God’s great plan for the world. It’s about what God is doing and going to do – and about my and your and his and her and our wanting to be part of it, wanting to focus on what matters most, here and now.

The opposite of discouragement and despair, of course, is presumption, the idea that entry is some sort of right, no effort required. We will avoid both despair and presumption when we appreciate that the effort and energy involved is a team project. Listen to Isaiah. People don’t just show up from all the nations. They are brought in by others sent out to get them. We squeeze through the narrow gate together. And, as long as we willingly help one another – and are willing to be helped in turn – that gate will prove wide enough.

Homily for the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, August 25, 2019.