After Iowa

Most states - more and more of them now - have some form of presidential primary to choose national party convention delegates. Primaries differ from general elections but resemble them in the way they revolve around the experience of voting - voting by secret ballot. The Iowa Caucuses are excitingly different. Anyone who watched any of the coverage on TV last night could not fail to be impressed by the turnout, the sheer number and age diversity of caucus participants, and especially by the serious commitment of caucus participants not only to stand in their candidate's corner but also to persuade one another as they section off. Surely this was democracy on display!

And then, chaos! After all the effort and energy everyone put into this process, not to mention the months of campaigning by candidates criss-crossing the state, something went wrong. No results.

At this early hour it remains unclear what exactly went wrong, but suspicion falls on the technology employed. Once upon a time, everything was counted manually and reported accordingly. Now we feel the need to use technology and mobile phone apps, with increasingly unfortunate consequences. (Hopefully, there are human records of what happened that can give us something like a trustworthy result, however belatedly.)

Meanwhile, the candidates are moving on to New Hampshire. Whatever boost the winning candidate might have gotten going into New Hampshire has been - if not lost - at least diminished. On the other hand, no one is being pressed to drop out this early because of an ostensibly poor performance in Iowa. Our process - or at least the obsessive way we cover the process - is preoccupied with "momentum." So far at least, Iowa has neither given nor taken away "momentum" to or from anyone.

Ultimately the big loser may be the Iowa Caucus process itself and its "first in the nation' status. Even without this mess, there have been calls to make the opening act of the election more representative. Those arguments will now be strengthened by this self-inflicted disappointment.

Candlemas

Today is the 40^th Day of Christmas, kept in the Church as the feast of The Presentation of the Lord. This ancient feast (which in some form dates back as far as the 4th century) marks the definitive end of the Christmas season. In Catholic countries, the Christmas nativity scene remains on display in churches until today. Back in 2012, during the first month of my "saints" course in Rome, I observed the popular custom of visiting as many nativity scenes in as many different Roman churches as possible prior to this feast. 

And so today I sadly say goodbye to my Peruvian Nativity set (photo). I first bought it on Bloor Street in Toronto some 25 years ago, adding an additional figure every year until I moved back to the US in 2000. It was displayed each Christmas season outside my office in the parish center during my 10 years in New York and has been displayed each Christmas season in our staff meeting room during these past 10 years here in Knoxville. After this year, Expecting to have no comparably suitable place to display it. in future, I have donated it to our local regional Catholic school, which means I am saying goodbye to it today - not just for another year but forever.

This feast is commonly called Candlemas Day, because on this day the Church blesses candles and invites the faithful to carry blessed candles in procession saying: “So let us also, gathered together by the Holy Spirit, proceed to the house of God to encounter Christ. There we shall find him and recognize him in the breaking of the bread, until he comes again, revealed in glory.” In this, the Church takes its inspiration from Luke’s Gospel account in which a holy man named Simeon took the infant Jesus in his arms and proclaimed him “a light of revelation to the Gentiles.” 

In the Gospel (Luke 2:22-40), the aged Simeon recites the canticle, “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace.” Known as the Nunc Dimittis, this canticle is an important part of the Church’s official Night Prayer (Compline). Concerning this, the great 20th-century liturgical scholar Pius Parsch wrote: “As we sing it we see Simeon holding the Child Jesus in his arms and then, with grateful heart, retiring from his earthly service to God. We too are in the Lord’s service. At the close of day we hold the Savior in our arms, mystically speaking; we hold Him in faith, in grace, in the sacraments, especially the Sacrament of the Altar. Fervently we thank God for His blessings; and we are prepared, if it be His will, to take our leave from the world.”

Until 1960, the Procession prior to today's Mass had a quasi-penitential character. It took place in violet vestments, and "folded chasubles" (planetae plicatae) were worn by deacon and subdeacon rather dalmatic and tunicle. This may perhaps have reflected the procession's putatively pagan, pre-Christian origins, although any connection with pre-Christian pagan festivals is uncertain and disputed. In any case, since 1960 the procession and the festive Mass have been more closely integrated. The only vaguely "penitential" hint, if one can call it that, is in wise old Simeon’s words to Mary in the Gospel, the first reference to what lies ahead, the first reference to the cross. Behold, this child is destined … to be a sign that will be contradicted – and you yourself a sword will pierce – so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. This suggests that, even as we today take a last look back at Christmas, Candlemas looks ahead to Lent (and so reminds us that the point of Christmas is Easter). Simeon and Anna’s encounter with the infant Jesus in the Jerusalem Temple points us toward our own encounter with the The Risen Christ in the here and now. 

Coming close to midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, a secular version of Candlemas is Groundhog Day. (The fact that both mark this seasonal signpost is obviously not coincidental.) Not so long ago, of course, most people in the western world knew about Candlemas Day. Today, many people – even many Catholics - seem to have forgotten. Yet even those who may never have heard of Candlemas have heard of Groundhog Day and connect it with the change of seasons. While the weather is still wintry, the days are noticeably getting longer. Whereas Christmas comes at the mid-point of the winter’s darkness, with the year’s shortest day and its correspondingly longest night, Candlemas comes at the mid-point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, the transition (according to one older way of reckoning the seasons) from winter to spring. Soon, day and night, light and dark will be equal. So this last of the winter light festivals invites us to look ahead to what these winter light festivals are meant to symbolize.

Since 1997, the feast of the Presentation has also been set aside as the World Day of Consecrated Life. Just as on Candlemas Day candles are blessed symbolizing Christ who is the light of the world, so too religious priests, brothers, and sisters in the various Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life are called to reflect the light of Jesus Christ to all peoples. It is obviously an especially appropriate day to pray that God will continue to bless his Church with abundant vocations to these communities so critical to the life of the Church. A (sadly silent) You Tube video shows clerics, who may possibly have represented Religious, presenting candles to Pope Saint John XXIII on Candlemas Day 1959 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEA6BwiSn6A

Caucusing in Iowa

I have only been to Iowa once. About 15 or so years ago, I spent several days in Davenport, one of the "Quad Cities" on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River opposite Illinois. Needless to say, however, I have never personally experienced the famous Iowa Caucus, which, since the 1970s, has functioned as the de facto beginning of the presidential primary voting process. Of course, the caucus system is far from flawless. It is obviously less representative than a primary. To which may be added the commonly expressed criticism that Iowa is itself a somewhat unrepresentative state. That said, while I have never participated in an Iowa Caucus,  I would surely have liked to! 

Whatever its faults, the caucus (now just one week away) is an illustrative example of citizen participatory politics. People actually have to show up and listen to one another! (Obviously the caucus system dates back to a time - not that long ago - when conversation was more common, not having yet been destroyed by the ubiquitous cell phone.)

The caucus is sometimes described as "a gathering of neighbors." Iowans gather at a designated location in their local precinct - a school, some other public building (e.g. a library), a church, or even a private home. Caucus goers indicate their support for a particular candidate by standing in a designated area; and, for some 30 minutes, participants try to convince their neighbors to support their candidate. Then the supporters for each candidate are counted. For a candidate to receive any delegates from a particular precinct, he or she must have the support of a designated percentage of participants. So, after this, supporters of non-viable candidates have another 30 minutes to choose another candidate to support. Then a final count is taken, and each precinct apportions delegates to the county convention. These numbers the ones reported to the media, which then draws its customarily weighty conclusions from them. 

There are two things that I think are particularly wonderful about these caucuses and that i wish were replicated elsewhere. The first is the level of direct personal participation, which involves not just voting but persuading others and/or being persuaded by others.The second is that (unlike most American voting processes) a voter's second choice may matter and may end up being decisive - an altogether more reasonable way than our usual "first-past-the-post" voting methods.

Like all forms of direct democracy, the caucus calls for a degree of personal participatory commitment in excess of what our typical primary and general elections require, as a well as a disposition toward politics as deliberation and debate in which one participates, as opposed to politics as entertainment which one consumes. Such caucuses may never catch on  more widely and will likely forever remain unrepresentative of the wider electorate. But (along with the personal, "retail politics" campaigning they inspire) they are a valuable and distinctive component of our overall election experience, the loss of which would impoverish the process even further - even more than it has already been impoverished.

The Sunday of the Word of God

For centuries in the Roman Rite, liturgical feasts of double rank or higher routinely took precedence over the Office and Mass of an occurring ordinary Sunday, so much so that in some places green vestments seldom ever even made an appearance. The 20th-century liturgical movement reprobated this practice; and, beginning with Pope Saint Pius X's reforms, the celebration of a feast in preference to an occurring Sunday was gradually reduced to the relatively few such occasions in the current calendar. So now thematic Sundays, superimposed on the liturgical formularies of the Sunday without actually altering them, have become increasingly common. For example, the Sunday unofficially called "Good Shepherd Sunday" has for over half a century now been the "World Day of Prayer for Vocations."

Now, by the Motu Proprio Aperuit illis, issued last September on the feast of Saint Jerome, Pope Francis has designated the 3rd Sunday per annum (this year, January 26) as "The Sunday of the Word of God." (This year marks the 1600th anniversary of the death of Saint Jerome, the ascetic Scripture scholar who translated the Bible into the Latin Vulgate and is one of the four great Doctors of the Latin Church.) Aperuit Illis  takes its name from the Gospel quote with which it begins, "He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures" (Luke 24:45).Its immediate practical object was the establishment of "The Sunday of the Word of God," to highlight the centrality of the Sacred Scriptures to our Christian identity - specifically the three-fold relationship among "the Risen Lord, the community of believers and sacred scripture." This observance, the Pope suggests, will also "be a fitting part of that time of the year when we are encouraged to strengthen our bonds with the Jewish people and to pray for Christian unity." The Pope proposes that on that Sunday the proclamation of the Word be highlighted, the honor due to it be emphasized, and "that in the Eucharistic celebration the sacred text be enthroned, in order to focus the attention of the assembly on the normative value of God's word." 

"Devoting a specific Sunday of the liturgical year to the word of God," the Pope claims, "can enable the Church to experience anew how the risen Lord opens up for us the treasury of his word and enables us to proclaim its unfathomable riches before the world." This newest papal initiative seems especially timely. The Bible, the Pope points out "belongs above all to those called to hear its message and to recognize themselves in its words." It "is the book of the Lord's people, who, in listening to it, move from dispersion and division towards unity."

In The Church and the Age (1887), Servant of God Isaac Hecker, the Founder of the Paulist Fathers, wrote: “The reading of the Bible is the most salutary of all reading. We say to Catholic readers, read the Bible! Read it with prayer, that you may be enlightened by the light of the Holy Spirit to understand what you read. Read it with gratitude to God’s Church, which has preserved it and placed it in your hands to be read and to be followed.”

On Trial

As Alexis De Tocqueville famously observed in his 19th-century classic Democracy in America, "There is hardly any political question in the United States that sooner or later does not turn into a judicial question." That American peculiarity is now very much on display in the ongoing impeachment trial of the president. That strangely solemn and stately proceeding is now at last underway, and it already has warranted comments about how exhausting it is - a commentary on contemporary attention-spans as much as on the absurd schedule adopted by the Majority Leader and his party. 

The House Managers, led by the eminent Adam Schiff, are providing the country with an eloquent exposition of presidential corruption. The contrast between the Managers' performance thus far and the comparatively unserious performance of the President's lawyers' speaks volumes - even while highlighting the fundamental disorder at the heart of our contemporary political malaise, of which this trial is neither a cause nor a solution. 

As Gail Collins observed in The New York Times: “Schiff elevated the saga with a lot of American history. He mentioned the founding fathers 28 times in the first 15 minutes. … For much of our modern history Republicans have tended to be the ones continually quoting the founding fathers, usually in regard to the dangers of an over-powerful federal government. Now the tables have turned.”

Meanwhile, each side seems especially preoccupied with complaining about the process. Process is important. Proper procedures are essential to good order, civility, fairness, and democratic governance. But debates about process should support the stage not dominate it. The seemingly endless argument about hearing witnesses and access to documents is especially attractive to both politicians and the media commentariat, because it is so understandable and so obviously touches on the fairness of the proceeding. The result, however, as, Osita Nwanevu noted in The New Republic, "The trial, so far, is largely about the trial itself."

Of course, inasmuch as the trial is not really about removing the president from office (an outcome no one seriously expects as an even remote possibility), there is a sense in which this trial is inevitably about the trial - or rather about what the trial reveals (or, at least, confirms).

Obviously the president is on trial - only the third president in history to experience this indignity. So what the trial reveals (or confirms) about presidential corruption is important - if not for the intended purpose of an impeachment trial, then for the judgment of the voters later this year and, maybe more importantly, for the judgment of history.

However it is not the president alone who is on trial. It is the 21st-century United States, what we have become as a society and whether we still have a capacity for constitutional self-government, that is on trial at least as much - and ultimately more importantly.