And the Oscar Goes To

 

Obviously, I have no idea which actors or what movies this year's Oscars will go to. Not only do I lack the requisite prophetic powers of prediction to pronounce to whom or to what the Oscars will go, I do not even know enough about most of the nominated movies and actors to guess to whom or what the Oscars should go. So far, i have only seen three of the Best Picture nominees - One Battle After Another, Hamnet, and Train Dreams (that last one not even in a theater, but streaming on Netflix). Both One Battle After Another and Hamnet, in my modest opinion, deserve the honor, as do the actors that star in them. But that is just my opinion and is offered largely in ignorance of the other films they are competing against, films I have not seen and likely will not see.

I guess that says something about me at this stage in my life. I used to see many more movies, and in the past I usually managd to see all the Best Picture nominees. Maybe it also says something about the changing dynamics of the film industry. I am not the only one who doesn't see so many movies anymore. When I do, in addition to the interminable trailers one has to sit through, the experience is further undermined by having to endure a commercial trying to sell me on the moviegoing experience itself. Of course, at that point I am already there, which makes me feel like the proverbial congregation being lectured by the preacher who is complaining about those who aren't attending Mass! More seriously, I guess that says something - something worrisome - about the perilous state of the film industry, which seems not to have recovered from the catastrophic consequences of the pandemic.

I commented on One Battle After Another on this site on October 1, 2025, and on Hamnet on December 27. At a friend's recommendation, I just recently watched Train Dreams at home on Netflix. The grand vistas of forests and trees so central to the film suggest I might well have done better to have seen it on a bigger screen. Even so, the beauty and the power of the film came across strongly - as well as the intense sadness of the story. Beyond the personal travails of its main character, there is also implicit in the story a saga of social and cultural loss - the loss of a certain way of life, the loss of simplicity and harmony with nature, the loss of a certain kind of American individualism that valued the good in others and sought to live in harmony with others, despite ethnic and other differences. It celebrates an older and simpler society - while recognizing its injustices and fundamental harshness.

I doubt Train Dreams will win Best Picture. Of the three I have seen, I would have to bet on One Battle After Another, whose actors also deserve awards - despite the reservation I expressed then and have expressed since, that right now this country could probably do without yet another film celebrating political violence!

Then again, I have not seen the other nominated films. So any guesses i am making are just that - ill-informed guesses! What will actually happen, we will just have to see.

House Divided

 

Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house (Luke 11:17).

When Abraham Lincoln famously quoted these words of Jesus, at what was then the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, on June 16, 1858, he was a senatorial candidate, his presidency and the civil war which characterized it then still in the future. When Lincoln quoted Jesus, everyone in his audience would have recognized the words and understood the reference.  Biblical literacy has declined enormously since then. So some may think Lincoln's words were original. Indeed, given the precipitous decline in historical literacy in recent decades, many may not recognize the quote or associate it with Lincoln at all, let alone with Jesus.

What Jesus said was supposed to be seen as self-evident. Division undercuts the unity necessary for a successful state - whether in a kingdom or nation or in a household.  The kingdom of God, of course, cannot suffer division. Jesus even goes so far as to warn us: Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. But earthly realities remain prone to division, as we all know. 

Theoretically, our connection with the Kingdom of God should bring us together and create an overarching unity that transcends and subordinates all out human divisions. But, again as we all know too well, such spiritual unity still eludes us. Lincoln had something to say about that too. In his Second Inaugural Address in March 1865, reflecting on four years of civil war, Lincoln famously said: "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. ... The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully."

In our own day, we seem to be divided as we have not been since Lincoln's time. We hear how families have been fractured and friendships forever ended because of political disagreements. And not only has our common communion in Christ not healed those division, those very divisions have penetrated into the life of the Church, so much so that for many Americans religious allegiances are reflections of - and even determined - by political allegiances, instead of the other way around.

We are accustomed to refer to Lent as a time of grace and reconciliation. That is a lot harder than it sounds. We all know - perhaps from personal experience - how hard it can be to reconcile quarrelling friends or jealous siblings, let alone unite a politically polarized nation or heal a divided Church. But such is the challenge of being Christ's Church today.

Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house (Luke 11:17).

Homily for the Thursday of the Third Week of Lent, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, March 12, 2026.

Communication Without Community

 

Byung-Chul Han is a Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Berlin's University of the Arts. His The Disappearance of Rituals: A Typology of the Present, tr. Daniel Steuer (Polity Press, 2020) is a short but complex critique of our contemporary "symbol-poor," neoliberal, narcissistic, commodified, consumerist culture. For Han, "rituals serve as a background against which our present times may be seen to stand ot more clearly." For Han, "rituals are symbolic acts," that "bring forth a community without communication," in contrast to which today "communication without community prevails." Rituals "stabilize life," through "their self-sameness, their repetitiveness." Rituals "bring people together and create an alliance, a wholeness, a community."

Han is particularly critical of the contemporary cult of authenticity., which he calls a "compulsion" which "leads to narcissistic introspection, a permanent occupation with one's own psychology." When "ritual gestures and manners decay, affect and emotion gain the upper hand." Hence, "narcissistic disorders are on the rise because we are increasingly losing the ability to conduct social interactions outside the boundaries of the self."

Rituals are not exclusively or uniquely religious, but religious rituals and their heightened form in religious festivals have obviously been a prominent part of human ritual experience. He examines, for example, the religious institution of the Sabbath; "when we subordinate rest to work, we ignore the divine." The silence of the Sabbath "gives rise to listening. It is accompanied by a special receptivity, by a deep contemplative attentiveness. Today's compulsion of communication means that we can close neither our eyes nor our mouths. It desecrates life." Unlike traditional religious festivals, "today's popular festivals have become mass events, and masses are not communities." he contrasts capitalism with religion. "Money, by itself, has an individualizing and isolating effect. It increases my individual freedom by liberating me from any personal bond with others."

Han challenges the prevailing conceit that modernity has been liberatory. Sketching what he calls a "genealogy" of rituals' disappearance, he pointedly interpret that disappearance as not "an emancipatory process." Our impolite society, it appears, has become a brutalized one. Han is hardly the first critic to make this case, although he does so in a very distinctive manner. His claims are quite sweeping, especially given the shortness of the book. Nor is it completely clear how, if at all, we can emerge from our present malaise. He explicitly eschews nostalgia and introduces his book by saying  it "is not animated by a return to ritual." yet obviously he is somehow trying to point the way toward the recovery of a shared dwelling in our divided world.

Fascism - Then and Now

 

When Robert O. Paxton, Mellon Professor Emeritus of Social Science at Columbia University, first published The Anatomy of Fascism (Random House, 2004, Vintage Books, 2005), it was a definitive historical study of what he called "the major political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain." A definitive historical study of a distinctly 20th-century phenomenon it still is, of course, but 20+ years on it also speaks presciently to troubling contemporary political movements and events.

For Paxton, fascism is "the most important political novelty of the twentieth century: a popular movement against the Left and against liberal individualism. Contemplating fascism we see most clearly how the twentieth century contrasted with the nineteenth, and what the twenty-first century must avoid." Paxton clearly distinguishes fascism from conservatism and conservative authoritarianism. Thus, for example, he finds little or no fascism in Franco's Spain. (Both "Franco and Salazar reduced fascist parties to powerlessness.") On the other hand, he emphasizes the importance of conservative collaboration with historical fascism. "Fascist movements could never grow without the help of ordinary people, even conventionally good people. Fascists could never attain power without the acquiescence or even active assent of the traditional elites ... The excesses of fascism in power also required wide complicity among members of the establishment." That combination of anti-liberal populism and elite establishment acquiescence seems again relevant in our contemporary context.

Historical fascism in 1920s Italy and 1930s Germany was related to the liberal political order's inability to deal adequately with the challenges of the post World War I world. Perhaps, we can see some similar parallels today in the apparent collapse of the traditional liberal politics in the post-Cold War, post-9/11, post-financial collapse era.

Rather than articulate an abstract definition of fascism, Paxton focuses on what historical fascists actually did - "a succession of processes and choices: seeking a following, forming alliances, bidding for power, then exercising it."

Examining historical fascism in interwar Italy and Germany, he. highlights how World War I "discredited optimistic and progressive views of the future, and cast doubt upon liberal assumptions about natural human harmony. Socially, it spawned armies of restless veterans (and their younger brothers) looking for ways to express their anger and disillusion without heed for old-fashioned law or morality." This is not 1920s Italy, but we too live in a society which has increasingly rejected progressive illusions and from which young men especially are increasingly alienated and nihilistic. All this is combined again with a distinctly problematic expression of resurgent nationalism. "Fascisms seek out in each national culture those themes that are best capable of mobilizing a mass movement of regeneration, unification, and purity, directed against liberal individualism and constitutionalism and against Leftist class struggle." Fascism involves "a passionate nationalism. Allied to it is a conspiratorial and Manichean view of history."

Fascism presupposes the mass politics of the 20th century. Looking for 19th-century precursors, however, he identifies interestingly the American Ku Klux Klan as "the earliest phenomenon that can be functionally related to fascism" and "a remarkable preview of the way fascist movements were to function in interwar Europe." He finds it unsurprising "that the most precocious democracies - the United States and France - should have geneerated precocious backlashes against democracy."

Italian and German fascisms contended successfully in the political arena. They offered "a new political style that would attract voters who had concluded that 'politics' had become dirty and futile." Doesn't that sound familiar? "When a constitutional system seizes up in deadlock and democratic institutions cease to function, the 'political arena' tends to narrow."

Mussolini famously lacked any actual program and adapted as opportunity presented, changing his tune to ally eventually with the Church and the monarchy. Both he and Hitler came to power by legitimate constitutional means. Neither formally abolished "the normative state" (and in Mussolini's case the state was still sufficiently strong to bring  him down in the end).

While charismatic leadership is not limited to fascism, it appears that fascism requires it. That dependence on charisma "may help explain why no fascist regime has so far managed to pass power to a successor." Without necessarily pushing the analogy too far, something similar still seems to be the case.

Mussolini's compromises with traditional elites and the Church made his regime increasingly appear more authoritarian than fascist. Hence his need for a war of aggression. "War provided fascism's clearest radicalizing impulse... both Hitler and Mussolini deliberately chose war as a necessary step in realizing the full potential of their regimes."

Paxton considers the "inoculation of most Europeans against traditional fascism by its public shaming in 1945" to be "inherently temporary." Future fascism "- an emergency response to some still unimagined crisis - need not resemble classical fascism perfectly in its outward signs and symbols." He imagines an "authentically popular American fascism would be pious, antiblack, and, since September 11, 2001, anti-Islamic as well." Also the collapse of the Soviet Union has left "the radical Right" with "no serious rivals as the mouthpiece for the angry 'losers' of the new post-industrial, globalized, multiethnic Europe" - and we might add the U.S. Armed with "reassuring language and symbols and in the event of some redoubtable setback to national prestige, Americans. might support an enterprise of forcible national regeneration, unification, and purification. Its targets would be the First Amendment, separation of Church and State ... efforts to place controls on gun ownership, desecrations of the flag, unassimilated minorities, artistic license, dissident and unusual behavior of all sorts that coudl be labeled antinational or decadent."

As "ominous warning signals," Paxton identifies "situations of political deadlock in the face of crisis, threatened conservatives looking for tougher allies, ready to give up due process and the rule of law, seeking mass support by nationalist and racialist demagoguery." 

Remember, Paxton anticipated all this over 20 years ago!

Only at the end, does Paxton finally formulate this working definition of fascism:

"Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

On Purim

 

By coincidence of calendars on this Lenten weekday, our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate the holiday known as Purim. (The sequence of events in John’s Gospel suggests that the healing of the disabled man at the pool of Bethsaida might have taken place at Purim.) The story of Purim is found in the biblical book of Esther, which tells how the exiled Jewish community living in Persia was threatened with genocide and then saved through the intervention of Esther the secretly Jewish Queen of the Persian king. The infamous villain of the story was Haman, sort of the Prime Minister, who hated the Jews because one of the Jewish leaders Mordecai had refused to bow to him. Mordecai was Esther’s uncle and went to her and told her, “Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for such a time as this?” Esther fasted and prayed and then courageously went to the king and eventually exposed Haman’s plot, saving the Jewish people from Haman’s malice.

Purim has a special salience this year. It occurs at a time of increasing antisemitism all over the world, across the political spectrum on both left and right. Secondly, it occurs at a time when we find ourselves engaged in an undeclared and unpredictable war with the modern successor state to the ancient Persian Empire, ruled by a contemporary version of a Haman-like government. These considerations contribute a certain added seriousness to what in contemporary Judaism is normally actually a very happy, very festive, fun-filled holiday.

But these are serious times. Regarding the war, we can only hope and pray that our national leaders and the leaders of the nations of the Middle East will find a way to work through this latest crisis to afflict that perennially fractured and troubled part of the world. As regards antisemitism, we need to remind ourselves of the explicit teaching of the Second Vatican Council that “God holds the Jews most dear … [and] does not repent of the gifts He makes or of the calls He issues,” and that “the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews … decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone” [Nostra Aetate, 5]

Homily for the Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent (Purim), St. Paul the Apostle Church, NY, March 3, 2026.

Photo: Dutch Painting, The Feast of Esther (c. 1625), by Jan Lievens (1607-1674).