An Old Book for a New Day

 

Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in a book from 1981, American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony (Harvard U. Pr.), by the then political scientist and Harvard Professor of International Affairs, Samuel P. Huntington (1927-2008), author most famously of Political order in Changing Societies (1968) and The Clash of Civilizations? (1993). In 1981, I was at the end of my political science career, and I somehow managed to miss American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, an omission I have now at last corrected.

When on sabbatical at Windsor Castle in 2005 and on other occasions when explaining (or, at least, trying) to explain “American Exceptionalism” to foreigners, I have usually fallen back on the distinction between ethnically identified nation states (e.g., France, Germany, Italy, etc.) and the very different civic identity of the United States, something Samuel Huntington in this prescient book calls our American creedal identity. By the “American Creed,” Huntington has in mind certain basic values and ideas - such as those articulated in the Declaration of Independence and other classic American expressions – which are widely and broadly endorsed by most Americans and which have continued for over 200 years to occupy a central place in American National identity. Particularly prominent among these creedal values, according to Huntington, are the 18th-century value of liberty and the 19th-century value of equality, with the former generally accorded precedence by Americans.

Huntington highlights the high degree of consensus among Americans with regard to the values of this creed, with the broadest consensus “among those more active in the system and who benefit the most from it.” The failure of any serious socialist movement in the U.S. “is perhaps the most dramatic evidence of the preponderance of liberal-democratic values in America.” 

Of particular significance for Huntington is how “all the varying elements in the American Creed unite in imposing limits on power and on the institutions of government.”

Of course, there is an inevitable gap between the ideals of the American creed and actual reality. This gap – more precisely, the varied ways Americans respond to this cognitive dissonance - is the basis for much of Huntington’s analysis. “Cleavage in the United States thus does not take the form of idea versus idea as in Europe, but rather of idea versus fact.” 

Huntington identifies four responses to this cognitive dissonance - moralistic reform ("eliminating the gap"), cynicism ("tolerating the gap"), complacency ("ignoring the gap"), and hypocrisy ("denying the gap"). Presciently, in terms of subsequent political history (and recent elections), he notes that those "who have less income and less education and who do not occupy leadership roles are more likely to be hypocritical or moralistic and lower status people cynical or complacent."

Huntington's emphasis is mainly on the periods of moralistic reforms, what he calls "creedal passion periods," which occur periodically through American history. He identifies four such periods in particular: the American Revolution, the Jacksonian era, the Progressive era, and the 1960s-1970s. "The Revolutionary era was the prototypical period of creedal passion. The three later periods represented a rearticulation of the themes of the Revolutionary years and a replay of the features and patterns of Revolutionary politics." The general direction of these efforts was "to make political institutions more responsive, more liberal, more democratic."

With certain exceptions, the great reforms in American political history have been associated with these periods, which seem to have occurred at approximately 60-year intervals. Reforms have not, however, been unambiguously successful. "The reforms of one generation often produce the vested interests of the next."

Another theme to which the author gives some attention is religion. "Not only was America born equal and hence did not have to become so, but it was also born Protestant and hence did not have to become so." The lack of establishment reinforced the weakening of the state, while strengthening religion.

Bringing his analysis forward, Huntington foresaw several possibilities. First, the core creedal values, which derive from the 17th and 18th centuries, could "come to be seen as increasingly irrelevant in a complex modern economy and a threatening international environment," an irrelevance potentially exacerbated by rising secularism. Second, the transition to post-industrial society could be accompanied by an increasingly "communitarian" ideology, in place of Lockean individualism. Third, the increasing influence of recent immigrants could also dilute that Lockean tradition. Finally, having been in existence as a nation for over 200 years, what Huntington calls "the ideational basis of national identity" might "be replaced by an organic one." In his book, Huntington did not foresee these developments occurring in the late 20th century. Given the changes that have characterized the first quarter of the 21st century, however, Huntington's concerns appear to have much more relevant merit. 

Huntington was also veery prescient in considering future possibilities for the traditional pattern of American creedal movements. One possibility would be continuity, with "a major sustained creedal passion period" occurring in the second and third decades of this century (in other words, now). A second possibility would be a stabilizing greater acceptance of this cognitive dissonance. Finally, the third possibility, which he considered the most dangerous one, may also be the most relevant for our present predicament. Huntington notes "the continued presence of deeply felt moralistic sentiments among major groups in American society could continue to ensure weak and divided government, devoid of authority and unable to deal satisfactorily with the economic, social, and foreign challenges confronting the nation. Intensification of this conflict between history and progress could give rise to increasing frustration and increasingly violent oscillations between moralism and cynicism. ... The weakening of government in an effort to reform it could lead eventually to strong demands for the replacement of the weakened and ineffective institutions by more authoritarian structures more effectively designed to meet historical needs."

A lot has happened in this country since the las creedal passion period in the 1960s and 1970s, which was the immediate background for Huntington's work. It remains to be seen which of his predictions may come to pass and exactly how under these new political conditions. Meanwhile the scenario Huntington feared most - an increasing embrace of anti-creedal authoritarian structures - seems increasingly realistic. Huntinton may have predicted better than he knew.

A 19th-Century Vision for a Polarized Nation

 

 

One of the current popular preoccupations (both before and since the recent election) has been the destructive divisiveness and political polarization that characterize contemporary American society. Everywhere we look, Americans appear more divided than at any time in our recent history. Certainly, our two political parties have moved apart, which is to say that the once central middle ground previously occupied by moderate-to-liberal Republicans and moderate-to-conservative Democrats has largely disappeared. This has happened steadily over the last 50 years, thanks to a multitude of political factors, which students of the subject have easily identified. It is likewise obviously problematic that we have increasingly re-sorted themselves socially, politically, geographically, and most evidently educationally. 

In the post-war world in which I grew up, American pluralistic politics used to be characterized by what were commonly called "cross-cutting cleavages." That described a situation in which different groups and interests overlapped, in which voters allied with one another along different lines on different issues depending on their different interests, in which all the aspects of one's life did not all align together. One can trace some appreciation of this back to James Madison's Federalist 10, and it was the staple of mid-20th-century American pluralist political thought. In contrast, "reinforcing cleavages" occur when the groups and issues which one identifies with all fall on the same side of the political spectrum.  The problem is not that there are disagreements among different groups with different interests, which is, of course, inevitable; but that the differences are increasingly reinforcing, rather than cross-cutting.  All of which at best tests - and at worst corrodes - our capacity to advance the country's interests and the common good.

Many have compared this situation to the pre-Civil War period in American history. It was, of course, precisely in that period of division and polarization - in 1857, the same year as the infamous Dred Scott decision that helped make the Civil War inevitable - that the Paulist Fathers' founder, Servant of God Isaac Hecker, proposed to Blessed Pope Pius IX that Catholicism might “act like oil on troubled waters” and so “sustain our institutions and enable our young country to realize its great destiny.”

Isaac Hecker lived from 1819 to 1888. (Today would have been his 205th birthday.) His life spanned the Second Great Awakening, the rise (and fall) of Jacksonian democracy, the U.S. Civil War, and the Gilded Age, formative periods for 19th-century America with lingering lessons for us now in the 21st century.

For Hecker, the Roman Catholic Church - as the Body of Christ which continues the mission of Christ’s Incarnation in the world - was a powerfully unifying force, binding citizens together, and thus blunting the dangerously sharp cutting edges of conflict and dissension, fusing the private interests of individuals and factions into a common social and civic unity.At the heart of what he said and wrote, was this basic appreciation of what he had experienced in the Catholic  Church as the Body of Christ which continues Christ’s life and work in the world - and the individual and social effects which flow from openness to that divine activity. As he wrote in his final book, published the year before he died, “The church must justly be said to be the expansion prolongation, and perpetration of the Incarnation” (The Church and the Age). 

Hecker’s charism is thus a continuing invitation to read and reread our time and place through the unique experience of the Church’s life and then to share that experience with the world in our particular time and place. So, while many of Hecker’s 19th-century hopes and aspirations have obviously been contradicted by historical developments, we may still rightly seek inspiration in Hecker’s vision of social reconciliation through religious renewal. In our own time of religious division and decline, we may do well to look at our church life more intensely through this particular lens.

 

Hecker’s proposed solution to the problem of polarization was the Roman Catholic Church, which he himself had discovered as the solution to his own spiritual search. That search had started at an early age, in the era of religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening, which was even more socially and politically conscious than the earlier, colonial-era First Great Awakening. Much of the distinctive character American culture and its mingling of religion and politics stem from this period. It was when the U.S. became what Chesterton would famously call (1922): “a nation with the soul of a church.” 

In our contemporary idiom, Hecker had been “spiritual but not religious” for the first 25 years of his life. The story of his spiritual search eloquently exemplifies the appeal of such searching and speaks to the spiritual longings of some in our own society today. What was significant about Hecker’s “spiritual but not religious” period, however, was that he did not remain that way. For Hecker, seeking was never an end in itself. The point of seeking was finding. Once the object was found, the search ended. Having found fulfillment in the Catholic Church, he never desired to look farther. Rather, he desired to devote his life to helping others – especially other seekers, such as he himself had been – to find the truth in the Catholic Church. His missionary activity reflected his deep devotion and fidelity to the Church. Above all, he prized the unity and universality of the Church, which had attracted him to it in the first place. Reflecting upon his experience many years later, Hecker wrote that he “not only became a most firm believer in the mysteries of the Christian religion, but a priest and a religious, hopes thus to die.” For us today, living in an era when people find it increasingly hard to make substantial commitments, those are words well worth meditating upon.

In 19th-century Europe, in the wake of the French Revolution and its aftermath, the Catholic Church was struggling to survive as an institution against an increasingly individualistic and irreligious liberal political order that sought to constrain it. In reaction, the 19th century Church sought to counteract the growing social fragmentation and to reconnect increasingly isolated individuals into a community by preserving, repairing, or restoring religious bonds. One approach was to assert the Church’s claims to authority as vigorously as possible and to insist upon the Church’s political privileges and institutional rights in relation to the state and upon the traditional constitutional arrangements (for example, the union of throne and altar) that appeared most compatible with the Church’s social and political position, if only because of the security this seemingly offered in the face of frightening and unpredictable change. 

(A somewhat contemporary version of that is “Integralism,” which is enjoying a certain renaissance among conservative Catholic intellectuals, but which, whatever may be said as an abstraction, seems unlikely to have any serious prospect of relevance in an American context, something Hecker certainly understood.) 

 

Hecker’s religious alternative to that primarily political approach envisaged a social solution in which citizens, converted to Catholicism as the answer to their deepest human aspirations would be empowered, by combining true religion and democratic political institutions, to develop society along Catholic lines. His was a thoroughly religious form of discourse, uniquely capable of addressing social and political concerns.

 

Whereas for Hecker’s famous contemporary Karl Marx (1818-1883), religion meant alienation and its survival in society showed the inadequacy of its purely political separation from the state, for Hecker Roman Catholicism was the fulfillment of the most authentic aspirations of human nature; and its power to transform society through the conversion of citizens more than compensated for the Church’s loss of political power thanks to its separation from the State.

 

In one of his last Catholic World articles, published in the year he died, Hecker, quoting an anonymous acquaintance, said “he didn’t care for union of church and state if he could have union of church and people.” Such comments convey how he continued to conceptualize religion’s role in the transformation of society, and how he confidently expected this to accomplish more effectively what others hoped for from politics.

 

Hecker never wavered in his conviction that what he had found in Catholicism – and what he had been able to find only in Catholicism – could and would be America’s answer as well. Having himself experienced the divided and fragmented character of modern society, Hecker had found an alternative in the mission of the Church, as the organic temporal expression of Christ’s life, to continue Christ’s work by pouring oil on the troubled waters of the world. According to Hecker, to discern the Church’s action clearly, “and to cooperate with it effectually, is the highest employment of our faculties, and at the same time the primary source of the greatest good to society” (The Church and the Age). 

 

On this basis, Hecker rooted the renewal of American society in a Catholic religious renewal inseparable from the spiritual renewal of his fellow citizens made possible by grace. Hecker’s important insight was that, since all creation is always ultimately ordered to grace, even certain new situations and social arrangements, which are perceived as obstacles, (like American democracy and separation of church and state) may actually be new opportunities for individual and social transformation through the Church’s ongoing realization of Christ’s incarnation. Today we might also ask what other novelties which might be perceived as obstacles might really be opportunities?

 

Hecker was well aware that his spiritual insights into American democracy’s compatibility with Catholicism and what Catholicism had to offer to America hardly corresponded to conventional wisdom – on either side of the Atlantic. He never wavered, however, in his conviction that what he had been able to find only in Catholicism could and would be America’s answer as well. He combined Catholic universalism and a distinctly American self-understanding of the relationship between religion and society in a providential perspective, which could work politically within the framework bequeathed by classical liberalism’s separation of society and state. 

Admittedly, much of what Hecker admired about America, including its egalitarianism and sociability, no longer characterizes the contemporary post-industrial, late-capitalist, centralized state the U.S. has largely become. Likewise, American Catholicism - the religious remedy he posited for the social fragmentation which the United States still experiences - has changed as well. While conversions continued both during and after Hecker’s lifetime, they have never been in the numbers necessary to make the kind of impact on society Hecker had hoped for. What did make an impact, then and now, has been immigration, which has historically uniquely positioned the American Catholic Church to play a prominent part in the desperately required mission of cultural, ethnic, and racial reconciliation in this country, assuming the Church in America can summon the will to play that part.  

 

 

The Electors Vote

Tomorrow is presidential election day in the United States. Yes, tomorrow! It is the day when, according the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate.

For philosophical reasons, rooted in classical city-state and Roman republican experience as well as classical political theory, the Founders feared direct democracy, and were understandably reluctant to countenance direct popular election of the president. Direct democracy was anyway impossible in a large continental republic, where any form of constitutional government was obviously going to have to be a representative system. The question was how much of a "mixed constitution" it should be, and how extensive should the democratic component be (which in the original constitution was confined to the House of Representatives). Philosophical issues aside, it appeared excessively challenging to imagine how citizens spread out over such an extensive territory would be able to know whom to vote for in a presidential election, given the communications and travel technology of the 18th century.

The founding philosophy was quickly undercut by the very unexpected but rapid development of political parties, which immediately nationalized American politics and presidential elections. Once political parties were structuring the vote and once more and more states used popular election to choose presidential electors, the founders' original concerns became more or less moot. The Washingtonian king-like, above-party model of President quickly evolved into the President as party leader. As a result, what the U.S. has had since the early 19th century has, in effect, been a de facto popular election of presidents, but with the electoral outcome distorted by the defective representation of the popular vote by two factors - the overrepresentation of smaller states in the electoral college and the almost universally used winner-take-all system of allocating electors.

For a long time, I appreciated the Electoral College for its stabilizing effect in maintaining a two-party system. (Single-member congressional districts and our "first-past-the-post" electoral system are also major factors in producing and maintaining a two-party system.) It is not so much that I think a two-party system is better than a multi-party one. In fact, I would probably prefer the latter - if we enjoyed a parliamentary system, which I would also prefer. But, in our presidential system (the ultimate "single-member district" writ large), it is hard to imagine how a multi-party system would work. In a parliamentary system, multiple interest-based parties compete and then may form coalitions after the election in order to govern. In our particular version of a two-party system, multiple interests form coalitions before the election in order to compete as two broadly coalitional parties. Yet, a multi-party electoral universe would be one of the more likely consequences of moving to a straight popular vote for president. How that would play out in practice is for now anyone's guess.

That said, the deficiencies in our electoral college process and the manifest harm it has done twice in this century in putting the popular loser in the White House, combined with the way the electoral college distorts our political campaigns, effectively confining them to a small number of states, these considerations have long since convinced me (and many others) that the electoral college no longer serves us well and instead ought to be confined to the discarded rubble of our constitutional history.

Of course, there isn't the slightest chance in the current political climate that the constitution could be amended to eliminate the electoral college.

And so the electors will meet tomorrow as the constitution and the law prescribe. On January 6, the votes will be counted. No surprises expected!

Image: The number of electoral votes, out of 538, allocated to each state and the District of Columbia for the 2024 and 2028 presidential elections, based on the 2020 census.

Rejoice?

 

Traditionally, this third weekend of Advent marks a transition from the more penitential and apocalyptic aspects of Advent to a spirit of joyful expectation as Christmas approaches. Of course, Christmas (as we observe it now) has been in constant celebration for almost a month already. Yet, speaking personally, this year I have found it hard to get too much into the Christmas spirit. Perhaps, as we age, time seems to pass faster, and thus Christmas has just crept up on us quicker and caught me busy about other things and otherwise unready. Or maybe, despite the surrounding Christmas ambience, this really just isn't a very joyful time in 2024 America.

By any measure, this has been a difficult year. Personally, for me, it has been a year of health challenges - knee replacement surgery and rehab, covid (twice), sleep problems, etc. It has also obviously  been a very difficult year for our country - and our wider world. Enough has been said already about the election and its ramifications in terms of national divisions, political polarization, and loss of trust in our institutions and in one another. This has also been a year of wars, international and civil, and all the human and social suffering that inevitably accompany such conflicts. Add to all that the natural calamities we have increasingly experienced - fires and drought, not just in California but also in New York and New Jersey, complemented elsewhere by storms and floods! Yes, this has been a difficult year!

Rejoice in the Lord always.
I shall say it again: rejoice!
Your kindness should be known to all.
The Lord is near.
Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, 
by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, 
make your requests known to God.
Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding 
will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

[Philippians 4:4-7]

However jarring it may feel this year, this traditional Gaudete Sunday message is the season's much needed corrective to the malaise many may understandably be experiencing at the present moment. It reminds us that Christmas comes faithfully in good times and bad, in peace and in war, in prosperity and recession, in unity and division. Hence the perennial appeal of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas - famously introduced by Judy Garland in the 1944 musical Meet Me in St. Louis.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away

Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were near to us
Will be dear to us once more

Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

Of course, we today, no more than Judy Garland in 1944, fully expect all our troubles to be out of sight and miles away. The carol, for all its sad and melancholy vibe, is an invitation to hope, which is, of course, the spirit of Christmas.

On this Gaudete weekend, we are invited to take the nearness of the Lord seriously as our entry into the peace of God that surpasses all understanding, which makes Christmas something deeper and more fulfilling that the ephemeral lights of December and sounds of the season.

Birthright Citizenship

Since my mother died in 2020, I have been in possession of her first passport - actually my grandmother's Italian passport from 1929, which included my mother and two of her older siblings. The title page reads (my translation): In the name of His Majesty Victor Emmanuel III, by the grace of God and will of the nation, King of Italy, the Minister of Foreign Affairs grants this passport to Signora Nunzia Orlando [my grandmother], wife of Francesco Bonaccorso [my grandfather], with her children Virginia and Salvatore and the foreign child Carmelina [my mother].

Francesco and Nunzia Bonaccorso had first immigrated to the U.S. in 1920 with Virginia and Salvatore and three older children.  In 1922, my mother was born here in New York and was thus, by birth, according to the provisions of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution a natural-born U.S. citizen. Soon after, while the three older children stayed in New York to work, my grandparents and their three younger children returned to Italy. from which they finally returned to New York in 1930. Immigration was difficult after 1924, but my "foreign child" mother's American birthright citizenship made it easier to reunite the family in the U.S. Thank you, Birthright Citizenship!

Among the many mischiefs being contemplated by the incoming Administration is an attempted attack on the constitutional principle of birthright citizenship. Yet the authors of the 14h Amendment (adopted 1868), left no ambiguity about the Amendment's citizenship provision: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

This provision overruled the Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision (1857) that African-Americans were not and could not become U.S. citizens. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 had granted citizenship to all people born in the United States if they were not subject to a foreign power, and this clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was obviously intended to constitutionalize this provision permanently. Subsequent jurisprudence has clearly affirmed that this clause applies to all children of non-citizens born in the United States under any circumstance. 

A direct assault on birthright citizenship (presumably by executive order) would, of course, be challenged in the courts. While the jurisprudence is clear, the Trump Supreme Court is now known for its notorious indifference to legal precedents. We will have to wait and see, possibly at the cost of considerable social disruption and personal suffering in many immigrant families.

Photo: 1929 Passport photo of my grandmother Nunzia Orlando Bonaccorso and her three younger children, my uncle Salvatore, my aunt Virginia, and the youngest, my American-born mother. Carmelina (Camille).

The Forever Health Insurance Crisis

 

Let it be stipulated that last week's hit-man style murder of UnitedHealthCare CEO, Brian Thompson, a fellow citizen and a human being, who was also a husband and a father of two children, was a serious crime and a grave moral evil. No one should applaud murder. Nor should anyone take lightly the increasing valorization of political violence in our society.

That said, what should be made of the varied reactions to this tragedy, including widespread lack of sympathy for the victim and even some apparent glee over what some may perceive as revenge against the for-profit health insurance industry? At minimum, maybe this is yet another symptom of the terrible coarsening of our society and the disappearance of traditional moral notions and expectations of appropriate behavior. 

Stipulating all that, however, what else does this say about the widespread anger and frustration over the state of health care in America? The Times quoted this comment on Tik Tok: “I’m an ER nurse and the things I’ve seen dying patients get denied for by insurance makes me physically sick. I just can’t feel sympathy for him because of all of those patients and their families.”

Indeed, for-profit Health Insurance Companies deservedly occupy an increasingly notorious and infamous place among the objects of widespread popular anger and resentment among American people today. 

Yet, an alternative to our dependence on profit-making private insurance has long been available. It is called Medicare-for-All. If the Vietnam War had not short-circuited the Great Society, we might have made real progress in that direction decades ago - perhaps by a progressively lowering of the minimal age to qualify for Medicare. It is well known that President Nixon was willing to consider Medicare-for-All in 1973, but the Democrats - to their eternal discredit - did not jump at that chance to fix our health care system once and for all.

Medicare is much more efficient than private insurance, which wastefully spends a lot of its resources on denying and preventing rather than providing health care. Moreover, Medicare is widely accessible and publicly funded, as health care ought to be in an affluent society. 

Of course, an oligarchic government dominated by billionaires, whose main concerns seem to be tax cuts for themselves and reducing regulations that protect the public instead of their private profits, such a government is not likely to move in the direction of Medicare-for-All or any other serious improvements in our health-care system. If RFK, et al., were really serious about making America Healthy Again, they might start with resolving our forever health insurance crisis. But it is a safe prediction that no one will.

Notre Dame Reopens

 

This weekend, the great cathedral Notre Dame de Paris has reopened after a destructive fire five years ago and an heroic reconstruction and restoration project that cost some 700 million euros. Notre Dame is, of course, a great historic and artistic monument, a masterpiece of French art and culture, and a site for so many major events in French history, from the wedding of Henri IV to Napoleon's coronation to DeGaulle's Liberation Day Te Deum. Its reconstruction and restoration necessarily concern the wider French society and its secular Republic, which, of course, actually owns the building (as it does all pre-20th-century French churches). So President Macron's outsized role in orchestrating this reconstruction and restoration and his very visible presence in the glorious ceremonies surrounding the cathedral's reopening are appropriate. Visiting the restored cathedral last week, President Macron called it "overwhelming." Indeed, Notre Dame belongs to all France - indeed, to the world. Hence the presence of other world figures - among them U.S. First Lady Jill Biden and President-Elect Donald Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Prince of Wales, and numerous others from Europe and beyond.

That said, Notre Dame is - and remains - first and foremost a cathedral, the center of the Catholic Church in Paris. If the fire that engulfed it and threatened its survival may in some sense be seen as symbolic of the challenges that face the Catholic Church in today's troubled world, the cathedral's reconstruction and restoration - and its glorious reopening as a place of prayer for all peoples - may likewise be treated as a sign of hope, an encouraging sign of what Isaac Hecker would have called "a future for the Church brighter than any past."

Photo: The Virgin of Paris, a medieval statue saved from the fire at Notre Dame returned in procession to the cathedral last month.

St. Nicholas Day

 

This morning I celebrated the Community Mass in our House Chapel for today's feast of Saint Nicholas (270-343), the Bishop of Myra in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). According to legend, he attended the great Council of Nicea (325), the 1700th anniversary of which will be commemorated during the forthcoming Jubilee Year. He is especially remembered for his anonymous acts of charity, most famously for throwing three bags of gold into a poor household to provide dowries for three sisters. Centuries later, Saint Nicholas still comes in person in parts of Europe - notably the Netherlands, Germany, and Austria - and there are many popular traditions connected with his visit on the eve of his feast, some of which have survived in the most unexpected places. In December 1981, when I was a Paulist novice in rural northern New Jersey, December 6 fell on a Sunday. That morning, we all awoke to find a stocking outside each of our doors, with various personally appropriate items chosen for us by our devoted novice master. 

In 19th-century New York, Clement C. Moore famously re-costumed Saint Nicholas into our contemporary Santa Claus.  Santa has since spread all over the world, overshadowing his original persona as a saintly 4th-century Bishop. Sadly, today's department-store Santa serves instead the devilish demon of profit and is thus at best an imperfect intimation of the spirit of Saint Nicholas. Still, some of that spirit survives even in spite of everything. Whether acknowledged or not, Santa's amazingly generous gift-giving each Christmas still celebrates the amazing generosity of God who gave the world the gift of his Son at Christmas and continues to do so for the rest of history in the life of his Church. The real St. Nicholas responded to God's great generosity concretely in his own faithful and holy life of generous love for others in need. And, whether attired as the real bishop he was or as Clement C. Moore comically re-costumed him, he continues to exemplify God's generosity and call us to imitate it.

-

Photo: my toy Santa Claus, originally given to me by a family friend for my first Christmas in 1948. At that time, it was a new model, and it sang Jingle Bells when you turned the little handle in his back. Old now (like its owner), the handle no longer works, and Santa no longer sings Jingle Bells. But, otherwise, he seems to have held up pretty well these past 76 years!

The Biden Pardon

 

"Humanity and good policy conspire to dictate, that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed. The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel." So wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 74.

It is hard to challenge the President's view that his son has been excessively targeted largely because he is the President's son.  It is hard to believe that right-wingers have suddenly become converts to strong enforcement of gun laws - apart from this one case, where the target is the President's son. Hunter Biden has obviously not behaved admirably over the years, but President Biden is not the first (nor likely will he be the last) president to be encumbered by embarrassing relatives. (The incoming former President famously pardoned his son-in-law's father, whom Chris Christie had prosecuted, whom the President-elect plans to send to France as Ambassador.)

That Hunter Biden may have been "guilty" of the "crimes" in question is somewhat beside the point. After all, a pardon presumes guilt. The pardon power is also a useful corrective when one has been unjustly convicted. But, in most cases, those who are pardoned are at least somewhat guilty of whatever they may be charged with. That is the point. A pardon is noit an exoneration. It is an exercise in clemency. And its use, as Hamilton rightly wrote, is a good corrective to the severities of the justice system. Even today, more than two centuries after Hamilton wrote, American justice still wears "a countenance too sanguinary and cruel." Presidents should pardon more, not less. I hope President Biden exercises his pardon power in more cases in the limited time remaining.

"Rule and Ruin" Revisited

 

Recent developments have inspired me to re-read Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, From Eisenhower to the Tea Party, by Geoffrey Kabaservice (Oxford U. Pr., 2012). I wrote about the book here at the time I first read it, but the re-election of Donald Trump and his complete takeover of the Republican Party have motivated me to want to reexamine the half-century-plus story of the decline of traditional "moderate" Republicanism and the transformation of the party into its present, post-conservative, quasi-cultic character.

It is a very good history of the modern pre-Trump Republican Party and – by extension at least – of American party politics in the half-century plus since World War II, with particular emphasis on the earlier period. That, of course, is the era my Boomer generation so well remembers and – more than just remembers – the era so many of us were fundamentally formed in: the peaceful and prosperous decade of the 1950s, followed by the tumultuous and exciting but ultimately catastrophic 1960s, leading directly to the onset of national decline in the 1970s. (That decline would go into apparent remission somewhat in the 1980s and 1990s but then become almost inexorable in the first decade of the current century). From the way Kabaservice tells the story, Moderate Republicanism’s fate fairly parallels that larger trajectory of American political time. Given that, as recently as when I studied American Politics in graduate school in the 1970s, it was still taken for granted that American political parties were inevitably more or less broadly-based coalitions, the novelty of the current situation (in both parties) cannot be overstated.

Kabaservice emphasizes that the merit of Moderate Republicanism wasn’t just facilitating compromise (which is what it sometimes tends to get reduced to when its absence is lamented today) but real programmatic political substance. Indeed, one of the merits of this book is to highlight the important part played by Moderate Republicans in advancing much of what we retrospectively see as a progressive agenda – especially in the area of Civil Rights. At the same time, he describes in sometimes chilling detail the machinations by which the party was totally transformed, tactics which in some ways anticipated the norm-breaking behaviors of the present party.

The book concluded on a somber note, with "moderate" Republicanism virtually extinguished and even "conservative" Republicans being challenged by the new forces represented by, for example, the Tea Party. In his conclusion, he warned: "As the Republican Party continues to reject its own heritage and forgets the hard lessons of the 1960s, it seems increasingly likely that right-wing activists may prevail over the party professionals and nominate  an extreme presidential candidate."

Kabaservice was more prophetic than he knew. However, his prediction envisioned another Goldwater-like debacle, followed by a reconstruction of the Republican party "along more moderate and electable lines." He even cited the British Conservative Party under David Cameron. Well, we know how that ended!

Thus, while the first part of the author's prediction came true crashingly in 2016 with the nomination of Donald Trump and his complete evisceration of his "establishment" opponents in the party, both the party and the country had so thoroughly changed since the Goldwater debacle that not only did Trump completely take over his party, but also - in the 2024 election - the country.

Trump is a uniquely charismatic figure, whose success was not easy to predict and was never obvious - until it became so. Nonetheless, Rule and Ruin remains perhaps the best analysis available of how the ground was well prepared for Trump's takeover.

"Raise Your Heads"

 

 

The last time I lived in New York, back when I was in full-time pastoral ministry, the afternoon of the first Sunday of Advent often saw me visiting the beautiful Church of Saint Thomas on Fifth Avenue to celebrate the beginning of the Advent season with that church’s wonderful tradition of Anglican choral music. More recently, a combination of health concerns and laziness have led me to do so from a distance, via the contemporary miracle of livestream. That may be something of a loss, perhaps, but access to that traditional advent music still enables me to enter the spirit of the season in a special way.

 

Advent is a strangely spiritual season. Almost totally overwhelmed by the surrounding secular holiday season (which is wonderful in itself), Advent is visible, if at all, only in churches. Yet Advent still has spiritual power when and wherever it is allowed to exercise it.

 

Advent originated not as the festive season it has somewhat degenerated into, but as an annual period of repentance focused on preparation for Judgment Day. Somber sentiments such as those of the great medieval sequence Dies Irae served to concentrate people’s attention on Christ's final coming at the end of time as judge of all the world.

 

Notably, one of the constants in American history has been the periodic appearance of movements and people preparing for some sort of impending calamity, real or imagined, including even the end of the world. Usually, they are fringe groups at the margin of mainstream society, although sometimes the anxieties are more reality-based and more widely shared. I think back, for example, to the fallout shelter movement in the early 1960s, which was actively promoted here in New York by no less mainstream a person than Governor Nelson Rockefeller and was also taken seriously and discussed within the Kennedy Administration, as well as in the pages of the weekly Jesuit magazine America. Worries about nuclear war may have diminished salience today, but recent events have highlighted how dangerous our world is. We hardly need Advent to warn us of what is coming upon the world (Luke 21), when we have the calamities created by our changing climate - among them  500 wildfires and brushfires in New Jersey and New York City this year.  

 

Anticipating an actual and total end to the world may be more than most contemporary disaster-worriers really care to contemplate. But it does have a long history. Add to that the prospect of divine judgment (an especially salient theme as one grows older), and we can get into some really scary stuff! No surprise then that the early Christians – who took both the end of the world and divine judgment very seriously - prayed, in the third century: “for Emperors, their ministers, for the condition of the world, for peace everywhere, and for the delaying of the end” [Apologetics, 39]

 

To us today, living in a world that appears increasingly as dangerous and disorderly if not more so (and where we hear right away about every terrible thing that happens almost anywhere in the world), to us that sounds like a familiar enough list – except for the final petition, which we seldom give much thought to, even while we pray every day at Mass for the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ.  Yet that “end” is precisely what the Church calls on us to contemplate today, as indeed we do every Advent. 

Advent acknowledges the fears we have always felt about what lies ahead. As Jesus himself said in today’s Gospel [Luke 21:25-28, 34-36], People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world. Advent, however, is also about hope. The same Jesus who said all those scary things also said, when these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand.

 

Thus, it seems somehow so especially fitting that at this time of national and international tension and worldwide worry, that the Church is about to celebrate a Jubilee Year of Hope, inviting us to put our fears behind us, to stand up and raise our heads, as Jesus said, and go on pilgrimage together literally and spiritually. Pilgrimage, as Pope Francis pointed out in his proclamation of the Jubilee Year, “is traditionally associated with our human quest for meaning in life.”

 

That quest for meaning seems so much more of a challenge – and so also that much more vital – this Advent, when so much that has been taken for granted has been upended, and the future seems even more menacing. In his proclamation of the Jubilee Year, Pope Francis warned against the temptation “to think ourselves overwhelmed by evil and violence.” Like Jesus, he directs us to discern “the signs of the times, which include the yearning of human hearts in need of God’s saving presence.”

 

As I used to say, back when I had the privilege of preaching about Advent, this season challenges us to discern the coming of Christ bringing light into anxious lives and a worried world, which is why I like to describe Advent as simultaneously fearful and hopeful, as we experience both the passing of another year and our hopes for a new one, both the darkness of winter and the living light of Christ coming to make everything bright and new, both the end of this world and the coming of God’s kingdom. 

 

None of that is to deny or diminish the reality that, in our conflict-ridden world and a painfully politically polarized country, there will be plenty for all of us to worry about in the new year. And that is in addition to all our ordinary anxieties, unfulfilled longings, and painful memories of lost opportunities and ruptured relationships, all of which seem to haunt us even more intensely at this festive time of year. 

 

Advent is a winter wake-up call to face up to our renewed responsibility to live our lives like people whose God really has come and whose coming actually matters to us. 

 

In the words of Paulist founder, Fr. Isaac Hecker, There is little or no hope at all of our entering into the kingdom of heaven hereafter, if we are not citizens of it here. If Christ is to be to us a savior, we must find him here, now, and where we are; otherwise he is no Christ, no Saviour, no Immanuel, no “God with us.”

"Our Town" Today

I haven't been to a Broadway show in ages, but last night I finally got to go to see the new production of Thornton Wilder's classic Our Town, which famously portrays the fictional American town of Grover's Corners between 1901 and 1913 through the everyday lives of its ordinary residents. Noted for its unusual format in which the "Stage Manager" regularly addresses the audience and its typically bare stage with few props, Our Town (which was first performed at Princeton's McCarter Theater in 1938) was once described by Edward Albee as "the greatest American play ever written."

I first saw Our Town on TV in the1950s (back when high-quality theatrical productions - like Our Town and Amahl and the Night Visitors were frequent on TV. To me, the beauty of Our Town is its portrayal of ordinary life and inherently meaningful and significant. Although set in rural New Hampshire in the early 20th-century, this gives it a truly universal feel, which likely accounts for its continued appeal.

The new production on Broadway is very well done and faithful to the basic story. It does, however, take some liberties, presumably intended to modernize or make it more relevant. Thus, some of the characters (notably George) wear shorts, which I suspect would not have. happened in 1901. It is precisely the early 20th-century setting that highlights the ordinariness and universality of the story - not giving (some) characters a contemporary look, which (by definition) is not universal. I also felt the musical introduction at the beginning, with its strange medley of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim prayers, really adde nothing to the story and may even detract from it, although I remain open to being convinced otherwise.

Despite these few lapses into relevance, Our Town remains a powerful portrayal of the human condition in its most basic elements and experiences.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Day has long been my favorite secular holiday. It has a little bit of everything and something for everyone. It is a seasonal holiday that perfectly captures autumn's spirit. It is a national, patriotic holiday, which invites us to reflect upon our history as a country and on the condition of our current national community (a not particularly pleasant prospect at present). Most of all, it is an especially wonderful celebration of basic human community, of family and friends gathered around the table of God's and nature's bounty and the results of human labor. Hence the crowded airports and highways all this week, as from one coast to the other Americans  fly or drive or otherwise make their way to whatever counts as "home." In the 2003 film Latter Days, Lila (Jacqueline Bisset) famously welcomes her Thanksgiving Day guests with the words: "I want you to know that wherever we find ourselves in this world, whatever our successes or failures, come this time of year, you will always have a place at my table and a place in my heart."

Sadly, due in part to some health problems earlier in the fall, I will not be traveling anywhere for Thanksgiving this year. I have family members whom I almost never see. The family members whom I do see, I usually see only once or twice each year. So I treasure those opportunities and will very much miss this one.

Some people purport to be especially anxious about Thanksgiving this year, presumably out of fear of political conflicts erupting around the dinner table. Personally I think it should be considered normal for members of the same family to hold differing political positions. What is actually abnormal rather is only speaking with those people once a year and otherwise living in a way which never exposes one to people with different ideas or attitudes or beliefs. As a society, perhaps we need to be paying more attention to solving both those problems.

All that having been said, Thanksgiving remains our uniquely American holiday, which we should all be able to celebrate together as one nation. So, whether we are at home or traveling over the river and through the wood, Happy Thanksgiving to us all!

Overread = Overreach

Newly elected presidents like to claim a mandate. Most of the time they don't really have one - or have only a very limited one. Trump certainly doesn't have one. True, his party controls all three branches of the federal government, which certainly counts for a lot. But he won only a plurality of the popular vote, and the difference between his vote and Harris's vote - while decisive - was very modest. To over-read the result as a real "mandate" (a mistake other past presidents have made), to over-read his "mandate," is the royal road to overreach.

The most famous recent example in this 21st century was George W. Bush in 2005. Reelected in 2004 as a National security president, he over-read the election results as a "mandate" and - in a dramatic display of overreach - interpreted his "mandate" as an opportunity to privatize social security.

I think we can be safely confident that Trump will not try to privatize social security. The changes Trump is most likely to care to implement relate to immigration and tariffs. I would expect a flurry of executive orders in the first few days of the new Administration on these issues. 

It is reasonable to suppose that those who voted for Trump will be generally supportive on these issues. On the other hand, if it is true that a lot of people voted for Trump because of the price of eggs, those voters may not be so happy with the consequences at the check-out counter of mass deportations and tariffs, both of which will likely result in higher prices. And we can even more safely assume that a lot of those voters most certainly did not vote for antivax-induced outbreaks of measles and polio. 

How much of that will happen obviously cannot be predicted in advance. What can be predicted is that the Trump Administration will pursue at least some policies that will likely adversely affect a lot of Americans - among them some of Trump's voters. How adversely, of course, remains to be seen. But the likelihood of overreach is high. And the consequences of overreach, come the midterms, is another familiar feature of American politics.