Bad Religion Revisited

 

Some weeks ago, I registered some of my reservations about Ross Douthat's recent foray into a distinctive style of apologetics, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. Douthat is neither a theologian nor an academic religion scholar but a journalist, a New York Times opinion columnist; but that is no reason to disparage his writings on religion. Moreover, whatever one concludes about Believe, I think that Douthat's 2012 book Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics (Free Press), which I have reread in preparation for Holy Week, remains a masterful account of the multiple crises facing contemporary American religion today and is, if anything, more relevant and more to the point than it was 13 years ago when it was first published. In that now classic book, Douthat served up a rigorous analysis of the contemporary American Christian landscape and offered advice to both believers and their institutions.

The first half of Douthat's book summarized how we got to where we are today. It's a familiar story - familiar certainly to those of us either old enough to have lived through it or historically aware enough to appreciate how our relatively recent past was so very different from our present. It's the familiar story of a "Lost World" of confident, evangelizing, post-war American Christianity and its largely (and seemingly self-inflicted) decline. Douthat's "Lost World" examined four successful strains of post-war American Christian experience - Mainline Protestantism (personified by Reinhold Niebuhr), Evangelical Christianity (represented by Billy Graham), Roman Catholicism (exemplified by Fulton Sheen), and African-American Christianity (de-marginalized by Martin Luther King, Jr.). From there, the familiar trajectory is traced, as most major American Church groups, for the first time in American history,  suddenly stopped growing and entered a period of unprecedented decline (as they frantically aspired to remain relevant by accommodating to the culture which they were originally meant to convert). 

A crucial key to understanding our present situation is that popular interest in the things that religion had traditionally been about has continued, even while religious institutions seem to have been in a free fall of decline - with predictable consequences for both religion and society. 

Whereas "both the Protestant Mainline and the Catholic Church were strong cultures in 1950s America - capable of making their presence felt in the commanding heights of American life," today's "mainline has drifted to the sidelines of American life, Catholicism's cultural capital has been reduced by decades of civil war, and Evangelicalism still has the air of an embattled subculture rather than the confidence of an ascendent force."

In the second part of Bad Religion, Douthat discussed four "heresies" that have come to dominate contemporary American culture and America's still ostensibly Christian religion: "heresies" he calls "Lost in the Gospels" (a fashion for finding a "real" Jesus prior to and apart from the historical Church), "Pray and Grow Rich" (an uncritical reconciliation of Christianity with prosperity), "the God Within" (a pyschologized, self-absorbed religiosity, what Philip Rieff famously warned against in his 1966 classic, The Triumph of the Therapeutic), and finally "The City on the Hill" (our contemporary - and if anything significantly increased since 2012 - uncritical reduction of religion to politics). What all these "heresies" have in common - the goal of all heresies, according to Douthat - is "to extract from the tensions of the gospel narratives a more consistent, streamlined, and noncontradictory Jesus," in contrast to Christian orthodoxy's "fidelity to the whole of Jesus."

In our contemporary context, it is especially the fourth of these "heresies" that seems so especially salient, although I think all the others remain vigorous alternatives to traditional Christianity.

Douthat identified "four potential touchstones for a recovery of Christianity, each of which has both possibilities and limitations. The first, he called, "the postmodern opportunity" (the possibility of the Church confronting and responding to globalized rootlessness, widespread skepticism, and religious relativism as the Church has successfully confronted and responded to such forces in its past). Personally, I suspect that may account for some of the seeming revival of spirituality and religion that appears to be occurring at present in certain settings. The problem with that for religion, however, is the challenge "to avoid simply becoming a kind of warmed-over accommodationism," which may end up  ultimately more interested in adapting to the culture than in changing it."

A second strategy would be something akin to Rod Dreher's  "Benedict option" (a limited withdrawal from engagement with the world on the model of St. Benedict's monastic response to the Roman Empire's collapse). One problem with that, however, is that it "often seems to have little to say about the millions o baptized Christians whom separatism would effectively leave behind." Ancient Christians, after all, "did not just withdraw from a collapsing civilization" but "took responsibility for it as well."

The third possible avenue for Christian recovery Douthat called "the New Chrsitendom" (the growth of Third World Christianity and its impact on the American Church through immigration and missionary activity). On the other hand, as in fact we are already seeing some signs of in the years since Douthat wrote this, "the American way of religion" may changes immigrants, more than immigrants change American religion.

Finally, he proposed "an age of diminished expectations" (a crisis-induced reassessment "that's willing to reckon with the ways that bad theology and bad religion have helped bring us to our present pass"). That Douthat saw as contributing to the mid-century, postwar religious revival in the U.S.  On the other hand, he feared, "institutional failure may just end up inspiring Americans to be even more suspicious of any sort of religious authority, and more inclined to put their faiht only in the God they find within." That caution certainly seems warranted by recent experiences of Churches' institutional failures.

Douthat concluded with an exhortation to the kind of individual and communal faith that can animate what he calls "a Christian renaissance." He called for a faith that is "political without being partisan," which frees Christians to embrace different political positions, while being open to the Gospel's challenge to every ideology. He recalled how not that long ago "America's leading Evangelical politician was the antiwar environmentalist Republican Mark Hatfield, and one of its leading Catholic officeholders was the pro-life Democrat Sargent Shriver. But what, one wonders in the light of all that has happened since, would be required to enable anything like that now? Secondly, he suggested "a renewed Christianity should be ecumenical but also confessional" and offered Timothy Keller (The Reason for God, 2008) as a model. Thirdly, he proposed "a renewed Christianity should be moralistic but also holisitic." By this, he meant not downplaying Christianity's moral demands in the area of sexuality but also not acting as if there were only one, rather than seven, deadly sins - and not exclusively emphasizing culturally contentious issues such as homosexuality, while neglecting, for example, "the heterosexual divorce rate, the heterosexual retreat from marriage, and the heterosexual out-of-wedlock birthrate that should command the most attention from Christian moralists.""

Finally, Douthat insisted, "a renewed Christianity should be oriented toward sanctity and beauty." He concludes: "Only sanctity can justify Christianity's existence; only sanctity can make the case for faith; only sanctity, or the hope thereof, can ultimately redeem the world. ... To make any difference in our common life, Christianity must be lived - not as a means to social cohesion or national renewal, but as an end unto itself."

Therein, ultimately lies the challenge. It seems increasingly plausible to suggest that it is less secularization as once understood than it is the varieties of "bad religion" that Douthat described - consumeristic, psychologized, and politicized - that pose the greatest ongoing and continuing threats to authentic Christian revival in the U.S.

Palm Sunday

 

The Gospel [Luke 19:28-40] we heard at the beginning of our celebration today told us of Jesus’ festive Passover pilgrimage to Jerusalem, which has been dramatically reenacted in Palm Sunday processions all over the world for centuries – and most recently onscreen in the popular series The Chosen. The rest of the story, which we have just now heard [Luke 22:14-23:56], reveals the ultimate destination of that journey – to the cross and the tomb. We, of course, are the prime beneficiaries of this. It all happened, as we say every Sunday in the Creed, for us and for our salvation.

Thus, it is no accident that the cross in the central symbol of Christianity, because the cross of Jesus is precisely where we meet God in our world, just as the tomb – the eventually empty tomb – shows us where he is taking us.

In a world where suffering and death always seem to have the last word, the death of Jesus was God’s great act of solidarity with us in both our ordinary day-to-day suffering and our final mortality.

In itself, of course, there is not much to be said in favor of suffering. Nor should it be claimed (at least not without qualification) that we are automatically “ennobled” somehow by suffering. One can unfortunately live one’s entire life in anger rooted in resentment, as so much of our politics and public life seem to illustrate. 

Jesus, however, gives us a salutary counterexample, as every word he utters in his passion shows him reaching out to others – to the women of Jerusalem, to his executioners, to the convict being executed along with him – finally commending himself once and for all to his Father. 

So, this week we are invited to accompany Jesus to the cross and to the tomb

- to be consoled as were the women of Jerusalem,

- to be forgiven as were his executioners,

- to be remembered in his kingdom as was the dying criminal,

- and, finally, to be commended to his Father, with whom he now lives forever,

- because, thanks to Jesus’ cross, death no longer has the last word in our world.

Homily for Palm Sunday, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, April 13, 2025.

The White Lotus: Was It Worth It?

I was not a White Lotus fan prior to this season. I managed to skip over completely the HBO series' first two (and, apparently, more highly regarded) seasons. I finally tuned into season 3, curious about what all the attention was about. While I found the series somewhat repulsive on many levels, there is something about rich people behaving badly, especially rich people behaving badly in very beautiful places, that is perennially interesting. Envious or not, we are at least voyeuristic about the lives and bad behaviors of rich people, whom we invariably look up to and invest with unjustified power over us, and so we find a series such as this hard to resist.

By now, everyone who is remotely interested has seen the season 3 finale and knows everything that happened and may even have analyzed it all to death. At this point, what more is there to be said?

It is easy to characterize the obscenely wealthy characters in The White Lotus as malevolent in various ways, although it is their vacuousness that seems to dominate the scene and characterize their behavior most of the time. Their much prized wealth and good looks open many doors, largely closed in real life to their envious audience. But anything resembling real happiness somehow seems determined to elude them. Only marginally more interesting as people are the hotel's workers - notably the two who have the most significant plots, Belinda and Gaitok - who are portrayed as seemingly good persons, who are inevitably roped in by their envy of the what their social betters have.

A lot of choices are made by these people. Rick refuses (fatally) to take the advice of his girlfriend, Chelsea, the only person who loves him and offers him a better path, choosing instead to remain stuck in his personal path of self-pity and vindictiveness, rooted in what turns out to have been a lie his mother had told him. (He also sets the stage for that tragic end by the utterly stupid choice, which no normal person would have made, to return to the hotel - as if nothing had happened - after attacking its owner in Bangkok, an obvious intimation of even more harmful choices to come.) Piper makes a choice to abandon her life of pseudo-Buddhist virtue-signaling and admit instead that she really likes being rich - almost getting herself killed in the process and just into time to become really rather than performatively poor. Saxon seems actually to learn something (how much is unclear) from his experience. He actually listens to Chelsea (more than Rick does) and so, maybe, has a shot at becoming a decent person in his new circumstances back home, instead of the "soulless" person Chelsea had originally called him. Belinda makes the most dramatic choice, chucking all her moral scruples to become really rich. (She too had set  up her situation by her amazingly stupid choice to identify herself to a man she believed to be a murderer, something most sensible people offstage would probably avoid doing.) Gaitok, at the very low end of the White Lotus social hierarchy, struggles between remaining an unambitious nice guy with limited prospects, professionally and romantically, and heeding his own Lady Macbeth (Mook) as she strives to motivate him to become more practical and ambitious. In the end, he gets both the career and the girl. However morally compromised, Gaitok and Belinda at least get a materially happy ending of sorts. So do the most vacuous rich guests, the three life-long girlfriends, who come out of the experience at least able to appreciate what they have in one another. (That's a nice ending for them, but the turnaround - beautifully expressed in Carrie Coon's monologue - comes about too suddenly, with little explanation.)

One of the best lines in the show, which summarizes its moral compass so well is when Piper's mother Victoria assures her that the morally right thing to do with excess wealth is to enjoy it. Anything else would be offensive to the millions without wealth who are striving to attain it. Unfortunately even the enjoyment is somewhat circumscribed and in many cases quite dangerous.

Dramatically, the ending is unsatisfying. How does the family just get on the book without any reference to Lochlan's near-death experience? Does Saxon feel nothing about Chelsea's death? Likewise, her supposed friend Chloe? And the Russian thugs just go on as before, unpunished in a manifestly unjust world.

Even with enormous wealth, the world cannot completely be controlled, and the characters are forced to negotiate situations they would not have chosen. But, within those parameters, there remains much room for moral realignment, good and bad, and for finding what finally matters most in one's particular life. 

Susanna

 

Today's Old Testament reading at Mass [Daniel 13] recounts the Book of Daniel's dramatic story of Susanna, set in the Jewish exile community in Babylon. The story of Susanna was a popular one in the early Church and has long been a staple of the lenten liturgy.

It tells the story of Susanna, wife of very respected Jewish elder Joakim, who is trapped by two corrupt Jewish elders who falsely accuse her of committing adultery under a tree with some unidentified young man. After Susanna is unjustly condemned to death, she calls on God, who hears her prayer and stirs up young Daniel to challenge the elders and defend Susanna's innocence. Daniel interrogates the elders separately, thereby catching them in their lie. It is a classic morality tale about how God saves those who hope in him. 

Thus was innocent blood spared that day.

Then as now, people were conscious of and alert to political corruption and the unfairness of things, thanks to some people's privileged positions. Societies - such as our own - have often prided themselves on practicing justice. In human terms, justice, judging people according to their deserts and merits rather than their wealth, status, or political power, is something we value as a great accomplishment of civilization. We compare societies by how just they are - or at least appear to be. Around the world right now, people are judging us the United States by how just or unjust we appear to be in the ways we treat one another in society, how our government treats those lacking in wealth, status, or political power.

In the Lenten liturgy, this reading has traditionally been paired with John's Gospel account of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery [John 8:1-11], which we heard yesterday. Unlike Susanna, the woman the Gospel account was presumably actually guilty and had been judged justly and condemned justly according to fair application of the law. Thanks to Jesus, the woman gets off and is told by Jesus, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on do not sin any longer.”

The point of the comparison is not to devalue justice, but to praise and glorify God's great mercy. Justice is a great thing, a great human accomplishment societies should aspire to and be proud of. But, as Portia says in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice: "In the course of justice, none of us should see salvation." When it comes to what we need the most, mercy outranks justice any time.

Homily for Monday of the Fifth Week of Lent, Saint Paul the Apostle, NY, April 7, 2025.

Fight: The 2024 Election Relived

 

After the shock of the Trump's victory in the 2016 election, journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes wrote Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign. The authors covered the campaign primarily through "background" interviews and a commitment to wait until after the election to go in print. Now that Trump has done it again, so have the authors. Their latest account is Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House (Harper Collins, 2025).

Fight focuses on the story as it played out in the aftermath of the disastrous Biden-Trump debate in June 2024.  The first - and by far most interesting part of the book - covers what, for lack of a better word, can be called the coup that removed Biden from the top of the Democratic ticket. Clearly the authors think that Biden decisively damaged Democrats' chances, first, by irresponsibly deciding to run for a second term, and, then, by resisting removal from the ticket for weeks following the debate debacle. The book highlights the intra-party conflicts that led to Biden's stepping aside, especially the role of Democratic heavyweights like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama, whose personal relationships with Biden deteriorated dramatically as a result. The book also highlights the role of money in American presidential campaigns, the decisive significance ascribed to the way donors's money started to dry up in the aftermath of Biden's poor debate performance. Fight illustrates how Kamala Harris deftly and successfully moved quickly to win the nomination (despite opposition from Pelosi and Obama), but was unable ever really to overcome the factors working against her chances of winning, not least the widespread impression that she never articulated very well her reason for running. The book highlights how Harris successfully maneuvered Biden into endorsing her, but also suggests that Biden's endorsement also reflected his resentment of Obama, who had supported Clinton over Biden in 2016.

The book does not neglect the Trump campaign, but its beginning point precludes coverage of Trump's re-ascent from his post-January 6 nadir. We get coverage of the political maneuvering within the Trump campaign, how well the Trump campaign was actually managed, the assassination attempt and its effects on the campaign, the selection of J.D. Vance as Trump's running mate, and, of course, Trump's effective outreach to low-propensity voters and use of new social media. Obviously, these are important and interesting topics. But overwhelmingly, at least to this reader, what this book highlights most is the Biden-Harris story, and the "gaslighting" that the authors believe best describes the Democratic party's 2024 story - "gaslighting," first, about Biden's apparent decline, and, "gaslighting," then, about the prospects for Harris to win. As someone who had come to believe, by the end of the campaign, that Harris had a realistic chance of winning, I really appreciated the convincing way the authors demonstrate how very poor her chances really were.

This "gaslighting" theme inevitably highlights how dysfunctional the Democratic party's leadership became in 2024. "Democrats tried to break Donald Trump. Instead, they shattered again. They said they were saving the country the presidency, and the Congress from Trump and his MAGA movement. They saved nothing, not even themselves. Democrats lost everything, including their friendships."

Greenland Isn't Green

 

Most people probably already know that Greenland isn't green. But, if he didn't know it already, Vice President Vance presumably knows that now, after his chilly reception in Greenland. It was chilly in the literal sense. (Greenland is a cold place.) It was, perhaps more importantly, chilly in a metaphorical sense, in that the Vances had to scale back their plans because no local Greenlanders could be found who wanted to host them.

Greenland isn't green. Much of it is glacier-covered. It is no accident, then, that the King of Denmark's Coat of Arms includes a polar bear to represent his sovereignty over Greenland.  Recently, since the American threat to Greenland has become something to be reckoned with, Denmark's King revised his coat of arms to give Greenland's polar bear bigger space in a heraldic quadrant all its own. On can compare the older (on the left) and the newer (on the right) versions of the Danish royal coat of arms (above).

Of course, to a grifter, Greenland might appear green in a very different sense. There are natural resources there to be exploited and hence money to be made. And one thing America never seems to lack are Americans ready to exploit natural resources, regardless of the harm to the common good and to our common home. 

Greenland's location in the north Atlantic makes it significant for American and European security. But Greenland (via Denmark) is part of NATO, the north Atlantic's surest source of security, and the U.S. already has a military base on Greenland, guarding the sea lanes and the arctic air. For its part, Denmark has been a very loyal ally of the United States, actively supporting us in peace and war.

There are not a lot of Greenlanders. They are a very small nation, suddenly experiencing the classic bad behavior of great powers pushing their smaller neighbors around (as we have witnessed most extremely in the case of Russia's 2022 invasion of its smaller neighbor Ukraine). It appears that some, maybe many, local Greenlanders would like independence. If I were a Greenlander, I would probably prefer to remain Danish, with Danish and European Union social benefits and NATO's security umbrella. Denmark does, after all, repeatedly rank as one of the happiest countries in the world. But that is ultimately up to the Greenlanders and the Danes to sort out. Whatever Greenland's future, it should be the business of Greenlanders and Danes to determine.

The Last Supper (The Movie)

 

I have not fully followed The Chosen, the first-ever multi-season TV series about the life of Christ. I have watched just a few episodes from the first season. But yesterday I went to the theater to see the latest episode, The Chosen; The Last Supper, Part 1. 

The series itself has gotten great reviews. From what I have heard from others who have followed it more faithfully, for the little I have seen myself, and finally from watching this in-theater episode, it is certainly impressive. The series is beautifully filmed, conveying a real feel for what the world of the New Testament - at that very specific place and time must have been like. It illustrates first-century Jewish life, which we Christians need to appreciate as much as possible. It also illustrates what kind of dramatic affect Jesus had on people's lives, people whose lives which until then had been otherwise ordinary but were suddenly being dramatically challenged to transformation through their experience of and relationship with Jesus.

As I remarked in regard to the current series House of David, one of the problems with dramatizing biblical narratives is that there is a lot of space to fill in with what must inevitably be made-up events, stories, and even characters. In the case of House of David, the downside of this is evident in the effort and amount of fictionalization required required to fill eight episodes with only three chapters of the biblical account. The latest episode seemed totally like a forced attempt to make up enough to fill in the time so as to get in one more episode. I haven't seen enough of The Chosen to be certain that this series avoids that pitfall. What I have seen suggests it is doing a more interesting job of filling in the spaces between actual biblical events.

That said, The Last Supper, Part 1, is really more about the first few days of Holy Week than about the Last Supper itself, which is only shown in intermittent excerpts of Jesus' Last Supper Discourse. The highlights of the evening (e.g., the foot washing, the Eucharist) are presumably being saved for a later episode. Instead of the Last Supper itself, this movie is about the triumphal entry into the city on Palm Sunday and the cleansing of the Temple (which the Gospels suggest occurred right away, but which the movie makes happen a day or two later). Both are well dramatized, and both are preceded and followed by fictionalized events that seem intended obviously to fit in with the bigger events and help interpret them (for example, the Gentiles from the Decapolis perplexed reaction to the Temple commerce and their wonder what Jesus would think of it).

This is the season for biblical dramas - especially passion plays. The Chosen; The Last Supper seems to do a better than average job of filling that niche of seasonal expectation, with something that definitely invites us to put ourselves into the story and imagine personally how Jesus' activities impacted his surroundings and what they are meant to mean for us today.

Abundance (The Book)

 

Ezra Klein is a well known NY Times political columnist and podcaster, originally from California, now based in Brooklyn, and author of Why We're Polarized (2020). Derek Thompson is an Atlantic staff writer and also a podcaster. The two have teamed up to produce Abundance (Simon and Schuster, 2025).

Abundance is dedicated to what its authors consider a simple idea, but which they and we know to be actually a quite controversial one, that "to have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need." They oppose this to a 21st-century American "story of chosen scarcities." Thus agenda transcends the 20th-century political dichotomy between "a right that fought the government and a left that hobbled it."

As anyone familiar with the way these issues have come to be framed recognizes, this book is a conversation largely within the progressive left. It expresses "the anger any liberal should feel when looking at the states and cities liberals govern." California, for example, "has the worst homelessness problem in the country. It has the worst hosing affordability problem in the country. It trails only Hawaii and Massachusetts in its cost of living. As a result, it is losing hundreds of thousands of people every year to Texas and Arizona." The authors also highlight the consequent effect ineffective progressive misgovernment in such places has had electorally - in the form of the rise of populist Trumpism.

In their argument for a retrieval of growth politics, the authors take on the misanthropic antigrowth politics that they see as having developed somewhat in tandem with the environmental movement and related quality-of-life concerns in the last 50-60 years.  Back then, the rising anti-growth ideologies sometimes attacked Christianity. Here. the authors rebut that attack. They call degrowth "an anti-materialist philosophy that holds that humanity made its fundamental errors, hundreds of years ago, trading the animism of our ancestors for Christianity's promise of dominion over nature."

The book gos into great detail illustrating the ways in which liberal preoccupations with process have frustrated and stunted the outcomes liberals ought to have been seeking. I live in New York City, a city that once epitomized what America could build. Imagine anyone trying to build the Empire State building in just a year today? Let alone trying to build enough housing for everyone who wants to live here?

But the authors believe that this may be one of those rare periods in our national history, "when the decline of one political order makes space for another." They recall how the New Deal political order arose in the 1930s and then collapsed in the 1970s, to be replaced by the neo-liberal order which has been fracturing under the weight of the Great Recession, the climate crisis, the pandemic, and "our interlocking crises of scarcity, supply, and unaffordability." In such times of transition, "ideas once regarded as implausible and unacceptable become possible and even inevitable."

So is it time for such a retrieved politics of abundance? The authors see the politics of scarcity  in the currently reigning right-wing populism, which "seeks power by closing doors, halting change, and venerating the businesses and dominance hierarchies of the past. So too is the sense that governments today are weak and corrupt and, therefore, that strongmen are needed to see the world clearly and deliver on democracy's failed promises." Meanwhile, however, Blue America remains stuck in its own scarcity politics. The authors' argument is that, given the right's abandonment of its many successes (e.g., the Texas housing market, Operation Warp Speed) in order to embrace a politics of scarcity, there may now be room for liberals to embrace the politics of abundance that Republicans have abandoned.

This is a very thoughtful and provocative book. It is hard to contest its data. But diagnosing where we have historically gone wrong is always easier than producing the political solution that may be needed. At present, the left lacks political power, without which little can be accomplished. To acquire power - and to use it effectively in our present predicament - require a kind of liberal "strongman," a liberal anti-Trump, an FDR for the 21st century, who can coalesce a new coalition that can be led to embrace not just more of the same, but a new political order, responsive to the new challenges of the present. Whether the current opposition party can rise to that challenge remains yet to be seen.

77

 

Our span is seventy years or eighty for those who are strong. And most of these are emptiness and pain. They pass swiftly and we are gone (Psalm 90:10).

Those familiar words from the psalter, recited regularly for a lifetime in the ordinary course of the Divine Office, take on a special salience on one's birthday - especially when one is in his late 70s, on a day like today when I celebrate turning 77.

Frankly, the first feeling I have as I turn 77 is simply gratitude - gratitude at having lived this long, at being still around after so many years and so many experiences and so much that has happened both to me and to the world that no one would have anticipated on this date back in 1948. 

It is good to be alive, in tolerably decent health, much slowed down but nowhere near stopped. It is good to remember the people I have known, the places I have been, the things I have done - and also the opportunities missed and other inevitable regrets. (No honestly examined life is without its regrets.) 

Today, it feels good to reflect on where I have been, not mainly for nostalgia or regret, but for where I am going in whatever time may yet be given me.

 

What's Going On?

 

“Why do bad things happen to good people?” Some of us here are old enough to remember that as the title of a popular 1980s best-seller. Long before then however, as today’s gospel [Luke 13:1-9] suggests, this was a perennial problem and an endlessly asked question.

 

Since even Jesus in today’s Gospel avoided answering the questions directly, neither will I be so presumptuous as to attempt an answer here. Jesus’ refusal to speculate why bad things happen to good people in life – or, for that matter, why good things happen to bad people – appears almost as enigmatic and mysterious as God’s answer to Moses’ somewhat impertinent insistence on asking God’s name [Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15]. God reveals himself not through philosophical and moral speculations about what is going on in the world but by otherwise unforeseen personal initiatives. Maybe I Am merely means that God exists, as opposed to false gods who do not, and was God’s way of telling Moses that some things about God that are just mysterious, as if God were saying, “I am who I am and that’s all you need to know.” Maybe that’s why the real Moses (in contrast to the famous 1950s movie’s Moses) refrained from asking God the obvious question, why it has taken God so long to react to his people’s suffering in Egypt and hear their cry of complaint.

 

On the other hand, God is obviously showing personal interest in his people’s problems. Moses may not have asked, but he may still have wondered why they had to have those problems.  Well may we wonder as well. Likewise, those anonymous some people who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices may well have wondered why good Galilean pilgrims on pilgrimage in Jerusalem had been killed by Roman soldiers. And why, for that matter, had 18 innocent people been accidentally killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them?

 

The last example reminds me of Thornton Wilder’s famous 1927 novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which revolves around seeking some connection among the apparently random victims of a bridge’s collapse – in the hope of explaining why they, in particular, died instead of someone else.

 

Of course, no one needs to read a novel to find plenty of comparable examples in real life, which is full of natural disasters and as many multiple tragedies and injustices of human making. All these things inevitably inspire people to wonder. Could it possibly be that we, whose lives have so far been spared, who are lucky to live lives of affluence and abundance, are somehow more worthy or deserving or virtuous than those who haven’t been so lucky? The question itself seems absurd and maybe morally repugnant. The very universality and randomness of so much human suffering would seem to rebut the logic of any explanation, even if our all-too-human desire to impose some order and logic on the apparently arbitrary randomness of so much of what happens causes us to engage in such speculations in the first place.

 

As if to pre-empt any such speculation, Jesus just rejected it out of hand, telling us, in effect, don’t go there.  Focus instead, he seems to be saying, on where we do have agency, particuarly on our universal need for conversion and repentance. By becoming one with us in the burning bush, by becoming one of us in Jesus, God has, so to speak, agreed to meet us where we are at. But where we are at, Jesus warns us, may not be such a good place after all. Hence his parable – simultaneously so comforting and so threatening – of the unproductive fig tree.

 

Now most people would probably agree that the whole point of cultivating a fig tree is to produce figs. A fruit-less fig tree hardly warrants the work involved in cultivating it year after year. If there were ever an obvious application for the slogan “three strikes and you’re out,” this would seem to be it. After all, how likely would it be that, after three fruitless years, yet another year’s effort might make the tree bloom at last? Not much!

Yet the gardener in Jesus’ parable is willing to give it one more try. Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future.

 

To us, impatient people that we are, the thing to do with an unproductive tree would be to stop wasting soil and effort and just cut it down. But God patiently postpones cutting us down. He gives us extra, even lavish attention, cultivating and fertilizing us, revealing himself to us more and more clearly, and more and more fully, through Moses and others, finally sending us his Son as his final and fullest revelation of himself, his final and fullest expression of his patience and mercy, the one piece of really good news in our otherwise dismal history.

 

As this saga of God’s long-lasting mercy toward the human race reveals so dramatically, amid the world’s cacophony of otherwise bad news and in spite of all that is wrong with the world, God has been opening up new perspectives and opportunities and has been incredibly patient to us in spite of everything. The challenge, however, is that, while God’s patience and mercy may be infinite, we are not. The world may be in a mess, but meanwhile we have to avail ourselves of God’s limitless patience and mercy in the inevitably limited time each of us has.

 

Lent is our annual reminder, our annual wake-up call, challenging us to bear fruit in spite of everything else that seems so wrong right now, to put God’s patience and mercy to good use – right here right now.

 

Homily for the Third Sunday of Lent, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, March 23, 2025.

A Frighteningly Contemporary Crime Drama

 

Adolescence is a powerfully gripping (and at times somewhat emotionally frightening) four-episode British mini-series recently released on Netflix.

Episode one begins with the shocking arrest of a 13-year old, Jamie Miller, at his seemingly peaceful and ordinary family home early one morning, on suspicion of murder. Jamie claims to be innocent, and continues to protest his innocence through the horrifying experience of arrest and questioning at the local police station. Most of the episode seems set up to make the audience sympathize with the traumatized young Jamie and his terrified family. Not only do we want to believe in Jamie's innocence, but the dramatic expectation built into this kind of crime drama normally leads one to expect - even as the evidence against Jamie accumulates - that at some point the case could collapse and someone else's guilt will be uncovered. Jamie meanwhile desperately wants his father to believe in his innocence, as if that could undo what has happened and, so to speak, fix the situation. Only in the second episode, set three days later at Jamie's school, when the detectives try to gather evidence (and perhaps the murder weapon) from Jamie's unruly schoolmates, do we begin to realize that this is not a typical  "whodunit," and that the drama is less about who committed the crime than about why it happened. Meanwhile, at the school (an "academy," with lots of stairs, where students wear uniforms and generally behave badly), we are  introduced into a really frightening world where teenagers appear to live primarily on-line, a world which adults (police, parents, and teachers) all seem incapable of comprehending. 

Episodes three and four take place respectively seven and thirteen months after the crime. The interesting minor characters (and sub-plots) we have been introduced to in the first two episodes, about which we might expect to see and hear more (like the story of the detective and his son, a student at that school), disappear. The tone changes dramatically from the more typical crime-drama of the first two episodes. Now that we know what happened, we are supposed to focus on the reasons why. Thus, episode three depicts the (now incarcerated) teenager's interview with a psychologist assigned to prepare a report on him for the judge. Their conversation continues and highlights a terrifying world of adolescent on-line and in-person bullying and male sexual obsession, that was earlier alluded to already in the second episode. In the course of episodes two and three, we learn about some of the factors that apparently contributed to Jamie’s crime, such as his extreme lack of self-esteem, his experience of being bullied at school, and especially the on-line world's mixed messages about masculinity and the fear of being labeled an "incel." Then, the final episode, set over a year after the crime, focuses on Jamie's parents and sister and how they have coped with this family crisis and the inevitable feelings of recrimination and guilt which these multiple tragic events have left them with. There are no family secrets to be uncovered (as one might be tempted to expect there will be), just seemingly ordinary people experiencing sadness and regret over something that can no longer be fixed.

This is a very difficult series to take in. It is depressing and at times shocking. It invites us to examine what kinds of messages contemporary on-line culture may be conveying and how such messages may further complicate the already chaotic challenges of growing up unsure of who one is or whether one is valued. It also challenges contemporary society not only about what boys may experience but also about how society should respond and better enable them to to navigate through this increasingly toxic and dangerous world of masculine expectations and pseudo-expectations.

The Leopard

 

Several years ago, when I was still in Tennessee, I read The Leopard (Il Gattopardo) a wondefrul novel by Italian writer Giuseppe Tomasi de Lampedusa, which chronicles the changes in Sicilian life and society during the Risorgimento that resulted in Sicily becoming part of the newly unified kingdom of Italy. The author was the last in a line of minor Sicilian princes, and he based the novel on his great-grandfather, Prince Don Giulio Fabrizio Tomasi. Published in 1958, it became one of the top-selling novels in Italian history and is regarded as one of the more important novels in modern Italian literature.  Lampedusa's elegy to fading Sicilian aristocracy has sometimes been compared to Gone With the Wind, in its intimate, familial portrayal of a certain type of society doomed to give way to modernity, in this case in the form of the unified kingdom of Italy in the 1860s. In 1963, the novel was made into a film, which I have not seen. Now, however, it has reappeared as a series on Netflix.

Probably the book's most memorable sentence is “For things to remain the same, everything must change.” The story, both in the book and in the Netflix series is ultimately all about the process of socio-political change (in this case Italian unification), who benefits (and who doesn't), and the toll the process takes on everyone, both those who adhere to the old and those who fight for the new.

Like the novel, the Netflix series starts in 1860 with Garibaldi's Redshirts invading Sicily to overthrow the Bourbon monarchy and (eventually) unite Sicily and southern Italy with the northern Italian Piedmontese kingdom of Sardinia ruled by Vittorio Emmanuele II, who in 1861 will be proclaimed king of a united Italy (which at that point still lacked Austrian ruled Venice and papal ruled Rome). The series alludes to these political events and their consequences, but it is mainly their consequences as experienced by a small group of central characters centered around Don Fabrizio Cordera, Prince of Salina, his wife and children, most especially his daughter Concetta, his favored nephew Tancredi, who fights for Garibaldi and then becomes an official in the Turin government,  and is at various time sin love with Concetta, but marries thr mayor's rich and ambitious daughter Angelica. 

The series compresses the story, which in the book ends with Concetta's retrospectives as an old woman in 1910. In the Netflix series everything (including Concetta's later recollections) takes place in real time in the early 1860s. It ends with the Prince's death, which effectively symbolizes the end of the old society although aspects of it (including the family's continued rule over its lands) do continue even under the new regime.

The series deftly combines the social and political changes the Prince and his fellow Sicilians are forced to adapt to with more personal familial crises which transcend the immediacy of politics. The three-way love entanglement of Tancredi, Angelica, and Concetta is simultaneously a time transcending familial crisis of love, affection, and loyalty, as well as also a parable of the changing mix of confusing affections and loyalties that accompany social and political change.

All this Netflix does in the most visually beautiful and engaging manner. One feels as well as sees the beauty of the Sicilian landscape, the grandeur of the life stye of its aristocracy, the increasing tensions in society and Church, and the growing attractiveness of the new Italy. The Netflix version of The Leopard combines the book's timeless love story and historically specific social and political conflicts with a gorgeous sensate display that effectively reflects Sicily's natural beauty and its historical problematic of attraction and repulsion.

Photo: Cover of the first Italian edition of the book (1958).

 

O Canada!

 

"I, Mark Carney, do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be a true and faithful servant to His Majesty King Charles III as a member of His Majesty's Privy Council for Canada." With these words, the new leader of Canada's Liberal party became Prime Minister of Canada. In explicitly promising "true faith and allegiance" to His Majesty the King of Canada, the Prime Minister implicitly rejected any contrary or competing allegiance to King Donald of the United States.

I spent six happy years stationed at a parish in downtown Toronto. So I likely have enjoyed more on-site personal experience of Canada than many other Americans have. Also, even back when we still seriously studied history in our schools, the snippets anyone learned about Canada were likely few and far between - and almost certainly U.S.-centric. So it is safe to say that few Americans really know enough about our peaceful and friendly neighbor to the north. Some seem barely aware of its existence as an independent nation, from whom we long ago separated when the two parts of what was then British North America divided and went their very separate ways.

That said, Canada and the U.S. are neighbors, who have peacefully shared a common border since the War of 1812. We are different, but we have much in common. Only now, thanks to the Trump Administration's unaccountably aggressive policy of rediscovered Manifest Destiny, do the differences seem to matter so much more. Those differences are not only real, they derive from the very different histories of our two countries and our different founding experiences.

At the time of our initial separation - the successful revolt by British colonists located largely along the eastern seaboard, who were unwilling to pay their share of taxes, the event that we now remember as the America Revolution - the European colonists in what is now Canada were largely Quebecois, that is, French settlers and traders, whose mother country had been defeated in the Seven Years War (known among English-speakers in North America as The French and Indian War) and who were now suddenly subjects of the British Crown. Presumably, such subjection was reluctant initially, but it was hardly intolerable, thanks to the Quebec Act of 1763, which guaranteed free practice of Roman Catholicism and restored certain of the Church's legal status, as well as maintaining some aspects of French civil law. This incensed the largely Protestant British colonists to the south and was one of their complaints in their 1776 Declaration of Independence: "He [the King] has combined with others [Parliament] ... giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation ... For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province." 

It was no wonder, therefore, that, when a delegation of American rebels tried to persuade Canadians in Quebec to join in our revolution, their efforts were roundly rejected. The American revolutionaries had already attempted a military conquest of Quebec in 1775-1776 and failed. A more peaceful approach followed in the negotiating efforts of the delegation, which included Benjamin Franklin, Charles Carroll of Maryland, the best known Roman Catholic in the Colonies, and his ex-Jesuit cousin, John Carroll, the future first Bishop of Baltimore. The intense anti-Catholicism of the Continental Congress and the secure status Quebec's Catholics already enjoyed under British rule guaranteed the futility of all such efforts on the part of the revolutionaries.

The American Revolution was really a civil war between revolutionaries and loyalists (with as many as one-third of the colonists sitting on the fence). After the war, many of the loyalists left. - either for Britain or for Canada. (Unlike the U.S. in Vietnam in 1975 and Afghanistan in 2021, the British remained in New York until they had evacuated as many loyalists as possible.) Many loyalists settled in what is now Ontario, and became the basis of Canada's bi-lingual founding identity. (One of our parish staff when I was a priest in Toronto was a descendent of United Empire Loyalists.)

The separation between the two countries was solidified after the U.S. unwisely declared war on Britain in June 1812. Once again, the U.S. invaded, and once again the attempt ended in catastrophe. In April 1813, American troops occupied York (now Toronto) and burned Upper Canada's Parliament building. In retaliation, the British occupied Washington, DC, and burned the Capitol and the White House. The pointless war ended inconclusively, but it conclusively created a distinctive Canadian identity which has ever since remained different from that of its southern neighbor.

In 1841, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty definitively settled the border between eastern Canada and the U.S., and in 1846, the 49th parallel was set as the border between the rest of Canada and the U.S. A final border treaty was signed in 1908. For most of the time since the end of the War of 1812, Canada and the U.S have lived next to each other in peace, each country developing in its own way. Canada became noted for "peace, order, and good government," and more recently for its national health care. The U.S. in contrast has emphasized individual liberties, like virtually unrestricted gun ownership and the right to  be victimized by inadequate health care controlled by for-profit insurance companies. 

I am an American, born and bred, happy to be so. But my years working in Canada have  given me an appreciation of the particular paths Canadian national development has taken, from which we self-regarding Americans could learn some lessons.. 

Despite our differences, the historical and cultural similarities between our two nations have mattered more. Canada and the U.S. are each other's principal trading partner, are NATO allies, and have forged the closest cooperation possible militarily for the common defense of North America. None of that should be forgotten or ignored, which suddenly seems to be happening thanks to an amazingly unwise turn in the U.S. posture toward Canada in the current administration.

Et ta valeur, de foi trempée, Protégera nos foyers et nos droits, Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.

House of David

House of David is an 8-episode series that retells the biblical story of King David's rise from youngest son (stuck tending the sheep) to King of Israel. Its first three episodes premiered on February 27, and season finale will be on April 3. Already in its first week, this series reached second place on Prime's most watched list.

Any retelling of the biblical story of David could easily be done in a few episodes, certainly in a single season at most. So, as with all such attempts (e.g., The Chosen) dramatization demands fictionalization, filling in the gaps in the story with imagined additional developments in the lives of the characters - and indeed with imagined additional characters. Season one starts with Saul's disobedience of Samuel after his victory over the Amalekites and will end (so it appears) with David's defeat of Goliath. That is all of just three chapters in the first book of Samuel. So, obviously, narrative engagement requires considerable additional amplification of the biblical account. In itself, this is perfectly legitimate. In theory, this allows more in-depth character development, helping the once universally familiar biblical story become more fully accessible to contemporary audiences.

On the other hand, the series, while well produced and visually appealing, may (in my opinion) perhaps go too far in amplifying the biblical account, adding questionable elements not only without any obvious basis in the story (e.g., David's illegitimacy) but also explicitly contradicting the biblical story (e.g., the death of David's mother when he was a child, which explicitly contradicts 1 Samuel 22:3-4). How dramatically helpful such dubious additional aspects are may be debated, but I think it may be a mistake when the biblical account is explicitly contradicted or obviously distorted.

Again, while the series is generally well done dramatically, it may test the patience of anyone who knows the actual account and wonders when it will finally get around to those exciting events themselves. In the four episodes aired so far, we have seen Samuel's rejection of Saul and alternative anointing of David in secret, followed (as in the actual account) by Saul's being tormented by an evil spirit and the summons to David to attend Saul and play the harp for him. Everything else in the series so far is made up - including the fact that Saul's daughter is presented as instrumental in bringing David to the king's court. The series seems to want to make more than may be warranted out of the romance between David and Saul's daughter Michal - including (contrary to the biblical account) anticipating the romance by initiating Michal's attraction to David well before David's defeat of Goliath. Given that David's first marriage will in fact be neither happy nor dynastically significant, this seems a somewhat strange choice, unless, of course, it was simply deemed dramatically required to highlight a romance as a necessary condition for accessibility to a contemporary audience. The hero has to fall in love and be seen at least in part as motivated by such!

Be all that as it may, the numerous fictional sub-plots (including a story about Saul's unsatisfactory second son Ishbaal) makes me at least a little impatient for the series to get on to the (what I would consider) much more compelling drama of the actual characters from the actual biblical account. If the series ultimately falls short in my estimation, it may well be because it goes so far in focusing on minor characters and their fictional sub-plots rather than emphasizing the very real drama inherent in the primary figures in the story.

Still, the series is well worth watching. It manages to depict, in an apparently convincing way, what life at that place and time (c. 1000 BC), in such a society so different from ours, may have been like. Moreover, in its own roundabout way, it does seem to highlight the biblical account's fundamental theme of God's election of David and providential purpose for him in Israel's history (and, hence, in salvation history).

Five Years Ago

It is a truism that, when a new year begins, none of us knows how it will end. But that was more than typically true five years ago. When 2020 began, I was in a somber mood because I knew I was beginning the final months of my assignment as a pastor in Tennessee. Not only did I love being a pastor, but I was definitely not looking forward to my imminent (chronologically inevitable, but no less undesirable for being inevitable) demotion to "senior status." Meanwhile, parish life was continuing its accustomed pace, while the wider world was watching President Trump's first impeachment trial and the Democratic primary debates. Super Tuesday would come in March, by which time the Democrats' nomination contest would effectively be all finished, although that was not yet the case when I availed myself of "early voting" in the hectic weeks before Super Tuesday.

I am not sure when I first heard of the new coronavirus sweeping through China. February saw the usual winter flu epidemic - enough to close schools for a few days and for the diocese to prohibit Communion from the chalice until March 1. By the end of February, when the directive came to resume the chalice, I was already aware of the new virus from abroad and wondered whether we might do better to prolong the prohibition. Nonetheless, everything seemed normal as Lent began with the usual crowds coming for ashes on February 26 and the usual Friday Fish Fry and Stations two days later.

Unvesting after Ash Wednesday noon Mass, however, I got a call from my sister in California informing me that my mother had been taken to the hospital. At 97, she had been slowing down, but she had seemed normal enough on the phone only a few days before. We had the Rite of Sending for the Catechumens on Sunday as usual, but I spent much of the week on the phone as my mother's condition quickly worsened. By Monday, we were arranging for home hospice care, but that was cancelled on Tuesday as it suddenly became clear that she would not be leaving the hospital after all. On Thursday, March 5, my mother died. (That same day, although I probably paid insufficient attention, Tennessee conformed its first covid case.) Meanwhile, the family started planning the funeral, and I made travel plans for California. 

That weekend, we had guests at the house and went out to dinner together (for what turned out to be our last restaurant dinner together that year). On Monday I went to the doctor for a pre-scheduled appointment. I talked about my mother's death and my feelings about presiding at my mother's funeral. Unexpectedly, the doctor discouraged me from making the trip! Then, the next day, Tuesday, we had a diocesan priests' meeting, at which anxiety was beginning to be widely expressed. When I spoke privately with the Bishop about my mother's death and my imminent travel plans, he recommended that we postpone the funeral and I avoid any travel! The next day, WHO declared a pandemic. The State of California forced us, first, to cancel the lunch we were planning to host after the funeral and, then, the funeral Mass itself. On the day when I had been scheduled to travel, I watched horror scenes of panic at Chicago's airport, where I had originally expected to be changing planes that day. That same day, Monday, March 16, the Mayor declared a state of emergency.

Attendance was down at Sunday Mass on March 15, and I celebrated an abridged Scrutiny Rite. That turned out to be the last regularly attended Sunday Mass for more than two months. Life had gotten tense as the worldwide crisis quickly closed in on us. By the end of the week, Tennessee, California, and most of the rest of the country had effectively shut down, something none of us had ever experienced before.

Family grief was put on hold. (It would ultimately be 15 months before we would bury my mother.) A weird panic set in. I wore gloves when putting gas in the car, and I left the mail out on the porch for a day for the sun to kill any viruses on the envelopes! Instead of answering condolence cards, I started a daily email to keep in touch with parishioners, which I continued until my last day as pastor. Happily, my tenure as pastor was extended until December, which was good for parish stability, but also beneficial for me personally.

We were directed to "live stream" Sunday Mass, something I had no idea how to do. Fortunately, I was able to get guidance from a seminarian in Washington and much needed assistance from some parishioners. Eventually we invested in cameras and other equipment, which are still in use there today. But, for the first few weeks, it was just myself at the altar, with someone sitting in the nave "live streaming" on my laptop!

By late May, Mass resumed under constricted conditions - masks, social distancing, spraying the pews with disinfectant between Masses. All things considered, we got through it all rather well, but political polarization was setting in over contentious issues such as masking, and local divisions developed that echoed the wider national conflicts, which have only gotten worse in the years since then.

The heartache was enormous, but somehow I made it through the year without catching covid. Only one person in the house got sick. Only one parishioner died of it (on New year's Eve, literally on my last day as pastor). I got to celebrate my 25th anniversary of ordination in October with a modestly attended, live streamed Mass, with beautiful music and friendly words from the Bishop. My gratitude for 25 years of priesthood were amplified by the harrowing events of that year and the unexpected experiences and lessons learned.

The year ended with me still in Knoxville, but getting ready finally to move on. January 2021 brought me to New York and soon the first of many covid vaccinations. (Ironically, it would only be in September 2024 that I would finally get the virus - twice, in fact, as I was one of those to get a "rebound" infection from taking paxlovid.)

What happened to us in Tennessee and throughout the U.S. in mid-March 2020 was a challenging experience that ought to have brought us together and taught us how to prepare for future threats to the common good. Unfortunately, in the end, it seems to have done the opposite, as our society seems more polarized than ever since the Civil War, and our divisions have damaged out precious stock of social capital and left us traumatized and embittered. Ominously, I fear that if some "covid-25" were threatening us this March, our response would actually be significantly worse than it was five years ago.