An Election in Canada

 

Having lived and ministered for six very happy years in Canada at the end of the last century, I am justifiably wary as an American about opining on Canadian politics. Canada is, after all, a different country with its own issues and concerns. All politics may not be local, but much of it certainly is. That said, since President Trump inserted himself into Canadian politics, both by means of tariffs and by his expression (taken seriously by many Canadians) of designs against Canadian sovereignty, the recent Canadian election has been unusually influenced by the unexpectedly strange turn in American politics.

Before Trump's election, Canada seemed to suffer from the world-wide pattern of popular anger at incumbent parties. The Conservatives, newly led by a stylistically populist Pierre Poilievre, were widely expected to win a parliamentary majority thanks to widespread cost-of-living concerns and the dramatic decline in former Prime minister Justin Trudeau's popularity. Then Trump was elected President and the U.S. suddenly seemed to pose an existential threat to Canada. Meanwhile Trudeau stepped down, and the Liberal Party chose Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada (and also former Governor of the Bank of England) as a very different leader.

The result has been a remarkable shift in electoral politics. As of this morning, with 99% of the polls having reported results, the Liberals have won168 seats of the 172 needed for a majority. The Conservatives appear set to remain in opposition as the second-largest party, with 144 seats so far. (Of the minor parties, Bloc Québécois is leading in 23 seats,  NDP is leading in 7, and the Green Party in only 1.)

Besides being an amazing political comeback for the Canadian Liberal Party, the election results also suggest a significant rebuke to Donald Trump from your northern neighbors whose annexation he claims to desire.

Of course, a foreign election has no immediate impact upon the United States, but it is suggestive. On this Trump's 100th day in his second term (an altogether artificial marker, but one widely invoked nonetheless), we are all reminded that however much politics may over-reach, there are always limits when voters actually assert themselves.

What's Next?

 

The Church has now begun the novendiales, the nine days of official liturgical mourning for Pope Francis, beginning with yesterday's Funeral Liturgy, followed by Francis' interment at the papal basilica of Saint Mary Major. Meanwhile, having committed Pope Francis to the mercy of God, we inevitably turn our attention to the selection of his successor, and what we, both the Church and the world, will want and hope for from the next Pope.

In 1782, after the Austrian Emperor Joseph II had suppressed over 500 monasteries during what seemed like the zenith of Josephism (the Hapsburg version of Gallicanism), Pope Pius VI traveled personally to Vienna to try to negotiate with Joseph, the first papal trip outside Italy in over two centuries. The kaiser conceded nothing, but the papal visit occasioned an enthusiastic reception by cheering crowds, demonstrating an unexpected depth of popular feeling for the Pope. An analogous occasion of imperial chagrin occurred in 1804, when comparably enthusiastic crowds turned out to greet Pope Pius VII as he made his way to Paris for Napoleon's coronation. Despite despotic political policies that attempted to diminish the power of the Catholic Church, a vibrant grass-roots Catholicism demonstrated its popular strength and the people's respect and reverence for the office and person of the Pope. If anything, the Pope's position at the heart of Catholic life may be even more central today.

So, whoever appears on the loggia of Saint Peter's as our next Pope, he will stand on a stage of uniquely universal prominence, from which he will be expected to advance the mission of the Church in a contentious and cacophonous world, which is so often at odds with that mission.

Pope Francis endeared himself to the both Church and world when he first greeted both with the simple words, buona sera. Pope Saint John Paul II had done something similar, 35 years earlier, when he invented the tradition of the new Pope's balcony remarks, referring to nostra lingua italiana. The seemingly simple humanity projected especially by those two popes set a new tone for papal appearances and, to some extent, a new tone for the Church's life and mission, a new tone which will increasingly be a prerequisite for effective leadership. 

The death of the Pope leaves a very obvious void on the world stage, visibly highlighted by the presence of so many world leaders at Francis' funeral, many of whose social, economic, and political priorities conflict dramatically with those of Pope Francis. Even at his funeral, the Pope's position as potential mediator of conflicts was on display. Who could fail to marvel at the otherwise seemingly improbable spectacle of the 15-minute impromptu meeting of U.S. President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky in St. Peter's Basilica? (The White House described the meeting as "very productive," and President Zelensky later called it "very symbolic" with the "potential to become historic.")

So, what's next?

The most decisive event in contemporary Catholic experience has been the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Although the Council itself may seem as ancient as Nicea (325) to the majority of Catholics alive today, it remains undoubtedly the most significant event in recent Church history. Notably, the Council addressed some of the persistently neuralgic issues that had challenged the Church's life and mission since the late 18th century (i.e., since the Enlightenment and the French Revolution). The Second Vatican Council negotiated a new relationship between the Church and the modern world, making peace (or at least a truce) with certain modern sensibilities, including democracy and religious liberty, as well as addressing important pressing issues like the Church's relationships with other Christians, with the Jews, and with other religions and those of no religion. In the process, the post-conciliar recognition of history and change also inadvertently opened the Church to the new corrosive forces of modernity, which unexpectedly arose in the post-conciliar period - primarily (although not exclusively) issues related to sex and gender, issues increasingly fought over socially and politically.

While maintaining the integrity of established Church doctrine, the Second Vatican Council challenged the Church to do so with a new and more engaging tone. Pope Francis reopened the debate about the Council's legacy, simultaneously reaffirming disputed doctrines while accompanying the world in a new tone - in the process bringing back to center stage post-conciliar conflicts which had appeared somewhat settled.

So the Church today remains divided over issues that arose after the Council and which the Council could not have directly addressed. Not everyone prioritizes those conflicts over the greater value of Church unity, but those conflicts continue to erode the Church's unity regardless of how directly or indirectly they are addressed. They are, however, also largely conflicts characteristic of the "older" Church in Europe and North America. While the Francis papacy may have unintentionally reignited the intensity of those European and North American "culture war" conflicts, the pontificate of the first pope from the Global South has highlighted also both the parts of the world where the Church is really growing and the very different kinds of concerns that characterize that growing Church in the Global South. Some of those concerns inevitably affect the European and North American Church as well - most obviously migration and the social, economic, and political conflicts migration has highlighted. In an increasingly disordered world, many look to the Church - and the Church looks to the Pope - for a unique kind of leadership in responding to these crises.

The mere fact that the last pope was from the Global South hardly guarantees that the next pope will also be from Latin America, Africa, or Asia, although the probability of an African or Asian pope is, I suspect, real. On the other hand, it is just as possible that we may go back to electing an Italian pope one more time! More important than where he is from, however, the geopolitical and ecclesial concerns associated with the Global South will likely play a prominent role in the next Pope's pontificate, regardless of the new Pope's home. In any case, the world's increasing disorder is a global phenomenon, which increasingly impacts everyone everywhere.

Every pope must perforce perform many roles - pastor and teacher being the ones most obviously highlighted by recent popes. Pope Francis seemed to stress the pastoral aspect of the papacy. He was primarily a pastor. The next pope will certainly also need to be a pastor, but he will more specifically need to be a healer, a uniter - healing as best he can the conflicts and divisions within the Church and uniting the Church's multitude of factions in the profession of our common faith, which it is the pope's mission to proclaim to the world.  That mission of proclamation must also be among the new pope's priorities, as an increasingly disordered world looks to him to articulate the good news of eternal truth, so easily missing in our overdose of information.

Looking ahead to the conclave, it is impossible to predict an outcome - except that it will not be like the movie! The two charismatic papacies of the post-conciliar period emerged from conclaves that met under extremely unusual circumstances. The second 1978 conclave met in the wake of Pope John Paul I's sudden and unexpected death, a traumatic experience which may have unsettled and opened the conclave to the daring choice of a non-Italian. The 2013 conclave met in the aftermath of Benedict XVI's even more unexpected abdication, a traumatic experience which may have unsettled and opened the conclave to the daring choice of a Pope from the Global South. More like the 2005 conclave, meeting at a time when the Church's challenges seem to be rapidly accumulating, this one may perhaps be looking for less charisma and more stability. Or maybe not! Recent conclaves have been relatively short by historical standards. since this conclave will have so many more participants and since so many of them do not really know each other, maybe this will be a longer conclave. Or maybe not!

The papal office is central to the divinely established constitution of the Church. But whom to elect as pope is a very human affair, as the Cardinals (representing the whole Church) are challenged to discern the signs of the times and provide the Church with the Shepherd it needs here and now. And so we implore the guidance of the Holy Spirit and pray as the Church prescribes:

O God, eternal shepherd, who govern your flock with unfailing care, grant in your boundless fatherly love a pastor for your Church who will please you by his holiness and to us show watchful care. [Roman Missal]

The Complex Legacy of Pope Francis

As the Church prepares to bury Pope Francis at his chosen location in the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary Major, and then prepares to turn the page and elect a successor through the complicated, time-honored rituals of the Conclave, comments about Francis' pontificate and evaluations of his legacy are inevitable. 

Born in Argentina on December 17, 1936, into a family of Italian immigrants, Jorge Mario Bergoglio became the first Latin American to be elected pope, and thus the first pope from the "Global South." What is commonly called the "Global South" is that part of the world that is both the poorer part of the world and also increasingly the more religious and more Catholic part of the world. After a brief period in an archdiocesan seminary, Bergoglio entered the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) in 1958. Although many popes have come from religious communities, he was the first Jesuit ever to be elected pope. Just as his origin in the Global South certainly impacted how he viewed the world and the social, economic, and political perspectives he brought to his papacy, his Jesuit formation and spirituality just as certainly impacted how he approached his office. Although he is known to have had at times a somewhat troubled relationship with the Jesuits prior to becoming pope, undoubtedly he infused the Jesuit spirituality of discernment into his papal pronouncements and persona papal style. Indeed, his final encyclical was on the very Jesuit devotion to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Finally, he was the first contemporary pope not to have participated personally in the Second Vatican Council, and so represented the post-conciliar reception of that Council in the life of the contemporary Church.

Elected in 2013 after the unexpected abdication of Pope Benedict XVI, he was the first pope to take the name Francis, naming himself after the poverello of Assisi, a very medieval saint who has somehow become one of the most popular saints among modern Catholics, non-Catholic Christians, and even non-Christian secularists, many of whom have been attracted to Saint Francis' humility, simplicity, and apparent harmony with the created world and the natural environment. Fittingly, some of Pope Francis' most significant initiatives have been about calling us to greater identity with and concern for this planet which he called our "common home." This may perhaps prove to be his most substantial legacy - especially beyond the boundaries of the Church. (The reception of Francis' commitment of the Church to the struggle imposed on us by climate change may sadly be less substantial, especially in the United States, which in certain ways has seemed to many to be the center for opposition to some of the directions associated with Pope Francis, a state or affairs with which Francis' successor will also inevitably have to reckon.)

In his commitment to the environment and recognition of the moral issue of climate change, Francis was, in fact, continuing the direction set by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI. Unlike his predecessor, however, Francis had the media on his side from the beginning of his pontificate. Whatever the merits of his not living in his assigned home or not wearing traditional choir dress, such gestures were immediate media hits and were widely interpreted positively as signs of informality, humility, and simplicity. Through such powerful gestures, Francis consistently proved himself to be a master in the performance of a pastorally focused papacy, meanwhile winning the accolades of the media and widespread popularity generally.

One doesn't need to have studied Max Weber to understand that modernity has brought centralization of power and the bureaucratization of power to all political institutions -  including the Church. Since the end of the 18th century and increasingly so in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the papacy has become both more visible and more prominent on the world stage. Popes now appear in public all the time and are increasingly expected to pronounce on all sorts of issues, old and new. (Pre-modern Catholics generally did not expect this of popes.) Francis was an expert at performing this modern expectation of papal prominence in governance, an expectation which will persist for his successor.

Popes - particularly modern Popes - are expected to govern the Universal Church in a very direct way, and Francis was strong force for further centralizing that governance. Whatever the merits of this perhaps inevitably increasing ultramontanism both within the Church and in the secular world's perception of the Church, it has placed the Pope in a uniquely powerful position to speak on behalf of those who have no one else to speak for them. Hence, the increased importance of papal visits to marginalized people in peripheral places. Notably, Pope Francis spoke effectively against contemporary capitalism and what he called "throwaway culture." He was a consistently vocal advocate for immigrants, which put him at odds with populist politics in the developed world and in particular with the Administration in the U.S. Famously, one of his last acts was to write to the U.S. Bishops in support of immigrants and taking issue with certain statements by the U.S. Vice President, a convert to Catholicism who just happened to be one of the the last people Pope Francis met with, on Easter Sunday, the day before he died.

Pope Francis seemed most authentic and was perhaps at his performative best when interacting with and advocating for the poor of the world. His advocacy for the environment, for our "common home," and his commitment to immigrants and other marginalized people, along with his simple-pastor personal papal style - so human, so humble, so informal, so simple - will likely be what he will be most positively remembered for. On other issues, susceptible to more nuance, inevitably his legacy may be more mixed. His response to the war in Ukraine left many defenders of Ukraine (and the postwar international order) against Russian aggression less than fully satisfied. His response to the war in Gaza may well have somewhat negatively impacted Catholic-Jewish relations going forward. And internally, within the Church, his handling of the forever festering sexual abuse crisis has widely been criticized as ambiguous at best.

These problems will persist, as will the persistent divisions afflicting the post-conciliar Catholic Church. Addressing some of the neuralgic issues that had challenged and hobbled the Church's life and mission since the late 18th century (i.e., since the Enlightenment and the French Revolution), the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) in the process also opened the Church to the multiple corrosive forces of modernity in new and unexpected ways. While maintaining the integrity of established Church doctrine, the Second Vatican Council challenged the Church to do so in a new and more engaging tone. Pope Francis reopened the debate about the Council's legacy, simultaneously reaffirming disputed doctrines while accompanying the world in a new tone. Not only the media but also many, maybe most of the faithful have appreciated Francis' more welcoming and tolerant tone. At times, it seemed as if much of the popular perception of Francis has focused almost entirely on this welcoming and more tolerant tone - meanwhile neglecting his repeated reaffirmations of unchanging doctrines. Hence, the perennially contentious post-conciliar disputes (most of them about sex and gender) remain largely in the same state of widespread popular dissatisfaction, both for those who at one extreme fancifully aspire to radical destabilizing change and for those at the other extreme who see danger in any change, even if only in tone.

Will the next pope prioritize "accompaniment," welcoming gestures, and changes in pastoral tone or will he prioritize community stability and consistent doctrinal direction? Or will other, presently unexpected concerns climb to the top of the papal agenda? Italians say that he who goes into the conclave a pope comes out a cardinal - an obvious warning against over-confidence in predicting the Church's future. The current College of Cardinals, whose members will soon assemble in conclave, is the most diverse that the College of Cardinals has historically ever been. One of Francis' most recognizably visible accomplishments was normalizing and institutionalizing the new world-wide composition of a post-European Church. Demographically, the coming conclave will reflect this new face of the Universal Church. But it is also, for that reason, even more unpredictable than usual, since the cardinals from the peripheries do not necessarily know one another and may not share similar experiences the way previous, less diverse, and much smaller conclaves did. 

Over and above their cultural differences, however, the cardinals are all united in one common faith, the faith which it is the Pope's primary mission to witness to the world - at one and the same time a world of ordinary believers, a world of questioning skeptics, and a world of worldly political power which, like its historic exemplar Pontius Pilate, questions the very existence of truth,

Like any monarch - and more so than most monarchs - a pope, the most sacral of monarchs, plays an important and highly symbolic role above and beyond what he actually says and does. He is, after all, the Successor of Saint Peter. He is, therefore, the very visible link across time and space between us 21st-century faithful and the Church of the apostles and Peter himself, whose profession of faith in Jesus as the Christ made Peter the rock on which the Church has been built. Uniting the Church with Peter in time across the centuries, the Pope also unites the Church in the present across space, uniting the diversity of Bishops and local Churches throughout the world in one universal community. Whatever his short or long-term accomplishments, we pray daily una cum famulo tuo papa nostro, and the omission of that phrase at Mass, in this interregnum until we elect a new pope, highlights how central the pope is to our being Catholic.

Pope Francis

 

O God, who in your wondrous providence
chose your servant Pope Francis to preside over your Church,
grant, we pray, that, having served as the Vicar of your Son on earth,
he may be welcomed by him into eternal glory.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

[Roman Missal]

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."