Follow Me

 

We are in the final days of the Easter season, and the Church today reads from the concluding chapter of John’s Gospel, the familiar story of the Risen Lord’s appearance to his disciples, where he revealed himself through the miraculous catch of 153 fish and then served them a breakfast of bread and fish. There’s a little church on the shore that marks the supposed site of this event. The story highlights the role of peter. So, the church is called “The Church of the Primacy of Peter.” Here, in this church today, as surely as on that distant lakeshore, The Risen Christ feeds us with food we would never have gotten on our own. Here too he challenges us, as he challenged Peter, with the question: do you love me?

Peter was asked this critical question three times – obviously corresponding to the three times Peter had earlier denied Jesus, his triple profession of love replacing his triple denial.

Listening in on this conversation between Jesus and Peter, we learn that what started out as a fishing story has now turned into a shepherding story. In relation to the world, Peter (and his fellow disciples) have been commissioned by Jesus to keep casting their nets, drawing people in – into the Church, which will continue the mission of the risen Lord in the world. But once inside, within the Church the dominant image is that of Jesus the Good Shepherd, who here shares that shepherding role in a special way with Peter. Others will share in shepherding the flock, of course, but Peter is particularly and specially called to follow Jesus in the role of the Church’s shepherd.

That special role continues in the Church in the ministry of the Pope. This mission of Peter and of his successor, the Pope, has been very much in the news lately, thanks in part to criticisms of the Pope by some American politicians but also because of his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“On the Protection of Human Dignity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”), which will be released on Monday. After his election last year, Pope Leo indicated that he intended to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor Leo XIII by responding to today’s technological revolution, as the earlier, 19th-century Leo had to the industrial revolution, guiding the Church in faithfully following Jesus’ command, “Follow me.”

Homily for Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, May 22, 2026.

Living "the Politics of Disharmony"

When Harvard's Samuel Huntington authored American Politics: The Politics of Disharmony in 1981, the Soviet Union still stood (seemingly) strong, and American politics still predictably performed more or less according to Americans' Cold War era norms and expectations. As I acknowledged in my belated review of Huntington's book on this site (December 20, 2024), in 1981 I was at the end of my political science career and so managed to miss reading the book - until the transformed political world of 2024 finally inspired me to read it and apply its analysis to today. It is, as I wrote in 2024, "An Old Book for a New Day." 

Huntington highlighted the traditionally "creedal" character of American identity. He highlighted the high degree of consensus among Americans about the "American Creed," especially among those more active in the system and who benefit the most from it." On the other hand, those "who have less income and less education and who do not occupy leadership roles are more likely to be hypocritical or moralistic and lower status people cynical or complacent."

Huntington's emphasis was mainly on the periodic eras of moralistic reforms, what he called "creedal passion periods," which occur periodically through American history, approximately every 60 years. He identified four such periods in particular: the American Revolution, the Jacksonian era, the Progressive era, and the 1960s-1970s. The general direction of these efforts was "to make political institutions more responsive, more liberal, more democratic." Reforms have not, however, been unambiguously successful. "The reforms of one generation often produce the vested interests of the next."

By Huntington's calculation, "a major sustained creedal passion period will occur in the second and third decades of the twenty-first century" - i.e., right about now. There can be little doubt that the decade of Donald Trump has already initiated precisely such a crisis, in which not only elements of the "American Creed" but its very viability as the primary vehicle for the expression of American identity has come into question.  Unlike earlier periods, when the conflict was not so much between rival ideas as between the ruling ideas and the facts found in existing American institutions, a conflict has evidently emerged between conflicting ideas themselves, as the very character of American identity as "creedal" has come. under sustained intellectual and political attack.

Huntington already in 1981 recognized the possibility that in the future (which is now the present) other forces could "change, dilute, or eliminate the central ideals of the American Creed."

Bringing his analysis forward, Huntington foresaw several possibilities. First, the core creedal values, which derive from the 17th and 18th centuries, could "come to be seen as increasingly irrelevant in a complex modern economy and a threatening international environment," an irrelevance potentially exacerbated by rising secularism. "As religious passion weakens, how likely is the United States to sustain a firm commitment to its traditional values? Would an America without its Protestant core still be America?" 

Second, the transition to post-industrial society could be accompanied by an increasingly "communitarian" ideology, in place of Lockean individualism. Third, the increasing influence of recent immigrants could similarly also dilute that Lockean tradition. Early 20th-century immigrants "introduced a different 'ethic' into American cities." Likewise, "the more recent immigrants could well introduce into American society values markedly in contrast with Lockean liberalism." Obviously, immigration is a contentious issue at present. Even when occasionally masked as a concern about the introduction of alternative ideas which might or might not be compatible with the traditional "American Creed" (as was the case with the 19th-century "Know-Nothing" opposition to Catholic immigrants), the intense animus against immigrants currently dominant in our politics is obviously racially structured. That said, it it obviously also true that, like the earlier Catholic and Jewish immigrants, more recent immigrants may also bring with them ideas and values that may challenge (as well as in many case affirm) elements of the traditional "American Creed."

Finally, having been in existence as a nation for over 200 years (now almost 250), Huntington suggested that the U.S. may experience less need fo its founding ideals as a primary definition of its national identity. "History, tradition, custom culture and a sense of shared experience such as other major nations have developed over the centuries could also come to define American identity, and the role of abstract ideals and values might be reduced." (This is roughly the position JD Vance famously articulated in his 2024 Convention acceptance speech.) What Huntington calls "the ideational basis of national identity" might "be replaced by an organic one, and 'American exceptionalism' would wither." Instead of "a nation with the soul of a church," the U.S. could "become a nation with the soul of a nation." In other words, we may be becoming "like all other nations" (cf. 1 Samuel 8:5).

Obviously other nations are not bad, and being more like them is not necessarily all that bad either. What is (at least possibly) problematic is the loss of the previously unifying character of the "American Creed," which (among other things) made immigration work so successfully for the U.S. in ways it may not work for other more organic countries.

Given the dramatic and unprecedented political and cultural changes that have characterized the Trump decade, the possibilities Huntington foresaw appear somewhat prophetic.

Huntington nonetheless recognized the "tremendous persistence and resiliency" of classical American values and ideals. Likewise, increasingly cultural pluralism could also play a supportive role in sustaining those values and ideals. The more pluralistic the nation, "the more essential the values of the Creed become in defining what it is that Americans have in common." That is, of course largely what happened after the previous periods of mass immigration. It is probably one of the processes at work among immigrant communities even now and would likely be the predominant process, were it not for the forceful opposition of the current racialized, radical anti-immigrant alternative constituency.

Given these diverse possibilities, Huntington envisioned different possible futures. The one he considered most dangerous, however, may perhaps prove to be the one most relevant for our present predicament. Huntington notes "the continued presence of deeply felt moralistic sentiments among major groups in American society could continue to ensure weak and divided government, devoid of authority and unable to deal satisfactorily with the economic, social, and foreign challenges confronting the nation. Intensification of this conflict between history and progress could give rise to increasing frustration and increasingly violent oscillations between moralism and cynicism. ... The weakening of government in an effort to reform it could lead eventually to strong demands for the replacement of the weakened and ineffective institutions by more authoritarian structures more effectively designed to meet historical needs."

Is this the direction in which we are going? It does seem to be the direction in which we have been going and from which we find it harder and harder to extricate ourselves. American history (and the wider history of the Western world) offer multiple resources for us to draw upon - as well as abundant examples of opportunities missed roads that failed to be taken when the possibility was sitll open. Meanwhile the scenario Huntington feared most - an increasing embrace of anti-creedal authoritarian structures - seems increasingly realistic. As i wrote in 2024, Huntington may have predicted better than he knew.

"With One Accord"

 

Some of us here may be old enough (obviously, I am) to remember when the Easter Candle was ritually extinguished after the reading of the Gospel on Ascension Day. Even more dramatically, in certain places in earlier centuries, either the candle itself or a statue of the Risen Christ would be hoisted up to the church’s ceiling until it disappeared though an opening of the roof, often to be replaced by a shower of roses as a sign of Christ’s parting promise to give the Holy Spirit to the Church. Yet, the point of such rituals was less about Christ’s departure, as if he were now permanently absent, than about his new mode of presence in our life together as his Church. As the Church prays in the Preface of today’s Mass: he ascended, not to distance himself from our lowly state but that we, his members might be confident of following where he, our Head and Founder, has gone before.

Some 20 or so years ago, the famous British biblical scholar and retired Church of England Bishop N.T. Wright, authored a book, The Last Word, in which he suggested we think of history as a play in five acts. The first act is creation; the second the fall and sin’s consequences for the human family; the third the story of God’s Chosen People from Abraham to Jesus; the fourth the fulfillment of God’s revelation to Israel in the story of Jesus (after whom, as Vatican II reminded us, we neither need, nor expect any further revelation). The final fifth act, the present, is the time of the Church. It presupposes all that preceded it, as we tell and retell the world the story of creation, sin, and salvation in Christ, while moving forward toward our final destiny.

Historically speaking, this fifth act – the time of the Church, our time – began when the disciples were all filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Before his ascension, the Risen Lord had told them to remain in Jerusalem to await the promised gift of the Holy Spirit. The Acts of the Apostles tells us that they devoted themselves with one accord to prayer, assembled in Jerusalem, under the leadership of the apostles, praying together with Mary, the Mother of Jesus and Mother of the Church, during that interval, that in-between transitional time, which the Church’s calendar recalls during this novena of nine days between Ascension Thursday and Pentecost Sunday.

Thus, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost all go together. The first highlights Christ's actual resurrection; the second his glorification at the Father's right hand; the third his continued presence in his Church through the gift of the Holy Spirit. When "we clearly see and understand the divine action of the Holy Spirit in the successive steps of the history of the Church," wrote this first pastor of this parish, Isaac Hecker, in his great book The Church and the Age, "we should fully comprehend the law of all true progress."

Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, May 17, 2026.

Ascension Thursday

Today is Ascension Thursday, the 40th day of Easter. In some European countries, today is celebrated as a public civic holiday, as well as a holy day. In the U.S., sadly, today is for most Catholics a workday like any other. Still, Ascension remains one of the five greatest festivals of the Christian calendar (along with Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost). Prior to the occupation of Rome by the Kingdom of Italy in 1870, the papal blessing urbi et orbi was sometimes given on this day at the Lateran Basilica. In some places, either the Easter Candle or a statue of the Risen Christ would be hoisted up to the church’s ceiling until it disappeared though an opening of the roof, often to be replaced by a shower of roses as a sign of Christ’s parting promise to give the Holy Spirit to the Church. A variant of that tradition still continues at the Pantheon in Rome (the Basilica of Santa Maria ad Martyres) on Pentecost Sunday, when thousands of red rose petals are dropped from a height of 140 feet through the Pantheon's oculus to symbolize the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, the Risen and Ascended Christ's parting gift to his Church.

In his Sermon 1 on the Ascension, Pope Saint Leo the Great said "it was a great and unspeakable cause for rejoicing, when in the sight of a holy multitude, human nature ascended above the dignity of all celestial creatures, to pass above the ranks of the angels, to be raised above the heights of the archangels, and not to have any degree of loftiness set as a limit to its advancement, short of the right hand of the eternal Father, where it would be associated with his royal glory, to whose nature it was united in God."

Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost all go together. The first highlights Christ's actual resurrection; the second his glorification at the Father's right hand; the third his continued presence in his Church through the gift of the Hoy Spirit. That interconnection is expressed in the concluding words of today's gospel: behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age (Matthew 28:20).

Photo: Watercolor Ceiling Painting of the Ascension, c. 1913, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN.

Mothers Day

 

Today is Mothers Day. I will dutifully remember my mother (and my grandmother) at the commemoration of the dead at Mass this morning. That, however, will likely be the extent of my observance of Mothers Day. 

When I was a pastor, I made a point of having our parish May Crowning on the first Sunday of May - to avoid confusing it with the very commercialized, secular celebration that is the American Mothers Day holiday. It is one of those historical coincidences that this very secular American holiday occurs in the month Catholic tradition dedicates in a special way to Mary, the Mother of God and Mother of the Church.

One of the rare occasions when the 1969 post-conciliar calendar improved upon its predecessor has been the relocation of the feast of the Visitation to May 31. Unfortunately, because it occurs on Trinity Sunday, the Visitation will be omitted this year, which is a good excuse to "christianize" Mothers Day by reflecting on the Visitation. (On the "plus" side, since Pentecost occurs in May this year, so will the feast of Mary, Mother of the Church, celebrated on the following day.)

The second Joyful Mystery, the Visitation is recounted in Luke 1:39-56. That gospel was traditionally read on the Ember Friday of Advent as part of the Church's proximate preparation for Christmas. As a full-fledged liturgical feast, however, it is a relative latecomer, inserted into the Roman Calendar by Pope Urban VI in 1389. It was originally assigned to July 2, the day after the octave of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist, who "leapt" in his mother Elizabeth's womb on the occasion of Mary's Visitation. The feast was retained in both the Anglican and Lutheran calendars, and is still observed in Germany both by Catholics and by Lutherans on July 2.

The image of the meeting of the two pregnant mothers, Mary and Elizabeth, has been much meditated upon throughout the centuries, as well as being a frequent subject of works of art. One beautiful 14th-century gilt wooden image (photo) includes crystal cabochons, suggesting the presence of the babies in their mothers' wombs (and it is thought may once have highlighted images of the holy infants).

The Golden Legend (c. 1260) by the Dominican Friar Blessed Jacopo de Voragine (c.1230-1298) was written before the introduction of the feast. It does, however, describe the Visitation in its entry for the Birth of Saint John the Baptist: "In Elizabeth's sixth month Mary, who had already conceived, came to her, the fruitful virgin to the woman relieved of sterility, feeling sympathy for her in her old age. When she greeted her cousin, blessed John, already filled with the Holy Spirit, sensed the Son of God coming to him and leapt for joy in his mother's womb, and danced, saluting by his movements the one he could not greet with his voice. He leapt as one wishing to greet his Lord and to stand up in his presence." (The Golden Legend: Reading on the Saints, tr. William Granger Ryan, Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 330.)

Referring to this unique encounter of the two infants in their mothers' wombs, the Catechism calls the Visitation "a visit from God to his people" (CCC 717). It is, what the U.S. Bishops have called "a cherished American Catholic custom" to refer to Mary as "our Blessed Mother" (Behold Your Mother: A Pastoral Letter on the Blessed Virgin Mary [1973], 70). Mary's motherhood remains especially timely today when religion is so easily manipulated. When that happens, one response is to abstract from actual Christian faith in some sort of de-natured, non-religious "spirituality." Abstractions, Karl Rahner famously warned, have no need for mothers (cf. Leon Cardinal Suenens, "Mary and the World of Today," L'Osservatore Romano [English Ediiton] June 15, 1972).

Photo: The Visitation (c. 1310-1320), attributed to Master Heinrich of Constance, Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of J. Pierpont Morgan, 1917.

Pope Leo's First Year

One year ago today, that traditional announcement of ecclesiastical good news, Habemus Papam ("We have a Pope"), resounded in Saint Peter's square, followed immediately by the surprising - shocking even - announcement of the election of the first American-born pope. While Robert Cardinal Prevost was certainly a plausible papabile, I think most run-of-the mill observers (myself included) adhered to the conventional wisdom that no American would be elected - until, of course, one was!

Suffice it to say that Cardinal Prevost was - as was commonly observed - "the least American" of the American cardinals. Indeed, had he just been a typical American cardinal, he would almost certainly not have been elected. Unlike a typical American cardinal, however, for much of his priesthood Prevost had been a missionary priest and later a diocesan bishop in Peru. He is thus legitimately seen as "the second Latin American pope." He is also a Religious, a former Prior General of the Augustinians, with world-wide pastoral experience, as well as being, at the time of his election, the head of the very important Dicastery for Bishops. So the election of the first American pope must certainly be interpreted more broadly, more universally, than through any primary preoccupation with particularly American issues (either American intra-Church issues or American political issues). Personally, I think it unlikely that he was elected primarily to be a counterweight to President Trump. That said, it is significant that the two most prominent Americans on the world stage now are Trump and Leo, and that Leo inevitably projects an alternative image of America, very different from that projected by its President.

The early impressions of Pope Leo - from the very first impressions when he appeared on the loggia dressed traditionally as a pope - have been of a return to normalcy. He seemed to be fulfilling a widespread desire for some continuity with his predecessor's more popular initiatives, but without his predecessor's polarizing and divisive personal style. He has celebrated public Masses frequently, returned to the traditional papal residence and to Castel Gandolfo, brought the cardinals together for consultation in consistory, and highlighted the unifying functions of the papacy, emphasizing the office over the office-holder's personality. He seems to appreciate the requirements of the role and the constraints it imposes on the holder of the office. His Augustinian spirituality of service in unity and community has been constantly evident in illuminating his fundamental spiritual orientation. Obviously the unity of the Church - something we cannot take for granted these days - is his high priority.

In his first address from the loggia, Pope Leo recalled that May 8 is the commemoration of Our Lady of Pompeii. Today, one year later, he is at the shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii, 155 miles southeast of Rome, whose founder, Saint Bartolo Longo (1841-1926), Pope Leo canonized last October.

Leo inherited the 2025 Jubilee Year with its already elaborately planned programming. With the Jubilee finished and Francis' commitments (e.g., the trip to Turkey and Lebanon) fulfilled, Leo in 2026 has more and more pursued his own path. His 10-day trip to four countries in Africa, for example, has highlighted his longer term priorities moving forward. So will his first encyclical, expected later this month.

Inevitably, however, he cannot escape the expectations that arise from his U.S. origin. After all, he speaks English! He addresses Americans in our own language and sensibility, and cannot be easily dismissed as a foreigner who doesn't understand American religion or American politics. Even so, Pope Leo has been wisely reserved on some of the issues that have dominated too much of recent Catholic life, especially in the U.S. Thus, in a recent in-flight conversation with the press, he said, "First of all, I think it's very important that the unity or division of the church should not revolve around sexual matters. We tend to think that when the church is talking about morality that the only issue of morality is sexual. And in reality, I believe there are greater and more important issues such as justice, equality, freedom of men and women, freedom of religion that would all take priority before that particular issue." What long-term effects Leo's words will have on the priorities of the U.S. Bishops, of prominent lay Catholic converts (like Vice President JD Vance), and of the politically polarized U.S. Catholic community, all remain to be seen.

On a very practical level, one of the most important things that modern popes do is the appointment of bishops. In his first year, Pope Leo has appointed several American bishops - both ordinaries and auxiliaries - including, perhaps most prominently, fellow Chicagoan Ronald Hicks as the new Archbishop of New York. What stands out about some of his other appointments, however, is that they have been immigrants to the U.S.  - in other words, they are the sorts of people that the Trump Administration might prefer were not in the U.S. at all, let alone serving as prominent religious leaders in the nation's largest denomination. His very first episcopal appointment was San Diego's Bishop Michael Pham, who came to the U.S. as a young Vietnamese refugee. Later last year, he appointed Bishop Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez to the Diocese of Palm Beach, which includes Mar-a-Lago. Both bishops have been pro-immigrant advocates. Pham has accompanied immigrants to court hearings. Rodríguez has challenged Trump’s immigration policies and recently denounced the criticisms of the Pope as "disrespectful and violent." Then, a week ago, he appointed Washington Auxiliary Evelio Menjivar to be Bishop of Wheeling-Charleston. One of the reddest states now has as its Bishop someone who came to America as an undocumented immigrant teenager from El Salvador (supposedly smuggled into the United States in a car trunk).  Clearly, the Pope is letting the U.S. know where he stands on the issue of immigration, what may be the great moral crisis of this contentious period in American history. If any doubt remains on where the Pope positions himself on the immigration issue, that should certainly become clear on July 4, when he plans to spend the 250th anniversary of American independence on the Italian island of Lampedusa, the symbolic epicenter of the Mediterranean migrant crisis, an obvious and pointed statement.

Beyond any immediate relevance to present Administration policies, the relevant fact is, of course, that the Pope is inherently a global figure. He is the leader of a global institution, whose members are in spiritual communion with one another on every continent all over the world. This is in conspicuous contrast to the increasingly insular, anti-globalist orientation being emphasized at present in the United States, especially among those for whom President Trump is more like a spiritual leader than a mere politician.

My sense, however, is that even those who imagined Leo's papacy as primarily a counterweight to Trump probably did not anticipate the recent, very public attacks on him by the American President. Popes and Presidents frequently disagree, but usually politely and respectfully. Trump's criticism of the Pope has been unprecedented in his expression of personal animosity, including the absurd claim that Leo endorses Iran's acquiring nuclear weapons! Presumably, all this is yet another deplorable consequence of Trump's unfortunate - and, maybe more to the point, unpopular - Iranian war, which hardly anyone would have anticipated a year ago. Ordinarily, public papal interventions in international relations tend not to have a lot of direct effect. The practical effect we should be on the lookout for will be whatever impact the contretemps between President and Pope has on American Catholics. (No one should ever forget that 55% of American Catholic voters in 2024 voted for Trump, and 64% of white American Catholic voters did so.) 

That said, Pope Leo obviously takes to heart Saint Augustine's admonition in his Rule: you would be at fault if by your silence you allow your brothers to meet their downfall, when by speaking you could set them on the right path (4:8).

 

Sigmund Freud at 170

 

Charles Darwin, it is sometimes said, eliminated God from nature; Karl Marx expelled God from history; and Sigmund Freud drove him from the human mind. The unholy Trinity of Darwin, Marx, and Freud are rightly remembered as the great disrupters, whose problematic legacy we now have to live with, whether for better or for worse. Definitely for the worse, the ideas of all three have been bowdlerized in socially harmful ways, such as Spencerian Social Darwinism and eugenics, in Darwin's case, and the Communism of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, in the case of Marx.

And what of Freud (1856-1939), who was born 170 years ago today in what is now the Czech Republic but was then still the gloriously reigning Hapsburg Empire? Freud was a product of the golden twilight decades of the Hapsburg Empire. That empire was both the symbolic heir of the old Holy Roman Empire (and hence heir to the ambitions, both political and religious, of Charlemagne) and also at the same time a glittering home for much of what was most memorable in turn-of-the-century central European civilization. Freud was very much an Austrian old-world scholar (one reason for his discomfort with America!) For Jews like Freud, Franz Josef's Austria was a good place to be. While Vienna had an anti-semitic mayor, none of that stopped Viennese Jews from being leaders in the arts and sciences. Freud's strong attachment to imperial Austria also helps explain his famous dislike of Woodrow Wilson, who Freud believed (with good reason) had contributed to the unfortunate demise of the Austrian Empire - a political, economic, and cultural disaster from which the successor states of the old empire have as yet never fully recovered.

Freud, of course, created psychoanalysis - both as an explanation of the human predicament and as a method of treatment for those in acute pain from struggling with the social civilizational challenges of that human predicament. As an explanation, Freud's theories shocked the world with what he purported to reveal about humanity and its unconscious desires. (Of course, anyone who believes in original sin should hardly find Freud's analysis of the human condition ultimately all that shocking.) As a method of therapeutic treatment, classic Freudian psychoanalysis is time-consuming, expensive, emotionally demanding, and increasingly dismissed as lacking in scientific credibility. The more modest types of talk psychotherapy many of my generation experienced - shorter, cheaper, and less demanding than psychoanalysis - were derivative adaptations, obviously inspired by Freud's methods and in that sense a major component of Freud's longer-term legacy. Freud himself recognized that, when it comes to the practical question of treatment, what he called "more convenient methods of healing" than psychoanalysis might be turned to just as successfully, which is what contemporary modes of therapy have done - largely with drugs of various sorts.

Psychoanalysis, moreover, does not cure, which more contemporary therapeutic approaches may sometimes dubiously aspire to do. Rather, it tries to free the suffering soul to cope - to cope minimally, to cope better, maybe even to cope well. It seeks a secularized version of Christian liberty, the freedom Christ brings from sin and guilt, which doesn't necessarily make life all that much easier, but does allow it to make sense.

Freud assumed (with more confidence than history may have warranted) that in our modern world no traditional moral system could continue to compel elite belief. He offered an alternative to religion that paradoxically vindicates humanity's original religious impulse, which rationalistic modernity refuses to acknowledge and cannot abide. Unlike our contemporary therapeutic culture of individualistic self-fulfillment, however, Freud offered a secular, pseudo-scientific alternative to religion that repeated religion's warning against the individual pursuit of transitory happiness and modernity's erroneous equation of individual happiness with ultimate meaning. 

Even as he undermined it, however, Freud affirmed the civilizational necessity of a system of moral demands upon the individual. He emphasized the sublimation of instinctual desire as indispensable to civilization and the fulfillment of humanity's communal purposes. His psychoanalytic therapy tried to help fill in the gap created by the modern collapse of moral community and consequently the individual's increasing need to go it alone. Freud tried to replace older and (to him) historically discredited means of making sense of life (like religion) with newly strengthened individual inner resources.

As Philip Rieff famously observed in his classic The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966): "A man can be made healthier without being made better - rather, morally worse. Not the good life but better living is the therapeutic standard."

May Day

Today is May Day, although a chilly 44 degrees in the city at the start of the day belies the inherited image of May Day as a herald of summer.

May Day is a curious combination of, on the one hand, an ancient spring festival, midway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, traditionally marked by rituals to ensure fertility for crops and livestock, and, on the other, a modern International Workers' Day, originating in the late 19th-century U.S. labor movement and adopted as an international socialist holiday. Those of us old enough to remember the Cold War will recall how May Day was one of the days when big parades would be held in Moscow and other communist capitals (the other one, of course, being November 7, the anniversary of the October Revolution).

May Day was highlighted in the 1960s musical Camelot. ("Those dreary vows that everyone makes, everyone breaks, in the merry month of May"). Apart from such theatrical evocations, however, in our de-natured, disenchanted, post-industrial, technological world, the change of seasons obviously matters much less than it did for all of previous human history. Such seasonal celebrations as May Day survive only marginally as folkloric occasions, the stuff of romantic nostalgia. Maybe some group erects a maypole somewhere, but its original meaning no longer has any operational significance in the lives of those play-acting dancing around a maypole. 

Likewise, with the fall of communism, the political salience of May Day has receded. International Workers' Day still resonates in labor and left-wing political circles, of course, but labor unions, social democratic political parties, and workers' and "left" causes in general have fared poorly in our present politics of neo-liberalism and populism. On the other hand, we now have an acknowledged social democrat as mayor of New York, whose election may infuse some new vitality into that troubled movement. The more fundamental problem, however, is that much of what passes for the progressive left represents society's winners, those whom the system has favored and who have benefited so much from it, not those left behind, who tend to look elsewhere for a focus for their political allegiance.

As Pope Benedict XVI famously wrote back in 2006: "Democratic socialism managed to fit within the two existing models as a welcome counterweight to the radical liberal positions, which it developed and corrected. It also managed to appeal to various denominations. In England it became the political party of the Catholics, who had never felt at home among either the Protestant conservatives or the liberals. In Wilhelmine Germany, too, Catholic groups felt closer to democratic socialism than to the rigidly Prussian and Protestant conservative forces. In many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness." ("Europe and Its Discontents," First Things, January 2006).

That said, the Church's mid-20th-century attempt to co-op May Day hasn't fared much better than the day's secular iterations. In 1955, Pope Pius XII established a religious analogue to International Workers' Day, the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, which acknowledged the dignity of labor and celebrated Saint Joseph (himself referred to in scripture as a carpenter) as a patron of workers. Saint Joseph the Worker replaced the feast of the Patronage of Saint Joseph (formerly celebrated on the third Wednesday after Easter). Liturgists, however, seem not to have taken to the new feast, for in the problematic post-conciliar 1969 calendar, Saint Joseph the Worker was reduced from the highest ranking liturgical day to the lowest ranking ("optional memorial"). It is perhaps pointless to try to make sense of the post-conciliar calendar reform. Personally, however, given the abiding religious resonance of at least some aspects of democratic socialism, I find the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker worth keeping.

The Gospel reading for today (Matthew 13:54-58) recalls the famous incident in the Nazareth Synagogue where the people took offense at Jesus. Where did this man get such wisdom and mighty deeds? Is he not the carpenter's son? That's as good an account as any of the lack of respect accorded to work, of our failure to appreciate the contribution of those whose labor is in fact essential to society's successful functioning.

Photo: Saint Joseph Altar, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY.

Special Relationship

 

When the United States celebrated the Bicentennial of Independence in 1976, Queen Elizabeth II, the fourth generation great-granddaughter through the senior royal line of America's last King, George III, was invited for a state visit as an appropriate culmination to our national festivities. That state visit included a memorably televised State Dinner in an air-conditioned White House tent in July 1976. (I remember watching the event - including President Ford dancing with the Queen - with several grad school classmates.) Given that history, it was virtually inevitable that our 250th birthday would also be highlighted by a visit by King George III's next heir, King Charles III. Accordingly, the King and Queen Camilla arrived in Washington, DC, on Monday where they were effusively welcomed by President and Mrs. Trump.

The term "special relationship" goes back to the World War II partnership between FDR and Winston Churchill. But, of course, the relationship goes back much longer - starting with the English and Scottish colonists who settled in 13 North American British coastal colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries, whose descendants eventually declared their independence 250 years ago. Once our independence had been recognized by Britain after a long and costly war, one of the new country's important tasks was to manage its relationship with the mother country, which was then the most important power in the world.  Since then, the relationship has been somewhat reversed, and it is now the U.S. that is the world's superpower and the U.K. which has to manage its relationship with the U.S. as best it can, 

The theory of our "special relationship" can be traced all the way back back to John Adams' famous address to King George III on June 1, 1785. Adams said to the King: "I Shall esteem myself the happiest of Men, if I can be instrumental in recommending my Country, more and more to your Majestys Royal Benevolence and of restoring an entire esteem, Confidence and Affection, or in better Words, “the old good Nature and the old good Humour” between People who, tho Seperated by an Ocean and under different Governments have the Same Language, a Similar Religion and kindred Blood.— I beg your Majestys Permission to add, that although I have Sometimes before, been entrusted by my Country it was never in my whole Life in a manner So agreable to myself."

Fast forward to 2026, the 250th anniversary of American independence, in celebration of which King George III's successor, King Charles III, addressed a joint succession of Congress (photo). The King praised the American Founders, who "united thirteen disparate colonies to forge a Nation on the revolutionary idea of ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. They carried with them, and carried forward, the great inheritance of the British Enlightenment – as well as the ideals which had an even deeper history in English Common Law and Magna Carta." 

The King referenced his own Christian faith and his long-standing commitment to interfaith dialogue, expressing his belief "that the essence of our two Nations is a generosity of spirit and a duty to foster compassion, to promote peace, to deepen mutual understanding and to value all people, of all faiths, and of none."

He spoke at length about "The Alliance that our two Nations have built over the centuries – and for which we are profoundly grateful to the American people" He referenced the two World Wars, the Cold War, 9/11, and then pointedly turned to the present: "Today, Mr. Speaker, that same, unyielding resolve is needed for the defence of Ukraine and her most courageous people – in order to secure a truly just and lasting peace."

Nor was that his only reference to a potentially contentious issue in our present relationship. "Yet even as we celebrate the beauty that surrounds us, our generation must decide how to address the collapse of critical natural systems, which threatens far more than the harmony and essential diversity of Nature. We ignore at our peril the fact that these natural systems – in other words, Nature’s own economy – provide the foundation for our prosperity and our national security."

From what the King called "the bitter divisions of 250 years ago," he recalled how our two countries have since "forged a friendship that has grown into one of the most consequential Alliances in human history." And he expressed his hope - obviously the underlying point of the royal visit "that our Alliance will continue to defend our shared values, with our partners in Europe and the Commonwealth, and across the world, and that we ignore the clarion calls to become ever more inward-looking."

Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

The Mysterious Island

One of the benefits of being part of a parish book club is that it makes me read books I would otherwise probably never read - like, for example, this month's selection by Jules Verne (1828-1905), The Mysterious Island (1875), tr. Jordan Stump (Random House, 2001).

It is easy to appreciate why a technology-loving 19th-century audience might have been taken with this novel. That was when the industrial age was most celebrated, and Jules Verne was certainly one to express that celebratory spirit. Of course, even in the 19th century, the Romantic movement revealed reservations about progress, but the overall direction of the 19th-century saw modernity, science, and technology as benefits to be celebrated. For many of us in the 21st century, however, when even space exploration has lost a lot of its luster, the triumph of the industrial age has long worn off. We are as apt to be bored by Verne's castaways' creative inventiveness as his earlier readers were excited by that aspect of the story. I know I was! As a result, I found much of what was probably meant to be an exciting adventure somewhat tedious. (It doesn't help, of course, that we are dealing with a 19th-century, originally serialized novel.) The tedious passages describing the seemingly endless succession of lucky chances and technological accomplishments call for patience on the reader's part. That patience will be rewarded as the final chapters of the story become more adventurous - and more surprisingly mysterious.

Characterized in Caleb Carr's Introduction as "arguably Verne's most important and self-revelatory book," The Mysterious Island tells the increasingly implausible story of five Americans marooned on a deserted Pacific island somewhere in the southern hemisphere, who utilize their scientific knowledge and ingenuity to exploit the opportunity provided by a richly abundant island not only to survive but to prosper, to make their island into a miniature modern industrial society. This would especially appeal perhaps as in some sense almost an allegory about America itself - an almost miraculously abundant wilderness turned into the world's most prosperous society (albeit taking much more time to accomplish this task than Verne's lucky castaways). The reader may assume that Verne (and many of his readers) would have shared a Tocquevillian attitude about America as the modern world's emblematic future.

Less emphasized but immediately obvious to this senior-citizen reader is the evident physical fitness of all the protagonists, who regularly walk endless miles and perform multiple feats of physical labor. None of this is superhuman, of course, but it is a reminder that their multiple accomplishments might well be beyond the capacity of any random collection of five less talented and less sturdy individuals in the real world!

The author summarizes the protagonists' sense of their accomplishments on the first anniversary of their arrival at the island: "They had begun as mere castaways, fighting the elements for their wretched lives, and unsure of their prospects for success! And. now, thanks to their leader's knowledge, they were true colonists, equipped with weapons, tools, and instruments, and they had taken the island's various plants, animals, and minerals - elements from each of nature's three kingdoms - and turned them to their own advantage!"

This plot is complicated, however, by the fact that all is not as it initially seems. The island is, in fact, mysterious. the mystery component contributes a whole other dimension to the story, making it more than just a celebration of science and ingenuity. The author obviously agrees with the colonists' de facto leader that progress is "a good and necessary thing" and that is "a mistake" to believe one could bring back the past." But, in an ending which 21st-century readers might even better appreciate than the original audience, nature wins out; and all the technological ingenuity in the world is ultimately no match for it.

And, for all the castaways' seeming self-sufficiency, that progressive trope is, of course, completely undermined by the presence of the mysterious benefactor, whose own story highlights the abiding relevance of human power politics, science and technology notwithstanding.

Meanwhile, the story takes a novel turn with the discovery of someone else who has been marooned nearby. The experience of finding a man abandoned on a neighboring island for some 12 years and reduced by his isolation to a seemingly sub-human savage state, and then, as it were, coaxing him back to something resembling normalcy, that sub-plot prompts interesting reflection on exactly what it means to be human, on what it means to say that. human beings are social animals - this in the 19th-century heyday of liberal individualism!

Yet that experience itself - namely how the colonists ever even came to be aware of the existence of their new comrade - only further seems to highlight the story's growing sense of mystery. We now know for certain that there must be someone, somewhere, who is also an active character in this story. 

In the end, the mysterious someone does the colonists one final life-saving favor, just in time, as nature triumphs over civilization; and the colonists get to do that characteristic 19th-century thing, they immigrate to America and build themselves a successful and prosperous life together there.

Re-Embracing Robigalia

 

The modest, easy-to-have-missed occurrence earlier this week of Earth Day 2026 reminded me of when Earth Day was still new and exciting - and concerns it highlights were likewise new and exciting. I can still remember as a college student attending the first Earth Day celebration in Central Park in 1970, when nearly one million people participated in Earth Day events around the city. Hardly anyone then spoke much about climate change (although my Geology teacher at City College did). For most the focus was on pollution and the progress that was beginning to be made in that area.

But, long before the invention of Earth Day, we had, for centuries, had Rogation Days!

From the reign of Pope Saint Gregory the Great until that of Pope Saint Paul VI, April 25 (which, for some reason, was widely also thought to have been the date on which Saint Peter had first arrived in Rome) was observed in the Roman calendar as one of the four annual Rogation Days. The April 25 celebration was known as the Litanaie majores (the "Greater Litanies"). The other three Rogation Days (the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before the Ascension) were known as the Litaniae minores (the "Lesser Litanies") and were of ancient Gallican, non-Roman origin. I have previously written here [Cuckoo Day April 25, 2012] about the pre-Christian roots of the "Greater Litanies" in the ancient Roman Robigalia festival, one of ancient Rome's significant spring agricultural commemorations. As I noted then:

 

“Ancient peoples appreciated their dependence on the natural seasons and the harvest. The change in religion redirected the focus of people's prayers to the true Creator God. But that didn't change their dependence on nature or their need for a successful harvest or the value of ritualizing that on traditional days.”

 

I also suggested that, in the light of contemporary environmental degradation and the dangers to human civilization posed by climate change's devastating effects: 

 

“Perhaps a rationalized late 20th-century Roman Liturgy's abandonment of such reminders of our connection - and dependence - on nature wasn't such a smart idea, after all.”

Neither the pre-conciliar liturgical movement nor the Second Vatican Council itself ever explicitly anticipated, let alone contemplated, the abolition of the Rogation Days, prior to their disappearance in Paul VI's 1969 liturgical calendar. There was, admittedly, in certain quarters a view (which one might charitably label "liturgical puritanism") that the Rogation Days were not "in harmony with the spirit of Easter," and there were in fact proposals to eliminate some and transfer others (cf. the 19th meeting of the Pontifical Committee for the Reform of the Sacred Liturgy, April 29, 1952). More modestly, the 1960 rubrical reform of Pope Saint John XXIII, while making no change regarding April 25, made the "Lesser Litanies" optional in private recitation of the Office and gave Local Ordinaries the faulty of transferring them to three other successive days which might seem more suitable locally (General Rubrics, 87, 90). I guess that proved to be the proverbial camel's nose under the proverbial tent!

On the other hand, expressing a deeper spirit and sense of the 20th-century liturgical movement, the esteemed Pius Parsch wrote: "The four Rogation Days have preserved the main elements of this venerable rite [the ancient Roman stational observance], an observance that we should respect and foster. for we should pray both perseveringly and in common, since special efficacy and power is attached to such prayer." 

No less than the calamities of Pope Gregory the Great's time, climate change and its associated environmental and other woes seriously threaten the planet itself, and particularly some of the planet's most vulnerable populations. Furthermore, since I first wrote about this on this site over a decade ago, the U.S. has definitively retreated from even recognizing, let alone responding effectively to, the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation. The case for recovering the sensibility underlying the Rogation Days, for recovering what the Roman liturgy lightly discarded some 57 years ago,  for re-embracing a Christianized Robigalia, is, if anything, even more obvious than it was then!

Reading the Bible as a Nation under God's Judgment

As part of seven straight days of continuous public bible readings from Genesis to Revelation, called "America Reads the Bible," this evening at 6:00 p.m. ET, President Trump will publicly read 2 Chronicles 7:11-22, a passage specifically assigned to him apparently because of its decades-long role as a call to prayer in America. Bunni Pounds, founder and president of Christians Engaged, said that this passage, particularly verse 14, has been central to American prayer life for decades, often invoked during times of national reflection. (Hopefully, President Trump will remember - or be prompted - to say "Second Chronicles," not "Two Chronicles"!)

That particular text reads: If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. I was not particularly aware that this passage "has been central to American prayer life for decades, often invoked during times of national reflection." It is, however, an obviously appropriate choice.

The ghost of the religion-hating Thomas Jefferson notwithstanding, public prayer has long been a fixture of our civic life in this traditionally religious country. As Jefferson's wiser rival expressed it to the Massachusetts Militia on October 11, 1798: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." This was precisely because of the limited power permitted to government under our constitution. "Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net." Likewise, the mot famous and perceptive 19th-century observer of American politics, the French aristocrat Alexis deTocqueville Tocqueville noted that, while democracy dangerously fosters individualism, American religion balanced this by providing a community of  widely shared moral values and beliefs, which strengthened rather than threatened American democracy.

In its original Old Testament context, 2 Chronicles 7:14 obviously applied to God's covenant with the People of Israel. God promised to hear Israel's prayers, forgive their sins, and heal their land. Simultaneously, however, God articulated certain expectations that his people, on their part, were to fulfill. God challenged them (1) to humble themselves, (2) to pray, (3) to seek God's face, and (4) to turn from their wicked ways.

Originally tied to God's covenant with Israel, both God's promise and his expectations of his people continue for Christians of every time in every place. At his now very famous Prayer Vigil in Saint Peter's Basilica on the very day that peace negotiations began between the U.s. and Iran, Pope Leo warned against the "delusion of omnipotence." The obvious corrective to that delusion is for leaders and their nations to practice what God enjoined for Israel in 2 Chronicles 7:14 - humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways.

it is a fine thing that these words will be publicly read by the President himself. More important, however, is that those who read and those who hear these words internalize them and reflect them in our national life and collective behavior at home and abroad.

Our Politicized Relgious Landscape

 

Continuing the national debate about the present condition and future prospects for American Christianity, that debate has been greatly enriched by Southern Illinois University Professor of Religion and Politics and American Baptist Church Pastor Ryan P. Burge's new book, The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us (Brazos Press, 2026). 

Burge offers a clear portrayal (backed up by lots of social science numbers) of what has happened in and to American religion over the course of the past half century. As the book's subtitle suggests, one of his major claims is that the onetime moderate middle of American Christianity - notably "mainline Protestantism" - has largely disappeared, with all the social costs that entails in terms of decreased exposure to and interaction with people one might be different from or disagree with and reducing eh American religious landscape to increasingly conservative Republican churches and non-religion with little in between.  

The tipping point for Burge seems to have been the 1990s. (That decade increasingly seems to emerge as having been politically and culturally critical. Think of John Ganz, When the Clock Broke). Politics changed decisively with the Newt Gingrich revolution, and that polarizing period also saw the consolidation of the religious right and the official declaration of religious culture war by Pat Buchanan. Combine that with the end of the Cold War, which had importantly been a common conflict against godless communism, and the development of the internet, with its radical reshaping of community and identity.

Burge's social science research highlights how Americans increasingly experience religion as coded conservative, such that those who do not identify with conservative cultural or political positions feel decreasingly at home in religion and more at home with liberal non-religion.  According to Burge, "Americans are increasingly understanding religion in a very clear-cut way: as a tribal marker for politics. Thus, to call oneself a Christian (or even more specifically, an evangelical) is to make a statement about one's political worldview, not really about one's local church or spiritual walk." 

Burge recognizes that "Catholicism has withstood the urge to divide and purify more than any large religious organization in the United States." That said, he doubts the Church can "resist the fragmentation and division that have become so deeply ingrained in American society over the last several years." He notes "that the only reason the Catholic Church has not declined more rapidly is because it has drawn a large number of nonwhite members" at a time when "race is one of the primary cleavages in the American political landscape." 

Hitherto, "white Catholicism was politically heterogeneous." Sunday Mass may have been "the only opportunity that exists for people from diverse backgrounds to meet in a social space on a regular basis. However, with the political sorting happening among white Catholics, this space is transitioning from a place of tremendous diversity to a place that is less and less welcoming to those who find themselves on the left side of the political spectrum."

Meanwhile, Catholic Mass attendance has declined since the 1970s, a trend Catholicism shares with the even more declining mainline Protestant churches.

Back to the larger picture, Burge believes "the average American increasingly understands religion through the lens of tribalism. It's a way to say which political team one plays for, whom they find common cause with, and how they line up during an election season." That said, he examines the persistent debate over whether polarization is primarily an elite phenomenon or has penetrated among more ordinary Americans. He sees a certain disconnect. White evangelicals and Catholics are increasingly moving right; the nonreligious increasingly moving left. Yet, there is data that suggests average Americans tend "to be fairly moderate, nuanced, and pragmatic in how they view some of the most talked about and divisive issues in modern society." At the same time, however, those average Americans are "becoming more and more convinced that they should at least feign support for the most strident voices in their tribe." It appears as if many "listen to the thought leaders of their respective tribes and just can't believe everything they are hearing. However, they do agree that the other side is clearly wrong and deserves to be ridiculed for belonging to a different tribe."

Having presented his disconcerting data, Burge still wants to make the case for traditional, inclusive (what he would call moderate) American religion. "People gathering under one roof to sing together, pray together, and work in common cause to create a better community and a better society will certainly move us closer to the ideals that were set forth by the Founding Fathers of our country. There's nothing simpler and more consequential than people getting up on a Sunday morning, getting dressed, and making their way to a local house of worship. The fate and future of American democracy may be at stake."