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."

Orestes Brownson

 

Orestes Brownson (September 14, 1803 - April 17, 1876), who died 150 years ago today, was perhaps the most intellectually noteworthy lay American Catholic convert of the 19th century. His contemporary (and fellow convert), Paulist Fathers' founder, Servant of God Isaac Hecker (1819-1888) later recalled: “He [Brownson] was the master, I the disciple. God alone knows how much I am indebted to him.” [“Dr. Brownson and Catholicity,” Catholic World, 45 (1887), p. 235.] According to one of Brownson's more recent biographers, Patrick W. Carey, Hecker “was interested in ideas and enjoyed extended discussions with Brownson,” while the older, more intellectual Brownson, although somewhat wary of Hecker’s mystical tendencies, “was drawn to what he criticized in Hecker and knew, instinctively, that Hecker possessed something that he did not.” [Orestes A, Brownson: American Religious Weathervane (Eerdmans,2004), p. 138.] Importantly, Carey highlights how Brownson also “always had an emphasis on the social dimension of Christianity, an emphasis that evolved into his stress upon the church" [p.135].  

Brownson himself recounted his long journey to Catholicism in 1857 in The Convert, which acknowledged how difficult a move it was to become Catholic and how ineffective he considered the Catholic apologetics of the time - "dry, feeble, and unattractive."

Bronson was born and raised in the intense religious atmosphere of the Second Great Awakening. He learned his Bible as a child. He became a Presbyterian, then a Universalist, then a Unitarian, none of which he found fully satisfactory. He was attracted to the 19th-century movements we now remember as "utopian socialism." In the 1830s, he was active in the New York Workingmen's Party, motivated by his "deep sympathy with the poorer and more numerous classes."

When Isaac Hecker first heard him lecture in New York in early 1841, Brownson was a prominent Unitarian minister, journalist, and active social reformer. Later that year, thanks to the initiative of the Hecker brothers, Brownson was back in New York to give more lectures and stayed with them at their home. At the time, besides being an intellectual influence, Brownson also became a personal friend and a help to Isaac and his family as they struggled to come to terms with the increasing intensity of Isaac Hecker's spiritual experience. Although both men moved on to more explicitly religious preoccupations and Brownson's faith in American democracy diminished over time, his early political program never completely lost its salience for Hecker.“The ominous outlook of popular politics at the present moment,” Hecker wrote in 1887, “plainly shows that legislation such as we then proposed, and such as was then within the easy reach of State and national authority, would have forestalled difficulties whose settlement at this day threatens a dangerous disturbance of public order. [“Dr. Brownson and the Workingman’s Party Fifty Years Ago,” Catholic World 45 (1887), pp. 205-208.] 

In the 1840s, Brownson concluded that "progress depends on the objective element of life ... on living in communion with God." In 1844, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church by Boston's Archbishop Fitzpatrick. Brownson's Quarterly Review, which he had founded in 1838, added to his prominence as the best known Catholic convert and apologist of his era, who also enjoyed a large non-Catholic audience.

He remained friends with Hecker for the rest of his life, visiting and corresponding with him, and contributing to Hecker's Catholic World, although theological and editorial disagreements  would eventually cause him to cease writing for the Paulist publication.

Those disagreements were anticipated in Brownson's review of Hecker's second book, Aspirations of Nature. in Brownson's Quarterly Review (October 1857). While praising Hecker and his goal of converting Americans to Catholicism by appealing to "the earnest seeker after truth, who is revolted by the depreciation of reason and. nature by Calvinism," Brownson rejected Hecker's tendency to to treat New England Transcendentalism "as an index of the direction likely to be taken by the American mind." Brownson had a better appreciation of American Protestantism's prospect of renewing and revitalizing itself, producing "more conservative forms of Protestantism." Indeed, Brownson suggested, "the American people are more Evangelical to-day than they were fifteen or twenty years ago." Hecker, Brownson acknowledged, was writing "to the popular mind, in a popular style, and seldom aims at technical precision." He appreciated how Hecker's purpose "led him to dwell on the goods retained after the Fall rather than on those lost by it." That said, however, he faulted Hecker "for not taking sufficient pains to guard his readers against confounding what reason and nature have the power to do with what they actually accomplish." With remarkable prescience, Brownson worried whether, in appealing to "Rationalists or Transcendentalists, we are more likely to be regarded as converting the Church to them, than we are to convert them to the Church." Of particular relevance to the contemporary American situation, Brownson insisted on the empirical fact that there never has been an actual state of pure nature. Hecker's "Earnest Seeker," Brownson observed "has been born and trained in a Christian atmosphere, under direct or indirect Christian influences, for no man absolutely ignorant of revelation and grace could propose his problems in the form he proposes them."

Americans can be converted, Brownson argued, "by addressing that in them which is common to all men, their reason, their heart, and their conscience, not what is peculiar to them, or what is their local or temporary interest or passion." He feared subordinating "the Church to American nationality" and warned that mixing the Church "with a radical party or a conservative party would be to compromise her Catholicity." That last warning, in particular, seems an especially apt one for us all to ponder today.

Photo: Orestes Brownson, Portrait by G.P.A. Healy (1863).

Encountering Augustine in Annaba

President Trump's denunciations notwithstanding, Pope Leo today is in Algeria and has availed himself of this opportunity to visit Annaba, the site of the ancient Roman North African port city of Hippo, once the see of the great Father and Doctor of the Church Saint Augustine (354-430), to whom the Latin Church in general and Pope Leo's religious order in particular are so indebted. Algeria is the first stop in a four-nation African tour. This 10-day trip will also take him to Cameroun, Angola, and Equatorial Guinea, countries with significant Catholic populations.

Algeria is, on the other hand, an overwhelmingly Muslim country; but the Pope's visit there  includes celebrating Mass today in Annaba's 19th-century French colonial Basilica of Saint Augustine, which overlooks the site of ancient Hippo and what are presumed to be the remains of Saint Augustine's actual original basilica. (In 1842, a piece of the relic of Saint Augustine's right arm was brought from Saint Augustine's burial place in Pavia, Italy, and inserted into the arm of a marble statue of Saint Augustine in the modern basilica.) 

By beginning his journey with a day-long visit to the ancient site of Hippo, where Saint Augustine lived in community, preached, and wrote, Pope Leo is highlighting his own debt to Saint Augustine, as an Augustinian friar rooting his papacy in Augustine's vision of the unity of the Church. It will be remembered that on the day of his election last year, Pope Leo described himself as a "son of St. Augustine," and he quoted the ancient North-African saint who famously said, "With you I am a Christian, and for you I am a bishop." The Pope's Augustinianism is evident with his frequently quoting of Augustine in his addresses.

Saint Augustine also wrote a Rule, which has historically been adopted and adapted as a basis for the common life of many Catholic religious communities. Augustine had created his first quasi-religious community in his hometown of Tagaste (Souk Ahras, Algeria) in 388, only a year after his baptism. He did the same in Hippo in 391 after his relocation there as a presbyter, and then a few years later, after being ordained bishop, he set up a similar community for fellow clergy in his house. There, around 397, he wrote the Rule that bears his name. The text, reflecting some of the earliest experiences of cenobitic religious life in the Latin Church, is relatively short, biblically based, and inspired by Luke's image of the Jerusalem community in Acts. Its first precept, therefore is live together in harmony, being of one mind and one heart on the way to God (cf. Psalm 68:7; Acts 4:32). The Rule emphasizes a simple and common life. The simpler a way of life, the better it is suited to servants of God. And the degree to which you are concerned for the interests of the community rather than for your own, is the criterion by which you can judge how much progress you have made.

Augustine is rightly known as the Doctor gratiae ("Doctor of Grace"), because of his emphasis on our fundamental need for God's gratuitous grace - in opposition to the heresy of Pelagius. He could also be called a Doctor of Unity because of his tireless advocacy of the unity of the Church (and the objectivity of the sacraments) against the schismatic African Donatist church. This aspect of Augustine's pastoral ministry particularly resonates with the challenges facing this Augustinian Pope in today's politically polarized and fractured Church and world, in which the Gospel is increasingly overshadowed and disfigured by partisan identifications.

We entreat you, brothers, Augustine implores us as he did his contemporaries, as earnestly as we are able, to have charity, not only for one another, but also for those who are outside the Church. Of these some are still pagans, who have not yet made an act of faith in Christ. Others are separated, insofar as they are joined with us in professing faith in Christ, our head, but are yet divided from the unity of his body. My friends, we must grieve over these as over our brothers; and they will only cease to be so when they no longer say our Father. (Commentary on Psalm 32, 29).

Celebrating a Votive Mass of Saint Augustine in the Augustinian Basilica at Annaba today, preaching in French on Acts' account of the Jerusalem apostolic community and the Gospel's story of Nicodemus, the Pope said: "We can be born anew from above by the grace of God. We should do so then according to his loving will which desires to renew humanity by calling us to a communion of life that begins with faith." We quoted Saint Augustines's famous prayer, Give what you command, Lord, and command what you will, to highlight how Christ gives us the strength to renew our lives completely, no matter how weighed down we are. Referencing the Jerusalem apostolic community, he spoke of "the lifestyle that characterizes humanity when it has been renewed by the Holy Spirit." Recalling that there, "Saint Augustine loved his flock fervently seeking the truth and serving Christ with ardent faith," he invited his hearers today to "be heirs to this tradition."

Photo: Annaba's Basilica of Saint Augustine viewed from the ruins of Hippo.

Quotations from Augustine's Rule are from The Rule of Saint Augustine, tr. Raymond Canning, OSA (Doubleday Image, 1986).

Peace Be With You

 

Today’s annually repeated gospel [John 20:19-31] captures the novelty and uniqueness of the resurrection in its account of the disciples’ two encounters (one week apart) with the Risen Christ. No one witnessed Jesus’ actual resurrection. What was witnessed initially was just an empty tomb – an important condition for the resurrection to be believed, but insufficient evidence in itself. Something more had to happen, and something more did happen – in the form of a series of encounters in which the Risen Lord demonstrated to his disciples that he was the same Jesus who had lived and died (hence the wounds in his hands and side), now alive again in a unexpectedly new and wonderful way (hence his presence among them, although the doors were locked.)

 

Fearful for their safety, the disciples had hidden behind locked doors. Perhaps, this was the same “upper room” where they had so recently eaten the Last Supper and where they would gather again after the ascension to await the coming of the Holy Spirit. If so, how appropriate! Since apostolic times (long before the invention of the modern weekend), Sunday, the first day of the week, has been the special day, the irreplaceably privileged day, when Christians assemble in their churches to encounter Christ, the Risen Lord, present through the power of his Holy Spirit in the sacramental celebration of the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist.

 

On that first day of the week, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” How we long to hear those words today in a world again at war. Not for nothing have the Church's bishops for centuries used these words of Jesus as an official greeting. Not for nothing did Pope Leo make those his first public words to the world on the day of his election almost a year ago. Surely, that was no mere wish on his part! Christ, the Risen Lord offers us his peace - not just some transient social or political peace, however, but the peace that conquers fear. It is clear enough from the locked doors just how fearful the disciples must have been.

 

Many of us in fact spend much of our lives behind locked doors – literally so in our modern urban way of life - a sensible practice perhaps, but one obviously rooted in fear.

 

There are also the many locked doors one doesn’t see, but which one feels, nonetheless. We may not all be afraid of exactly the same things the disciples were, but our fears are no less real, wounding us in all sorts of ways, wounds we carry within us, concealing them as best we can.

 

Yet, when Jesus came to his disciples that first day of the week, far from concealing, he showed them his hands and his side – and the disciples rejoiced. As the absent Thomas acutely appreciated, Jesus’ wounded hands and side reveal the continuity between the Jesus they had known and loved, who really and truly died on the cross, and the now-living Risen Christ, who commissions his Church to heal the world’s wounds and impart his forgiveness in the sacraments of his Church: “Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them.”

 

For the resurrection was not just some nice thing that happened to Jesus - and then leaves the rest of us and everything else in the world completely unchanged. It was – and is – the foundation of what the first letter of Peter, from which we just heard [1 Peter 1:3-9], calls an imperishable, undefiled, and unfading future inheritance to which, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, we already have access here and now in the present.

 

Like Thomas, none of us were there on that first day of the week, but we are here today - on this first day of this week. The first day of the week, the day on which God began the work of creation, has become our day of re-creation, the beginning not just of another week but of a whole new way of life, pointing us forward to the fullness of that new creation in which, living for ever with the Risen Christ, we will finally become most fully human.

Homily for the Second Sunday of Easter, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, April 12, 2026.

No Ordinary Fishing Trip

 

Modern pilgrims in Israel easily sense the contrast between the Judean desert (where Jerusalem is) and the relatively lush, green of Galilee (where today’s Gospel [John 21:1-14] story is set). Renewed annually by winter’s life-giving rains, the land around the large lake the Gospel calls the Sea of Tiberias (more commonly called the Sea of Galilee) is at its greenest in spring. It was to that place, at this season of the year, that Peter and six other disciples returned. It had been from those familiar shores that Jesus had originally called them to follow him. Now they’d come home – back to what they knew best. They went fishing.

But this was to be no normal fishing trip!

There’s a church on the shore that marks the supposed site of this event. In front of the altar is a rock, traditionally venerated as the stone on which the risen Lord served his disciples a breakfast of bread and fish. Staples of the Galilean diet, bread and fish seem to be staples of the Gospel story itself! Just a short walk away is another church, marking the site where, not so long before, Jesus had fed 5000+ people with five loaves and a few fish. Presumably, the disciples would have remembered that earlier meal. As surely we should as well, as we also assemble here at the table lovingly set for us by the risen Lord himself, who feeds us with food we would never have gotten on our own.

Typically, in these stories of the risen Lord’s appearances, while he is certainly the same Jesus the disciples had followed in life and who had died on the Cross, something about him is now different. Hence, the dramatic moment when Jesus is recognized, as when the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” But recognizing the risen Christ is but the beginning of a life lived following the risen Lord. So, even before being formally entrusted with his special mission, Peter leads the way, dressing up for the occasion, jumping into the sea and swimming to Jesus ahead of the others.

As his role requires, Peter here is already leading the Church, leading here by example. His example illustrates for the rest of us what it means, first, to recognize the risen Lord and, then, actually to follow him.

Homily for the Friday within the Octave of Easter, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, April 10, 2026.

American Pope

When Donald Trump was triumphantly returned to the White House on January 20, 2025, he immediately became ex officio the most important, the most powerful, the most prominent American in the world. Then, exactly 11 months ago, on May 8, 2025, somewhat surprisingly and unexpectedly (at least to most people), Robert Cardinal Prevost, a Chicago-born, Augustinian Friar, who had been a missionary priest and bishop in Peru, was elected Pope - instantly blowing up the traditional expectation that no American could or would ever be elected Pope. In 2025, an American-born Pope immediately became ex officio the other most important, the other most powerful, the other most prominent American in the world. What this means - and the hope that Pope Leo XIV's election may bring to the Church and the world in the era of President Trump - is the focus of CNN Vatican correspondent Christopher Lamb's American Hope: What Pope Leo VIV Means for the Church and the World.

Despite the conventional wisdom that no American would be elected Pope, Lamb argues that Trump's re-election caused a recognition that the U.S. role in the world was changing. He claims that Cardinal Prevost was on his own short list of papabili. Even so, when the white smoke appeared so quickly on the second day of the conclave, he assumed the winner was Cardinal Parolin, the Secretary of State, who had been widely seen as the frontrunner. But, when Cardinal Mamberti announced Prevost's name, Lamb's "previous feelings of deflation turned to excitement."

I too had heard Prevost's name mentioned prior to the conclave, but I still assumed that his American nationality would count against him. In fact, that very morning when someone had asked me if I thought there would be a new Pope that day and who it might be, I had answered that the only thing we could predict for certain was that it would not be an American! 

Of course, having been born in the USA is not the only noteworthy aspect of Pope Leo's background and life story. Lamb rightly highlights his membership in (and his leadership of) the Order of Saint Augustine and his missionary service in Peru - both as important aspects of who Leo is and as important considerations which made an American-born pope's election even possible. "He would not be pope were it not for the years he served in Peru, a time which profoundly shaped him and which brought him to the attention of Pope Francis." He was thus the "least American" of the American cardinals. His Augustinian identity, Lamb also argues, wrote "community, contemplative prayer and unity" into his "governing style," while his two terms as the Augustinians' Prior General had given him "insights into the growing churches of Africa and Asia, and experience of leading a complex, international Catholic community."

Lamb is also extremely preoccupied with demonstrating continuity between Pope Francis and Pope Leo - even while acknowledging Leo's "balance and moderation" and his desire to be "an expert listener and community builder," qualities that somewhat differentiate him from his more polarizing predecessor.  The author's emphasis on continuity, even while recognizing the ways in which Leo is temperamentally different from his predecessor, almost seems like a case of protesting too much. Also, given that Leo in certain respects represents the Global South as much as the U.S., Lamb devotes much more space than one would therefore expect to contentious first-world issues (like women's ordination, which Francis himself in continuity with his predecessors had rejected). 

Nonetheless, Leo's Americanness is an important theme of Lamb's analysis. He does not expect Leo to seek deliberate confrontation with Trumpism. "He is measured and careful with his language, and far less provocative than his predecessor." On the other hand, while Francis was easily criticized as someone who "simply did not know enough about the United States," that "cannot be said of an American pope."

Leo's papacy offers an alternative vision to the one emanating from the White House, a vision that is built on unity and spirituality and which is allergic to divisive rhetoric and polarization. Lamb quotes Fordham University's David Gibson: "While Leo's exposition of Catholic teachings will contradict many of Trump's policies and statements, it is Leo's character that stands in contrast to Trump, both as a Christian and as an American. ... This is about two diametrically opposed ways of being in the world."

Lamb contrasts Pope Leo not only with President Trump but also with the most prominent American Catholic layman, Vice President JD Vance, who was received into the Church in 2019 and claims his conversion was influenced by Saint Augustine. "JD Vance takes his faith seriously, and the story of his conversion, which he laid out in The Lamp magazine, reveals someone who has made a sincere engagement with the Catholic faith, and who wrestles with how to apply the teachings of Christianity in his life. Yet in the vice president of the United States, Leo also faces someone whose Catholic faith is tied to a political worldview." Vance is a "post-liberal," who "believes that society is better served by stronger communitarian and social bonds rather than by the autonomy of the individual." Such ideas resonate with some traditional Catholic teaching and in their more extreme form have become increasingly prominent in a revived ideology of Catholic integralism, an alternative which inevitably challenges the post-conciliar Catholic Church's apparent accommodation with liberal democracy.

Meanwhile, in his first Urbi et Orbi Easter Message a few days ago, Pope Leo issued a challenge which it would be hard not to understand. "We are growing accustomed to violence, resigning ourselves to it, and becoming indifferent. Indifferent to the deaths of thousands of people. Indifferent to the repercussions of hatred and division that conflicts sow. Indifferent to the economic and social consequences they produce, which we all feel." One of the most damaging consequences of our current politics is precisely how it has normalized violence, hatred, division, and the economic and social consequences of inequality and bigotry. The Pope's challenge is both perennial and contemporary: "let us abandon every desire for conflict, domination, and power, and implore the Lord to grant his peace to a world ravaged by wars and marked by a hatred and indifference that make us feel powerless in the face of evil." 

Lamb concludes American Hope with his worry about whether Pope Leo's "low-key style, his desire to see all sides of the argument, and his sometimes studious aversion to making news headlines, could be dangerous if it creates a perception of a papacy that has no clear narrative." He contrasts this with President Trump, whose "success is his uncanny ability to shape the narrative" and with Pope Francis, who "within hours of his election established a clear narrative for his papacy." Lamb worries Leo could cede the narrative to outside events as he believes happened with Pope Paul VI. 

There may be something to this argument. In contrast, however, I would suggest that Pope Leo's "low-key style," etc., may be among his great assets. Trump is bold. (So, in different ways, was Pope Francis.) The alternative to such Trumpian norm-shattering boldness that America and the world so desperately needs lies precisely in calm, balance, moderation, intelligent discourse, and - above all - empathy, all of which have already formed the basis for Pope Leo's counter-narrative. Lamb himself hints at this when he suggests that Leo "embodies the very qualities people hold up to be the best of America, at a moment when it's often said that the American President is undermining them."