Our Approaching Semiquincentennial

A month from now, on July 4, the United States will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, “when our country claimed its place among the family of nations,” an occasion for giving thanks “for what has been achieved” and asking divine help “for the work that still remains.” [Collect for Independence Day, U.S. Roman Missal].

As Americans, we share in the benefits bequeathed to us by the founders of this country, whose legacy we receive with respect and celebrate with gratitude. We are ourselves or are the heirs of immigrants who came to this country in response to its promises of economic opportunity, political freedom, and religious liberty. For generations, Catholic immigrants have brought our faith to this land and enriched this society with a strong network of Catholic institutions, which have served Americans of all backgrounds, contributing a distinctly Catholic sensibility to the American experiment.

In keeping with that Catholic sensibility, the U.S. Bishops will next week consecrate  the United States to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. According to Portland's Archbishop Alexander Sample: "As we reflect with gratitude on the blessings God has bestowed on our country, our devotion to the Sacred Heart demands that we consider how we might foster truth, justice, and charity in American life. We are called to bring our faith into the actions we take and the lives we lead in our communities. We celebrate the ways the Church has contributed to a more just world, and we invite all in our society to see the face of Christ reflected in each sister and brother. We welcome God’s 'kingdom of justice, fraternity and solidarity' [Pope Leo XIV, Dilexi Te, 16]. remembering that 'God has a special place in his heart for those who are discriminated against and oppressed, and he asks us, his Church, to make a decisive and radical choice in favor of the weakest [Pope Leo XIV, Dilexi Te, 16].This anniversary and consecration will be a great opportunity to promote the beautiful devotion to the Sacred Heart and to encourage the laity to offer their lives in service to God and their country."

As this special anniversary approaches, we are all well aware of the many difficult and divisive issues facing our country, along with the contentious arguments that command the news and dominate social media. In response to the pervasive political polarization of his own time, Servant of God, Isaac Hecker (1819-1888) hoped that, as he said to Blessed Pope Pius IX, Catholicism could “act like oil on troubled waters” and so “sustain our institutions and enable our young country to realize its great destiny” [Letter, December 22, 1857, The Paulist Vocation, p. 46]. Despite the difficulties that continue to cloud our country's horizons, our faith challenges us to make Hecker’s hope a reality in response to the multiple challenges of our time.

Those challenges are many and do not admit easy or one-dimensional solutions. Disagreements are to be expected. As Catholics and as citizens, we are called to address our disagreements in a morally serious way that transcends simplistic sloganeering, emotional appeals to narrowly defined secular or religious identities, and the vilification of political opponents, immigrants, and others. As our American bishops reminded us over a decade ago: “Catholics may choose different ways to respond to compelling social problems, but we cannot differ on our moral obligation to help build a more just and peaceful world through morally acceptable means, so that the weak and vulnerable are protected and human rights and dignity are defended.” [USCCB, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (1915), 20]. 

I am old enough to remember our country's Bicentennial celebration 50 years ago, especially the flotilla of "Tall Ships" sailing through New York Harbor and up the Hudson and the same city's exuberant evocation of its history as a city of generations of immigrants. The contrast between the elegance of the "Tall Ships" and spectacle of pseudo-gladatorial combat on the White House lawn is not just a matter of aesthetics, but speaks directly to the moral and social diminishment of our political culture in these last 50 years.

Although it may seem now almost like a golden age in retrospect, in fact 1976 was not really the best of times either.  Now as then, our impending celebration of our 250th anniversary challenges us to a renewed search for solidarity and a recovery of mutual trust. 

Pressure (The Movie)

 

After 80+ years, one might imagine that the public's appetite for World War II movies (and D-Day movies in particular) might have been satiated by now. But, as with books about that war, the interest never seems to fade. As a child of a World War II European Theater veteran, neither does my interest ever fully fade in that seemingly endlessly fascinating story. (As it happened, while waiting for the film to start, one of the many movie trailers was for yet another WWII film, set apparently at the Battle of the Bulge!)

This latest D-Day movie is Pressure, directed Anthony Maras, written by him and David Haig and based on Haig's 2014 stage play. It stars Andrew Scott as the British meteorologist James Stagg, and Brendan Fraser as General Eisenhower.

The historical event behind the film is the effect of the weather on the initial plan for the D-Day invasion, which was originally scheduled for June 5, 1944. British Chief Meteorological Officer Dr. James Stagg accurately forecast a severe, catastrophic storm, which forced Eisenhower to make the decision to delay the invasion by 24 hours to June 6. Then he successfully forecast a break in the storm, which allowed the invasion to go ahead after all one day later on June 6. The film's title, Pressure, may be a play on both the enormous decision-making challenges Eisenhower faced (with the consequently intense pressure on him and everyone around him) and also the barometric indicators being tracked by competing meteorologists coming to opposite conclusions with the limited predictive capacities available to the military in 1944..

Of course, we know the story. The outcome is no surprise. so the drama lies netirely inthe interplay of the personalities involved. The film effectively captures the atmosphere at Allied Headquarters and the overwhelming tension surrounding the preparations for the biggest invasion in history. It also captures the interplay of strong personalities in ego-driven competition under those stressful circumstances - notably British General Montgomery (Damian Lewis)'s rivalry with Eisenhower and the American meteorologist Irwin Krick (Chris Messina)'s rivalry with Stagg. At any given moment anyone of them can come across as arrogant. An important calming influence in the tense environment is Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon), who seems to navigate well the powerful storm of warrior egos and manages to calm not only Eisenhower but also Stagg, whom she alone seems to see as another person.

The film portrays Eisenhower's stirring D-Day message, against the background of the landing and accompanying casualties. We also get to hear his famous second message, in the event of failure, confided to in the movie to Summersby. "My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone." It was a classic act of personal responsibility, characteristic of the man and something to be expected in his time. It is hard to imagine any public figure today expressing nay comparable degree of personal accountability for a political or other public failure. Nor is such acknowledgment of personal responsibility any longer anything that is expected today, so catastrophically changed is our political and moral landscape.

Eisenhower also gave credit where it was due. As he later said, D-Day succeeded because "we had better meteorologists than the Germans."

Magnifica Humanitas

On the anniversary of Poe Leo XIII's 1891 groundbreaking social encyclical Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIV signed his first papal encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (“On the Protection of Human Dignity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”). The encyclical was publicly presented at the Vatican ten days later, on May 25, during an event which included presentations by Pope Leo himself and, surprisingly, a co-founder of an AI company, Anthropic. Through this encyclical, Pope Leo is following the path of of his predecessor Leo XIII by attempting to respond to today’s technological revolution, as the earlier Leo had to the industrial revolution.

Leo XIII's intervention began a whole series of such encyclicals, which together have come to be called the "encyclical tradition" of "Catholic Social Teaching." Some of those encyclicals, notably Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno, apparently had actual political and economic effects in influencing the U.S. New Deal. Whether this Pope Leo's intervention - in a very different kind of world - will have a comparable practical effect remains to be seen.

The Pope begins with the irresistibly anti-technological biblical image of the Tower of Babel. One possible moral to take from the Babel story is that such aggressive  technological efforts are intrinsically misguided, if not inherently evil. Leo, however, is no Luddite. He obviously recognizes that AI technology is here to stay, but he tries to envision a world in which AI technologies may be morally tamed by regulation. Hence, his contrary image of Nehemiah, another biblical builder, whose approach Leo invokes as a positive model. Technology for Leo, "is not inherently evil," but neither is it neutral, "because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it" [9].

Seeking to situate himself in the tradition of which he seeks to represent a continuation, Leo reviews in some detail the 135-year history of the modern Church's Social Doctrine. Certainly for many secular readers (and perhaps for many Catholics as well), this review, which is really a mini-compendium of the Church's Social Doctrine, will be necessary, for it forms an essential preliminary for what follows. Highlighted are the tradition's emphasis on "the dignity of the person, the value of work, the universal destination of goods, solidarity and subsidiarity, care for creation and the centrality of peace and fraternity" [45]. Leo describes the principle of the common good "as the social expression of the dignity recognized in every person" [59]. This all-important principle of the common good cannot be reduced to the "total of individual benefits, nor the intersection of their particular interests; it is a greater good that belongs to everyone, and it can only be achieved nurtured and protected by our collective efforts" [60]. "Politics should promote this common good, not "short-term calculations or sterile polarizations" [63]. The injunction is welcome, but probably needs to be complemented by a realistic reflection on the problem of democracy, which inevitably seems to prioritize the short-term over the long-term and private interests over the common good.

Another essential social doctrine principle is "the universal destination of goods." Private property the encyclical reminds us "is always subordinate to the universal destination fo goods." The "social function" of private property, the Pope insists, "must not be considered a mere theological opinion, but a doctrine of the Church" [66]. This doctrinal development must certainly be taken as a challenge to certain strains especially in American Catholicism.

Subsidiarity (which, one may suggest, is often, especially in the U.S., the most commonly misapplied principle of the Church's social vocabulary) sets certain limits on the State. But in the new digital context, "the highest level is not the State, but rather major economic and technological actors that exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life." Here the encyclical calls for "transparency, accountability, and meaningful forms of participation" [71]. The necessary complement to subsidiarity is solidarity. "When subsidiarity is not linked to solidarity, it ends up becoming merely the protection of particular interests; when solidarity is not supported by subsidiarity it degenerates in to a form of welfare that does not promote responsibility" [73].

Social justice is "characterized by the capacity of a social, economic and political order to allow everyone - particularly the weakest - to live a truly dignified life, without leaving anyone behind. ... A litmus test for social justice today is the treatment of migrants, refugees and those forced to move due to poverty, violence, climate change and environmental disasters" [77, 81].

Chapter three takes on the technological paradigm and digital power and memorably quotes Romano Guardini, "contemporary man has not been trained to use power well" [[93]. Here, he finally draws the necessary distinction between human and artificial intelligence. AI's "power remains entirely tied to data processing. So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. ... they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through whcih human beings grow in wisdom" [99].

Accordingly, "AI can be a valuable tool," but requires "a measured and vigilant approach," for "every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores and optimizes, and how it classifies people and situations" [100, 104]. Unfortunately, there is an "imbalance between the speed of technological growth and the slower development of awareness, norms, safeguards and institutions capable of governing its effects" [106] "What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating, and of protecting the opportunities for communities still to be able to participate and ask questions" [107].

Hence, his most memorable phrase from the entire encyclical: Disarming AI. This "means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. ... merely regulating it is insufficient; it. must be disarmed" [110]. Whether societies and governments will in fact act to "disarm" AI or even moderately regulate it is, it must be said, a matter for political action and will depend upon the mobilization of political will. Hopefully, the encyclical's rather radical rhetoric will energize some of that elusive political will!

The "central question" the Pope poses is "what does it mean to safeguard our humanity?" He warns of a "pervasive technocratic paradigm" which "threatens to normalize an anti-human vision," in which "the fullness of life is equated with having more, reducing weakness, eliminating uncertainty and exerting total control" [112] "If the. human being is treated as something to be perfected or surpassed, it becomes easier to accept that some lives are less useful, les desirable or less worthy" [117]. Thus, "the true alternative" is "between two paths of development: a progress that serves individuals and peoples, or a progress that subjects them to the mentality of power" [129]. throughout the encyclical, the Pope keeps his focus not on the technology but on the human person who is impacted by technology - and, it is hoped, may in turn impact it. (Hence, the encyclical's title is not Artificial Intelligence, but “On the Protection of Human Dignity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.”)

Chapter Four addresses this issue of safeguarding humanity in this time of transition. "In light of the principles of the Church's Social Doctrine, the digital transformation invites us to rediscover truth as a common good, to protect the dignity of work and to safeguard freedom against all forms of dependence and commercialization" [131]. In an observation that cannot but help seeming especially timely today, the encyclical warns that "When questions about what is true lose their appeal, and a pragmatism takes hold that is content with what appears useful or effective, then democratic life is weakened" [134]. Whether democracy is actually up to the challenge of responding to the technological transformation that is taking place is obviously an open question, the answer to which is as yet far from certain.

While concerned not to "demonize" technology, the encyclical also highlights harms associated with digital media that have already commanded attention in today's society and the challenge facing contemporary education: "a culture of immediacy and hyper-stimulation, which gives rise to fatigue, boredom and apathy concerning the effort required for seeking the truth" [139]. 

Following in the tradition of Rerum Novarum, Leo emphasizes the intrinsic importance of work. As is already well known (and was mentioned by the Anthropic executive at the Vatican event), one of the great fears popularly associated with AI technologies is the loss of many jobs. Hence, the significance of Pope Leo's citing Pope Saint John Paul II's 1981 assertion in Laborem Exercens, "unemployment is a grave evil" [151]. The Church "insists that access to work for all must be a high priority for public policies and economic processes, serving as a criterion for evaluating the human quality of any development model" [155]. Interestingly, the encyclical  cites the U.S. Bishops on the importance of work for identity, friendships, relationships, practical responsibilities, and vocation discernment [167].

This leads to a discussion of the dangerous manipulation of persons as objects and warns against currents that "envision 'second-class' human beings, subordinate to the interests of elites who consider themselves superior" [172]. This is the context for the. encyclical's reexamination of slavery, "a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached" [176]. One reason for this facing up to the sins of past history is to serve as "a call to vigilance," in which what has been learned from the past "must be translated into discernment and responsibility in the present" [177].

Chapter Five addresses the issue of war, which in this context acquires a special salience, "the risk that technology, detached from ethics and responsibility, will render decisions about life and death more rapid and impersonal" [182]. From this understandable concern with the impact of new technologies upon warfare, the encyclical then meanders somewhat into a wider discussion of all contemporary conflict and an apparent perception on the Pope's part "that humanity is slipping onto a violent culture of power, where peace no longer appears as a responsibility to be taken on, but as a fragile interval between conflicts." This leads to a statement which will surely be controversial (and also seems somewhat self-contradictory), that "without prejudice to the right of self-defense in the strictest sense, it is important to reaffirm the 'just war' theory, which has all too often been used to. justify any kind of war, is now outdated" [192]. If the first part of that controversial sentence is taken seriously, then unconditional surrender and pacifism are not a universal moral mandate, in which case how can just war (intended as one moral alternative to unconditional surrender) be "outdated"? Likewise, the encyclical calls "erroneous" the "belief that nuclear deterrence is an indispensable prerequisite for security" [194]. Obviously, it is not "indispensable," in that there may well be other avenues to achieving security. How, however, apart from the successful consequence of nuclear deterrence, does one explain the empirical historical fact that the Cold War remained cold and did not end in another actual world war on the scale of the 1940s? And then there is also the exemplary sad case of Ukraine, which gave up its nuclear deterrent and has since been invaded, something which would almost certainly not have occurred had it retained its nuclear deterrent. Hopefully, concerns about these controversial expressions will not detract from the encyclical's larger arguments that speak with such directness and relevance. .

Thus, the encyclical's concern for the larger question of violence versus peace-making laments a contemporary climate in which "nihilism and pragmatism become intertwined and end up normalizing grave errors. Religious extremism and identity-based fanaticism ally themselves with irrational economic policies, while politics often turns to misinformation and ridiculing opponents, and systematically cultivating fears and resentments" [206]. Commendably, the encyclical challenges individuals themselves and emphasizes our responsibility to "examine our conscience regarding the words we use, the prejudices we have and the explicit or implicit aggression that lies within them" [214]. 

Having systematically addressed this multitude of theoretical and practical concerns, Pope Leo returns at the encyclical's end to the fundamental context of Christian faith. "At the heart of everything is the mystery of the Incarnation, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us" [231]. "In Christ, we are called to cooperate in the work of creation, rather than be disinterested observers of technological processes that limit our freedom and responsibility. The dignity inscribed in each of us by the Holy Spirit can also be seen in our capacity to reflect critically, choose and love freely, and form authentic relationships" [233].

In conclusion, Leo recalls again the image of Nehemiah, in whom the Pope sees "a striking parable of our own vocation, which is not to be passive spectators of social and cultural fractures, nor mere commentators on what is crumbling, but men and women prepared to enter the construction sites of history ... in order to build what has collapsed and protect what is threatened" [241].

Like Leo XIII before him, Pope Leo XIV has recognized in this encyclical the challenge of "new things" in our time and has presented the Church and the wider world with an agenda for reform, renewal, and revitalization. Had the earlier Leo's response to the social crisis of the 19th-century been taken more seriously by secular society, the history of the 20th century might well have been very different. Magnifica Humanitas represents a serious religious response to some of the latest "new things" that appear as clouds darkening the horizon of this 21st century. The Tower of Babel image which Pope Leo has invoked ought to frighten us, for the Tower of Babel was one of primeval humanity's great mistakes, as AI technologies might well prove to be one of humanity's serious mistakes. The Tower of Babel's construction was halted, although not without irreversible damage to the unity of the human race. Unlike the Tower of Babel, it is hard to image AI actually being stopped. The best that probably can be aspired to is a reassertion of human initiative - much as God restored divine initiative at Babel. Magnifica Humanitas has ably highlighted both this challenge and the dire consequences that lurk in the event of human failure to respond socially and politically with the required reassertion of human initiative.

Memorial Day

 

Today is Memorial Day, originally a post-Civil War holiday created to commemorate those who died in our country's wars. It was originally known as Decoration Day, a day when Americans decorated the graves of fallen soldiers. To some extent, it has evolved into a day when many recall all their beloved dead. Thus, for example, when I was a pastor, I started the practice of an annual Mass at the parish-owned cemetery, a custom commonly observed as well in other Catholic cemeteries of which I am aware 

Cemeteries are special places for us – special not just because they are blessed and consecrated by the Church and marked by beautiful and noble monuments. They are special places for us, first and foremost, because it is where we remember one another, where we remember those who have died, who have gone before us in life, our cherished past to whom we owe our present. Remembering is one of the things that makes us human. To remember those who have died, as our nation does today, is to acknowledge the importance of their lives - and the common humanity which we share with them in life and in death. Remembering is also one of the things that makes us Christian. To remember those who have gone before us in faith, as we do especially here today but every day at every Mass, is to celebrate the multitude of ways in which the grace of God touched and transformed each one of them in life - and the hope we still share with them in death. Memorial Day is one of the few occasions commonly remaining to remind us of our links with those who have gone before us and of our continuing connection with them.

By coincidence of calendar this year, today is also the feast of Mary, Mother of the Church. We are a global Church, united in faith with people living on every continent. As Saint Augustine famously said on one of his Pentecost sermons, the original Church of 120 has become a great Church that speaks the languages of all nations [Sermon 267 (c. 412)]. We are also united - as the liturgy regularly reminds us - with those who have gone before us. So it is, as the author of the book of Maccabees has reminded us, a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins (2 Maccabees 12:46). and welcomed among the saints, as we too hope someday to be welcomed with them forever.

Homily, Memorial Day, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, May 25, 2026.

Photo: Mourning Virgin, South German 1510-1520, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

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.