Luke the Beloved Physician

Lule the beloved physician sends greetings (Colossians 4:14).

A Gospel is a work of art as well as a work of history. How fitting, therefore, that the Evangelist Luke, whose feast the Church celebrates today, should have been, according to tradition, a painter as well as an historian! 

The historian Luke tels us in the Prologue to his Gospel (Luke 1:1-4) how he decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence. The "everything" that he investigated was the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us. Luke displays a genuine historian's sensibility in his approach, but even more so a pre-eminently ecclesial sensibility. The "events" must continue to be told in the community - even after the eyewitnesses from the beginning are gone. Hence the need for a Gospel to function as a perennial eyewitness. And Luke brings his considerable artistry to bear in telling the story for future generations. And not just one story - but two! Luke the historian recounts and Luke the painter portrays not just life and mission of Jesus but the life and mission of his Church, which continues Christ's presence and action in the world. The sequel to Luke's Gospel, The Acts of the Apostles, paints the picture of the providential growth and expansion of the Church - even in the midst of persecution - from a small Jewish sect in Jerusalem to a mixed Jewish and Gentile community based in the major cities of the Roman Empire and putting down roots even in the capital itself, Rome.

In this age of so much spiritual individualism, when that nonsensical neologism "spiritual but not religious" has become so current, we do well to counter that by recalling Luke's parallel portraits of Christ in the Gospel and the Church in Acts - and the man himself who lived the Church-centered life he portrayed. The great missionary Saint Paul, who devoted his life to founding and nurturing local Church communities and their mutual communion with one another, cherished the community of collaborators on whom he relied and depended - among them Luke.

It seems that Luke was often with Paul. (In today's reading from Paul's 2nd Letter to Timothy, we get to hear Paul lament that Luke was the only one with him at that juncture!). In his letter to the Colossians, Paul associates Luke's greeting to the faithful with his, calling him "the beloved physician." One supposes that medicine was what we would nowadays call Luke's "day job," when he wasn't writing scripture or otherwise heling foster Church community in the Gentile Roman world! But Paul wasn't just noting Luke's "secular" profession. He called him "the beloved physician." Perhaps Paul himself had used and benefited from Luke's medical expertise. But, above all, Paul seemed to value Luke as a companion.

Because the life of faith is not just an individual career path, but a communal journey together through the world, Paul acutely appreciated his companions - fellow disciples like Luke. And so must we. Like Luke, we depend on our sources for the story we tell the world. Like Paul and Luke together, and like the Spirit-filled communities of faith Luke portrayed, we all depend on one another. 

We are our most "spiritual" when we are together. 

Voting Early

Some three decades ago, a friend me a story about her novitiate. One day all the sisters were given a “day off” from regular convent routine.  Before going on their outing, that morning she recited the entire day’s Office (since the Sisters wouldn’t be reciting it together). Including Compline, I asked kiddingly? Yes, she answered. Even the Examination of Conscience, I asked? Yes, she said, since she knew already in advance what sins she would likely commit during the day!

To me, Early Voting (which began today in Tennessee and started even earlier in some other states) is a bit like that. Enough potential voters (almost all of them, if the polls are to be believed) have already made up their mind that for most Americans the election might just as well be held today. Even so (as David Brooks observed recently), there certainly seems something strange about casting one’s vote before even the 1^st Presidential Debate has taken place. It does seem to make the whole campaign/election process seem somewhat … ridiculous.

To me, voting has always been primarily a symbolic civic ritual, which signifies a connection with and participation in the larger society, both national and local. Perhaps, I picked that up in elementary school civic class. Probably even more influential, however, was growing up watching my parents go to the polls on crisp autumn days – first, to register (back then when one had to register every time one planned to vote) and, later, to vote. Members of the “Greatest Generation,” my parents set a good example faithfully voting in every election. Rational Choice theoretical models that argue for the “irrationality” of voting notwithstanding, to my mind voting has always been mainly about participating in the process, bonding with my fellow-citizens, and adding legitimacy to whichever party gets the mandate to govern – all important things!

But what about Early Voting? Can the symbolic resonance of participating in the electoral process survive being reduced to what seems like yet another convenience-store transaction? Of course, there can be good reasons for taking advantage of the convenience of Early Voting. Still, as with anything else that has - or once had - a communitarian context and significance, when we align the civic ritual of voting with individual timetables rather than a common calendar, do we perhaps run the risk of losing even more of what little we have left of a once vibrant civic culture?

Debate Mania

I was out of the country on the day of the Vice Presidential Debate and so didn't actually see it - although I've heard and read plenty about it since! (I just didn't consider it worth sacrificing an already fitful night's sleep to try to watch it at 3 a.m. Rome time!) I did, of course, watch the disastrous first debate, a presidential performance Andrew Sullivan has famously denounced as "so execrable, so lazy, so feckless, and so vain." Sullivan's hyperbole strikes me as accurate. But such hyperbole only raises the real question: why does it matter so much?

Of course, ever since 1960, when JFK "won" his first debate with Richard Nixon because he looked better on TV (an interpretation confirmed by the fact that those who listed on radio thought that Nixon had "won" the debate), these presidential debates have been basically  about showmanship. Had either the President or the moderator called Romney on his slick re-invention of himself in the last debate, he might not after all have emerged as the "winner" with "momentum," but there can be no doubt whatever that he looked and acted "presidential" and deservedly won the first debate's stature contest. But, again, given that the campaign has been going on - it seems like - forever, why should any one-time event make such a difference?
Alec MacGillis has diagnosed the debate-mania malady in today's New Republic online. "Twitter has given political reporters all the more reason to exalt the debates as the highest test of aptitude. After all, isn't exchanging succinct points and parries how we now spend so much of our time, rather than being out talking to people in Dayton or digging into tax proposals or campaign finance rackets? The debates have become the Platonic ideal of campaigning for a glibly cynical couch-potato press: Just sit back and watch, laptop on the lap, iPhone and remote in hand, facile witticisms on the brain."
30+ years ago, when I was teaching political science at a midwestern university, one of my colleagues frustratingly described me and another colleague as having learned as part of our Ivy-League graduate education to substitute "witty apercus" for substance. What would he (rightly) say about the way the media covers the process by which the most powerful person in the world is elected?
Of course, I too will be in front of my TV tonight for the second debate!

Pilgrimage

This post was written on Thursday, October 11, during a visit to the Paulist residence in Rome.

For the past week, I have been accompanying a group (mostly parishioners from the Paulist Mother Church in New York) on a Year of Faith Pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi. I didn't have my laptop with me and we didn't stay in places with easy internet access, so this is my first (brief) comment on the experience. Tomorrow I fly back to New York and the next morning back to Knoxville! In Rome last Sunday, we attended the Papal Mass at St. Peter's for the solemn opening of the Synod of Bishops on the topic of the New Evangelization. The special highlight of that celebration was the elevation of St. John of Avila and St. Hildegard of Bingen to Doctors of the Church. Having recently compelted a course here in Rome with the Congregation of the Causes of Saints, It was especially interesting to attend this ceremony, which after all happens not that often. And St. John of Avila is an especially appropriate saint for the Church to celebrate as we embrace the challenge of the New Evangelization.

The historic and religious sites we visited were all familiar to me already. So for me the highlights (besides spending time with familiar friends from years past) were the Masses I was privileged to celebrate on Monday at St. John Lateran, on Tuesday at St. Paul's Outside the Walls, and on Wednesday in Assisi. These were moments of real grace for me as I look forward to this Year of Faith, which the Church begins today.

I have gotten so used to going on line every day, to keeping up with the NYTimes and other political and news sites, I had wondered what it would be like to survive without them for a week. Well I've made it - none the worse for being out of touch and maybe a bit better off for having not heard anything about the presidential campaign for a week!

Subsidiarity

We seem to be hearing a lot about “subsidiarity” lately.  “Subsidiarity” is enshrined in Article 5 of the European Union Treaty, where it is specified that (apart from areas exclusively in its competence) the Union should not act in other areas unless its action would be more effective than action at the national, regional, or local level. Like most things European, however, “subsidiarity” has a longer history which predates the problematic European Union.  It is commonly associated with the thinking of the 20^th-century, aristocratic, German Jesuit Oswald von Nell-Breuning (1890-1991) and more famously with Pope Piux XI’s 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (which von Nell-Breuning is thought to have influenced.) In Quadragesimo Anno, Pius XI asserted that “every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them” (Quadragesimo Anno  79).
As I understand it, the operative idea underlying “subsidiarity” seems to be to maintain what I would prefer to label “zones of free activity within society" - lest an all-powerful State arrogate all activity to itself, leaving only itself and atomized individuals. That, of course, was what Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) famously envisioned in his magisterial Leviathan - an  outcome that was so effectively illustrated in the familiar frontispiece of the 1651 edition of Leviathan. Of course, Leviathan's all-popwerful sovereign was seen by Hobbes as a necessary remedy for the inevitable consequences of human individualism, which unchecked could only result in a war of all against all. It is, in fact, individualism which historically has weakened the power of organic communities and social associations, eventually producing a situation in which there is nothign between atomized indiviudals and the State. Whether it is right-wing, captialist, "free-market" indiviudalism or left-wing, lifestyle individualism, the result is similar.
So "subsidiarity" makes serious sense as an argument against both excessive liberty and unlimited state power. An argument for limited government is not an argument against government. Whatever its current uses or misuses, “subsidiarity” is not about small government as a value in itself, but about limited government. That is, it is about government fulfilling its mission to “promote the general welfare,” in a way which complements, respects, and reinforces the roles, responsibilities, and activities of authentic human communities (among them families, churches, voluntary associations, etc.).  
The principle at the heart of this is that such “zones of free activity within society" - the authentic human communities experienced in families, churches, voluntary associations, etc. - contribute to human well-being in a fundamental and essential way. Therefore, it would be contrary to the common good of society to try to destroy such communities (as totalitarian systems typically try to do) or less directly to force them, in effect, out of business, something which governmental efforts to universalize an elite-group social agenda have already begun to do and may yet end up doing on a wider scale.

At the same time, “subsidiarity” is certainly no argument for abandoning public activity on behalf of “the general welfare” to individual benevolence, as is sometimes strangely suggested. Philosophical considerations aside, the practical absurdity of that is evident. For example, Catholic Charities annually distributes billions of dollars in service to the poor, but much of that comes from government assistance of one sort or other. It is ideological mystification to suggest that the cuts some have proposed in government spending would simply shift such service to the poor from an alien government to private charities - and to label that “subsidiarity.” Rather, the most likely outcome would simply be a radical reduction in the ability of those charitable associations to act effectively on behalf of those they serve.

Again the important value in all this is human well-being and the common good, both of which require the survival of such “zones of free activity within society" and a national government able to act effectively to “promote the general welfare.” Thus, for example, anticipating our contemporary experience of increasing inequality, Blessed Pope John XXIII wrote in 1963: “experience has taught us that, unless these authorities take suitable action with regard to economic, political and cultural matters, inequalities between the citizens tend to become more and more widespread, especially in the modern world, and as a result human rights are rendered totally ineffective and the fulfillment of duties is compromised.  (Pacem in Terris, 63).