Killing a King

On this date in 1793, King Louis XVI, "The Most Christian King" of France, was executed in Paris at the subsequently ironically renamed Place de la Concorde. The judicial murder of "The Most Christian King" has long been recognized as one of the truly decisive, no-turning-back moments of the French Revolution - that epic, world-historical, calamity that has ever since defined Western civilization's transition to modernity.

Among the Revolution's contemporaries, perhaps the most famous response to what the French Revolution had undone in terms of community and society and was consequently unleashing on the world was Edmund Burke (1729-1797), whose Reflections on the Revolution in France appeared already in 1790. That was well before the Revolution's infamous "Reign of Terror," but already Burke had seen enough - notably, the events of October 4-5, 1789, when the Parisian mob invaded Versailles and forced the Royal Family to return with them to Paris. Already in that and other such events that were happening on the ground and in the constitutional disruptions being legislated in the Assembly, Burke recognized the inherent danger in the substitution of ahistorical, individualistic, Enlightenment abstractions in place of the more organic development and communitarian character of actually existing social structures and institutions that have traditionally bonded people together in societies.

In the 20th century, It was Albert Camus (1913-1960) who, in his book The Rebel (L'Homme révolté, 1951), famously analyzed the Revolution's frontal attack on both history and transcendence.  Camus called scandalous the presentation of the killing of the king as some great historical achievement. (Certes, c’est un répugnant scandale d’avoir présenté, comme un grand moment de notre histoire, l’assassinat public d’un homme faible et bon.) The central symbolic significance of the event for contemporary history, according to Camus, was how it sought to secularize our history and to remove from it ("dis-incarnate") the Christian God (Il symbolise la désacralisation de cette histoire et la désincarnation du Dieu Chrétien.)

And now, more than 200 years into the post-revolutionary epoch, we continue to live this drama.

Anna's Tragic Dilemma

"I have urged them not to be ashamed of being alive, since they have no possible reason for being ashamed of having sinned." So wrote Saint Augustine (De Civitate Dei, II, 2) to console "women of of holy and devout chastity who felt felt the pangs of shame at their treatment by the enemy, although they have not lost their resolute purity."

Too bad Saint Augustine wasn't in residence at Downton to counsel Anna Bates in the painful aftermath of her horrendous rape by Lord Gillingham's vicious valet! Of course, Anna has thus far proved impervious to the counsel of the wise and compassionate Mrs. Hughes (unlike tom Branson, who seems to recognize a real friend and prudent adviser when he finds one). So what would make anyone think she'd be any more receptive to Saint Augustine's guidance in this matter?

Anna's tragic dilemma has a practical component. She fears Mr. Bates would react by killing her assailant and end up being hanged after all, having escaped that fate in the previous season. That legitimate worry would certainly warrant a prudent, well thought-out approach on Anna's part to telling her husband. But surely, especially with the helpful Mrs. Hughes at her side, Anna could conceivably have managed it. Did the script writers consider this? Or did they really just want to create more drama by disrupting the Bates' seemingly too happy marriage? The best thing Anna has going for her is her marriage. Yet she seems on the verge of blowing that up rather than allowing her husband to help her get through her grief and shame.

Anna's dilemma illustrates the unique pain and suffering of many victims of rape. But Anna's dilemma - what to do, whom to tell, how to relate to husband and colleagues -  also highlights, it seems to me, a larger issue. I refer to what seems to be a seemingly widespread human tendency, when confronted with a serious personal crisis, to isolate oneself precisely when reaching out is what may be called for, to withdraw from community when engagement would serve far better. That happens so often in so many sad situations - in families, friendships, and relationships of all sorts. If only we could learn instead to engage and rely on others rather than withdraw into and rely on ourselves!

Protectress

One of the constants in Catholic life remains funeral-home sponsored parish calendars, which year-in, year-out faithfully bring the Church's annual cycle of liturgical feasts and seasons into the domestic church of the family home. When I was a child in the 1950s and Mass attendance was so much higher, such calendars were eagerly sought after, so much so that parishes sometimes sought to restrict them to one per family.

 

At that time, I already had the fascination with calendars that has stuck with me all my life. One of my earliest "causes" that I embraced was the adoption of the proposed "World Calendar" (an idea that since seems to have deservedly disappeared and which no longer commands any enthusiasm on my part). Reading our parish calendar as a child, I remember being struck by the periodic appearance of something mysteriously entitled "Saturday Office of the BVM." Perplexed by this strange nomenclature, I concocted my own personal explanation, which was that Our Lady had an office in heaven to which she went to on Saturdays. I further imagined that that was where and when she would process our petitions. So Saturday seemed an extremely propitious day to pray for Mary's intercession.(We learned in 5th grade about the existence of the Divine Office. So this was obviously somewhat earlier.) I've often recalled this not just as an example of childish fantasy but also as an illustration of what I take to be the universal human inclination to try to make sense out of things that don't seem at first to make sense!

With the conclusion of the Christmas season, the Church’s calendar has re-entered a yearly cycle of 33 or 34 weeks which we unimaginatively have come to call “Ordinary Time” . “Ordinary Time” is the English term for Tempus per annum (“Season throughout the year”) and is divided into two parts, each of varying length (depending on whether Easter is earlier or later that year). In the traditional Missal, the shorter, first part was called “Time after Epiphany,” and the longer, second part “Time after Pentecost,” and the Sundays were numbered accordingly as Sundays after Epiphany or after Pentecost. In the new Missal, however, the weeks are simply numbered in order from the 1^st week in Ordinary Time to the 34^th.

One of the very few attractions of "ordinary time" is that on Saturdays, unless a higher-ranking festival occurs, what is now called the Memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Saturday may be celebrated. A special collection of thematic Votive Masses now exists from which one may choose an appropriate Mass, each with its own proper prayers and its own proper Preface for the Eucharistic Prayer. And so, whenever possible, I usually choose one of these special Masses to celebrate on Saturday mornings. I no longer imagine March's cluttered desk in heaven, but I still keep the custom of Saturday as a special day to invoke Our Lady's intercession

 

This year, with only a few exceptions, the intention for the Saturday morning Mass each week at my parish will be for the canonization cause of the founder of the Paulilst Fathers, Servant of God Isaac Hecker. In the northeast corner of the church is a special little shrine dedicated to prayer for Hecker’s cause. In a place of honor there is a copy of an ancient image enshrined in the Borghese Chapel in Rome’s Basilica of Saint Mary Major, known as Salus Populi Romani – Our Lady “Protector of the Roman People.” After his expulsion from the Redemptorists in August 1857, Father Hecker went to look for housing in the Roman neighborhood of the Spanish Steps, the center at that time of Rome’s English-speaking community. On his way, he stopped at Saint Mary Major and prayed for Mary’s guidance and protection at the Salus Populi Romani shrine. Hecker credited the support he received from Cardinal Barnabo and the eventually positive outcome of his time in Rome to the Our Lady’s intercession on his behalf. Salus Populi Romani is the same image which Pope Francis went to venerate at Saint Mary Major on the day after his election as Pope and on some subsequent occasions since then. Not just on Saturdays, but especially then, I too try to imitate Father Hecker and Pope Francis and also pray before the image of Salus Populi Romani.

The Unending Mandate Debate

"Can my employer make me pay the cost of practicing his religion? In the coming months, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide two cases involving just this issue." So writes Brigham Young University Law School Professor Frederick Mark Gedicks in an opinion piece in The Washington Post. Recognizing that how one frames the terms of the debate determines the outcome as often as not, both sides in the dispute over the HHS Contraception Mandate have sought to frame the issue in terms of religious freedom - something most people can understand and which most Americans (not to mention the Constitution) have a commitment to. 

Religious freedom, of course, can conflict with other societal values (e.g., the 19th-century battle about polygamy in Utah). Hence, the ubiquity and persistence of these disputes in our history and jurisprudence. As more and more areas of social life come within the purview of governmental regulations of one sort or other, these conflicts will if anything likely increase.

At present there are two concurrent controversies. The first has to do with non-profit religious organizations (e.g., the Little Sisters of the Poor), which are not churches per se and so do not meet the narrow definition of religious exemption adopted by the Administration. No one can predict, of course, how any case will be adjudicated, but a common sense understanding of the 1st Amendment and the unanimous Hosanna Tabor Supreme Court decision of two years ago both seem to counter the claim that government should be the entity to define who is a minister or what is a religion. The 1st Amendment protects religion from the State. So to allow the State to define who is entitled to the protections of the 1st Amendment would be a curious conflict of interest that would strike at the very purpose of the Amendment itself.

The second has to do with the right of private, for-profit companies to claim religious exemption from the mandate because of the religious beliefs of the company's owners. Admittedly, the legal question here seems much murkier. However, given the fact that the Supreme Court not that long ago allowed corporations to claim freedom of speech in the Citizens United case, it would seem at least as logical to allow corporations to claim freedom of religion! On the other hand, Supreme Court jurisprudence doesn't always follow along such logical lines. So what the outcome will be is anyone's guess

That said, there is still the matter of how the issue is framed - in this case, whose religious freedom is being infringed upon. Professor Gedicks would have us believe that “The threat to religious liberty, then, comes from the prospect that the court might permit a for-profit business to impose the costs of its owners’ anti-contraception beliefs on employees who do not share them by forcing employees to pay hundreds of dollars or more out-of-pocket each year for contraception and related services that should be covered under the law.”

Talk about turning the 1st Amendment upside down!

Since when is the desire for free contraception a religious liberty claim? It is established law, beginning with Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and subsequent expansions, that the State may not prohibit access to contraception. That is not the same thing as a right to receive contraception for free. That would be like saying that freedom of the press requires the State (or someone else) to buy me a printing press so I can start a newspaper! The State can, of course, as a matter of public policy legislate its choice to subsidize such activities. In effect that is what the HHS Mandate does. It wants to privilege contraception by subsidizing people's access to it. However, instead of doing that by direct government subsidy, the law directs private entities to do so. In other words, the legal issue is not whether one may have access to contraception but whether a third party (in this case the employer) should be compelled to pay for it. If doing so violates the religious beliefs of the employer, then it is the employer's religious liberty that is being infringed upon. No religious or other constitutionally established liberty of the employee is being infringed. The employee remains free to use contraception, but is not entitled to force the employer to pay for it.

Of course, the key word in Professor Gedicks' argument is should - as in "contraception and related services that should be covered under the law.” There is nothing self-evident about the claim that society should provide free contraception. At least as good a policy case could be made for free dental care. It is a public policy decision to privilege contraception over dental care. That decision - and the fanatical contraceptive ideology that underlies it - should not be allowed to trump the religious freedom of any American by forcing him or her to pay for it.

1964

Yesterday, I watched a PBS program reprising the year 1964. Last November's JFK anniversary may have whetted the media's appetite for such recollections. It is a fact that 50th anniversaries are big occasions. One reason, I suspect, is that those who participated in the original events (and many of those who remember them well) won't be around for ever.

I obviously don't know how much longer I will be around, but 50 years on I certainly do remember - and remember well - that decisive year 1964 and the series of society-transforming events that occurred then. The PBS program correctly characterized 1964 as the year that the underlying divisions in American life split open, a watershed year when American society's latent fault lines - political, racial, generational, gender - became visible. 

In the case of race, that claim may be a bit excessive. The same could, conceivably, be said for 1963. The racial tensions and conflicts that surfaced so dramatically in 1963 continued, to be sure, in 1964. The big change was Lyndon Johnson's throwing his full weight into the battle to pass the Civil Rights Act and succeeded, thanks to his personal skills and command of the legislative process in ending the Senate's filibuster (at a time when cloture still required 67 votes) and getting the bill passed. If the 1963 March on Washington was the highpoint of the non-violent Civil Rights Movement, the 1964 Civil Rights Act was the decisive legislation that transformed the public parameters of race relations in the U.S. Politically, it ushered in the realignment of our two political parties as the old Confederacy began to abandon its traditional home in the Democratic party, a process eased by the fact that, Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee that year, voted against the Civil Rights Act (unlike most of his Republican colleagues, including the Senate Republican leader).

The latent political fault line was less that between Republicans and Democrats as between Conservatives and everyone else. A minority movement, American conservatives consciously sought in 1964 to transform the political landscape, to prevent society's further slippage in directions they didn't identify with. Goldwater lost the election, of course, but the process of transforming the Republican Party into a right-wing party really gained its momentum that year. (And, as the PBS program pointed out, 1964 was also the year that Ronald Reagan emerged as a conservative spokesman.)

The generational split was largely still over the horizon in 1964. But the Beatles' first American tour in February and Berkeley's Free Speech Movement in the fall symbolically lit the fuse that would set off the generational divisions that dominated the rest of the 1960s. We Baby Boomers, brought up to prosperity and affluence unlike our Depression-era parents, were just beginning to sense our own social significance. (The program also mentions Bob Dylan and his signature song about the times a-changing; but, whereas I remember the Beatles well and the Berkeley student riots, I was largely oblivious to Dylan for another year or more.)

Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique hit the best-seller list in mid-March 1964. The dramatic transformation of relations between the sexes and the growth in social conflict along gender lines were still in the future. But the program correctly recognized gender as the final fault line revealed in 1964, even if it was as yet nowhere nearly so evident as the long-standing racial split and the developing political and generational ones. 

I've always thought that dating the beginning of the post-Camelot, contentious sixties back to Kennedy's assassination was but a convenient convention. Last night's month-by-month trip back through 1964, however, has reminded me how truly transformative that year was and how different everything would be after from what it had been before.

Recalling his experience of that year, one of those interviewed called it "the propulsion of the past into the present" and said there was no better time to be involved in the nation's affairs. Thinking back to how I remember that year - the War on Poverty, the Beatles, the Surgeon General's Report on Smoking, the Great Society, the Civil Right Act, the Harlem Riots, the Gulf of Tonkin, the LBJ landslide - he may well be right.