John Paul II at 100

Today would have been the 100th birthday of Karol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II, born on this day in the newly established post-World War I Polish state in 1920. He died 84 years later on April 2, 2005, having served as Pope from October 16, 1978, a papacy of more than 26 years. Because of the pandemic, his fans must settle for a somewhat muted celebration. Pope Francis will mark the occasion by celebrating Mass at his tomb in Saint Peter's Basilica (Photo taken by me in 2012).

History, which Pope Saint John XXIII famously called "the greatest of teachers," tends to take the long view. It may simply be too early, historically speaking, to come to any definitive assessment of John Paul II and his pontificate. One need only compare how US Presidents have been assessed during and at the end of their terms with how history has reassessed them. (Both Truman and Eisenhower, for example, have fared much better from the vantage point of history than they did at the end of their terms.)

By the sheer force of his personality and the unique circumstances of his nationality, John Paul inevitably played a larger-than-life role on the world stage. He did much to create our contemporary image of the Pope as someone whose job includes being successful as a media celebrity. There are obvious advantages to this for the Church's public presence in the world. It also reinforces the contemporary centralization of the Church, an almost inevitable modern phenomenon, but which is historically somewhat unique and which, while obviously beneficial in some respects, may prove less so in others.

The first decade of the Polish Pope's pontificate was, unsurprisingly, dominated by the critical final years of the Cold War. In retrospect, it seems almost inevitable that the Soviet system was destined to collapse eventually, with or without a Polish Pope. Andrei Amalrik's Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?, which I read in college, was written well before most people had ever heard of Karol Wojtyla. Amalrik got some details wrong (including, obviously, the date) but was otherwise on target. Instead of the war he predicted with China, the Soviets undermined themselves with a disastrous was in Afghanistan. 

Even if the Soviet system was perhaps on the road to self-destruct eventually, its immediate failures, for example, at Chernobyl certainly accelerated the process. Even so, the historical confluence of particular personalities played a key part in the process. Most notable, of course, but obviously not inevitable, was Mikhail Gorbachev - as was Margaret Thatcher's embrace of him. That said, the Polish Pope played some part for sure in how the process played out - particularly the part Poland played in accelerating that process. While he certainly did not single-handedly overthrow the Soviet system, he was a player, who obviously mattered enough to warrant the attempt to assassinate him. As Tony Judt, conceded in The New York Review of Books in 1996: "In any history of the last years of the Cold War, or of the collapse and fall of the Soviet Union, the pope will obviously figure prominently, not least for the part played by Solidarity and the Polish opposition in the undermining of Communist credibility."

However one evaluates John Paul II's contribution to the collapse of communism, once that had happened his influence in world politics diminished significantly. For the rest of his reign (and from a religious perspective even for the first part of his pontificate) his dominating role within the Church is what matters. 

1978 seems so distant that it may be hard to recall how depressed the Church's internal life and overall situation seemed at that time - at least in the West. (What was then called the "Third World" was a somewhat different story.). Young by papal standards, an exotic foreigner with a dramatic flare for showmanship, Pope John Paul II seemed to be just what the doctor ordered to strengthen the Church's self-confidence both in her inner life and in her posture toward the world. There can be no doubt that something like that happened, although the long-term significance of the change must remain open to debate.

In retrospect, what stands out is how personality-driven that pontificate was and how little it accomplished institutionally. The much noted contemporary symbol for that was the Pope's enormous personal popularity, especially with the young, which did not, however, translate into a long-term institutional recovery of strength for the Church - either in its internal life or in its public position in the world. (Here again, the "Third World" was different.)

Attending World Youth Day in 2005, the first such extravaganza after John Paul's death, I was struck by how the new Pope Benedict XVI seemed to be trying to get away from a focus on the personalty of the Pope and focus more on the Church. This more institutionalist orientation obviously was more in keeping with Benedict's more reserved personality. If in retrospect Benedict's pontificate appears as a modest interlude between the two intensely personality-focused pontificates of John Paul II and Francis, that probably reflects the celebrity-orientation of  contemporary culture and the correspondingly diminished standing of all contemporary institutions, religious and secular.

Great Joy in the City

It’s really not too far from Jerusalem to the city of Samaria to which the Deacon Philip traveled in today’s 1st reading. The Samaritans were, so to speak, the Jews’ next-door neighbors. Neighbors, however, don’t always get along, as we all know. The Samaritans were ethnically and religiously related to the Jews, but over the centuries, thanks to a complicated history, they had acquired a separate identity, worshiping the same God but in a different place and in a different way. The result was two groups, whose differences from one another came to matter more than what they had in common, causing them to regard each other with suspicion and hostility. (Being suspicious of and hostile to other people who are different in some way seems to be typically human behavior – now as then.)

Yet, surprisingly, none of that seems to have stopped Philip, who proclaimed the Christ to the Samaritans. Nor did it prevent the Samaritans from paying attention to what was said by Philip. The result was great joy in that city and yet another leap on the Church’s part, another experience of expansion, growth, and diversity (in keeping with the whole trajectory of the story of the early church in the Acts of the Apostles which, can be summarized as: Good News travels fast. Good News travels far. Good news builds the Church and heals the world.)

Even so, what Philip was doing and had done inevitably raised some serious questions back in Jerusalem. So Peter and John went to Samaria to see for themselves what was happening and to interpret what it all meant. Surrounded by Samaritans, strangers whom they would until then have probably preferred to avoid, Peter and John recognized God’s grace at work in in this unexpected way in that unexpected place, and so they laid their hands on the newly believing Samaritans, and they, in turn, received the Holy Spirit. There is only one Holy Spirit. So, if the Samaritans were going to become believers like them, then they had to be connected by that one Holy Spirit with the rest of the Church led by the apostles.

Luke’s point in telling this story seems to be to stress the importance of the unity and universality of the Church, specifically its apostolic leadership, which links us with the Risen Christ, through his gift of the Holy Spirit, through whom the Church continues Christ’s presence and action in our world.

The apostles may well have been surprised initially, both by Philip’s initiative and by the Samaritans’ response. Surprised or not, they saw in what was happening the direction they were intended to go. Acts constantly presents the Church as learning from experience, confident that, thanks to the Risen Christ’s continued presence in the Church through his Holy Spirit, what happens in the world really is significant.

Faith does not eradicate the many and various differences that exist among people, but it does create a completely new relationship for all of us with God and with one another - in Christ through the Holy Spirit.  Peter, John, and Philip all learned this from their actual experience of how God was acting, drawing different people and peoples together in a completely new kind of community that overcomes the ordinary divisions of our ordinary world.

Likewise, faith alone does not resolve all the problems we will experience even in our new life together as Christ’s Church. It does, however, give us confidence in the Risen Lord’s presence among us in the structures of his Church, and in the power of the word of God, which continues to be proclaimed in the Church, to create a unity which can resolve those conflicts and so transcend our human divisions and limitations.

Homily for the 6th Sunday of Easter, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, May 17, 2020.

The entire Mass may be viewed on the Immaculate Conception Church Facebook Page and later on the parish website icknoxville.org

Masked

As a seminarian in the 1980s, I suggested to my Religious Superior that people ought to be able to look into their priest's eyes and that therefore contact lenses were in order! He happily approved my request for contacts, whatever he may have thought of my concocted argument. I went on to wear contacts for another 20 years or so, until I finally tired of them and reverted to old-fashioned eyeglasses. I guess by then I realized that that particular barrier to looking into one's eyes probably didn't matter much after all. Now, all of a sudden, we have become a society in which we hide most of our faces from one another as well!

Of course, the precise purpose of the masks we all are now supposed to wear is not so much to hide our faces from one another as to hide our faces from the mysterious virus which others may have. Unlike those whose vanity makes them resist hiding their good looks or those whose right-wing ideology disposes them to oppose solidarity with others, I embraced the mask immediately as soon as we were told wearing one was good and the right thing to do. I do, however, find it physically uncomfortable, frequently causing my glasses to fog up and often falling off. Unfortunately, I have never been very good with technology, whether simple or complicated, from mask-wearing to live-streaming.

That said, however superficially uncomfortable my mask may be and however strange and awkward the sight of covered faces still seems, it is indeed the right thing to do; and, as with so much else, I do not doubt that we will largely learn to adapt. Other societies have been wearing masks much longer than we have. Obviously, we can learn a lot from others. (That, sadly, is something we Americans are notoriously bad at.)

Those other societies, of course, are characterized, more often than not, by more social cohesion than we have, certainly more than we have had these past 40 years or so. The lesson we really need to learn is less how to adjust our masks physically to fit better than how to adjust our emotions to wear the masks better. In other words, we too need to acquire greater community cohesion as a society. We need to relearn to value social solidarity above our over-celebrated individualism.

If and when we can relearn those older values of community and social solidarity, then it will in fact matter much less whether we can see each other's faces because we will see and feel so much more. We will, as John Winthrop exhorted some of our country's early settler in 1630: abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other's necessities ... delight in each other; make other's conditions our own rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body.

Whatever the infection-fighting benefits, wearing masks may prove to be a beneficial exercise in moral transformation for a society that has been taking the wrong path for far too long.

Meeting Jesus

On the night before he died, Jesus tried to console his disciples with the now familiar image of his Father’s house’s many dwelling places. Apparently, his disciples felt the need for even more reassurance “Master,” the Apostle Philip said to Jesus in the Gospel we just heard [John 14:1-12], “show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Now, most of us were brought up to be properly respectful to our teachers. So we instinctively peg Philip as a bit bold. Jesus’ response would seem to confirm our instinctive sense that what Philip was asking was really rather over-the-top. “Have I been with you for so long,” Jesus said to Philip, “and you still do not know me?”

On the other hand, if we’re really honest, isn’t that what we all want? Don’t we all want a direct line to God? Especially at a time like this, surrounded by so much sickness and death, don’t we all want at least some tangible sign from God – some tangible signs that God cares about us and acts in our best interest?

So how did Jesus answer? “Whoever has seen me,” he said to Philip, has seen the Father.” Jesus is saying the he himself is our direct line to God, and that we experience God’s presence and activity in our lives most fully and effectively in our experience of Jesus.

There is an added irony in this Gospel story. A few days earlier, some Greeks had asked to see Jesus, and Philip had served as their liaison, their conduit, to Jesus [John 12:21-22]. Already, without knowing it, Philip was evangelizing. Often, in fact, we may be bringing others closer to God without fully knowing that we’re doing it!

Now the normal way we meet Jesus – and also the normal way we share him with others – is in the Church, where we do so not as isolated individuals, but as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of his own,” as Saint Peter proclaimed in today’s 2nd reading [1 Peter 2:4-9], quoting God’s words at Mount Sinai to the people of Israel [Exodus 19:5-6]. What God told Israel and (according to Peter) applies now to the Church is to be the liaison, the conduit, between God and the world, which we are because, like Philip, we too experience Jesus, the Risen Christ, living among us, always present in his Church.

What God told Israel and applies now to the Church is to be the link between God and the world, which we are because, like Philip, we too experience Jesus, the Risen Christ, living among us, always present in our spiritual house, his Church.

As our unique and indispensable connection with Christ, the Church continues Christ’s mission in us and in our world, proclaiming the uniqueness and centrality of Christ for all the people of the world, thereby echoing Jesus’ words in today’s gospel: “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, then you will also know my Father.”

It was precisely the apostles’ confidence in the Risen Christ’s continued, living presence – as Lord – in his Church, that enabled them to take the bold step we just heard described in today’s 1st reading, from the Acts of the Apostles [Acts 6:1-7]. – a forerunner of further and even bolder steps the Apostles would courageously take to put power into their words.

If nothing else, this episode and others like it remind us yet again of the perennial problem of factional conflict, of cultural and ethnic divisiveness, and of ideological division and polarization, that characterize our world and can so easily undermine the unity and universality even of the Church and thus get in the way of its mission – not just in 1st-century Jerusalem but in every time and place. Then as now, aspects of life within the Church community can sometimes seem simply to replicate the conflicts and divisions that themselves seem to define our secular society – so much so that it is said that Americans increasingly choose their church affiliation or their local parish on the basis of their politics! 

But there was more to the story of the apostolic Church than out-of-control factional conflict. After all, the Jerusalem Church didn’t split into separate sects. Instead of a threat to their unity, this episode shows us how - trusting in the Risen Christ’s continued, living presence as Lord in his Church - the apostles responded to the challenge they faced with creative confidence. They saw how the challenge they were faced with could become an opportunity instead of a threat.

In 1851, the future founder of the Paulist Fathers, Isaac Hecker, wrote to Orestes Brownson: “If our words have lost their power, it is because there is no power in us to put into them. The Catholic faith alone is capable of giving to people a true permanent and burning enthusiasm frought with the greatest of deeds. But to enkindle this in others we must be possessed of it first ourselves.”

Today, faced with a terrifying global pandemic and divisive conflicts, even within the Church itself, about how to respond to this challenge, we are being called upon to show once more that “true permanent and burning enthusiasm frought with the greatest of deeds,” which is what it will take for us to continue to be that powerful link that Christ intended his Church to be to all types of people – a Church as alert as were the apostles to the challenges and equally as ready to respond to the opportunities.

Homily for the 5th Sunday of Easter, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, May 10, 2020.

The entire Mass may be viewed on the Immaculate Conception Church Facebook Page and later on the parish website icknoxville.org

The Perennial Third-Party Problem

I don't think I had ever even heard of Michigan Congressman Justin Amash (photo) until a year or so ago, when the first Palestinian-American Congressman (and one of just five Eastern Orthodox members of Congress) emerged as that rare Republican who publicly opposed President Trump - to the point that he left the Republican party and even voted for Trump's impeachment. Now he is threatening to run for President as the candidate of a third-party (the Libertarian party). 

This possible misadventure has suddenly been attracting attention. It was the topic for this week's NY Times podcast The Argument, and Richard Ostling wrote about Amash on Get Religion at https://www.getreligion.org/getreligion/2020/5/3/there-are-religion-angles-with-a-presidential-run-by-michigan-libertarian-justin-amashnbsp

Now I regard Libertarianism as one of the more morally repulsive of political ideologies. So I wouldn't be tempted to vote for him or his party in any conceivable case. Nor do I fear too many others will.. (In 2016 Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson received a record 3.29% of the popular vote.) On the other hand, third-party fetishism is found on both extremes of the political spectrum. And, in our electoral college system, it can clearly make a disastrous difference in some pivotal swing states - as Ralph Nader is alleged to have done in 2000 helping to make George W. Bush president, and Jill Stein and the Green party are alleged to have done in 2016 helping to make Donald Trump president.

The only instance in American history when a third-party actually won the presidency was the unusual four-way race in 1860, from which the Republicans emerged as one of the two major parties. Other than that, the only time a third-party amassed more electoral votes than a major party (but still not enough to win) was ex-President Theodore Roosevelt's "Bull Moose" Party in 1912. That was obviously a consequence of TR's personal popularity; and, when he returned to the Republican fold in 1916, his third-party returned to the more typical, marginalized status of most third-parties.

As an academic political scientist actually teaching the subject in 1980, I knew perfectly well the absurdity of voting for a third-party or "Independent" candidate. Yet even I did so that year, when - out of anger at the Democrats for renominating Jimmy Carter instead of nominating Ted Kennedy - I voted for John Anderson. So I can clearly appreciate the appeal of such politically harmful behavior. But it remains harmful - a narcissistic self-indulgence in feeling too morally superior to make the binary choice our political process requires serious citizens to make. One can, of course, quarrel with that system and suggest better alternatives, but it remains the system we now have and within which we must live and operate as citizens.

It is true, of course, that in that same system most of our votes for president don't matter. In Tennessee where I vote now and in New York where I used to vote, there is no real doubt which party will win the state's electoral votes. So a symbolic third-party vote in such states makes no practical difference and so does no immediate damage. Only in the relatively few closely contested states can a third-party candidate's votes determine the result - as Nader's and Stein's supporters are alleged to have done in certain states in 2000 and 2016.

Fair enough! But what makes those dangerous situations so much more possible is the greater legitimacy third-party voting, when actually and widely practiced, acquires nationwide, which is why such votes even in totally safe states do moral damage to the process, regardless of their lack of practical political electoral effect.

At this point, no one can predict what impact an Amash candidacy may have or not have in distorting this year's outcome. All one can say is that our society as a whole and our fragile political culture would be better off without that distortion.