At the Shore

There is nothing quite like being back at the shore of the Atlantic ocean! For me, being by the ocean is an almost mystical experience, simultaneously relaxing, refreshing, and exhilarating. 

Of course, one of the consequences of climate change is how the oceans may become more threatening to coastal communities - as Hurricane Sandy illustrated in this region just three years ago. But, growing up in New York at a different time, the ocean was generally seen as our great friend (as well as a supreme source of relief from summer's heat). 

The Jersey Shore was the sight of our spring retreat in the novitiate, our community-wide retreat in the last Jubilee Year, and another on-the-boardwalk retreat for our community's 150th in 2008. For now at least, the ocean still seems more friend than foe. It remains a perfect setting for a retreat!

So this week, Paulist priests and seminarians from all over the country are gathering at the Redemptorist Retreat House in Long Branch, NJ, on the famous Jersey Shore for what I anticipate will be a wonderful community retreat in observance of the current “Year of Consecrated Life.” This special “Year of Consecrated Life” is a gift to all religious communities from Pope Francis, who is himself a lifelong member of an Institute of Consecrated Life, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). 

In his message in preparation for this year of Consecrated Life, Pope Francis identified three aims for the year. They are “to look to the past with gratitude,” “to live the present with passion,” and “to embrace the future with hope.” These three aims will form the thematic focus for our community retreat this week in the relaxing, refreshing, and exhilarating atmosphere of the amazing Atlantic ocean. 

150 Years Late

As weeks go in our nation, this has been one of the more transformational ones. A great debate has unexpectedly been unleashed in the country after the recent shooting tragedy at a Charleston church. And, as a result of that debate, the confederate flag may finally be lowered from its place of dubious honor at South Carolina's Statehouse - and hopefully elsewhere. Along with politicians, several corporate entities are also finally taking welcome action against the confederate flag. And, at yesterday's funeral of the church's pastor, who was also a state senator, the President of the United States, who knew him personally, spoke movingly and powerfully about removing the confederate flag.

At last! It's only 150 years since the United States defeated the rebellion whose treason against the United States that flag is a symbol and hateful reminder of. It is also a symbol not just of treason against the United States but of a history and culture of vicious and violent racist oppression, that sadly did not quite come to an end with the rebellion's defeat in 1865 but survived another century in Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and other evils. That that flag remains a living emblem of racial hatred is evident even from the circumstances of its reappearance at the South Carolina Statehouse in 1962 - as a symbol of regional resistance. That the flag still flies today, 150 years after Appomattox, highlights how the Civil War continues in our country, in spite of the the overwhelming military victory of the United States in 1865.

The confederate flag belongs in history museums and perhaps in civil war theme parks. It - and the ideology of racist oppression it represents - have no place in the public square. The Civil War settled once and for all which flag flies in this country's public places.

The Chief Justice Saves Health Care for Us All - Again

King v. Burwell was a case so strange, so transparently and cynically ideological in its proponents' motivation, that the Court should probably never have taken it up in the first place. But then, having heard the case, the Supreme Court, by a decisive 6-3 vote, came to the clearly correct conclusion. And once again, it was Chief Justice Roberts, who stated the obvious: "Congress passed the Affordable Care Act to improve health insurance markets, not to destroy them. If at all possible, we must interpret the Act in a way that is consistent with the former, and avoids the latter.”

In our system, the interpretation of legislative texts is inevitably one of the tasks of the Judiciary. And it can be a challenge - especially given what the Chief Justice noted are the Affordable Care Act's "more than a few cases of inartful drafting." But, in the end no matter how poorly written the statute and its infamous four words admittedly were, it was - as the Court's majority readily recognized - Congress's clear intent to increase the public's access to health insurance and to provide people with the financial subsidies necessary to enable them to purchase insurance on the exchanges that were to be created across the country. Of course, Congress probably had expected that most states would create such exchanges, as they likewise must have expected that most states would expand Medicaid. That so many states have failed to do so is a sad commentary on our pathetic politics, and on an opposition party committed to denying people access to affordable health insurance. 

Contemporary legislation tends to be very long and complex and probably contains many examples of "inartful drafting.". All the more reason, it seems to me, to take intent seriously, to take seriously what those who voted for the law evidently intended they were accomplish by passing it - in this case, making it possible for those who could not otherwise afford health insurance to do so with the help of a federal subsidy. In the end this logic was obvious to the majority of the Court - in fact, to all but its three most eccentric ideologues.

Obviously the most important result of this decision is that some 6.4 million Americans who have - in many cases, for the first time - acquired adequate health insurance thanks to the availability of federal subsidies need not now fear losing their insurance. But this result also means a further stabilizing of the new "Obamacare" status quo. It means many more Americans will continue to experience and become accustomed to the benefits of the law, which will, of course, make it harder and harder in the future for anyone to take access to affordable health care away from them. The opposition surely understands that. Everyone remembers what happened with Social Security in the 1930s. Like Social Security, "Obamacare" is now here to stay. And the nation is that much better because of it!

High School + 50

High School may have been for some the happy highpoint of their lives. (I have heard about such people, but honestly I don't think I know any.) For others, it may have been the opposite. For most, it was likely somewhere in between. I, for one, have occasionally expressed the opinion that, if only one could magically just fall asleep for a few years, and then wake up ready to go to college or get a serious job, having missed high school in the process, he or she would have acquired the benefits of living through the high school years without the pain of actually having to experience them! 

Certainly high school was not the happiest period of my life! But it was hardly hell on earth either. As with so many life experiences, my memories are more mixed than univocal. And even apparently painful experiences typically seem less so with the passage of time! And, if on the one hand I didn't make too many friends in high school, on the other I did meet my best life-long friend there. I also experienced some teachers who were model priests, who undoubtedly (if indirectly and unknowingly) contributed to my own eventual vocation. So, on this 50th anniversary of my high school graduation, I want to recall some of my better memories of that time and place.

It may not have been the best of times, but it was far from the worst of times. In fact, for many in my parents' and teachers' generation, people who had grown up during the Depression and come to maturity during the Second World War, the early 1960s may well have seemed to them to be the best of times. And some of that contentment - or complacency - certainly rubbed off on us!

While bullying and social stratification were as endemic in high schools then as they probably had always been before then, adolescence was not yet quite so completely cut off from adult culture, and much of what we experienced socially at school and outside of school was, for better or for worse, relatively congruent with the way things were in the wider world. The fact that we were such a relatively small school probably further reinforced that congruence, separating us even less from the wider world.

Most of us had known each other already for years before in grade school (from which, incidentally, I also graduated on this date - exactly 54 years ago). So high school was also in many ways a continuation of and congruent with parish life - at a time and place when the parish was largely identical with the neighborhood, which for most of us most of the time was almost identical with the world. 

If it was parochial in the good sense, it was perhaps also a bit parochial in the other sense. Certainly, the education on offer could hardly have compared with New York's famous specialized selective high schools such as Bronx Science or Stuyvesant, or of the famous Jesuit scholarship-only Regis High School. Perhaps the education on offer in those other institutions would have challenged me more effectively, broadened my horizons more, and better prepared me intellectually for City College and Princeton (neither of which were yet anywhere in my sights on graduation day). Who can say? Certainly, however, it was academically as good as what was available in most ordinary high schools at the time, both Catholic and public. And who is to say that I would have been remotely ready yet for the intellectual and emotional challenges those more prestigious high schools might have offered?

In short, like so much of life, it could have been better, but it could have been worse. And the fact that my future almost immediately turned out in some ways so different from what high school seemed to be preparing me for is itself also just part of the mystery of human life in a messy unpredictable world.

But, as I said, it was also parochial in the good sense. It reinforced historic communal values that would continue to form and motivate me - personally and socially, morally and religiously. 

I quickly lost contact with most of my high school class and so have only limited information about how they have fared over the years. In recent years (thanks to Facebook), I have managed to reconnect with a few of them. Some, I know, have died, as have several of my teachers and both principals. May they all rest in peace! (Or, as we would have said back then, Requiescant in pace!). I will be offering my Mass today for all my elementary and high school classmates and teachers, living and dead, wherever they may be, and whatever directions their lives may have taken them.

Reading Laudato Si' (6)

The 6th and final chapter, Ecological Education and Spirituality, centers on the change that must occur in human beings themselves. Reminiscent of his earlier Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis wants us to get out of ourselves. "We are always capable of going out of ourselves towards the other. Unless we do this, other creatures will not be recognized for their true worth; we are unconcerned about caring for things for the sake of others; we fail to set limits on ourselves in order to avoid the suffering of others or the deterioration of our surroundings. Disinterested concern for others, and the rejection of every form of self-centeredness and self-absorption, are essential if we truly wish to care for our brothers and sisters and for the natural environment" (208).

Young people in particular, the Pope warns, "have grown up in a milieu of extreme consumerism and affluence which makes it difficult to develop other habits" (209) Hence the importance of "cultivating sound virtues" which will facilitate "selfless ecological commitment" (211). Again it seems that the solution to the problems of the present lies in a retrieval of what humanity learned long ago!

Hence, he recommends recovering "the rich heritage of Christian spirituality" (216). Invoking Saint Francis of Assisi again, Pope Francis reminds the world "that a healthy relationship with creation is one dimension of overall personal conversion, which entails the recognition of our errors, sins, faults and failures, and leads to heartfelt repentance and desire to change" (218).

Since our present predicament is rooted in the human desire for more, which presupposes more mastery over the world, the Pope makes a case for the virtue of humility. "Once we lose our humility, and become enthralled with the possibility of limitless mastery over everything, we inevitably end up harming society and the environment. it is not easy to promote this kind of healthy humility or happy sobriety when we consider ourselves autonomous, when we exclude God from our lives or replace him with our own ego, and think that our subjective feelings can define what is right and what is wrong" (224). Of course, that is a good description of where our culture has moved in the last century especially. The Pope acknowledges that cultural movement in the opening sentence of that same paragraph on humility: "Sobriety and humility were not favorably regarded in the last century." 

Indeed not, which is why that memorable line will likely not become a popular soundbite in the secular media! That in turn, of course, is what makes it less likely that the next century will be any different!

The personal conversion he proposes points to a retrieval of authentic civil society rooted in religious virtue and practice. "We must regain the conviction that we need one another, that we have a shared responsibility for others and the world, and that being good and decent are worth it" (229).

As he brings his encyclical to its close, Pope Francis invites us to focus on such basics as saying Grace before and after meals (227), an intensified appreciation of the sacraments, "a privileged way in which nature is taken up by God to become a means of mediating supernatural life" (235), and the observance of Sunday, "a day which heals our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others and with the world" (237).

The encyclical concludes with two prayers, a more generic prayer to God the Creator and a more explicitly Trinitarian Christian prayer "to take up the commitment to creation set before us by the Gospel of Jesus" (246).

Laudato Si' is long and repetitive. Reading it takes time and requires some patience. But, unlike the more philosophical prose of Saint john Paul II, for example, it is relatively accessible to the average reader, who takes the time to engage it, not primarily as a work of political philosophy or economic theory or as a program of public policy proposals, but as an invitation to conversion of heart, mind, and will. To read it effectively, therefore, one must the time necessary to absorb its underlying theological principles and its religious challenge to transformational spiritual conversion.

Fittingly, it is worth noting that the official date of the encyclical was Pentecost Sunday, the day when the Church recalls its own birth in the Risen Lord's gift of the Holy Spirit, the beginning of the Church's mission to continue Christ's life and work in our world. This encyclical is intended - and should be received as - another contribution of the Church's magisterium to that continuation.