The Dinner

Roger Ebert didn't care much for The Dinner, a film by Oren Moverman, based on Herman Koch's 2009 Dutch novel of same name (subsequently translated into English and published in the US in 2013). But I have a soft spot for movies about politicians and/or family dysfunction. So I went to see it today. It is a challenging film to follow, but worth the extra effort. The original Dutch The Dinner was set in Amsterdam. The movie version is American in every way. It stars Richard Gere as Stan Lohman, a congressman and candidate for Governor and Paul Coogan as Paul Lohman, a retired school-teacher,  his somewhat estranged - and seriously psychotic - brother. Laura Linney plays Paul's wife. Rebecca Hall plays Stan's wife and Chloe Sevigny as his former wife and the mother of his children.

The film's name refers to the lengthy dinner the two couples have together at a ridiculously high-end restaurant. The meal and the pretentiously sycophantic staff are almost a parody of the absurd lifestyle of the privileged rich. But the purpose of the dinner is to discuss a horrendous crime in which their sons have been involved - a vicious attack on a homeless woman whom they set fire to in the ATM where she had sought shelter. While we become aware of this crime early on, the two couples don't actually get around to discussing it until much later. In the interim, we have numerous flashbacks highlighting Paul's psychotic episodes and his estrangement from his brother (who he believes monopolized their parents' affection). All this has obviously taken a toll on his family- notably on his son. Stan, the politician, besides running for governor is in the process of getting a mental health bill passed. He is someone who, as his wife says late in the film, is much better at governing than at parenting.

One expects Stan to come across as superficial and strategic. In some respects he is. But that is overshadowed by the psychotic and rude and otherwise dysfunctional behavior of his brother - both at the dinner and throughout the film's flashbacks. The two wives seem focused on holding things together - in particular, protecting their sons, regardless of what they have done.

Stan approaches the family crisis strategically - as he might approach a political problem. But his is the most clear-headed and clear-eyed perspective. Paul is too hopelessly resentful to function effectively as a parent, and the two wives are single-mindedly protective of their sons, who seem to be on the verge of getting away with their crime. Only the politician seems capable of looking at anything like a larger picture and at least acknowledging the crime's large moral and social complications. His conflation of morality with strategy leads to him to advocate a painful but more morally sound course of action. But, under pressure, from his wife, he temporizes. In the interim, even more tragedy ensues.

“They have their privilege and they have their lives, and they don’t really see other people as human,” is how Moveman characterized the characters on SiriusXM. “There’s a lot of self-preservation, a lot of self-interest dictating policy and I think that is at the core of some of these characters’ behavior.” In a sense the film portrays the terrible human and social cost such a society exacts on all. Meanwhile the glitzy restaurant and its absurdist rituals of social status and privilege provide a kind of elitist entertainment that at some level tries to beautify the self-absorbed narcissism of the privileged and cover over their indifference to the wider world. 

Abundant Life

To repeat the same news over and over again is one way to highlight its importance. To hear the proclamation of the resurrection, over and over, during these Easter Sundays strengthens our faith by the witness of others’ faith - in particular that of the apostles. That is why one of the most noticeable features that distinguishes Easter from other seasons of our Catholic liturgical calendar is the daily reading from the Acts of the Apostles. Through our journey with the original apostles through the book of Acts, we identify ourselves with that first generation of Christians in their experience of the Risen Christ, becoming like them a community which witnesses to the presence and action of the Risen Lord in his Church, a community which expresses its new life in its worship.

In today’s 1st reading from Peter’s preaching to the people that first Pentecost Sunday [Acts 2:14a, 36-41], Peter wanted his hearers to feel personally impacted by his message – not simply hearing some new bit of information about which one might or might not care, as we do all day long in our “information age.” According to the Acts of the Apostles, Peter was apparently quite successful. The people, we are told, were cut to the heart, and they asked Peter and the other apostles, “What are we to do, my brothers?”

The proclamation of the good news – whether in 1st-century Jerusalem or 21st century Tennessee - ought always to lead to that same invitation to respond with true conversion of heart, in repentance which resolves guilt with forgiveness and the freedom which comes from forgiveness. As Peter told the people, the promise is made to all those ... whomever the Lord our God will call. The apostles’ message of the call to conversion was, initially of course, an invitation to identification with Christ in baptism. But, once we have been baptized, we are repeatedly exhorted, as Peter exhorted his hearers in today’s 2nd reading [1 Peter 2:20b-25], to follow in Christ’s footsteps, living the new life made accessible to us by Christ’s death and resurrection, remaining united with him no matter what.

We hear this message repeated, Sunday after Sunday, during this Easter season, as something intended not just for the 1st century, but for every time and place and for ourselves here and now.

As Jesus says in today’s Gospel [John 10:1-10], I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly. This life Jesus intends us to have is the life he possesses from his Father and which he shares with us in his body, the Church, in which the Risen Lord remains present forever by his gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church.

In particular, on this 54th Annual World Day of Prayer for Vocations, the Church challenges us to focus in a special way on what is required for this message to continue to be heard, to continue to be spread from place to place, and to continue to be passed on from this generation to the next, in the life of Christ’s Body, the Church. Confident as were those first Christians in the Risen Lord’s promise to be with his Church forever and never to abandon it, we must like them also take seriously our responsibility to do our part in making the mission of the Church actually happen among the people of our day and continue to happen in the future.

As Pope Francis has written in his message for this 54th Annual Day of Prayer for Vocations:

Those who are drawn by God’s voice and determined to follow Jesus soon discover within themselves an irrepressible desire to bring the Good News to their brothers and sisters through proclamation and the service of charity. … As disciples, we do not receive the gift of God’s love for our personal consolation, nor are we called to promote ourselves, or a business concern. We are simply men and women touched and transformed by the joy of God’s love, who cannot keep this experience just to ourselves. … This is particularly the case with those called to a life of special consecration … serenely confident because they have discovered the true treasure, anxious to go out and joyfully to make it known to all.

Homily for the 4th Sunday of Easter and the 54th Annual Day of Prayer for Vocations, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, May 7, 2017.

Another Executive Order

Today is our annual National Day of Prayer. Who knew? 

Actually, a 1952 federal law, amended in 1968,  requires the President to issue each year a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as a National Day of Prayer on which the people of the United States may turn to God in prayer and meditation at churches, in groups, and as individuals. Of course, the concept of such an observance is hardly new and is in fact deeply rooted in our American history back to colonial times. Thanksgiving Day, after all, is in theory just that sort of day too - colonial in origin but also proclaimed annually by the President to be observed on a date already stipulate in the law. some presidents have been more enthusiastic about it - holding events at the White House. Others have confined themselves simply to issuing the prescribed proclamation.

Not surprisingly, the infamous Freedom from Religion Foundation challenged the National Day of Prayer in court in 2008. After winning initially in a US District Court, the FFRF lost in 2011 when the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that "the President is free to make appeals to the public based on many kinds of grounds, including political and religious, and that such requests do not obligate citizens to comply and do not encroach on citizens' rights." (The same court also cited Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, for making reference to God seven times and to prayer three times.)

One reason we hear so little about the National Day of Prayer and why some presidents have made more if it while others have been content to issue the prescribed proclamation is that since 1983 the event has been effectively hijacked by a group called The National Day of Prayer Task Force, a conservative Evangelical Christian organization which organizes Evangelical Christian religious observances of the day each year. The group also proclaims a theme for each year's observance. According to the group's website, this year's theme is For Your Great Name’s Sake! Hear Us... Forgive Us...Heal Us! (based on Daniel 9:19, O Lord, Listen! O Lord, Forgive! O Lord, Hear and Act! For Your Sake, O My God).

Apparently, President Trump has decided to use today to issue yet another Executive Order, intended presumably to please his conservative Evangelical Christian constituency. According to yesterday's NY Times, the President is expected to "offer a vague promise to “protect and vigorously promote religious liberty.” He will also direct federal agencies to exempt some religious organizations from Affordable Care Act requirements that provide employees with health coverage for contraception." The article suggests that he will also "direct the Internal Revenue Service to exercise 'maximum enforcement discretion' so that religious organizations and other nonprofit groups are not subject to punishment for expressing political views during campaign seasons."

Actually, the law in question (the so-called "Johnson Amendment") does not prevent churches and religious groups from political advocacy. it only precludes their endorsing or otherwise supporting specific candidates. And, as The Times notes, many clergy - including many evangelical clergy - "say they do not want to endorse political candidates from the pulpit because it could split their congregations and distract from their religious messages."

Of course, only Congress can actually completely change or repeal the "Johnson Amendment." All President Trump can do is encourage "maximum enforcement discretion" - a largely symbolic change, given that there has been little evidence of especially strict enforcement of the relevant provision by the IRS over the years anyway. 

The "contraception mandate" - an unwise provocation against churches and religious groups by the previous administration - is, in fact, a regulation which the President probably can obliterate if not by executive order, then by the more deliberative process of repealing or replacing the relevant regulation - a step which may require more than Trump is as yet prepared to do but which would be all to the good if and when it is done. Beyond that, the rest of this seems likely to be more about symbolism for a particular constituency. It remains to be seen what effects it will have and whether and how much the President's conservative Evangelical constituents may be satisfied with such symbolism.

Frantz

This afternoon I saw Frantz, Francois Ozon's film set in the mournful aftermath of the First World War, apparently inspired by Ernst Lubitsch's 1932 drama Broken Lullaby. It features a young German woman, Anna, mourning her fiance Frantz, who died in the war, and who now lives with his grieving parents, and an aristocratic French war veteran, Adrien, who mysteriously appears in their German town and claims he had been friends with Frantz before the war. (Watching it I was reminded of a another film, Francois Truffaut's Jules and Jim, which, while very different, also dealt with friendship and a romantic love triangle all impacted by the seemingly all-encompassing tragedy of World War I.)

The gruesome (and pointless) tragedy of the Great War, in which neighbors who had learned each other's language and appreciated each other's culture were forced to fight and kill each other is brought home in a low-key but obvious way. The bitterness remains strong - on both sides. We see Germans defiantly singing Die Wacht am Rhein and their French opposite numbers equally defiantly singing La Marseillaise, and when Anna finally travels to France we get a glimpse of the devastation wrought by the conflict on the French countryside. But that is all background to the even more painful reality of overwhelming grief, commonly experienced by families on both sides of the border. Within their grief, Anna and her wonderful would-be in-laws discover an amazing capacity for reconciliation and, in Anna's case, authentic forgiveness (sensitively encouraged by her confessor in one critical scene). And, since modern audiences are probably expecting and anticipating it, it does not reveal too much to suggest that Anna tentatively rediscovers love. 

Unfortunately, not all is as it seems. The film forces the audience to ask: can forgiveness and reconciliation be fostered by a lie - or does the lie ultimately diminish everything it seems to enable?

May Day in the Shadow of Climate Change

The strangely unpopular (if at the time well-intentioned) feast of Saint Joseph the Worker still clutters the liturgical calendar on May Day. It was famously invented by Pope Pius XII in 1955 (and so first celebrated in 1956) as a transparently unsubtle attempt to co-opt the widespread (especially in Europe) Communist and Socialist celebrations of May Day as the - by then - long established international holiday for workers. But it never seems to have acquired the popularity - among workers or anyone else - that it was probably intended to have.

The fact that it displaced the older (if still modern) feast of the Solemnity of Saint Joseph probably didn't help its cause among liturgical enthusiasts. Under an older title, the Patronage of Saint Joseph, a second feast of Saint Joseph (in addition to that on March 19) had been kept in the proper calendars of certain religious communities and other places. In 1847 Blessed Pope Pius IX extended it to the whole Church on the Third Sunday after Easter (in keeping with the then still strong tendency to assign various devotional feasts to Sundays). The same Pope proclaimed Saint Joseph Patron of the Universal Church in 1870.  As part of the opening salvo of the 20th-century liturgical reform, Pope Saint Pius X's rubrical and calendar reform of 1911 moved the new feast to the Third Wednesday after Easter and renamed it the Solemnity of Saint Joseph.  My guess is that liturgical enthusiasts probably preferred the texts of the 19th-century feast to the seemingly less inspired new ones created by the future Cardinal Bea, et al., during the deliberations of Pius XII's liturgical reform commission in the mid-1950s.

Given the contemporary near collapse of the labor movement, a new attempt to highlight the Church's commitment to the rights and dignity of workers would seem very desirable. However, whether the existing feast (now downgraded to the seemingly frivolous status of "optional memorial") can still serve that function - or even contribute to it in any meaningful way - is debatable at best.

Prescinding from all of that, there remain two other casualties caused by today's "optional memorial" - the unfortunate displacement of Saints Philip and James from their historically traditional date (first to May 11 by Pius XIII and then to May 3 by Paul VI) and the eclipse of the even more traditional May Day (not as a socialist celebration but as a traditional seasonal celebration reflecting our connectedness with and dependence upon the natural world).

As anyone who bothers to read this blog knows, every now and then (but especially around the time of the now defunct Rogation Days), I like to harp on our need to retrieve a serious sense of our connection with nature, something the liturgy traditionally maintained through such seasonally focused observances as Ember Days, Rogation Days, etc. It would certainly be a stretch to blame climate change denial on this aspect of the reformed liturgy. But certainly the reform's wholesale abandonment of those observances that traditionally marked the natural seasons and highlighted our human connection with and dependence upon nature have not helped the situation any! And, while it may be true that, even when we had Rogation Days, most people probably ignored them, it is also the case that most people probably ignore Earth Day, which is not usually advanced as an argument against Earth Day,

As the traditional beginning of the second half of the ancient European year, May Day is as old and venerable as its autumnal equivalent Halloween (the latter more successfully sanctified by the liturgy with All Saints and All Souls Days). With the unfortunate loss of April 25's "Greater Litanies" (a baptized version of that day's pre-Christian Roman Robigalia), there remains a real need for an explicitly religious parallel to Earth Day. Perhaps May Day could be creatively re-imagined as a kind of Christian Climate Concern Day (perhaps even as a fast day) in the spirit of Pope Francis' great encyclical Laudato Si'.