On the Common Good: Politics, Partisanship, and Secular Franciscans

Last updated on: July 27, 2020 at 5:21 pm By David Cruz-Uribe

This article first appeared in the Summer 2020 Newsletter of the Brothers and Sisters of St. Francis Region of the Secular Franciscan Order, and is reproduced here with permission. It is specifically addressed to Secular Franciscans, but I think the underlying ideas should be relevant to all Catholics, particularly in an election year.

To avoid formatting issues, I reproduce here an earlier, slightly different version.

At my first meeting of the regional executive council last February, a big item on the agenda was planning for the upcoming (but now, sadly, canceled) Annual Regional Gathering. As part of this the council read through comments that were submitted by participants after the 2019 ARG. I was struck by a number of complaints that revolved around two intertwined ideas: that topics addressed at the ARG were “too controversial” and were “too political.” I was surprised as nothing in the agenda or the contents of the talks (as reported to me—I was not there) struck me as either.

However, on reflection I realized that I had run into this attitude on social media, and since the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing anti-racism protests, it has become more frequent. Immigration, the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, racism, police violence, Black Lives Matter: these subjects, and others, are considered controversial and political, and therefore should not be brought up by Secular Franciscans.

I think this attitude is mistaken: as Franciscans we are called to be both controversial and political. Here I want to explain why, and address what I believe are some common concerns.

It all begins with our Rule. Article 15 says:

Let them individually and collectively be in the forefront in promoting justice by the testimony of their human lives and their courageous initiatives. Especially in the field of public life, they should make definite choices in harmony with their faith. (emphasis added)

To be at the forefront of any movement to promote justice will be, inevitably, controversial. Addressing any social and political injustice requires challenging either the people who support the injustice (for whatever reason), or the larger number who are made uncomfortable by any attempts to change the status quo. As Martin Luther King Jr. said in his Letter From A Birmingham Jail, addressing religious leaders (including the bishop of Birmingham) who felt the demonstrations he was leading were provocative and unwise:

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.

So if we are going to be obedient to our rule, we are going to have to, at times, make other people uncomfortable by proposing controversial ideas and courses of action. Moreover, this also means we are going to have to make ourselves uncomfortable. Like any examination of conscience, we need to ask ourselves, “What have I done, and what have I failed to do” to confront this evil? This discomfort is not a goal: as Franciscans our goal should be peace and justice. But at times it will be painful for ourselves and others; these are the labor pains of a better world:

A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. (John 16:21-22)

With regards to the complaint that these controversial topics are “too political”: I agree they are political, and that is a good thing. Politics, as St. Thomas Aquinas—following Aristotle—taught, is devoted to the common good. Or as our Rule puts it, it is action in “service of the human community.” (Article 16) Here we need to distinguish between political and partisan. To be political is to address ourselves to the broader concerns of the community and public life. To be partisan is to advocate for the positions of a particular political party or ideology. These are closely related, as supporters of parties and ideologies often highlight specific problems or argue for their preferred solutions. The Church in general, and the Secular Franciscan Order in general, is not to be partisan: as a Church and order we do not support particular political parties.

But the Church can and must be political. In response to charges that the Church should not comment on social and economic questions, Pope Pius XI was clear:

[T]hat principle which Leo XIII so clearly established must be laid down at the outset here, namely, that there resides in Us [the Pope] the right and duty to pronounce with supreme authority upon social and economic matters….For as to these, the deposit of truth that God committed to Us and the grave duty of disseminating and interpreting the whole moral law, and of urging it in season and out of season, bring under and subject to Our supreme jurisdiction not only social order but economic activities themselves. (Quadragesimo Anno, 41)

In the same way, as Secular Franciscans, to be faithful to the Church and to our rule, we must also speak and act upon social, economic and political questions if we are to bring our faith to bear “in the field of public life.” In doing so, we are guided by Catholic social teaching, which is, as Pius XI explained, the application of the moral law to these questions. The range of issues covered is broad, and includes many that are regarded as both controversial and political. The Second Vatican Council gave one list of concerns; this list was later quoted by Pope St. John Paul II (Veritatus Splendor 80) as examples of grave and intrinsic moral evils:

Whatever is hostile to life itself, such as any kind of homicide, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and voluntary suicide; whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution and trafficking in women and children; degrading conditions of work which treat laborers as mere instruments of profit, and not as free responsible persons: all these and the like are a disgrace, and so long as they infect human civilization they contaminate those who inflict them more than those who suffer injustice, and they are a negation of the honor due to the Creator. (Gaudium et Spes, 27)

These are the evils we are called, as Franciscans, to address. In doing so, we will often find ourselves aligned with the stance of one political party or another, or find ourselves criticizing the actions of the government (controlled by one party or another). This, in and of itself, does not make us partisan. Instead, this alignment reflects what the Council said at the beginning of its constitution:

The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. (Gaudium et Spes 1)

So the next time the discussion—in your fraternity, on social media, or here in the pages of Communio—turns to something “controversial” or “political”, don’t condemn it out of hand because you associate it with a political party or movement you oppose. Instead, ask yourself: what does the Church teach on this matter? Why is this so controversial, and why do I find it so unsettling? What do I personally, and we as a community, need to do to advance the common good in this situation?

Why was Abby Johnson’s Video Racist?

Last updated on: July 9, 2020 at 10:14 am By David Cruz-Uribe

Two weeks ago Abby Johnson posted a video to YouTube and her Twitter feed in which she defended racial profiling and made an extended argument blaming the problems of the Black community on the breakdown of the Black family and on absent Black fathers. The video was later taken down from Twitter and was made private on YouTube. A copy was posted to YouTube, but was removed because of a copyright complaint from Abby Johnson. However, another copy may be found here. In addition, an extensive partial transcript can be found interspersed in a long blog post by Mary Pezzulo, blogging at Steel Magnificat.

This video has provoked considerably outcry and condemnation. Besides the blog post above, see the discussion by Simcha Fisher at her blog, Liza Vandenboom at Religion Unplugged, and Jacob Tonglet at the blog of Rehumanize International, a secular pro-life group advocating for the consistent life ethic. A petition calling on the USCCB and the pro-life movement to distance itself from Abby Johnson has gained almost 200 signatures. (Simcha Fisher also had a follow-up conversation with four Black Catholics, talking first about the video and then about racism in the pro-life movement and in the Catholic Church.)

I found the video very disturbing in its use of racist arguments, especially from someone in the pro-life movement. But based on some private conversations about it, I realized that a lot of people did not really understand why I believed the arguments in the video to be racist. Much of it was addressed in various ways in the blog posts above, but there seemed to be an underlying assumption that it was racist and that this fact did not need justification. So in this blog post I want to go through the video in detail and explain how its language and arguments are embedded in and reflect the broader racist ideas that are, unfortunately, still very common today. I think this is important, as racism has no place in the pro-life movement, and I want people to understand the outrage and why there are calls for pro-life organizations to distance themselves from her over this and previous incidents (discussed here). For my part, I fully support these calls: whatever good she has done (and certainly her book and the movie Unplanned have gained a lot of attention, and her work with current and former employees of abortion clinics is important) racism is a grave evil and we need to confront it no matter where we find it.

The video begins with her professing her love for her biracial son, a love I do not question. But notice how this child, in her description, evolves from an “adorable, perpetually tan-looking little brown boy” into an “large, intimidating-looking maybe, brown man.” Her White children will become “nerdy white guys” but her black son will become threatening. She gives no reason for why her White children will appear innocuous but her Black child will not. It is as if his blackness makes him threatening. This is nothing more than a stereotype—a softer version of the language of black “thugs” and “gangbangers.” It is language which is frequently used to describe black men, even skinny teenagers such as Trayvon Martin. The stereotype of black men as brutes and savages dates back to slavery, and has been in continual circulation since then.

In the video Abby Johnson then mentions having “the talk” with her son, though she never describes what she will say. Will she try to explain to him why it is okay for the police to profile him? I do know that this conversation is a source of dread for Black parents (as well as for White parents of Black and biracial children), as they try to explain to their children how to live and survive in a world where their color makes them a threat. One of my friends, who grew up in South Carolina, recalls having these lessons driven home by blows: his father, perhaps in frustration, wanted to convey to him the potentially fatal consequences his actions around White people could have. To really understand what is involved in “the talk”, I recommend this video, a Proctor & Gamble commercial. Another friend of mine wrote about his anxieties and fears for his biracial sons in a very thoughtful Boston Globe article.

Abby Johnson then goes on to justify her own son being racially profiled because police have good, rational reasons to fear Black men. Let me quote her at length:

“So, statistically, when a police officer sees a brown man like my Jude walking down the road, as opposed to my white nerdy kids, my white nerdy men, walking down the road – because of the statistics that he knows in his head, that these police officers know in their head, they’re going to know that statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons.”

This is a perfect illustration of racial profiling; singling out her son only because of the color of his skin. And she justifies it as “smart.” Moreover, she is not even talking about it as a fear or emotional prejudice, a bad consequence of larger societal stereotypes. Instead, she is arguing that cops are right to profile black men based on “statistics.” I have heard this argument before, often in this context: yes, there are racial prejudices in circulation, but there are also “facts” which exist side-by-side that need to be taken into consideration. (At this point, someone almost invariably says, “It may be politically incorrect to bring these up, but….”)

There are two problems with this argument. First, the statistics she cites about Black incarceration rates are either wrong or taken badly out of context. She conflates prison population with criminality, and takes no notice of the ways in which the judicial system, from the police through prosecutors and judges, treat Black people very differently than they do White people. This misuse of statistics is nicely discussed in the Rehumanize blog post linked to above. For an exhaustive discussion of the ways in which the criminal justice system has singled out and mistreated the Black community, and on White perceptions of the Black community, I recommend Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.

Second, and intertwined with this is the way in which “facts” and “statistics” are used to rationalize racial prejudice and reinforce a broader, false narrative above violent black men. I think the best example of this comes from a story I read (but which I now, unfortunately, cannot source): a Black prosecuting attorney is talking to a White colleague about a drug trafficking case they are handling. His colleague is proposing that they offer a relatively lenient plea deal, saying, “It’s not like he is a gun-wielding drug-dealer!” But, in fact, he was: he was charged with trafficking, and had been arrested with guns in his truck. The DA instead chose to interpret the guns through a different, exculpatory lens: he was a hunter, everyone who lives in rural areas carries a gun, etc. Were the defendant Black, the attorney telling the story argues, the interpretation would have been very different. The point of this story is that “facts” are not self-evident they have to be interpreted and placed into some context. Statistics about Black crime are interpreted and misinterpreted in support of preconceived notions about what Blacks, particularly Black men, are “really like,” and these preconceptions are driven by racist stereotypes that have a long history in America.

Abby Johnson then turns to the heart of her video, which is a denunciation of Black culture in general and absent Black fathers in particular. She drags out a statistic that she repeats several times, that 70% of black fathers are absent fathers. She gives no citation for this information, neither in the video nor in a follow up interview with Simcha Fisher (see the link above). After some searching, it appears that this number comes from a misinterpretation of data in a 1992 book by Andrew Billingsly, that found that (at the time) 70% of Black children were born to unmarried parents. However, unmarried does not mean that the parents are not living together. More recent studies claim that a majority of Black fathers live with their children, though the data is extremely complicated. (You can see the CDC data set and its analysis here.) Moreover, the same data suggests that Black men make a greater effort to be good fathers than White fathers do.

I want to turn from this specific, incorrect statistic, and look at the rhetorical basis of this argument.

She shifts the blame from any of the larger institutional problems and blames the Black community for what is happening to them. In her own words:

“If you wanna solve this madness that’s going on right here, right now in our society, that is where you start, because what’s happening right now with police, and criminals, and rioting, and violence – that is just a symptom of what has been going on for a long time in the homes and the communities of our Black families.”

Mass incarceration, police violence, racial profiling: none of this is the fault of a racist system—Black people are responsible for their own fate. And, presumably, they can solve all the problems of the Black community by fixing it themselves.

I will admit that I find it particularly repugnant to watch a White woman lecture the Black community about what their real problems are. (Given the tenor of the video, hectoring may be a more apt description.) Her presumption seems to be that the Black community is unable or unwilling to understand its own situation, and it necessary for White people to show them the truth. This attitude is grounded in a stereotype that predates the Civil War: a common justification for slavery was that Blacks were simply unable to behave in a civilized fashion without White oversight. This stereotype shifted after the war and became one of the pillars of Jim Crow segregation: that White dominance over Blacks was necessary and just because Black people were unable to manage their own affairs in a civilized manner. This was a major theme in D.W. Griffith’s superbly made but completely racist film, Birth of a Nation, and it continues to underlie many discussions of the Black community. By way of comparison: discussions about drug abuse, single parent households, gun violence, etc. in the White community are never framed as “problems with White culture.”

This line of argumentation also ignores the fact that the Black community is fully aware of these issues and discusses them at great length (though usually out of the sight and hearing of the White community). Note, for example, the discussions about the 70% figure linked to above came from a prominent Black newspaper, the Chicago Reporter, or see the more critical discussion here. The nature and problems of Black culture and the Black community have been discussed since the end of Reconstruction: they were central to the divisions between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, and the rise of the “New Negro” movement. (For a clear discussion of this history, I recommend Henry Louis Gates book, The Stony Road.)

Admittedly, there are some similarities between some internal critiques and the argument Abby Johnson is making. For instance, Bill Cosby gave the controversial “Pound Cake speech” which was highly critical of certain aspects of Black culture. There is, however, a significant difference. With the exception of a small handful of Black conservatives (besides Cosby, Candace Owens, mentioned by Abby Johnson, springs to mind) whose principal audience seems to be White conservatives, when these debates occur in the Black community they are generally about the Black response to White racism and the systems which helped to create and perpetuate black social pathology. Criticisms of Black culture exist, but are not uncontested–see the discussion about “respectability politics.” In other words, the Black community know there are problems, but they ground their discussion of them in the larger structures of racism that surround and oppress their community. For one good example of this, since rap music is frequently mentioned by Whites when criticizing Black culture, I recommend the video “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes” for a nuanced discussion about black culture and the role of the larger society in shaping it.

But, returning to the argument made byAbby Johnson: she appears to be unaware of this discussion within the Black community. In the video she repeatedly accuses Black people of either ignoring these issues or trying to pretend they are not problems. Note her assertion that

They are trying to redefine Black fatherhood, because they don’t like that 70% stat, so instead of setting the bar higher, for Black fathers, they’re simply redefining fatherhood in the Black community. (Emphasis added)

She instead lectures Blacks on what she believes their real problems are. She is not trying to engage with the Black community, or listen to it: they need to listen to her. Or, as she puts it:

“If Black America wants to start writing and talking about something, this is it. This is it.”

Finally, I want to call attention to the one glaring omission in this video. Nowhere in it does Abby Johnson mention the incident which triggered the current round of protests and riots: the brutal murder of George Floyd by a White police officer. She makes at best an oblique reference to it, dismissing his murder because it does not conform to her narrative about problems in Black culture:

Mark my words. It’s not because of bad cops. It’s because of bad dads. You want to jump on board with something? Jump on board with that.”

From beginning to end, the argument that Abby Johnson makes in her video is grounded in and expands upon racist stereotypes and assumptions that have been part of White America for a very long time. That she supports and disseminates these arguments is a bad thing. Silence by the pro-life community in the face of this can be interpreted as support, or at least a belief that these concerns are not as important as other issues (i.e., abortion). I hope and pray that in response to the outcry the video has generated, Abby Johnson does the “research” she talks about in the video and modifies her views. But until then the pro-life movement should distance itself from her.

Coda: I want to address one question that I have heard in private conversations: is Abby Johnson racist? I will stand by my assertion that the arguments she makes in this video are racist. But as to whether she herself is racist, in the (narrow) sense of harboring deep and abiding hatred or fear of Black people, that is unknowable based on a single video. Moreover, I think framing the question in this way misses an important point: racism is a problem not because of personal prejudice, but because of the systems of racial oppression which were created and continue to exist in the US, systems that most White people cannot see or do not understand the full implications of, simply because they never have a direct impact on them. (“Driving while Black” is a thing; there is no commensurate offense of “driving while White.”) As the sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has argued, we now live in an America filled with “racism without racists.” I feel it is important to challenge Abby Johnson’s arguments because they are part of a broader, false narrative which exists to support and sustain these structures.

Reading Rerum Novarum, Part III

Last updated on: June 22, 2020 at 1:06 pm By David Cruz-Uribe

This is a continuation of my reflections and ramblings on Rerum Novarum. You can read the previous two posts in Part I and Part II.

Our discussion got off to an interesting start. One of the women who belongs to the reading group called attention to a number of references to women and gender roles that sound, frankly, sexist to modern ears. For instance, we have the categorical declaration that

Women, again, are not suited for certain occupations; a woman is by nature fitted for home-work, and it is that which is best adapted at once to preserve her modesty and to promote the good bringing up of children and the well- being of the family. (par 42)

Earlier in the text, Leo XII, in his discussion of “peace and good order” warned of the “danger to morals through the mixing of the sexes” (par. 36). The language about “modesty” was a read flag for me: in previous years I have blogged extensively about (see here and here) and I am openly critical of the way this virtue is interpreted in some conservative Catholic circles. Thankfully, our discussion did not get bogged on this, but turned to the more important question of what positive ideas we can take from the encyclical. One point which was immediately brought out was that passages like these must be grounded in Leo XIII’s very deep concern for the family, a point he returns to multiple times in the text. It should also be noted that in the same paragraph quoted above, the encyclical has very strong language about child labor. Though not a categorical condemnation (which would come later), it is still very powerful, especially given the prevalence of child labor in mills and mines:

And, in regard to children, great care should be taken not to place them in workshops and factories until their bodies and minds are sufficiently developed. For, just as very rough weather destroys the buds of spring, so does too early an experience of life’s hard toil blight the young promise of a child’s faculties, and render any true education impossible. (par. 42)

Finally, though looking ahead to our next discussion on wages, Leo’s discussion of women was linked to the question of what we now call a living wage, and the ways in which the legitimate desire of women to be part of the workforce has become since the 1970s the “two-income trap” where married couples find they need two incomes in order to maintain a reasonable standard of living. Rather than framing it as a requirement of women to stay home, the sense of our discussion is that the economic system must recognize the importance of child care and domestic labor as “work” (whether done by men or women), and be structured in a way that supports it.

Moving on, we turned to the more philosophical question of Leo XIII’s definition of the state. His definition in paragraph 32 was rather generic: “any government conformable in its institutions to right reason and natural law, and to those dictates of the divine wisdom.” He goes on to refer to an earlier encyclical, Immortale Dei, on the Christian Constitution of States. There was some discussion of the connection between this encyclical and Augustine’s ideas on the state from the City of God, and the way this Platonic formulation of the state differs from both Aristotle and Aquinas. I don’t know enough about this (I wish I did), but it would be interesting to chase down, especially if Leo is breaking in any way from Aquinas, for whom he had the utmost respect.

But, looking at this definition and the ways in which the encyclical lays out the duties of the state, it is clear that Leo XIII categorically rejects any libertarian notion of the state. The state has an active role: “Rulers should, nevertheless, anxiously safeguard the community and all its members” (par 35); the state has “the duty of safeguarding private property by legal enactment and protection” (par 38); “The working man, too, has interests in which he should be protected by the State” (par 40). While the state “must not absorb the individual or the family” (par 35), it has a very broad role to play. We saw here the beginnings of the ideals of solidarity and subsidiarity: that social action is best taken at the lowest practical level, but that the higher levels (up to the state), have a duty to support and work to protect the interests of the lower levels.

Though we did not talk about it, and it is not mentioned directly in the text, it would be interesting to try to discern what Leo XIII would think of supra-national bodies, such as the United Nations or even the recently founded (at the time) International Committee of the Red Cross. This is probably outside of the scope of his thinking, though one could argue that he envisions the Church itself as such an organization. The legitimacy and role of secular organizations would have to wait.

One feature of the encyclical’s discussion of the role of the state is that it makes very explicit what later Catholic thought would call the preferential option for the poor. While, on the one hand, the state must treat all of its citizens equal before the law, it must do so in a way that is solicitous of the particular situation of the poor and marginalized. As noted above, the state has a duty to protect the interests of the working class. Earlier, he writes

Hereby, then, it lies in the power of a ruler to benefit every class in the State, and amongst the rest to promote to the utmost the interests of the poor; and this in virtue of his office, and without being open to suspicion of undue interference – since it is the province of the commonwealth to serve the common good. And the more that is done for the benefit of the working classes by the general laws of the country, the less need will there be to seek for special means to relieve them. (par 32, emphasis added)

And someone in the group called to our attention this passage, where he elaborates on this rejection of the charge of “under interference” by the state:

The richer class have many ways of shielding themselves, and stand less in need of help from the State; whereas the mass of the poor have no resources of their own to fall back upon, and must chiefly depend upon the assistance of the State.

I really want to contrast this positive obligation on the state with the more neutral, hands-off approach which governed much “liberal” thought in the 19th century, and with the “law and order” approach common in conservative thought then and now. I am also, for some reason, reminded of a quote by Antole France, a French writer who was a younger contemporary of Leo XIII:

In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.

A question I brought up at this point concerns the failure of the state to live up to the duties that Leo XIII lays out for it. What recourse do citizens of the state have when the state fails to deliver on the duties laid out by “reason and natural law“? In particular, what should the working class do when the state fails to intervene against the rapaciousness and greed of the capitalists? This was a pressing concern, having already led to riots and the violent overthrow of the states. Indeed, the Papal States had been abolished only 20 years before this encyclical was written, and the great revolts of 1848 were still very much alive in political memory.

This is not directly addressed in the encyclical itself, though Leo XIII’s repeated references to peace and order, and his categorical injunctions (discussed last time) to the workers to not resort to violence, suggest what the answer is. One of our members found his position outlined in an earlier encyclical, Quod Apositolici Muneris, On Socialism, written 13 years before in 1878. In it, he appears to categorically rule out revolution ever being a legitimate option:

And if at any time it happen that the power of the State is rashly and tyrannically wielded by princes, the teaching of the Catholic church does not allow an insurrection on private authority against them, lest public order be only the more disturbed, and lest society take greater hurt therefrom. And when affairs come to such a pass that there is no other hope of safety, she teaches that relief may be hastened by the merits of Christian patience and by earnest prayers to God. (par. 7)

The only exception he allows (and it is not clear how broadly he intended it to be interpreted) is in the following sentence:

But, if the will of legislators and princes shall have sanctioned or commanded anything repugnant to the divine or natural law, the dignity and duty of the Christian name, as well as the judgment of the Apostle, urge that “God is to be obeyed rather than man.” (par. 7)

Not surprisingly, considering how often he comes up, we all asked the same question: what was Aquinas’ position on revolt and rebellion? A very brief search suggests that this position taken by Leo XIII is a distillation of Aquinas, though perhaps some nuance has been lost. One article I found summarizes Aquinas this way:

The only exception Aquinas made was for the case of tyrannical rule, where he argued that subjects are not bound to obey tyrannical orders from the ruler. Still, Aquinas argued that subjects should simply withhold obedience to wrongful orders, not rise in armed rebellion. While in extreme cases it is not a sin to overthrow a tyrant, it is subordinate rulers who should take the lead in this task (here Aquinas anticipated Calvin on the overthrow of an unjust ruler by “lesser magistrates”), not the people at large. The underlying reason is the responsibility the subordinate rulers have to use their ordering power in the service of justice and peace; other people may have the individual right of self-defense, but they do not have this larger responsibility for the common good, given that the overthrow of a tyrannical government by popular uprising may lead to social and political chaos and even worse injustice than that under the tyrant.

While I don’t have the time or knowledge here, I think the position and concerns of Leo XIII (and Aquinas) should be brought into dialog with theories of democratic governance and the extent to which rulers rule because of the consent of the governed. Or, in other words, to what extent do “the people” share in the duties of “subordinate rulers” to maintain justice and peace and to act when they are not upheld? (The article I cite does indeed point to such an evolution, one which began in post-Reformation Europe as political philosophy had to deal with a disjuncture between the religion of rulers and that of the ruled.)

Returning to the encyclical, one member of the group suggested that Leo XIII saw the Church as an institution whose duty was to reign in the excesses of the state. This seems consonant with the discussion of the role of the Church in the earlier part of the encyclical, but it does raise two further questions: by what means can the Church influence the state, beyond moral suasion? The Church at the time found itself between two classes, and was struggling to find a way to be an “honest broker” between the two. And, second, what if the Church fails in its duty to reign in the state? It was pointed out that many times in the 20th century the Church, in its legitimate desire to combat communism, had often allied itself with tyrannical states who committed multiple grievous evils in the name of “anti-communism.” Though I did not mention it at the time, the Spanish Civil war came to mind, as well as the Church in El Salvador (and other parts of Latin America), though with some powerful exceptions (such as St. Oscar Romero).

It seems to me that the Church, to fulfill its role, needs to take on a prophetic stance that takes sides. This is a position which will evolve over the next century in Catholic thought. The seeds were implicit in Rerum Novarum, but concerns for peace and order prevented them from being fully realized then. And, if we are going to be honest, from being fully realized today, as well.

The discussion concluded at this point, and we will move on this week to the final section of the encyclical, which treats just wages and unions, among other things.

Reading Rerum Novarum, Part II

Last updated on: June 14, 2020 at 9:11 pm By David Cruz-Uribe

In this blog post I continue my random thoughts and reflections on Rerum Novarum, the first Papal encyclical on what came to be called Catholic Social Teaching. The first part, with some background details, can be found here. I initially thought to keep editing and adding to that post (which is what I said there) but I decided that it made more sense to create a new blog post for each set of reflections.

Last week my reading group focused on Paragraphs 16-30, in which Leo XIII outlines what he believes is the central role of the Church in settling the divisions between workers and owners. At some point someone noted that this section of the document is very much influenced by 19th century Catholic thinking (which perhaps reached its apotheosis in the Syllabus of Errors) which denied what in the United States is now loosely referred to as the “separation of Church and State” and which sees the Church as having a central, authoritative role to play in civil society. This does not in any way invalidate the analysis of these sections, though I think it would come to be applied (and needs to be applied) in ways very different from what Leo XIII intended.

In particular, I am reminded of the personalism of the Catholic Worker Movement, and their aphorism that “we must build a new world in the shell of the old,” with this new world based solidly on Catholic moral truths. The need for personal charity is spelled out in great detail, as is the need for subsidiary organizations (here all Church based) that lie between the State and the family. (See paragraph 28.) And the ultimate revolution must be one in the human heart.

In our discussion first point I raised was about Paragraph 20, in which the encyclical lays out the duties of workers and owners. He begins with the workers, using for the only time the word “proletarian” which is now so evocative of Marxist thought:

the following bind the proletarian and the worker: fully and faithfully to perform the work which has been freely and equitably agreed upon; never to injure the property, nor to outrage the person, of an employer; never to resort to violence in defending their own cause, nor to engage in riot or disorder; and to have nothing to do with men of evil principles, who work upon the people with artful promises of great results, and excite foolish hopes which usually end in useless regrets and grievous loss.

A couple things struck me: first, these are categorical duties. They are short, direct, and there is no nuance or exceptions. So, one must presume that no matter how harshly or unjustly treated, workers may not strike, engage in sit-ins, or use violence in self-defense. In light of US labor history (the Homestead strike and the Ludlow massacre come to mind) this does seem to be a rather high bar.

Second, the duties of employers are much more nuanced and while strong, are less forcefully presented. To make this clear, I am going to quote the whole passage, and put in boldface the specific duties which the encyclical enjoins on them:

The following duties bind the wealthy owner and the employer: not to look upon their work people as their bondsmen, but to respect in every man his dignity as a person ennobled by Christian character. They are reminded that, according to natural reason and Christian philosophy, working for gain is creditable, not shameful, to a man, since it enables him to earn an honorable livelihood; but to misuse men as though they were things in the pursuit of gain, or to value them solely for their physical powers – that is truly shameful and inhuman. Again justice demands that, in dealing with the working man, religion and the good of his soul must be kept in mind. Hence, the employer is bound to see that the worker has time for his religious duties; that he be not exposed to corrupting influences and dangerous occasions; and that he be not led away to neglect his home and family, or to squander his earnings. Furthermore, the employer must never tax his work people beyond their strength, or employ them in work unsuited to their sex and age. His great and principal duty is to give every one what is just. Doubtless, before deciding whether wages a[r]e fair, many things have to be considered; but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this– that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine. To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven. “Behold, the hire of the laborers… which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.”(6) Lastly, the rich must religiously refrain from cutting down the workmen’s earnings, whether by force, by fraud, or by usurious dealing; and with all the greater reason because the laboring man is, as a rule, weak and unprotected, and because his slender means should in proportion to their scantiness be accounted sacred.

I would not argue that these duties are bad, though the middle collection start “he be not exposed to corrupting influences” is remarkably paternalistic. But they are framed in a very different way than the duties imposed on workers. The text assumes that the duties imposed on the worker are self-evident and they are laid out as a series of commands. On the other hand, the duties of employers require explanation and cannot simply be demanded. Note the language “his great and principal duty” and “must religiously refrain“–these are exhortations to good behavior rather than commands.

That the workers are directly commanded to avoid violence is not surprising: Pope Leo XIII like much of the Church leadership, feared the social unrest which had periodically convulsed Europe since the French Revolution a century before. But a quote from Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail seems relevant here:

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations.

To (try to) be fair, Leo XIII is in fact acknowledging, at least implicitly, the conditions which were leading many workers to press strongly for reforms, and for some to promote revolution with the goal of over-turning a legal and social order that tolerated and supported their abuse by the wealthy. (Indeed, in paragraph 3, which we read two weeks ago, he is much more explicit.) And he is calling for change. But the asymmetrical way in which he constructs these duties suggests that he is more concerned with order than justice.

Another interesting point that came up in our discussions was the use of “cabor” and “capital” to refer to the two social classes. The document itself refers repeatedly to “the working classes” and also to the “working class”; but it names the classes “labor” and capital” only three times: in the title “Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor“, in paragraph 2, which identifies the goal of the encyclical as a discussion of “the relative rights and mutual duties of the rich and of the poor, of capital and of labor“, and in paragraph 19, which talks about their interdependence: “capital cannot do without labor, nor labor without capital.” At the time I had missed the first two instances, and was struck by the use of this terminology as well as the more ubiquitous use of “working class(es)”. These social divisions are presented as given, and no indication is given that these are relatively new social constructs. One can get marvelously sidetracked into when they came into being during the Industrial Revolution, but the key point, made by social historians such as E.P. Thompson, is that the working class came to be as a self-aware social grouping in the 19th century. There have always been rich and poor–the Old and New Testaments are replete with references to them, and medieval thought included a rich treasury of thought about them. (Here I want to call out a book I found very influential, Mollat’s “The Poor in the Middle Ages: an Essay in Social History“.) But the organization of people into two classes–labor and capital–that saw themselves in opposition was a relatively new phenomenon in history.

Herein lies both a great strength and a great weakness of the encyclical. Leo XIII recognizes their existence, but calls into question whether they are, by necessity, mutually antagonistic. Certainly, much (all?) progressive thought in the 19th century explicitly saw them so. I am much less certain of how they were viewed in conservative thought, I would hazard a guess, based on the similar conservative views held about blacks in America, that they felt that labor and capital could live in perfect amity, so long as workers knew their (subordinate) place. Leo XII states explicitly in paragraph 19:

The great mistake made in regard to the matter now under consideration is to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict.

This is an important argument which needs to be made: the goal of Christian social organization should be to get people to recognize their own mutual interdependence–or, as one participant in our discussions put it, their relationality.

But notice the elision that occurs here: he passes back from the new social classes of labor and capital, and refers instead to the “wealthy” and “working men.” These are terms that refer to individuals as opposed to socially constructed classes. So it could indeed be the case the rich and poor–as individuals–should not be in mutual conflict, but that the social classes of labor and capital–as they have developed in the 19th century–are, and this points to a flaw not in the behavior of individuals, but in the way in which society had come to be organized. (I will pass over for now why it came to be so organized.) This points to the great weakness in the text: there is no structural analysis of this new social organization: as I mentioned in a comment on last week’s blog, Leo XIII tends to approach these social questions in an abstract, ahistorical way, one which does not allow him to question the contingency underlying society: that it came to be does not mean that it had to come to be. This outlook shapes the duties of the workers and employers given above: workers must not engage in actions which undermine or challenge the existing social order (at least violently), and employers are to act justly and charitably within the bounds of the social order. This development will be left to later Catholic social teaching.

There was one other point in the text that we did not discuss, which is the balance between charity and justice. Leo XIII appeals to justice several times, but in a key passage in paragraph 22, discussing the right use of money, he steps back and says that giving alms “is a duty, not of justice (save in extreme cases) but of Christian charity, a duty not enforced by human law.” This tension between charity and justice is one which some of the Church fathers saw differently: here I think of St. Basil, and his injunction that “the coat in your closet you do not wear was stolen from a poor man” (emphasis added). I think that the use of these two terms in this section of the encyclical needs to be explored–hopefully, we can do this in the comments. In addition, I would love to better understand the “extreme cases” that Leo XIII was thinking of in which giving alms would be required by justice. Mollat, in his book, makes reference to a medieval debate about whether magistrates could force the rich to give alms if the need was great and they failed to do so. (If I remember correctly, the consensus was that they could.)

Our discussion ended with some questions about the relationship of Church and State, and whether one could live out and act upon Christian virtues in the context of a secular state. This was prompted by a discussion of my mother, who for many years worked for the county welfare agency. I brought her up because in the early days of her work, part of her job was making home visits to her clients, which often involved sitting and getting to know them and their circumstances. I was comparing this to a point raised by one participant about his work with the St. Vincent de Paul Society, and his suggestion that one of the strengths of private charity was its relational character, as opposed to its economic assistance. (I did note that budget cuts ended these home visits, and my mother became more concerned with paperwork and rules than with the lives of her clients.) This laid a great groundwork for our next discussion, which will focus on the role of the state.

Racism is the water we swim in

Last updated on: May 30, 2020 at 10:20 am By Jeannine Pitas

In 2005, novelist David Foster Wallace gave a university commencement speech that began like this:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

Wallace immediately seeks to reassure his readers that he is not assuming the role of the big fish giving advice to the little fish. Instead, he is simply seeking to make his audience conscious of realities they normally take for granted. As the speech goes on, he discusses the basic self-centeredness inherent to each of us, the default settings we need to overcome in order to empathize with others.These are so basic to our human nature, he says, that we normally do not even think of them.

As citizens of Minneapolis and other US cities take to the streets to protest the brutal death of yet another unarmed black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white police officer, one terrible truth is yet again made clear: for people of European origin living in the United States of America, racism is the water we swim in. While its victims cannot ignore it, those who stand to benefit from an unjust system all too often cannot see the injustice until it is explicitly pointed out.

In late 2016, soon after Donald Trump was elected to the highest office in the land, a number of hate crimes broke out across the US. As I read about harassment and violence perpetrated by whites against people of color, I was shocked. “Is this really my country?” I wrote, lamenting on social media. “Do these terrible things happen here all the time?”

“You may never know,” a Mexican-Canadian friend responded. “You’re white and you don’t have an accent. If they happen, these things won’t happen to you.”

For as long as I can remember, I’ve watched European-Americans bristle with defensiveness whenever racism is mentioned. We are quick to assert our own innocence, to absolve ourselves of individual responsibility for a society-wide problem. Unfortunately, this attitude is a large part of what feeds the phenomenon.

In Octavia Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred, the main character, a 26-year-old African American writer named Dana Franklin, is mysteriously transported across time and space from her Los Angeles home to a Maryland plantation in 1815. She realizes she has somehow been telepathically “called” by a white boy named Rufus Weylin, son of a domineering and abusive plantation owner, to rescue him from drowning. Dana eventually learns that Rufus is her great-great-great grandfather who, after becoming obsessed with a free black woman named Alice, forced her into slavery and concubinage.

In a period of time that for Dana is just a few weeks, Rufus “calls” her several times; she often remains in his world for months at a time or longer while just a few hours pass in her home time and place. As such, she sees him grow up from a small boy into a young man who slowly begins to take on more of his father’s characteristics, culminating in his horrific treatment of Alice.

For me, one interesting aspect of the book is the 1970’s Dana’s marriage to Kevin, a European-American writer twelve years her senior who clearly loves her, having been disowned by his racist family when he married her. But as critic Robert Crossley astutely observes, Kevin is limited in how much he can truly understand Dana’s situation.

At one point, he is transported back in time with her, and they are unfortunately separated, forcing him to stay in the antebellum USA for five years without her. While he does become an abolitionist, there are also moments when he bears an uncanny resemblance to both Rufus and his father. Though subtle, this dynamic of inequality plays out in his 1970’s life with Dana. This reality does not discredit his good intentions or undermine his love for Dana. But it reveals the unsavory truth that most if not all European-Americans have unconsciously internalized racism to one extent or another. It has become the water we swim in, and like David Foster Wallace’s fish, we usually do not even notice it.

A century and a half after the end of slavery, more than fifty years after the Civil Rights movement, we can see that racism remains alive and well in the United States. The death of George Floyd is emblematic of a conflict that remains unresolved – a conflict based on gross inequalities of power. Black Lives Matter is a new civil rights movement with complexities that parallel its 1960’s precursor. No one knows what the outcome will be, but we all will be affected.

It’s a common cliche to stay that the first step toward solving any problem is recognizing the problem’s existence. For too long, so many European Americans have reacted to the legacy of slavery and ongoing reality of racism by relegating it to the past or seeking to deny our own complicity. This needs to change. Seeking knowledge is the first step, followed by discernment and action. If we want reconciliation, we must begin with the truth, and as Pope Paul famously stated in 1972, “If you want peace, work for justice.”

The Paschal Mystery is as true as ever

Last updated on: April 8, 2020 at 9:46 am By Jeannine Pitas

Greetings from Buffalo, NY, USA. Today begins Passover, and tomorrow begins the Christian Triduum. For many across the world today, these traditions are bittersweet to say the least. As of this writing, the United States – currently the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic – just reported its highest daily death rate yet; in Spain, deaths had declined but are on the rise again.

We will not be gathering for public worship this year. While I am fortunate to be spending this Holy Week in my childhood home with my elderly parents for the first time in five years, I am sad that we will not be able to participate in most of our beloved traditions: Holy Thursday pilgrimage to seven churches, outdoor Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, a blessing of Easter baskets on Holy Saturday, the Easter liturgy, and Dyngus Day (a Polish-American Easter Monday post-Lent Carnival that Buffalo has become known for).

Nevertheless, in the midst of a global pandemic, we are called to celebrate everything this season stands for: death and resurrection, hope for new life. Faced with a frightening situation that none of us have experienced before, we Christians are called to reaffirm our faith in the Paschal Mystery, which remains real and true in every circumstance.

Passolver and Easter, which both recall terrible suffering followed by grace and redemption, have been celebrated in all sorts of circumstances for a very long time. People have celebrated these festivals during other plagues. Last year, Easter was marred by violence in Sri Lanka. For many people around the world, it is just another time of hardship that they endure all year long.

A dear friend recently directed me to this passage from The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware. This anonymous letter was written by a Christian gulag prisoner in the Soviet Union. I offer it as a meditation for all of us during this holiest of weeks.

It is only by being a prisoner for religious convictions in a Soviet camp that one can really understand the mystery of the fall of the first man, the mystical meaning of the redemption of all creation, and the great victory of Christ over the forces of evil. It is only when we suffer for the ideals of the Holy Gospel that we can realize our sinful infirmity and our unworthiness in comparison with the great martyrs of the first Christian Church. Only then can we grasp the absolute necessity for profound meekness and humility, without which we cannot be saved; only then can we begin to discern the passing image of the seen, and the eternal life of the Unseen.

On Easter Day all of us who were imprisoned for religious convictions were united in the one joy of Christ. We were all taken into one feeling, into one spiritual triumph, glorifying the one eternal God. There was no solemn Paschal service with the ringing of church bells, no possibility in our camp to gather for worship, to dress up for the festival, to prepare Easter dishes. On the contrary, there was even more work and more interference than usual. All the prisoners here for religious convictions, whatever their denomination, were surrounded by more spying, by more threats from the secret police.

Yet Easter was there: great, holy, spiritual, unforgettable. It was blessed by the presence of our risen God among us – blessed by the silent Siberian stars and by our sorrows. How our hearts beat joyfully in communion with the Great Resurrection! Death is conquered, fear no more, an eternal Easter is given to us! Full of this marvellous Easter, we send you from our prison camp the victorious and joyful tidings: Christ is risen!

– Letter from a Soviet concentration camp

Passover and Holy Week blessings to all.

An Unquiet City

Last updated on: January 26, 2020 at 3:33 pm By Matt Talbot

I’m a member of a Facebook group devoted to St. Therese of Lisieux, and there were a couple of recent posts which were, or could be easily read as, partisan political posts.

Those posts quickly – and predictably – became a morass of accusations and assuming bad faith and all the rest, and I can’t imagine there is anyone reading this post that doesn’t know what I mean.

There are genuinely important and valid issues to discuss at this point in the history of the United States.

This post isn’t about those.

It is about the spiritual danger posed to those who participate too readily in the extreme, tribal polarization that besets our country – in fact, most of the Western world – at this moment.

It should be no secret to anyone who’s read my past posts on this blog that I’m interested in politics, and that I have written about politics seen through the lens of my faith.

There are, again, important, consequential things worth discussing there.

But, again, this post is not about that.

I’m more left than right politically, and I’ve read and been horrified by comment-box suggestions – sometimes joking, sometimes “joking” – on lefty political blogs that some degree of genocide might make defeating your opponents easier.

I believe that a significant factor in the current tribal warfare is a sort of collective egotism possessed by and within each tribe – a sense that you are either With Us or else are Comprehensively Wrong.

In David’s post last month, he wrote:

When compassion and love are absent, Merton insisted, actions that are superficially nonviolent tend to mask deep hostility, contempt and the desire to defeat and humiliate an opponent. As he wrote in one of his most profound and insightful letters:
“One of the problematic questions about nonviolence is the inevitable involvement of hidden aggressions and provocations. I think this is especially true when there are … elements that are not spiritually developed. It is an enormously subtle question, but we have to consider the fact that, in its provocative aspect, nonviolence may tend to harden opposition and confirm people in their righteous blindness. It may even in some cases separate men out and drive them in the other direction, away from us and away from peace. This of course may be (as it was with the prophets) part of God’s plan. A clear separation of antagonists…. [But we must] always direct our action toward opening people’s eyes to the truth, and if they are blinded, we must try to be sure we did nothing specifically to blind them.
“Yet there is that danger: the danger one observes subtly in tight groups like families and monastic communities, where the martyr for the right sometimes thrives on making his persecutors terribly and visibly wrong. He can drive them in desperation to be wrong, to seek refuge in the wrong, to seek refuge in violence…. In our acceptance of vulnerability … we play [on the guilt of the opponent]. There is no finer torment. This is one of the enormous problems of our time … all this guilt and nothing to do about it except finally to explode and blow it all out in hatreds — race hatreds, political hatreds, war hatreds. We, the righteous, are dangerous people in such a situation…. We have got to be aware of the awful sharpness of truth when it is used as a weapon, and since it can be the deadliest weapon, we must take care that we don’t kill more than falsehood with it. In fact, we must be careful how we “use” truth, for we are ideally the instruments of truth and not the other way around.”

Merton wrote elsewhere of where egotism and selfishness leads (if unrepented), and I believe it can be just as applicable to participants in our current tribal comflicts as to individual narcissists:

What is the “world” that Christ would not pray for, and of which He said that His disciples were in it but not of it? The world is the unquiet city of those who live for themselves and are therefore divided against one another in a struggle that cannot end, for it will go on eternally in hell. It is the city of those who are fighting for possession of limited things and for the monopoly of goods and pleasures that cannot be shared by all. There is only one true flight from the world; it is not an escape from conflict, anguish and suffering, but the flight from disunity and separation, to unity and peace in the love of other men.

Thomas Merton on Peace-Making

Last updated on: December 9, 2019 at 12:48 pm By David Cruz-Uribe

I received the following reflection second hand via email. It comes from a Catholic Worker email list, and is a lecture by Jim Forest, a long time member of the Catholic Worker, biographer of Dorothy Day, and friend of Thomas Merton. I find his comments about compassion and peace-making to be very pertinent given the divisions in the world today, which is why I thought it appropriate to share on Vox Nova.

Despite his physical distance from centers of protest activity, Merton was quite able to relate to those in the thick of protest thanks to his vivid memories of equivalent activities from his student days at Columbia University in New York City. “I have the feeling of being a survivor of the shipwrecked thirties,” he wrote me early in 1963, “one of the few that has kept my original face before this present world was born.”

What he found was often missing among protesters was compassion. Those involved in protests tend to become enraged with those they see as being responsible for injustice and violence and even toward those who uphold the status quo, while at the same time viewing themselves as models of what others should be. But without compassion, Merton pointed out, the protester tends to become more and more centered in anger, becomes a whirlpool of self-righteousness, and even becomes an obstacle to changing the attitudes of others rather than someone who helps open the door to conversion. As he put it in one letter:

“We have to have a deep patient compassion for the fears … and irrational mania of those who hate or condemn us. These are, after all, the ordinary people, the ones who don’t want war, the ones who get it in the neck, the ones who really want to build a decent new world in which there will not be war and starvation.”

Most people, Merton pointed out, are irritated or frightened by agitation even when it protests something — militarism, nuclear weapons, social injustice — which objectively endangers them. As he put it:

“[People] do not feel at all threatened by the bomb … but they feel terribly threatened by some … student carrying a placard.”

Compassion was again stressed by Merton during a small retreat for peacemakers that he hosted in November 1964. He raised a provocative question: “By what right to we protest?” It wasn’t a question I had ever before considered. I was born into a family in which protest was a normal activity. While not by nature a person drawn to protest, as a young adult I found myself seeing protest as an unfortunate necessity. I could not watch preparations for nuclear war and fail to raise a dissenting voice or refuse to participate in actions of resistance. To protest was a duty, period. But by raising the “by what right” question, Merton forced me to consider that protest, if it is to have any hope of constructive impact on others, has to be undertaken not only with great care but with a genuine sympathy for those who object to one’s protest, who feel threatened and angered by it, who regard you as a traitor. After all, what we are seeking is not just to make some noise but to help others think freshly about our social order and the direction we’re going.

When compassion and love are absent, Merton insisted, actions that are superficially nonviolent tend to mask deep hostility, contempt and the desire to defeat and humiliate an opponent. As he wrote in one of his most profound and insightful letters:

“One of the problematic questions about nonviolence is the inevitable involvement of hidden aggressions and provocations. I think this is especially true when there are … elements that are not spiritually developed. It is an enormously subtle question, but we have to consider the fact that, in its provocative aspect, nonviolence may tend to harden opposition and confirm people in their righteous blindness. It may even in some cases separate men out and drive them in the other direction, away from us and away from peace. This of course may be (as it was with the prophets) part of God’s plan. A clear separation of antagonists…. [But we must] always direct our action toward opening people’s eyes to the truth, and if they are blinded, we must try to be sure we did nothing specifically to blind them.

“Yet there is that danger: the danger one observes subtly in tight groups like families and monastic communities, where the martyr for the right sometimes thrives on making his persecutors terribly and visibly wrong. He can drive them in desperation to be wrong, to seek refuge in the wrong, to seek refuge in violence…. In our acceptance of vulnerability … we play [on the guilt of the opponent]. There is no finer torment. This is one of the enormous problems of our time … all this guilt and nothing to do about it except finally to explode and blow it all out in hatreds — race hatreds, political hatreds, war hatreds. We, the righteous, are dangerous people in such a situation…. We have got to be aware of the awful sharpness of truth when it is used as a weapon, and since it can be the deadliest weapon, we must take care that we don’t kill more than falsehood with it. In fact, we must be careful how we “use” truth, for we are ideally the instruments of truth and not the other way around.”

Merton noticed that peace activists sometimes identify too much with sectarian ideologies or with particular political parties. In his view peace activity should communicate liberating possibilities to others, left, right and center. As he put it to me in one letter:

“It seems to me that the basic problem is not political, it is apolitical and human. One of the most important things is to keep cutting deliberately through political lines and barriers and emphasizing the fact that these are largely fabrications and that there is another dimension, a genuine reality, totally opposed to the fictions of politics: the human dimension which politics pretends to arrogate entirely [to itself]…. This is the necessary first step along the long way … of purifying, humanizing and somehow illuminating politics.”

* * *

An essay that includes much more from Merton on this topic:

http://jimandnancyforest.com/2009/02/thomas-merton-peacemaker-in-a-time-of-war/

For an in-depth treatment, see my book, “The Root of War is Fear: Thomas Merton’s Advice to Peacemakers”:

http://jimandnancyforest.com/2016/06/root-of-war-is-fear/

* * *

Listening Carefully: A Critique of Father James Martin’s Critique of “Male and Female He Created Them”

Last updated on: November 6, 2019 at 10:39 pm By Brett Salkeld

In his response of the recent document of the Congregation for Catholic Education, “Male and Female he Created Them:” Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education, Fr. James Martin asks the Congregation, and Catholics more generally, to “Listen to the L.G.B.T. person.” It is true that in the section on listening (the first of three sections in the document, the following two being reasoning and proposing), the Congregation is concerned not primarily with the experience of individuals, but with the theoretical frameworks being proposed and promulgated by which people interpret that experience.

While it is critical of these frameworks, it is in the “Points of Agreement” part of this section that some of the more quoted and quotable elements of the document appear. In particular, Martin and others do not fail to note the Congregation’s commending “a laudable desire to combat all expressions of unjust discrimination” and agreement on “the need to educate children and young people to respect every person in their particularity and difference, so that no one should suffer bullying, violence, insults or unjust discrimination based on their specific characteristics.”

While I agree with Father Martin that future work in this sensitive area unquestionably requires listening to the experiences of real concrete individuals created in the image and likeness of God, it is important to recognize that the kind of listening Father Martin is encouraging does not necessarily lead to the kinds of conclusions he seems to presume it will. Indeed, in my own work in this area, I have been privileged to learn from the stories of many people. I want to share two of those stories here (anonymously), not because they trump all other such experiences and can be used to deny the experience of others, but because they intersect with and complicate Father Martin’s critique of the document at two very specific points.

The first story:

(more…)

A Litany of Saints for Peace, Life and Conscience

Last updated on: November 1, 2019 at 3:24 pm By Julia Smucker

In a time when fear holds so much sway, when violence is so often touted and life and dignity disrespected, may the witness of martyrs and messages of prophets strengthen us to walk the Gospel Way in the service of the Prince of Peace.

For the strength to lay down all instruments of death, giving our first and greatest allegiance to Jesus Christ the eternal king rather than fight the wars of men,

Saint Marcellus of Tangier and Saint Martin of Tours, pray for us.

For the strength to seek the physical, mental and spiritual wholeness of whole persons, and the humility to see our place as creatures within the whole created order,

Saint Hildegard of Bingen, pray for us.

For the strength to extend the hand of friendship to enemies and to pursue peace rather than conquest,

Saint Francis of Assisi, pray for us.

For the strength to quiet the world through prayer and to wilt our guns through love,

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

For the strength to serve others with the reverence due to Christ and to especially revere those society would discard, in both great and small ways,

Saint Therese of Lisieux and Saint Teresa of Calcutta, pray for us.

For the strength to defy an unjust order whatever the cost, and the hope to beg and entreat the conversion even of the most violent,

Blessed Franz Jagerstatter and Saint Oscar Romero, pray for us.

For the strength to embrace the most radical demands of the gospel, following the way of peace and service and nourished by community and sacrament,

Dorothy Day, Servant of God, pray for us.

For the strength to speak truth, goodness and beauty to a culture of death, and the conviction to cry from the core of our being, “Never again war!”,

Saint John Paul II, pray for us.

All holy men and women, pray for the peace and healing of this world that God so loves and for the faithfulness of all who profess his son as Lord, so that on earth as in heaven we may join the great multitude in praise of the Lamb, forever and ever. Amen.