Opposing Universal Basic Income

Last updated on: September 3, 2017 at 10:37 am By David Cruz-Uribe

Resolved: Catholics should oppose plans for a universal basic income as being contrary to Catholic Social Teaching.

This resolution can be read in a lot of ways, so let me clarify: I am not opposing disability insurance, welfare payments or unemployment benefits to support those who cannot find work or are unable to work. Rather, I am thinking of the recent proposals which have arisen, partly out of Silicon Valley types, that the increase in automation and the expansion of AI based computing, is going to result in fewer people being employed or even employable, and so the correct response is to rework the economy to provide a basic stipend for those made redundant by the new economy.

Such an approach, I think, is just putting a band-aid on a more fundamental problem: post-industrial capitalism is no longer oriented for the good of persons, but rather towards the maximization of profit. Proposals for basic income are just an “enlightened” attempt to preserve the maximization of profits by preventing destitution and the violence which often accompanies it.

The problem with this approach is that it ignores the fundamental nature of work, not simply as a means of acquiring the means to survive, but as a constitutive part of human identity. Men and women need work to fulfill their vocations as human beings. To replace work with “income” is to complete the reduction of a person from a member of society to a consumer.

I think Pope Francis said it very well in Laudato Si:

If we reflect on the proper relationship between human beings and the world around us, we see the need for a correct understanding of work; if we talk about the relationship between human beings and things, the question arises as to the meaning and purpose of all human activity. This has to do not only with manual or agricultural labour but with any activity involving a modification of existing reality, from producing a social report to the design of a technological development. Underlying every form of work is a concept of the relationship which we can and must have with what is other than ourselves. Together with the awe-filled contemplation of creation which we find in Saint Francis of Assisi, the Christian spiritual tradition has also developed a rich and balanced understanding of the meaning of work, as, for example, in the life of Blessed Charles de Foucauld and his followers (Laudato Si, 124)

We were created with a vocation to work. The goal should not be that technological progress increasingly replace human work, for this would be detrimental to humanity. Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfilment. Helping the poor financially must always be a provisional solution in the face of pressing needs. The broader objective should always be to allow them a dignified life through work. Yet the orientation of the economy has favoured a kind of technological progress in which the costs of production are reduced by laying off workers and replacing them with machines. This is yet another way in which we can end up working against ourselves. The loss of jobs also has a negative impact on the economy “through the progressive erosion of social capital: the network of relationships of trust, dependability, and respect for rules, all of which are indispensable for any form of civil coexistence”.[104] In other words, “human costs always include economic costs, and economic dysfunctions always involve human costs”.[105] To stop investing in people, in order to gain greater short-term financial gain, is bad business for society. (Laudato Si, 128).

How I Became a Racist

Last updated on: August 13, 2017 at 9:33 pm By Jeannine Pitas

Note: This piece is being reposted, with a few minor edits, from another blog I occasionally contribute to, Broadway Fillmore Alive, based in my first hometown of Buffalo, NY. You can see the original piece here: http://broadwayfillmorealive.org/2.0/2017/08/how-i-became-a-racist/

This is an essay I have been meaning to write for a long time. It is also one that I have avoided writing, possibly for fear of the criticism I know I’ll receive, but mostly due to the difficulty of facing unsavory truths about myself. But the act of white supremacist domestic terrorism that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia yesterday – followed by the US president’s lukewarm condemnation of “violence on many sides” and failure to hold the perpetrators to account – are finally making me sit down, meet the blank page, and try to formulate answers to questions that have been brewing in me for years.

But before I begin to untangle any answers, I must admit a shameful truth: as eager as I am to condemn racism, I myself am a racist.

Before I go any further, allow me to state clearly that a racist is not what I want to be. Just as people who attend AA meetings do not want to be alcoholics, I yearn to be cured of my racism. And I am active in seeking this cure – by reading history from perspectives other than that of the victors, by listening to the stories of my diverse groups of students, by working with political organizations that seek to create a society where all people are given a fair chance.

And yet, I am still a racist. And, at the risk of offending many, I dare to say that if you, the reader of this article, are a US American of European descent, it is overwhelmingly probable that you are as well.

I can imagine your reaction on reading these words: anger, defensiveness, or perhaps dismissive eye-rolling at what might seem an empty, attention-seeking mea culpa from yet another white liberal. Please understand that I am not trying to accuse or criticize anyone. Instead, I am simply calling for us to recognize the bitter truth underlying our American identity for what it is. For me, this recognition must begin with a look at myself.

Like all children everywhere, I was not born a racist. But, unfortunately, I started becoming one within just a few years – if not months – of entering this world.

I became a racist by being raised in a family, church and school where nearly everyone was white. While I did have some encounters with non-white people (much to her credit, my mother made a point of putting six-year-old me into an urban summer day camp where I could at least recognize the existence of people who did not look like me), I was led to see them as somehow different, other, “not-like-us.”

I became a racist when, at age four, I heard the “n-word” for the first time – from my grandmother, who was complaining about how “those people” had “ruined” the neighborhood where she grew up in Buffalo, New York. “What did you say?” I asked her, and she looked away, embarrassed. My mother awkwardly told me to go out and play.

I became a racist when, again and again through my preteen years, I listened to fearful white suburbanites – relatives, family friends, hairdressers, grocery store clerks – going on and on about how “that neighborhood has changed so much” and “I would never go there.” (And yet, somehow they managed to descend on that same neighborhood every year at Easter time in a fit of nostalgia, eager to celebrate their traditions and visit the old, historically Polish-American churches, only to go back to condemning it once the hams and chocolate rabbits have been eagerly gobbled up).

I became a racist when I attended a prestigious private high school where over 95% of the students and all of the teachers were white. It was a high-achieving school with a rigorous entrance exam and the clear expectation that all of us were college-bound. In this way, I learned that white was the primary color of academic achievement, social mobility and future professional success.

I do not mean to denigrate my family or my education. On the whole, my family members – including the grandmother I cited above – are compassionate, generous people who lead their lives based on a deep-seated sense of right and wrong. My teachers were dedicated, incisive people whose example ultimately inspired me to become a teacher myself. In high school history classes I learned about the history of European colonization and the havoc it caused in the world; I studied white settlers’ genocide of Native Americans during the nineteenth century; I was forced to acknowledge the fact of slavery. I also read the words of great African-American leaders like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.

In American literature classes I read Alice Walker and Zora Neale Hurston alongside F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. In religion classes (my entire pre-college education was Catholic) I was introduced to the principles of Catholic Social Teaching, even if it was not explicitly called by that name. But was this enough to counteract all the other messages I was getting – from the media, from my own circle of acquaintances in the suburb where I lived, and unfortunately, sometimes from my nearest and dearest?

Unfortunately, it was not. In college, I was given the chance to take the Implicit Association Test – a psychological assessment that seeks to expose the biased attitudes that most of us hide, even from ourselves. Taken on a computer, it works by flashing words at subjects – words like “love,” “inspiration,” “hate,” and “fear” – and subjects are asked to mark these words as positive or negative. In between the words, images of faces are shown. Alas, like many participants, I made mistakes taking this test – I was much more likely to click the “negative” key after seeing a black face, even if the associated word was a positive one.

Along with this implicit bias lay a large amount of ignorance. I did not know about blackface – a staple of late nineteenth and early-to-mid-twentieth century theatre – until I was twenty-six and a graduate student at a Canadian university, when I happened to meet a professor who studies it as his main research area. I had heard about the history of lynchings, but I had no idea how common they were – or that they continued into the 1960’s – until two years ago, when I was preparing to teach Ralph Ellison’s grisly realistic story “A Party Down at the Square” to my own students.

Do my implicit attitudes and lack of knowledge make me a bad person? I don’t think so. Is guilt the appropriate response? Again, I don’t think so. As contemporary Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie argues in her acclaimed novel Americanah, most African-Americans do not want European-Americans to feel guilty. Instead, they are simply asking us to accept the truth that race-based inequality is deeply woven into the very fabric of our society.

So many times, when I have gotten into discussions on race and racism, either in person or online, I encounter defensiveness on the part of my fellow European Americans – a quick eagerness to distance ourselves from racism, to say “I’m not like that,” to point out that non-whites can be bigoted too. I would argue that this “white fragility” is one of the main forces perpetuating the stark injustice in our society today. Because while any human being can be bigoted, racism as it exists in the 21st century United States is overwhelmingly a structural issue.

Thankfully, violent events like the Charlottesville white supremacist rally and subsequent attack do not enjoy widespread acceptance; while the president’s response many have been lukewarm, the outraged reaction to his tepidity has been swift and pointed. However, there are many other instances of racism that on the whole we accept every day – like the segregation of our cities, the disproportionate amount of African-Americans in our prison system, and the racialized disparities in our public school system.

Looking at these structural injustices, it is all too easy for a European-American to evade or flat-out deny responsibility, to blame inequality on those who suffer most from it. But the fact is, the playing field is not level. As much as I’d like to think that I reached my current social status by my own merit, the truth is that I came into the world with a deck stacked in my favor. None of us has any power over the hand that we are dealt. But, those of us who’ve received particularly good hands hold a certain amount of power to step back and reshuffle – or perhaps, even better still, to try to change the rules of the game so that it will no longer be zero-sum. But it is hard to even begin to do this when so many of us are unwilling to critically examine the hand we were dealt, to recognize that our advantages have come at the expense of others.

It is hard to accept the truth that, just by virtue of being born into the dominant class of a society that is inherently racist, I became a racist. However, not unlike a twelve-step program attendee, I strive every day to remain in recovery – with full knowledge that the process will take a lifetime. By listening to those whom our unjust systems have hurt, by standing with them in their struggles for freedom, peace and justice, I can strive to unlearn the tacit assumptions I’ve been taught. Today, in the wake of this extreme act of hatred, I would ask all of you to engage in a similar process of self-examination and a critical “unlearning” of all those false assumptions that have been inculcated into us from birth. The very future of our local communities, nation and world depends on it.

Did Your Pastor Say Anything Today about Racism?

Last updated on: August 13, 2017 at 9:57 am By David Cruz-Uribe

It is all over the news, of course: one dead and 19 injured during a riot by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia. Between 500 and 1000 white nationalists, neo-Nazis and alt-right supporters, all heavily armed, descended on Charlottesville to “protect their heritage” in the form of a statue of Robert E. Lee that is slated for removal from the newly renamed Emancipation Park. There were a large number of counter-protestors; details remain sketchy, but it appears that while a few were anti-fa and black flag anarchists looking for a fight, the vast majority were peaceful. The white supremacists turned on them, and one drove his car into a group of peaceful protesters, killing one. (Her name was Heather Heyer; she was a 32 year old para-legal. Please remember her and her family in your prayers.)

Unlike President Trump, who issued a weak statement condemning violence on all sides, the American bishops have quickly and forcefully spoken out against racist violence. Archbishop Wilton Gregory, the most senior black bishop in the US, tweeted

“Hatred & vile racist actions defile the USA. Such activity is NEVER justified. Those who planned these acts must be denounced & defied. +WDG.”

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, President of the USCCB, issued the following very forceful statement:

“On behalf of the bishops of the United States, I join leaders from around the nation in condemning the violence and hatred that have now led to one death and multiple injuries in Charlottesville, Virginia. We offer our prayers for the family and loved ones of the person who was killed and for all those who have been injured. We join our voices to all those calling for calm.

The abhorrent acts of hatred on display in Charlottesville are an attack on the unity of our nation and therefore summon us all to fervent prayer and peaceful action. The bishops stand with all who are oppressed by evil ideology and entrust all who suffer to the prayers of St. Peter Claver as we approach his feast day. We also stand ready to work with all people of goodwill for an end to racial violence and for the building of peace in our communities.

Last year a Task Force of our Bishops Conference under Archbishop Wilton Gregory proposed prayers and resources to work for unity and harmony in our country and in our Church. I am encouraging the bishops to continue that work especially as the Feast of St. Peter Claver approaches.”

Given the forceful response of the bishops, the next step is to see whether their message is communicated to the laity. Will pastors mention it today? I realize that today’s homilies were all written before this started, and it may be too much to ask a priest to completely scrap a homily and start over at the last minute. But will anyone add a few remarks? Add an intention to the prayers of the Faithful? Say something during the announcements? I really don’t know, though I fear that very few will say anything.

So if your Pastor does say something at mass today, please let me know in the comments. If not, what do you wish you had heard? What do you think the next step should be for the Church in America?

The Handmaid’s Tale as a Call to Compassion

Last updated on: June 23, 2017 at 1:19 am By Jeannine Pitas

The Hulu television series The Handmaid’s Tale, based on Canadian writer Margaret Atwood’s famous dystopian novel, has made quite a splash this spring. I am one of many who hopped on the bandwagon, buying the book last April (which was so suspenseful that I couldn’t stop myself from dropping everything to read it in one day) and then borrowing a friend’s Hulu account to binge-watch the series. Both the book and TV series are set in a dystopian, near-future reality where, after a brutal muclear war that is still going on, the United States of America has been replaced by a totalitarian, fundamentalist Christian nation called Gilead.

Due to extreme environmental degradation, the vast majority of the North American population has been rendered unable to conceive and bear children. As a result, the new government has rounded up women who are known to be fertile to serve as ¨handmaids¨ in the homes of the ruling class. Their role is to be raped once a month by the ¨Commander¨ of their household in the presence of his wife, with the hope of conceiving and bearing a child which the wife will then raise. In this world, all women are forbidden to read and write; public executions of both men and women are the norm; and, from the looks of it, nearly all the people – including those at the top of the social pyramid – are profoundly unhappy.

There is a lot to be said about both the book (which has indeed made its way into the canon of twentieth century literature) and the TV series (which has been produced with Atwood’s input and adds several details and subplots to the book). For me, however, the most moving moment occurs in the final episode. Moira, an old friend of the main character, has been forced to work in an illicit, black market brothel for the powerful men of Gilead.

When the main character is taken there by her Commander and encounters her friend, she is dismayed to see that Moira – once an extremely spunky woman who tried to resist the regime – has grown weary and resigned herself to her plight. However, seeing her friend helps her find the will to resist again. She manages to escape the brothel after killing a client, dressing up in his clothes and stealing his car. She drives north to Canada and ultimately finds her way to Toronto, where she is taken in by a refugee settlement office, offered food, shelter and money, and assigned a permanent caseworker.

The look on Moira’s face in that moment is, for me, the most poignant part of the whole series. After several years of abuse and total bondage, she experiences freedom, compassion, and humane treatment. We see her shock, her trauma, her confusion, and a faint glimmer of hope.

Perhaps the expression on the face of Samira Wiley, the actor playing Moira, resonated with me so much because I have seen it before – not the exact face, but others like it. I saw it on the face of Amir, an Iraqi refugee I befriended while living in Toronto who finally made it to Canada after living through countless wars (including eight years in Syria). I saw it in the face of Meshal, one of the Saudi Arabian students I currently teach in Dubuque, IA. A religious minority in his country, he has faced much persecution while also being affected by the violence of its ongoing war in Yemen. I also have seen it in the faces of more than one young Guatemalan I’ve volunteered as a legal interpreter for in my home community.

For a long time, the word ¨refugee¨ conjured in my mind vague images of masses of people fleeing their homelands on boats or in trucks. It was hard to see them as more than statistics, to understand that each and every one of them is a unique individual with her or his own joys, sorrows, and dreams. Atwood’s novel and the Hulu adaptation of it serve as stark reminders that a day may come when the United States of America becomes a site of war and extreme oppression, when we complacent Americans join the millions who are forced to flee. In this way, the story urges us to increase our own capacity for empathy, to place ourselves in the shoes of the many people who are escaping situations all-too-similar to the one portrayed in Atwood’s Gilead.

Today, June 20, has been designated by the United Nations as World Refugee Day. According to the UN, a refugee can be defined as someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war, or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries.

On this day, we are asked to remember our brothers and sisters who have been forced to flee their homes, to welcome them into our communities, and to stand in solidarity with them. As much as we may want to think that we can control our lives and destinies, The Handmaid’s Tale serves as a bitter reminder of how fragile our social structures really are and how quickly our circumstances can change. It is possible that one day we, too, may lose everything we hold dear, that we may be forced to flee, that our very survival may depend on the kindness of strangers, that we too are the poor.

If you are interested in learning more about what you can do to help refugees, please consider supporting the following organizations. Many of them can be followed on social media; you can also sign up online to receive legislative action alerts:

UNHCR

http://www.unhcr.org/

Church World Service

https://cwsglobal.org/

Refugee Council USA

http://www.rcusa.org/

Jesuit Refugee Service

http://en.jrs.net/index

US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants

http://refugees.org/

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services

http://lirs.org/

Good News, Everyone!

Last updated on: June 11, 2017 at 11:28 am By voxnovablog

Vox Nova is pleased to present the following guest post by Ben Johnson.

When I joined the Catholic Worker movement it was very easy to believe initially that my task was to aid people in finding the stability offered by the governmental and economic systems we currently have. Find a job. Get a car. Get an apartment. These are the things that many expect the Catholic Workers to be encouraging our guests to acquire.

I have found in my time here, that this goal is entirely misplaced. For one, Catholic Workers have solid criticisms of the current economic/governmental system; so, it would seem odd to try to fit more people into it. The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker mention nothing about helping others find economic stability under our current structure. Also, the last thing we want others to believe is that their value lies in how useful they are to that structure. That view has blinded its believers to the world inhabited by those in poverty. In this world, to those who have the eyes to see it, we find that what the wealthy consider charity, the impoverished consider normal everyday caring for others.

There is so much talk about “poverty culture” including the violence, the scarcity, the drug abuse, and the danger. Those aspects do exist and should be given careful honest attention; however, we do not see the other side of this culture. Within it, many are acting as conflict mediators. Many are giving food to and protecting others. Also, it is a very normal thing in this world to offer your home to a friend (or even a person with whom you are only somewhat familiar) for an indefinite length of time.

Every time I have seen these acts of loving kindness play out, I believe I have seen the world Dorothy and Peter saw. It is the world they hoped to make easier to see through the Catholic Worker movement. It is the world promised us by Jesus. It truly is the kingdom of God.

In my time at Hope House, a Catholic Worker house in Dubuque, I have made many friends. I have seen my friends go to extraordinary lengths to help each other. It seems to be an unwritten expectation amongst these friends that if you have a place, and someone gets thrown out on the street, you offer them your home. It doesn’t matter that this act is illegal to do if one receives government assistance, nor does it matter how small the space may be. In one instance I watched a friend, without a second thought, offer to house a three person family (along with another buddy who had already been staying there) in his one-bedroom apartment. In another instance, my friend offered his home to so many people that he ended up spending most of his time at his mother’s.

In addition to offering support through housing, I have seen people show each other basic human respect. This is not something that happens all the time when you have less worldly wealth. Since wealth is perceived as an indication of power, those with less of it are generally shown less respect. So, there is a fulfilled need in which a person is respected without the prerequisite of power. I have seen a table of people stand up and tell one of the workers, here at Hope House, not to kick out a young woman who was being disruptive. These are the friendships we can rely on. These friends will show respect and stick up for each other when no one else will. This is the loving kindness which is the primary motivating factor in the kingdom of God.

It should be no surprise that those who have acquired less wealth have arrived at the kingdom first. This is how Jesus said it would be.

“Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you.” (Matthew 21:31)

“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24)

Wealth blinds us. When we have it we can pretend to have power over other people and over nature itself. In so pretending, we believe the farce and forget the truth of the situation we are in. We do not have the power to transcend nature and no human being has ultimate power over another. Wealth covers up the kingdom of God and replaces it with the idea that the works of humanity will bring control, stability, and ultimately salvation.

We do not need to build the “new society within the shell of the old”. We need to recognize it and encourage its growth. So, rather than “show people the way” I have found that I must learn the ways of those with less. When we have less, we are better at sharing, we are better at helping, and through this we become better at loving. The experience of this love opens our eyes to the truth that the kingdom of God is already among us… and has always been.

A native of Minneapolis, MN, Ben Johnson currently lives and works at Hope House, a catholic worker house of hospitality in Dubuque, IA.

A Bomb Is Not a Mother

Last updated on: May 14, 2017 at 3:24 pm By Julia Smucker

Pope Francis has a penchant for using maternal imagery in reference to the Church, and true to his gift for holding up the beauties of the Church’s tradition to let them speak for themselves, he does so in ways that transcend any pietistic stereotypes. Recently, he used this type of language to turn the language of military hard power on its head. We may be accustomed to the stock phrase “mother of all X” to convey magnitude, but the pope’s simple statement pointed out that the use of such a phrase for a deadly weapon is deeply ironic to the point of obscenity.

“A mother gives life and this one gives death, and we call this device a mother. What is happening?”

The history of Mother’s Day, particularly in the US, makes his point all the more fitting. Before it was a Hallmark holiday, it was a reaction to the horrors of war, as felt especially keenly by women. This is most clearly expressed in Julia Ward Howe’s “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” or as she titled it, “Appeal to womanhood throughout the world,” which reads in part:

Again, in the sight of the Christian world, have the skill and power of two great nations exhausted themselves in mutual murder. Again have the sacred questions of international justice been committed to the fatal mediation of military weapons. In this day of progress, in this century of light, the ambition of rulers has been allowed to barter the dear interests of domestic life for the bloody exchanges of the battle field. Thus men have done. Thus men will do. But women need no longer be made a party to proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror. Despite the assumptions of physical force, the mother has a sacred and commanding word to say to the sons who owe their life to her suffering. That word should now be heard, and answered to as never before.

Arise, then, Christian women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.

The changed nature of how wars are now fought can make Howe’s approach seem somewhat antiquated, but in a way that highlights how some of those changes have obscured the true human costs. Her language can make one almost nostalgic for a time when wars had clear beginnings and ends, and enemy combatants were inescapably visible and inescapably human. Nostalgic, when a bomb called “Mother” now brings death from a distance, without anybody having to see the people she killed.

But what really makes Howe sound antiquated is her gender-based appeal, now that daughters and wives and, yes, mothers are routinely trained to injure and kill alongside sons and husbands and fathers. It’s jolting to be reminded of a time when women being left to bear the emotional toll of war from the home front was simply taken for granted. But perhaps the particular moral authority Howe derives from this experience, as a woman and even as a feminist, can jolt us out of the assumption that it has only been a positive advance for women that we too are now trained to unlearn our human sensitivities to the depth and breadth of suffering caused by violence.

It’s no wonder that Pope Francis, with his calls for a “revolution of tenderness” and his signature emphasis on mercy, would hold the name of “Mother” so dearly as a favored image for the Church – nor that he would not miss the perverse irony of bestowing the same name on an inanimate bearer of destruction.

We are the body of the risen Christ

Last updated on: April 30, 2017 at 11:37 pm By Jeannine Pitas

During last week’s Masses we heard the story of the apostle Thomas, whom we might recall as an early religious skeptic. When the other apostles joyfully inform him that they have seen the risen Jesus, he shakes his head, obstinately affirming that until he can touch Jesus’ wounds, he will not believe. When Jesus reappears, he grants Thomas his wish, but nevertheless responds with a certain amount of reproach: ¨Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed¨ (John 20:29).

Since that time, many have echoed that reproach, seeing Thomas as lacking a deep faith. Others, however, have defended him. His doubt is based on a deep desire to know the truth. The testimonies of others, even his closest friends, are not enough for him. He needs to experience reality for himself, to place his fingers in Jesus’ hands and side. Thomas, in his stubborn insistence on empiricism, sets the stage for what would become central to Catholic Christian dogma: that we should be led to God not by faith, but by reason as well.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, faith is a constant struggle for me, and it is often clashes with reason. One reason for this conflict may have to do with the social environment I inhabit. As Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has astutely observed, those of us who live in those countries usually termed ¨The West¨ now live in a ¨secular age,¨ whose genesis he discusses in a nearly thousand-page tome of the same title. In the book (which is beautifully written and definitely worth reading), Taylor seeks to answer a question: why is it that in the year 1500, it was virtually impossible for most Europeans not to believe in God in Western societies, while in 2000 there are many options for belief, with unbelief often forming the default? What exactly happened in those five hundred years? The answer is complicated, by Taylor locates much of it in the growing tendency toward individualism which began with the Protestant Reformation and has intensified ever since, culminating in a postmodern era where the very concept of truth is itself often called into question.

We now live in an age where, across many countries, religious belief and practice appear to be in decline. ¨None¨ is the fastest-growing religious affiliation in the US; in most churches I visit, people in my age group (20s and 30s) are a marked minority. However, we are also secular in the sense that for most of us, religion is a private rather than a public matter. Outdoor religious processions, common in places like Nicaragua, are rare in the US and Canada. If you meet someone at a cocktail party, it is considered perfectly normal to ask them about their method of earning an income (perhaps as a way of gauging their social status) but not to ask them about their religious beliefs (considered too personal, too private to disclose to a stranger).

With this reality in mind, I am constantly asking myself how we who still identify as believers in God, should respond to the complex, rapidly changing world. After all, taken at the literal level, we believe in some pretty wacky things. That a man could die and miraculously rise from the dead…that his incarnate body is present in the host we consume at Mass…that he will return at the end of time to judge the living and the dead…it’s a pretty strange belief system.

I’ve read some atheists who predict that advanced in technology – which could drastically prolong human life and improve human health – will make the miracles that lie at the basis of many religions irrelevant. Meanwhile, others question the lack of fulfillment of Jesus’ promise. He told his disciples that he would be returning soon. Two thousand years have gone by, and he still hasn’t shown up.

Or has he? Indeed, during these two thousand years, many people have come forward claiming to be the returned Christ. Some of them were burned as witches; today, most of them are be quickly shuttled to the psychiatric ward and injected with a heavy dose of Risperidone. Could it be that Christ has actually come into the world many times, only to be persecuted or dismissed as he was when he first preached his good news in Galilee two thousand years ago? Could it be that, again and again, he has been condemned for his beliefs, labeled a dangerous revolutionary and executed by the state? I sometimes think so.

On Good Friday I had the opportunity to participate in an outdoor Way of the Cross in my hometown. Written by local members of the Catholic Worker movement, the stations involved stops at various sites of oppression and injustice: a gun shop, where we prayed for those affected by gun violence; a pornography shop, where we remembered all those degraded by the sex industry, including victims of human trafficking; the railroad tracks, where we recalled ecological degradation, particularly in the form of fracking. However, we also stopped at sites of mercy and justice: a crisis pregnancy center, where women facing unplanned pregnancies are given resources to prepare for their future; a parish rectory where undocumented migrants receive legal aid, and the local Catholic Worker house, where food, fellowship and shelter are offered to those who need it most.

At the end of the Stations, I truly felt that, like Thomas, I had put my hands in Jesus’ wounds. The Crucifixion seemed not like a distant event many years ago, but an ongoing reality that continues to this day. However, the Resurrection seemed just as real, embodied in those fighting for the dignity of all life and the stewardship of the earth. And perhaps this is why, when I completed the Triduum journey on Easter Sunday, the presence of the risen Jesus seemed truly real. Even now, in this era of mass extinctions, constant war, and widespread hatred. Especially now.

The Paschal Mystery is just that: a conundrum beyond our understanding. There is so much we cannot grasp. We cannot know with certainty when Christ will return, or how we will recognize him, or (as I would argue) if he has indeed returned many times, without us recognizing him. However, there is a lot that we can indeed understand. In many ways, the message of Jesus is quite simple. We are called to work for justice, to love one another, to show mercy. In an atomized world where loneliness is rampant, the Eucharist reminds us that we are indeed profoundly united. And though we wait for a future coming in glory, for now, our role in the world is clear. We ourselves are the body of Christ. For me, this is truly a reason for Easter rejoicing.

Take Heart, It’s Worse Than You Think

Last updated on: April 25, 2017 at 9:30 pm By Julia Smucker

Following last November’s election, I wrote a piece at Christian Democracy in which I tried to step back and look at the U.S. political situation in a global context.

An excerpt:

To try to retrace the steps of these phenomena, in admittedly broad strokes: a noticeable number of opportunistic individuals are being propelled to power by sociopolitical groundswells of what would have previously been seen as fringe movements. Behind the mainstreaming of these movements are widespread indignities felt by increasing numbers of people suffering from the negative effects of globalization and technocracy, such as the displacement of many industrial jobs by increased automation and international trade policies that have gravely hurt the western working classes (not to mention people working for unjust wages under unsafe conditions on the other end of the outsourcing, who remain largely unheard and unseen except when those unsafe conditions result in disaster). This strain is exacerbated by desperate waves of refugees seeking entry faster than their would-be host countries can hope to accommodate them, who themselves are fleeing unlivable situations caused by terrorism and civil wars, gang wars, and drug wars.

It’s hard to draw straight lines among all these bleak factors, and this still isn’t to get to the root of the thing: aside from having only scratched the surface of the complicated ramifications of globalization, there is plenty of room to step back further, looking for the causes of the violence driving people in droves to risk their lives to reach places where they are likely to be made unwelcome, and on and on. And this may be getting to the point where I can’t even make the simplest attempt at an answer. But one thing seems clear to me on a systemic scale: something has been happening far too rapidly and unrestrainedly and is leaving more and more people behind, with devastating effect.

Since I wrote these words, I’ve continued to give a good deal of thought to the multifaceted global phenomenon I had faintly begun to grasp in the process of connecting a few of those dots, trying to bring a bigger picture into focus. I even did eventually try to draw some straight lines among them, adding more as I saw them, which thus far has come out looking something like this:

Now, I thought, I really get what Pope Francis meant when he wrote in chapter three of Laudato Si about what he called “the technocratic paradigm.” This is the beast that emerges when the dots are connected: an idol of “infinite or unlimited growth” (LS 106), of “progress” with no moral compass, but with power as its driving motive; a breezily narcissistic faith in our own mastery over everything, in the power of human innovation to save us from the very problems it has created. This is the beast, the Pandora’s box containing so many modern ills and evils, and I suddenly started seeing it everywhere.

I thought of a conversation from a few years back, in which someone mentioned “substance abuse” as a candidate for the most pressing social problem. I wasn’t too convinced, thinking it sounded more like a surface level problem overlying the myriad voids people try to fill. And in many ways I suspect it is exactly that, but as I noticed news story after news story after news story of far-reaching drug-related crises in the U.S. and elsewhere all connected to multiple other crises, I began to wonder if that was a more central factor than I ever would have guessed.

I thought of a recent NPR story in which a coal miner dying of black lung said through labored breaths that he would do everything over again if it meant being able to provide for his family to the extent that he has. I was struck by the morbid irony that for people in his situation, their very livelihood is literally killing them. And they have willingly paid such a steep cost for the dignity of providing that livelihood, a profound human need and a theme of Catholic Social Teaching going back to Rerum Novarum.

One could mention any number of such things, all of which feed into the grotesque dichotomy that’s been playing out repeatedly on international political stages, between a globalized technocratic elitism that condescendingly dismisses those who have been most badly hurt by its economic and technological dogmas, and a series of populist nationalisms that have brought the ugly evils of racism and xenophobia into the sociopolitical mainstream through fear and anger. True to the nature of dichotomies, these things are usually presented in a way that pushes everyone to take a side. Even where this effect is unintended, it always makes me profoundly uncomfortable, since I find them both so abhorrent that to align with either is unthinkable.

One might take a perverse comfort in observing that it’s not just U.S. politics being poisoned by this polemic. For that matter, it’s not even just politics. There’s a perhaps undefinable global problem going on here that’s bigger than Donald Trump, bigger than Marine Le Pen, bigger than Rodrigo Duterte, bigger than Alexander Gauland or whoever else may yet surge to notoriety. For all their capacity to inspire equal measures of messianic hope and apocalyptic fear, none of these individuals, nor even all of them combined, is the source of the problem; that would be giving them far more credit than they deserve. They are merely opportunists riding waves of popular sentiment to their own advantage. The good news is that we may have less to fear than we think from any such professional provocateurs. The bad news is that we may have a lot more to fear from the broader situation they’re exploiting.

Unless, that is, we can find some alternative to a world of unbridled growth and “delusions of grandeur” (LS 114) or one of fear-driven retreat into insularity and vigilantism – both of which at best ignore, or at worst are openly hostile to, the needs of the most vulnerable.

The American Empire and Personal Christian Responsibility

Last updated on: April 20, 2017 at 8:27 am By voxnovablog

Vox Nova is pleased to share the following guest post by Tom Johnson, a Catholic Worker from Dubuque, Iowa, USA.

I have been torn during this presidential election year. As a Catholic Worker, I agree in principle with the movement’s aims and means that the vast size of the U.S. Federal Government makes it “government by nobody”ⁱ and, its function as “an effective political forum for redressing grievances, next to impossible.”ⁱⁱ

Then came Bernie Sanders, whose message of economic equality and revolution promised what sounded a lot like Peter Maurin’s “new society within the shell of the old.”^ⁱⁱⁱ I felt “the Bern” and became involved.

The presidential campaign system, however, already biased toward the Establishment of the wealthy and seasoned with dirty tricks, rendered its foregone conclusion. I was swayed by the advice that “voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil.” I therefore could not bring myself to vote for either of the candidates, whose policies, to me seemed equally evil.

“But,” I have asked myself more than once, “where can I run from such evil? Where or what is that system which allows principled, compassionate government? Is holding to my principles an excuse for doing nothing?”^{^iv} Is it possible for a radical Christian, a Catholic Worker, to live morally, responsibly, and effectively within the current society? What spiritual attitudes and behaviors are required?

“The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker”^{^v} advises the adoption of nonviolence, practicing the works of mercy; doing manual labor; and voluntary poverty. Regarding nonviolent sociopolitical action, it advises:

Jesus taught us to take suffering upon ourselves rather than inflict it upon others, and He calls us to fight against violence with the spiritual weapons of prayer, fasting and noncooperation with evil. Refusal to pay taxes for war, to register for conscription, to comply with any unjust legislation; participation in nonviolent strikes and boycotts, protests or vigils; withdrawal of support for dominant systems, corporate funding or usurious practices are all excellent means to establish peace.^{^vi}

I would further recommend – particularly for those who are upset by the current administration of the Empire – the practice of contemplation, a mystical form of prayer slightly distinct from meditation. Contemplation, or Centering Prayer, which leads one away from what Alan Watts describes as our artificial “system of words and symbols”^{^vii} to what is real, the world as it actually exists. In other words, we stop looking at our human-made map and regard the scenery, the world as it is.

Contemplation allows us to “Be still and know that I am God!”^{^viii}; that God is ultimately responsible and capable, not me or any other human being or system. It reminds us:

For just as from the heavens
the rain and snow come down

And do not return there
till they have watered the earth,
making it fertile and fruitful,

Giving seed to those who sow
and bread to those who eat,

So shall my word be
that goes forth from my mouth;

It shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will,
achieving the end for which I sent it.^{^ix}

It helps me to realize that God’s creative work, although yet unfulfilled, is nevertheless evolving toward wholeness, and with my/our cooperation, God’s reign of justice will indeed prevail.

When I act politically with the confidence that God’s justice will indeed be accomplished someday, I can choose more calmly and proactively, per principle rather than expedient or knee-jerk reactions.

Strangers and sojourners though we may be as we make our life’s journey as subjects of the American Empire, we may travel in the certainty that God will lead us to the Promised Land of justice.

The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker, http://www.catholicworker.org/cw-aims-and-means.html.

Ibid.

iii

Maurin, Peter; “Easy Essays”; http://www.catholicworker.org/petermaurin/easy-essays.html

The Communitarian Movement

aims to create

a new society

within the shell of the old

with the philosophy of the new

which is not

a new philosophy

but a very old philosophy,

a philosophy so old

that it looks like new.

Alinsky, Saul; Rules for Radicals (Vintage Books, 1989) p. 25.

Op. cit.

Ibid.

vii

Watts, Alan, Meditation, (Millbrae, CA; 1974) p. 5.

viii

Psalm 46.10.

Isaiah 55:10-11.

On Receiving the Works of Mercy in the Southernmost Capitals of the Americas

Last updated on: March 21, 2017 at 1:13 pm By Jeannine Pitas

I smiled with excitement as the plane landed on the runway and taxied toward the gate. It was March break (which as a teacher I anticipate just as eagerly as my students do), and I was looking forward to ten days in two cities I love: Buenos Aires, Argentina, where I was to present at my first academic conference in three years, and Montevideo, Uruguay, where I to participate in the presentation of a dear friend’s poetry book, which I’d edited and translated into English. After living and working in Uruguay for nine months in 2006 and returning for an extensive visit in 2013, I was excited to reconnect with old friends in a place that still feels like home

After getting through the Argentine passport control and picking up my bag, I used my bank card to purchase a bus ticket from the airport into the city Buenos Aires. The conference was scheduled to take place downtown at the Marriott Plaza Hotel, located along the famous Florida Street, a pedestrian walkway lined with shops. My bus ticket included a taxi that took me right to the hotel’s door, where I marveled at its elegance and luxury. I began talking with the other conference participants, most of them Spanish professors at various North American universities. That night we enjoyed a welcome banquet which featured live tango dance and music. It was truly a lovely beginning to what promised to be a great conference. (more…)