About Jeff

Jeff is an assistant professor of philosophy and Catholic social thought at Providence College in Rhode Island. He has taught at Mount Angel Seminary, Villanova University, and Transylvania University. He is the author of Reason, Tradition, and the Good (UNDP 2012) and the editor of Dune and Philosophy (Open Court, 2011). His article, "Local Communities and Globalization in Caritas in Veritate," published in the journal Solidarity, has been downloaded numerous time.

Presente! – Palm Sunday 24 March 2013

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Jeff

My sisters and brothers in Christ, today is the celebration of Palm Sunday–the entrance of our Lord Jesus into Jerusalem where he will be tried and executed through crucifixion. But on that entrance, the people stood up and shouted, “The King of Glory Comes, Hallelujah!”

We too, sisters and brothers, must shout, for if we do not, the very stones will condemn our silence with their praise of Jesus! Imagine, the stones and the trees, the hills and valleys shouting out “Glory to God!” It happens every day, but we are too deaf to hear. And every day, we crucify one more valley, one more tree, one more lake for our lack of hearing their shouting.

Today is also the celebration of the passing of Oscar Romero, the martyred archbishop of El Salvador. Why was he martyred? Because he stood up and shouted out–these people are God’s people! These people must too shine, for their lives, like our lives, shout out to the coming of the Kingdom! But we do not hear their shouts, not do we hear the screams of their bodies, trodden under the feat of rampant capitalism and fevered nationalism. Their cries join the cries of the earth–for they are the cries of the poor.

And Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is the response: The Lord hears the cry of the poor!

Why do we not hear their cries? Or do we hear them and ignore them? Are we unwilling to stand with Romero and live a simple life of love of neighbor and the condemnation of violence in the name of profit?

I say to you, my brothers and sisters, the United States is a religious nation, and it’s religion is the idolism of money, fame, power–of materialism without spirit. We are called to stand up and shout out against this idolism–”The King of Glory Comes! Hallelujah!” For God is with us, my brothers and sisters. He is here in your hearts. Look to each other and see. He is here in the lives of every beggar on the street, of every homeless child sleeping in a shelter tonight, of every starving mother working two jobs just to keep a roof over the heads of her children.

We must rejoice at the coming of the Lord, and we too, we must lay our cloaks at the feet of Jesus in the poor who wonder our streets looking for someone to shout with them–

God is Love!

Neither do I condemn you — Sunday 17 March 2013

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Jeff

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, my brothers and sisters! May your day be filled with blessings from God, with friends, and with celebration of the great wonders the Lord God has wrought.

My sisters and brothers, imagine this woman, dragged before Jesus, thrown onto the ground. You‘ve seen similar images today– men and women crowding around her screaming and yelling, many already holding their stones, some held high, their faces twisted in anger. She is crying, screaming, fearful, for she knows she is about to die. She knows it, my brothers and sisters, for the crowd is yelling down at her for her lust. Who knows why she committed the sin of adultery (and where is the man she committed it with–perhaps himself holding a stone?).

Then one by one, the crowd diminishes in the presence of Jesus’ silence. The screaming lessens and then disappears. Rocks are dropped, but nowhere near this poor woman. Does she even notice through her own tears? I would not. I would only realize at some moment, perhaps cried out, that I am not dead yet, and then realize that no one is yelling, and then look up and see no one but Jesus.

¹⁰ Jesus again straightened up and said, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’

¹¹ ‘No one, sir,’ she replied. ‘Neither do I condemn you,’ said Jesus. ‘Go away, and from this moment sin no more.’

Go away and sin no more. What mystical words, my brothers and sisters. Condemnation is about holding on to the past. Forgiveness is about moving on to the future. It is apt, I think, I hope, I pray, my brothers and sisters, that these sets of readings follow the election of Pope Francis. He has chosen the name Francis, which no pope has chosen before. And Francis was called to rebuild the Church in a time of turmoil.

Each of these readings is about rebuilding.

¹⁹ Look, I am doing something new, now it emerges; can you not see it? Yes, I am making a road in the desert and rivers in wastelands.

²⁰ The wild animals will honour me, the jackals and the ostriches, for bestowing water in the desert and rivers on the wastelands for my people, my chosen one, to drink.

²¹ The people I have shaped for myself will broadcast my praises.

God has created something new for Israel: a new home freed from slavery. Is Francis a sign of God bringing something new to the Church? Perhaps. But Francis cannot rebuild the Church alone. We too must join him. We must insist on a Church of the poor. A Church of the environment: “the wild animals will honor me. ”

Like Paul, we must proclaim

¹³ Brothers, I do not reckon myself as having taken hold of it; I can only say that forgetting all that lies behind me, and straining forward to what lies in front,

¹⁴ I am racing towards the finishing-point to win the prize of God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus.

Paul is not writing about progress. He is not seeking the next tool to let humanity live in this desert we’ve created. No. Paul is seeking to leave behind his old self to journey toward the resurrection. Christ has wiped our sins away through His death on the cross. We are called to race toward Him through the work we do in this world. A work filled with rebuilding the world toward hope and promise.

Pope Francis is showing us how: to leave behind the condemnation Church and to renew ourselves in Christ as a Church for the poor.

And so we return to that woman, cast down on the ground before Jesus. We, the Church, are like the woman. We have sinned against God by caring more for rules than for people. Yet, Jesus does not condemn us. He simply asks us to sin no more.

Can we carry that cross? Yes, forgiving others is a cross, and being forgiven for our sins is a cross that we bear. We are not worthy of such forgiveness. We are not worthy of reconciliation with God. Yet, Jesus sits there, writing in the sand. And the next time the wind blows, what He has written will blow away, just as our sins have been blown away by the water of baptism and the fire of confirmation. But now, we must turn our eyes, our hands, and our hearts to rebuilding.

I cannot say, my brothers and sisters, what Pope Francis will be like. I am hopeful that he will return us to a Church that focuses on love more than doctrine, that focuses on the poor more than reputation, that focuses on living love rather than speaking love. He cannot do it alone. And if he fails, we know that others have failed before him.

But the name Francis reminds us that every day people — people who are not priests or nuns — can renew the Church and can live a life of love, a life of poverty, a life that is following Christ. You and I, my sisters and brothers, must also take the name Francis. Having a new pope is a sign to do so. Having a new pope, though, is not a renewal of the Church or a rebuilding of the faith. You and I: we are the renewers and the rebuilders through Christ Jesus and the love that we have for each other.

Abundant Wealth, Extreme Poverty

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Jeff

Drive through Grayson County, KY. You will see humble shacks, some falling apart, sitting next door to beautiful mansion-like homes with clean-cut green grass. We all know in any city, all you have to do is turn the “wrong” corner and you’ll move from a “nice” neighborhood to a run-down area.

We have wealth beyond compare! Yet, this wealth is concentrated in comparably few hands. And those hands become more wealthy and fewer as the years go by.

Why?

Many will claim that it’s not right to give to people who don’t earn their money. It makes them feel entitled, and all they’ll do is laze around and never work if they don’t have to. And besides, those few hands that hold the wealth earned it.

What goes unquestioned, continues to go unquestioned down the decades and years, is the whole idea that an individual earns something. What could any one person do to earn a billion dollars or 35 billion dollars? Yes, Bill Gates created a technology used across the world that makes people’s lives easier. But why do we say that he earned 35 billion dollars for that? This concept of “earning” is a judgment we make– it is a political judgment.

And when we make that political judgment, we make the related judgment that other people ought to earn their bread and their roof and that, in fact, some people never do. We make the judgment that an individual Hispanic woman who cleans rooms, picking up people’s trash and used condoms, flipping over heavy mattresses and changing sheets, and pushing a heavy vacuum cleaner, day in and day out for years does not earn $20k a year. Her work is worth the work of Gates, even though she affects as many people as he does and makes their lives easier.

Wealth distribution is a political choice we make everyday. You can deny that, but you would be wrong. You can argue that people ought to earn their bread and their roof, and, on the one hand, you would be right (if you meant that everyone should work), but on the other hand, you would be wrong (if you meant that a political decision about the worth of someone’s activities should determine whether that person is homeless and hungry or not).

It is a shame and a crisis– a true human tragedy, that we have enough material goods in this world to satisfy the needs of everyone, and yet so many millions suffer while so few thousands eat caviar and drink champagne.

A Feast for Reconciliation: Sunday 10 March 2013

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Jeff

Oh, my brothers and sisters! What wonderful News we have to share today: the reconciliation of the sinful with God through Jesus Christ! Praise the Lord, my sisters and brothers, for the Gospel is good news, and the whole of Sacred Scriptures is a message of love.

Need I say any more than this:

¹⁹ I mean, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not holding anyone’s faults against them, but entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

²⁰ So we are ambassadors for Christ; it is as though God were urging you through us, and in the name of Christ we appeal to you to be reconciled to God.

No, my sisters and brothers, St. Paul says it all in his letter to the Corinthians. We are reconciled to God through Christ. God did not hold our faults against us. Neither may we hold faults against others. No, we must preach reconciliation with God. Our message is a message of love and peace, to be lived in uprightness in the Lord.

In the light of this passage, we must read what happened to Joshua and the Isralites at Gilgal. God has wiped the “shame” of Egypt from them. Egypt was not their sin, but they, like we, were shamed of the state that they held there. But God cleanses them, just as cleanses us. Through baptism, we are cleansed, and then we celebrate with the food brought from the land

And we all are familiar, my brothers and sisters, with the story of the prodigal son. This son, greedy and lazy, begs his father for his inheritance and runs away with it, squandering it on all manner of things. We too, my sisters and brothers, squander our inheritance.

One way we squander our inheritance is simple materialism. How many TVs and radios do we have? How many game systems? How often do we work for money and pride and status? Yes, my brothers and sisters, we squander our inheritance by investing our souls into material things and spiritual highs: drunken on our own arrogance.

But we also squander our inheritance every time we do not forgive. We squander our inheritance whenever we refuse to live up to our own potential. We squander our inheritance by denying that the Day of the Lord is here! But if only we would realize our reconciliation with God, we would see the truth of our lives and we would feast: just as the prodigal son and his brother feasted with their father.

Thus, we must understand the situation that Jesus preaches against, my sisters and brothers. The story of the prodigal son is the story of Israel and of our Church. The Pharisees and Sadducees are condemning Jesus for feasting with the sinners and tax-collectors. In His story, they are both sons. The Pharisees and Sadducees live by the rules of God, but they do not live by His love. So the Father must instruct them that they must love their brother, even if he was a sinner. And in that instruction, we see that the Pharisees and Sadducees have become the prodigal son. But they too, if they would only reconcile with God, could feast and share the inheritance that we all have from the Lord.

Our Church must also learn this lesson. This week, the hierarchy will ponder the election of another pope. We have lived too long with popes who condemn rather than celebrate our reconciliation with God through Christ Jesus. We live too long with a Church hierarchy who is much like the Pharisees and Sadducees, my brothers

A Bishop With Gun

and sisters. They do not heed the words of St. Paul, which I shall repeat again:

not holding anyone’s faults against them,

If our Church could only reconcile itself with God through Jesus, we can experience the new world that St. Paul tells us about:

¹⁷ So for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation: the old order is gone and a new being is there to see.

So, I pray, my sisters, that you will be this new creation and help me to join you in it. I pray my brothers, that you too will be this new creation. I pray that together, we can let the light of this new creation shine on all; that we will, not only preach the reconciliation with God, but be that reconciliation. And I pray that our new pope will serve this reconciliation and preach the new creation that is our inheritance. To do any less is to squander it.

International Women’s Day 2013

Posted on March 8, 2013 by Jeff

Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and director of The Avengers movie, was asked why he writes strong female lead characters. His answer was, “because you keep asking that question.”

Across the world today, even in the USA, we see continued oppression and injustice against women. Women still make less than men for the same work. Women generally find employment in the service industry. Women are raped at rates of 1 in 3.

Why do we allow this to happen?

Our cultural beliefs and attitudes about women as a whole remain demeaning and repressive. They underscore and justify the abuse and rape of women and the unfair treatment of women. We like to pretend that we have come along way, baby, but we haven’t really.

I’ve had numerous conversations with classes I’ve taught and people in general about hiring women. Women are still seen as the care taker, as the one who might get pregnant. So women are not hired for fear that they might need time off. When I ask about men who are fathers, I’m told that they have less responsibility at home. Recently, I read a story about a Christian college that fired a woman for having pre-marital sex, but turned around and hired her boyfriend– the father of her child.

This is only true because we make it true.

When we act and think like this, we place an incredible burden on women, a burden no man would understand or survive. How can we judge people we treat as slaves when we force them to choose between a livelihood and freedom that is their own and the life and care of others? This is not to justify abortion; it’s to condemn our treatment of women!

There will be no justice towards women until we change our beliefs and attitudes about women. This happens locally, but it must become global. I do not mean that all women everywhere must be the same or that all cultures must have the same beliefs. But I do mean that every culture in its various practices must provide for the needs and wants of women to the same extent that it provides for the needs and wants of men.

Otherwise, death follows.

Decrying Hugo Chavez

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Jeff

Hugo Chavez, the elected president of Venezuela, a democratic nation, died of cancer on Wednesday. Chavez had a contentious relationship with the United States declaring President W. Bush the devil. He was a leader among leftist governments in Latin America, buoyed by oil sales from Venezuela’s vast fields (second only to Saudi Arabia). I’ve found two interesting quotes from two different sources about Mr. Chavez’s death.

The first is from a story on NPR wondering what the effect of Chavez’s death will be on oil prices. Crass, I know, but even more crass is the following comment:

Chavez invested Venezuela’s oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world’s tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.

Yes, Middle eastern cities spend great wealth on buildings and museums. And our NPR/ Associated Press correspondent seems to think that spending on buildings and museums is a much better investment than spending on food, eradication of poverty, health, and education. But, what is even more interesting is how this review of Chavez conflicts with the one found at the Economist:

A majority of Venezuelans may eventually come to see that Mr Chávez squandered an extraordinary opportunity for his country, to use an unprecedented oil boom to equip it with world-class infrastructure and to provide the best education and health services money can buy. But this lesson will come the hard way, and there is no guarantee that it will be learned.

Here, we have a similar sentiment as the one in NPR, but expressed differently. Rather than condemning Chavez for spending money on the poor instead of building, The Economist looks at lasting infrastructure and the best education and health services money can buy. These are lofty goals. It’s unclear, though, what Chavez squandered the money on. More importantly, the NPR story says that Chavez spent money on health and education. So how is right?

It doesn’t matter, of course. All that matter is that each American publication had a chance to denounce Chavez, that leftist anti-capitalist. We cannot allow Americans to think that socialism leads to anything good, and God-forbid that anyone recognize the fact that Chavez did win democratic elections by large margins. And who cares if the stories conflict over what Chavez actually spent the money on? It’s not like American schools teach children how to look for contradictions from the printed word or to think about their own circumstances.

Education is about making money. And Chavez’s socialist regime won’t let you work for that.

Nothing Left to Show Us

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Jeff

So writes Taylor Brigler about Ashley Judd at the Daily Caller:

We are used to knowing just about everything there is to know about serious political candidates. But will Judd be the first potential senator who has — literally — nothing left to show us?

I want to hold off a minute

on commenting about Judd’s nudity or that some candidates for political office have been seen nude or otherwise “compromised.” Consider first what Brigler is saying here and whether she would say it of a man.

Bigler is claiming, implicitly if not explicitly, that because one has seen Ashley Judd naked, one has seen everything about Ashley Judd. Judd has nothing left to show us. Here, Judd is identified with her body, even more so, her sexuality. We should expect to discover nothing else about Judd– for example, her political positions on any number of topics, her philosophy of life, her beliefs about God or morality or even of her own film career. We have literally seen everything.

Aside from identifying Judd with her sexual body, Bigler presumes, as many people in the media do, that the material world is all that matters. Vision gives us access to anything we want or need to have. Shouldn’t Christians, for one, be concerned about such a materialistic understanding of the world, or of persons? Should not priests and bishops who reject the Vagina Monologues because the play “reduces women to their vaginas” not stand up and reject this presumption of Bigler, of the Daily Caller, and of American society?

But let us consider also, would Bigler, or anyone else, say the same thing about a male candidate running for office? No, and for two reasons: men are not traditionally associated with their sex. Second, men are taken more seriously than women.

But let’s look for a moment at the bigger picture: does it matter that a candidate for political office has been seen nude by the general public, that her or his career required nudity from him or her? One can answer yes to this only if one insists that the moral character of the candidate matters. But if the moral candidate of the character matters, then questions about nudity are not really about nudity. We can discuss whether it is ever moral–whether the internal goods of the practice of acting are ever satisfied by–nude scenes. But that is not a question about nudity per se, but about the choices individuals make in their every day lives. And if we begin to ask those questions–which, believe me, we should–we have to ask them of every candidate running for political office.

And once we ask those questions, we might want to consider how candidates relate to corporations versus the people they represent. What role, if any, religion plays in their lives. What concern they have for the least well off in society.

I know very little about Ashley Judd. I certainly don’t believe I will know anything more about her if I see her naked. But I also know that I know very little about any candidate just from the face he presents to the public. It would be best if we all stopped judging by the cover of the book.

Making Our Own Way

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Jeff

Today, I saw a familiar mantra on Facebook:

Do not go where the path may lead;

go where there is no path

and leave a trail

This mantra is familiar because Americans repeat it or ones like it all the time. We are supposed to be individuals, leaders instead of sheep, trailblazers instead of homesteaders, cowboys and cowgirls instead of farmers. Our movies are filled with (mostly) men and (very few) women who stand against the system. Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry is just the tip of the iceberg.

And yet, we often criticize those who question the American way of life, American exceptionalism. We imprison those who leak important information to the news media so that every day Americans can know what’s going on in the White House, the Pentagon, the Vatican. “Whistleblower” is often a dirty word.

A contradiction appears here of course.

I would wish that more people would question authority and question the American way of life. Right now, we life in a tyranny of the majority that Alexis de Tocqueville warned us against 150 years ago. We were so afraid of socialism in the 1980′s that we worried that everyone would end up dressing the same. Yet, today, looking at the city streets of Providence, Rhode Island or Portland, OR, I see over 70% of women wearing sleek black leggins, men dressed in jeans.

I would wish that more people would question capitalism. Of course, we all know that socialism has failed. The Berlin Wall came down, right? Capitalism won. There’s nothing better. Except for those millions of poor people and millions of disenfranchised home-owners kicked out of their homes for buying a house they believed they could afford.

I would wish that more people would question the bureaucrats and politicians in the White House, the senate and the congress. Yet, we continue to elect the same people over and over thinking that this time will be different.

There’s nothing wrong with blazing a new trail, but to make it a way of life may be more than we can ask of ourselves. It underlies all of our beliefs. We think capitalism and democracy our so good because it allows us to be individuals. But do we ever stop and think whether that’s true or not?

Subversive Thomism

Living Justly and Loving Kindness in a World on the Brink of Collapse

Author Archives: Jeff

About Jeff

Presente! – Palm Sunday 24 March 2013

Neither do I condemn you — Sunday 17 March 2013

A Feast for Reconciliation: Sunday 10 March 2013