A different kind of king, a different kind of throne

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Joan

“…How does Jesus enter into Jerusalem? The crowd acclaims him King. And he does not oppose this, he does not silence them (cf. Luke 19:39-40). But what kind of King is Jesus? Let us see: he rides a colt, he does not have a court that follows him, he is not surrounded by an army that would symbolize power. Those who welcome him are humble, simple people, who have the sense to see in Jesus something more; they have that sense of faith, which says: this is the Savior. Jesus does not enter the Holy City to receive the honors reserved for earthly kings, to those who have power, to those who dominate; he enters to be beaten, insulted and reviled, as Isaiah foretold in the first reading (cf. Isaiah 50:6); he enters to receive a crown of thorns, a reed, a purple cloak, his royalty will be an object of scorn; he enters to climb Calvary, carrying a tree. And this is the second word: cross. Jesus enters Jerusalem to die on the cross. And it is exactly here that his being a king, as God, is manifested: the royal throne is the wood of the cross! I think of what Benedict XVI said to the cardinals: you are princes but of a crucified King. That is Jesus’ throne. Jesus takes it upon himself… Why the cross? Because Jesus takes upon himself evil, filth, the sin of the world, even our sin, the sins of all of us, and he washes them away with his blood, with mercy, with God’s love. Let us look around: how greatly does evil wound humanity! War, violence, economic conflicts that harm the weakest, desire for money, which no one can take with them, it must be left behind. My grandmother said to us children: the shroud that they bury you in won’t have pockets. Love of money, power, corruption, divisions, crimes against human life and against creation! And – we all know – there are our own sins: lack of love and respect for God, for our neighbor, for the whole of creation. And Jesus on the cross feels the whole weight of evil and with the power of God’s love conquers it, he defeats it in his resurrection.” –Pope Francis, Palm Sunday homily

(found online at: http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pope-francis-palm-sunday-homily)

Pope Francis!

Posted on March 14, 2013 by Joan

(I promised Jeff that I’d finally write something for the blog again. This is not a careful analytical piece, just my first take on the new pope.)

For the moment, I am won over by Pope Francis–I was hoping for a non-European pope, but I never expected such an unusual figure. The first Jesuit pope! The first pope to choose the name Francis! And what an exciting, markedly different style from the one to which we have become accustomed.

Why have I become almost giddy over this pope, with a momentary gleefulness that is likely to be tempered by some bad news or other in the days to come? Ought I not to be tamer and more sensible and scrutinize his record more carefully? I will eventually, eventually. But not today. Today, I am happy, because a new thing is happening, and it seems like a good thing.

Maybe it was just hearing the enthusiastic peal of bells from the local Newman Center across the street from my apartment complex, racing over and wanting to be part of something, and watching impatiently to see what mysterious figure would emerge from behind that curtain (while praying, to be honest, “Please not Dolan…”). (I did not tell that to the nice fellow sitting next to the me in the parish office, who was rooting for Cardinal Dolan.) Maybe it was the enthusiastic faces of the crowds, with their earnest chanting and praying and singing, who could care less about the rain, and the solemn procession of the Swiss Guard, their helmets glinting in the bright lights.

Or something more? Maybe it was his humble, surprisingly demure, almost casual welcome, engendering memes like this one:

I must admit that I knew nothing about Bergoglio before his appointment as pope. Yet now I have a pope who insists on dressing in the simplest of garments, rides the bus with the other cardinals instead of driving the fancy car reserved for him, returns to the hotel to check himself out rather than sending some underling to do it for him. He rode the bus like everybody else in Argentina, and he’ll be darned if anybody will tell him he has to travel in style now that he’s pope. His simplicity and his choice of the name Francis suggest compassion for the “least of these” and a commitment to rebuilding/reforming the Church that is in ruins, as St. Francis was called to do. The pope’s anti-clerical side will serve him well in the important and difficult work of responding to the sex abuse scandals.

Here is a pastoral pope. His demeanor is that of a humble servant, not a scholar, king, or judge. One isn’t sure whether he’d be good at solving some difficult doctrinal dispute (though he is an intellectual, like all Jesuits), yet one feels that one could confess to him or seek his counsel.

Lots of people (mostly people who don’t understand the current state of Catholicism very well) are labeling Bergoglio a “conservative.” If they mean that he opposes abortion and same-sex marriage, then he is “conservative,” but that is a relatively useless way to categorize him (as a Commonweal blogger pointed out), since that’s frankly all of the cardinals. Major changes on issues of sex, gender, sexual orientation, etc. were never on the table in this conclave. Even if one finds all of the options unpleasing, one should still acknowledge differences between the papabile, as the Catholic hiearchy is far from uniform. Theologically speaking, Francis is more moderate than his predecessor, Benedict XVI. He is open to ecumenical and interfaith dialogue (not that Benedict was not, but Francis is perhaps more so), and Francis’s views on the liturgy are noticeably more liberal. Those who have been yearning for a return to the principles of Vatican II might get their wish. And he seems “collegial.” Noted liberation theologian Leonardo Boff, by the way, is pleased with this pope and has countered claims that Bengoglio supported the right-wing military junta in Argentina.

On economic issues, although he was critical of liberation theology and Marxism, Bergoglio has challenged neoliberalism and spoken out against the crippling burdens of debt imposed by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank upon third world countries. Like his predecessor, Pope Francis is likely to criticize unbridled capitalism, and one can hope that he will challenge austerity with vehemence and determination.

Whatever disagreements I may end up having with him, I love him for asking the people for our blessing before giving his own, for riding the bus to work, for kissing the feet of AIDS patients, for scolding uptight priests who refused to baptize babies for not having been born into the “right” kind of families. Yes, probably he should have spoken out and risked his safety during the dirty war, but if he lacks the moral courage of a martyr, at least he seems to have sympathy for the poorest and least. After the lights dim a bit and the Swiss guard put all their sparkly helmets back on the shelf, perhaps I’ll be more critical. For the moment, it doesn’t seem to take a lot to make me really happy.

(photo credit: http://catholicsensibility.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/pope-francis-on-liturgy-ii/)

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.

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?

An Honest Question about Inequality in America

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Jeff

This free video on youtube is very informative. It explains what people think the wealth distribution in the United States is compared to what it actually is. The wealth distribution is so far off from what people actually think it is that the disparity is incredible!

One of the issues here is, of course, that optimism that Americans are known for. They do not see their situation as bad as it really is. Almost every American thinks that he or she will make it big some day if he or she works hard and stays committed to their company. But reality is far different. And almost every American –9 out of 10– thinks that the wealth make only 20 or 30 times what he or she makes. That is 9 out of 10 of Americans regardless of political party. But the reality is that the wealthiest 1% make over 300 times what the poorest American makes.

The other issue is the question of knowledge. How can Americans be so misinformed about wealth distribution in their own country and if they were informed, would they change how they act in the world — would they in fact demand change?

Many factors play into the lack of knowledge here. America is an entertainment country– the important things are sports teams, movies, and television shows. Who is Kim Kardashian sleeping with? We are amusing ourselves to poverty. But another issue is the sheer dishonesty that can be found in the news media which is owned by major conglomerates of the top 1%. Of course they do not want us to know that we have to work more than a month to make what they make in one hour.

I’m afraid, however, that the first issue may be the larger issue. As long as we are amusing ourselves, we are unlikely to stand up and demand fair taxation and a fairer distribution of wealth. I am not talking about socialism here. Watch the video! Think about the ideal distribution that most Americans– republicans and democrats– favor compared to what the reality is. Should there not be more demand for this ideal situation in the land of the free?

I also read today that we are headed for a new market crash. I wonder what will happen if that turns into reality. And i wonder especially how bloody it might get.