A bumpa crop o' Paine

I saw this wonderful bumper sticker -- a quote from Thomas Paine -- on the way in to work this morning:

Thomas Paine, colonial American pamphleteer, was a Deist -- who believed in "but one Deity, and [whose] religion consists in contemplating the power, wisdom, and benignity of the Deity in his works, and in endeavoring to imitate him in everything moral, scientifical, and mechanical."

Sounds like a very bad man, indeed. Dangerous in his own time; just as much in our own.

Religious Liberty -- JFK v Santorum

Senator Rick Santorum sure has made his share of wild statements lately.

First, he claims that Obama wants to impose a "phony theology" on America, whatever that means. Then he subtly signals his agreement with (by failing to correct) a supporter who ridiculously claims that Obama is a secret Muslim.

But I was most intrigued by his references to a famous -- and normally widely-praised -- speech by JFK to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association -- a Baptist group  -- during the 1960 presidential campaign  (emphasis mine):

On ABC, Santorum said the Kennedy speech -- which sought to ease concerns about his faith interfering with his ability to govern -- made him sick. 

"What kind of country do we live that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case?" Santorum said in seeking to link his interpretation of the Kennedy speech with his criticism of the Obama administration for what he calls impeding on religious freedom. 

"That makes me throw up and it should make every American who has seen from the president, someone who is now trying to tell people of faith that you will do what the government says, we are going to impose our values on you," Santorum said, later adding that imposition of government values would be "the next logical step when people of faith, at least according to John Kennedy, have no role in the public square."

That last part -- that JFK advocated that people of faith stay out of the public square -- is absurd on its face. The man who made the statement was himself running for the ultimate position in the public square.

JFK's speech to the Baptist ministers was partly political. Given the enormous antipathy toward Catholics, even as late as 1960, there was a need to ensure that the conservative Baptists weren't going to organize against him. But Kennedy's speech was also a rallying cry to the basic American perspective that caused the Founders to reject establishing religion in the first place.

Kennedy started by acknowledge the "religious issue" of a Catholic running for President, pointing out that there are far more important national issues to contend with than his religious affiliation (true then, true now):

While the so-called religious issue is necessarily and properly the chief topic here tonight, I want to emphasize from the outset that I believe that we have far more critical issues in the 1960 election: the spread of Communist influence, until it now festers only ninety miles off the coast of Florida -- the humiliating treatment of our President and Vice President by those who no longer respect our power -- the hungry children I saw in West Virginia, the old people who cannot pay their doctor's bills, the families forced to give up their farms -- an America with too many slums, with too few schools, and too late to the moon and outer space.

Kennedy then reprises a bit of our nation's uncomfortable history with religion, to show that today's religious victors become tomorrow's victims:

For, while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew -- or a Quaker -- or a Unitarian -- or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that led to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today, I may be the victim -- but tomorrow it may be you -- until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped apart at a time of great national peril.

And he throws in a bit of Texas history for good measure:

And in fact this is the kind of America for which our forefathers did die when they fled here to escape religious test oaths, that denied office to members of less favored churches, when they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom -- and when they fought at the shrine I visited today -- the Alamo. For side by side with Bowie and Crockett died Fuentes and McCafferty and Bailey and Bedillio and Carey -- but no one knows whether they were Catholics or not. For there was no religious test there.

Where JFK and Santorum part ways is in the understanding of their office, the national interest and the culture war issues of the day:

Whatever issue may come before me as President, if I should be elected -- on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling, or any other subject -- I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictate. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.

In case anyone still didn't get it, he winds up by making his position crystal clear, drawing a clear picture of his role as leader of the American people:

I am not the Catholic candidate for President [but the candidate] who happens also to be a Catholic.... I do not speak for my church on public matters -- and the church does not speak for me.

These are lofty sentiments spoken by a man whose life of wealth and privilege had been dogged by suspicions of his ancestors' faith. They express the lived experience of transient success won against great odds and bigoted opposition. As a son of Ireland, Kennedy was bedeviled by the same forces that caused the Founders to shy away from religious tests and federal support for churches. He knew first hand, or from family memory, of the prejudice that for years had kept his clan out of the halls of power.

JFK saw how religion can be poisonous in the public space, preventing otherwise capable men and women from contributing to their society, diverting the passions of citizens from productive, cooperative work to pointless infighting and antagonisms. Given the passions that human beings attach to their faiths, there is no way to maintain a society in which one sect flourishes under government support while others stand politely by. That wasn't possible in 1791 when the Bill of Rights was ratified, and it is not possible today.

And this is the point of view makes Rick Santorum sick?

John Kennedy may have realized the political expediency of neutralizing the rabid opposition of Baptists to his candidacy. But he also spoke from hard-won experience -- that those who raise religion as a cudgel to batter their opponents do so in order to distract voters from crucial issues that are common to all. In 1960, Cold War missiles could fall with impunity on Catholic, Protest, Jew, Muslim and atheist alike. In 2012, an unregulated economy is sinking all boats -- the JP2, the Mitzvah, the John Calvin and the SS Madalyn Murray O'Hair; the uninsured come from all sects and races; and greed pulls funds away from roads and bridges that serve conservative and liberal believers alike.

What makes me sick is the constant raising of the specter of sectarian religiosity, which builds no bridges, heals no sick and brings no justice.

Read the speech in its entirety. It's a classic of rhetoric and persuasion.

At your hands

I have been thinking about this prayer, spoken by the people during offertory:

May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands, for the praise and glory of his name, for our good and the good of all his Church.

Who is speaking the prayer? And to whom is directed?

The prayer is spoken by the people of God, and it is directed to the presider. We pray that God will accept the work of the priest on our behalf. This suggests a reality at odds with the way many Catholics think about the role and power of the ordained. We think that it is the priest who is empowered by ordination to act as the sacrificial agent. We get to watch.

But the prayer suggests a different reality.

As Christians, we are baptized into the kingship, prophethood and priesthood of Jesus. This is usually not taken too seriously by anyone. We hear the words, consider them nice, and go on believing that they apply to the bifurcated church reality of the ordained and the lay. But what is we understood our priesthood and accepted it? What if every Christian acted as Jesus did, without reference to the lines that separated priest from people? He forgave sins, dined and healed without worrying about what lines he was crossing. It's one of the things that got him killed.

And don't talk to me about old-time Pharisees and hypocrites. The same line-crossing would get Jesus killed today.

The offertory prayer provides a rare and valuable insight about our role and what we do with it at Mass. One that is surprisingly in line with the way Jesus operated.

Priests have the power to sacrifice. In the context of the church, that means the power to perform sacramental action. If it didn't then then moniker "priest" would have little meaning. Just another joke on the laity. But if our priesthood means anything, then it means we have the power (and the duty?) to perform tasks usually reserved to priests. Like prayer for each other. And like performing ritual actions, even the Mass itself.

But if we are priests, and could say Mass, why don't we? Sure, we have been taught that it's improper and even sacrilegious to do so. And Canon Law proscribes it. There are practical reasons too -- even if they're kind of lame. Most of us are busy with our jobs, our studies, or raising kids, and don't have time to delve into the Scriptures or liturgical practices. There's something to be said for ritual well-performed.

But still, we are priests, making every Mass a con-celebration or priests who happen to be ordained, and priests who are not. But too many priests (in the limited time-space continuum we inhabit) can spoil the ceremony. And so, we (the laity) temporarily lend our priesthood to the ordained minister, empowering him to act on our behalf to offer sacrifice to God. We do this explicitly in our prayer.

I don't think that I will win any awards for this interpretation. But in spite of the rarity of the sentiment in the rubrics, there it is.

Reclaiming our priesthood should be on every believer's top-ten list. As long as the ordained believe that priesthood is theirs to hoard, then all sorts of abuses are possible. And all sorts of problems. Scriptures that apply to the entire Church have to be turned inside out to seem to apply only to the ordained. Take the Eucharist. As long as the Last Supper is seen as "Christ instituting the priesthood," priests will think they have a leg up on the laity. They (and their holy fingers) will continue to be indispensable for confecting Christ in the Eucharist -- as though they were specially certified pastry chefs.  And as long as priests claim that Christ's breathing his spirit onto his disciples allows them (and not all Christians) the power to forgive sins, then they will have control of God's grace and mercy, to their benefit and the detriment of God's people.

Talk about sacrilege!

God's goodness and mercy cannot be channeled and controlled, doled out to believers at the whim of human beings. The offertory prayer may be the last remnant of this reality in the Mass, but it is one that has profound consequences for the way we see ourselves and for the way it calls us to participate in the life of the Church and our relationship to each other.

A proferring of ashes

I'm usually fairly egotistical, but I have restrained myself in part by thinking of Christ's admonition against flaunting my personal holiness:

“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, who love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that others may see them. Amen, I say to you, they have received their reward." (Matthew 6:5)

So I was mildly horrified in my youth..., on Ash Wednesdays, to get my ashes and then to have to wear them all day. As Sister said. I know we should not hide our faith, but jeepers! What could be more showy than wearing a black patch smack in the middle of your forehead?

So, I make it a practice to wipe off my ashes soon after I leave church. Actually, as soon as it won't look disrespectful to be doing it. Surely, by the time I get into my car to head home.

But last night, after Ash Wednesday, I forgot. I headed to the library to pick up some books that were on hold. I was my usual self, joking around with the librarians, checking out the new arrivals and playing with the new self-checkout lane. When I get home, I caught a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror -- and the huge, black, ashy cross on my forehead.

So Jesus, does it still as prayer if I didn't know I was showing off?

The heart of forgiveness (wordy version)

The inspiration for my poster, The Heart of Forgiveness, was this Sunday's reading from Isaiah 43:

Thus says the LORD: Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am doing something new!...It is I, I, who wipe out, for my own sake, your offenses; your sins I remember no more.

I should have been paying attention to the homily, I know, but I got to thinking about forgiveness. Like a lot of religious terminology, it's not always easy to connect the term to real life. I often need to concretize terms to make them sensible.

But, lo! An image came to me, grounded in my own experience of seeking forgiveness.

When I want to apologize for doing something hurtful, I inwardly lower myself in the eyes of the person I hurt. I am saying in effect, "I am not so grand or important that I can treat you unkindly -- as though you were below me." I find myself giving up the heightened status that I wrongly took on, and abase myself -- literally, bring myself toward my base. Believe me, this can go against the grain, especially when having to apologize to my own kids, as I have had to do more than once. But during a sincere apology, for that moment, I empty myself of my parental prerogatives and place myself below the other.

But here's where it gets interesting. In a family or a community, the abasement of an apology should be only half the story. Because in a family or community, when an offender lowers himself, the offended has the opportunity to raise up the offender. To take them off their knees and set them on their feet again. To restore them to full status, to full personhood, to full rank.

That's what it means in my poster to bring a sinner to "I" level. It means that in forgiveness, I bring the sinner up from his abasement to my own level. We are again eye-to-eye. But it means more. When I bring you to "I" level, I am returning your personal value -- your "I-ness" in my eyes and in your own. I am telling you that you are again worthwhile to me.

When Isaiah speaks of God forgetting our sins, he may be speaking the literal truth -- the Lord of all Creation may well wipe from his mind the memory of our misdeeds. But we needn't settle for the metaphor of forgetting. When we are forgiven by God, we are raised up again to our full status as sons and daughters. We again have permission  to look God in the eye, as it were.

This may seem like a strange privilege for a Creator to allow for his created, but it is true. God raises our heads, and gazes at us lovingly, fully in the face.

Some challenges:

Allowing ourselves to be seen as God sees us is not easy. It's more likely that we continue seeing ourselves as shameful and unworthy. There is no easy trick to seeing ourselves otherwise, and there are many who benefit when we see ourselves as dirty and no good. But the realization that God has raised us from our lowliness may be the first step toward regaining the full worth that we have already been granted by our loving God.

Second, it is a rare gift to be able to forgive. As far as I know, true forgiveness may be nearly out of reach for most human beings. Forgiveness means a willingness to restore a person fully to their favored place in our hearts, in our homes and in our lives.

But doesn't it seem too easy, after some horrific event, for people say that they forgive the offender?

I know a man who recently lost his wife. She was killed while buying donuts for Sunday Mass by a drunk driver at 5 in the morning. The woman bled to death, on the street, in the arms of her distraught husband. The next day, the husband (a saintly man, without a doubt) told reporters that he forgave the driver. I will not pass judgment on whether the man was capable of this or not. But I know that I would be unable to forgive that quickly. Forgiveness, if it came, would be a long process. I would have to come to it by stages, if at all, over a long period.

But forgiveness must at least be an option. It was Isaiah's insight that God needs to move on, to clear the decks, to do something new. And God will not be distracted or delayed by his people's insistence in their own unworthiness. Everything must go! Even the memory of our violence, rottenness and smallness.

For this, we thank the Lord -- that though slogging ever unwillingly, we follow the lead of One who gives us new life and 222nd chances.

Book Review: The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, by Thomas Lynch

Thomas Lynch is a poet by inclination and an undertaker by profession. This warm and witty memoir brings to life (!) the secret world of those in "the dismal trade." Lynch paints himself as something of a tradesman, neither rich nor poor, but carrying on the needed business of extracting the dead from our lives in the kindest, most expeditious way possible. His stories are heart-warming and hilarious. There's the local woman upset, after a bridge collapses, that her funeral cortege would have to ride through downtown and enter the cemetery's back gate. There's the constant terror of his funeral director father, who saw his own young progeny in the faces of the young people he embalmed. There's the new craze in turning golf courses into cemeteries, with the possibility of having your remains blasted out of the sand trap. There's Lynch's consideration of "cremorialization," the practice of mixing your remains with glass or ceramic. making of the dead a semi-permanent knick-kick.

Often though, Lynch depicts the difficult side of the death business: cleaning up after gunshot suicides; piecing together the battered faces of murder victims; making bloody home inhabitable again. There's more to the mortuary biz than racking in the cash. And Lynch has few complementary words to say about Jessica Mitford, she of naysaying "The American Way of Death." And of Jack Kevorkian, a local Michigan "character" at the time the book was written, Lynch has barely-concealed loathing. Not because he was bad for business, but because of the path on which Dr. Jack's cavalier treatment of death and illness put us, in this age of convenience and distaste for suffering.

Mostly, though, Lynch waxes poetic about life and death -- aside from sex, the poets' (especially the Irish poets') favorite topics. He has a soft heart, bought at high price from years experiencing the tears and traumas of the grieving. He is not embarrassed to say that, while an expensive funeral is no substitute for years of neglect, many people feel, as he does, that it is sometimes a necessary way to move the living past death into new life.

Lynch's "The Undertaking" shows a human sufferer in humble service to the suffering. A wise, warm and precious book.

The heart of forgiveness

DVD Review: The God Who Wasn't There

The argument that wasn’t there

As an open-minded Christian, I enjoy reading the work of atheists. Richard Dawkins does a nice job of elucidating the atheist viewpoint. Even the recently-departed Christopher Hitchens, he of the vicious attacks on moral superheroes, makes a great case for the danger of religious thought.

But poor director Brian Fleming. His “The God Who Wasn’t There” is all bluff and puffery, and not well-though-out at all.

This basic contention is that between 33AD, when Jesus died, and the writing of the first gospel around 70AD, very little happened. Jesus, in his lifetime was known, then was forgotten for thirty-five years, and then “remembered” again. This would indeed be compelling evidence if it were true. Fleming correctly states that Paul, who wrote in the 40s and 50s, did not write about the sayings of Jesus, his healings, the virgin birth or the other miracles. Fleming claim therefore that Paul did not know of these events at all. Which is a stretch – no consideration is given to the possibility that Paul knew of them but chose not to write about them.

But this argument is silly on a couple of fronts. Fleming omits the book of Acts, admittedly written around 85AD, that tells the story of the early church. In many cases, Acts at least parallels what Paul writes about, providing a source of some internal consistency. Fleming also ignores that Paul was not a historian, but an  apostle and preacher. All that mattered to Paul was that Christ, born of a woman, had been crucified, raised from death, and was soon  to return in glory. Who cared where he was born and what color his hair was?

Fleming resurrects the old argument that many gods in the ancient world were born of virgins, crucified, rose from the dead and are seated among the gods. This old dog sure has made the rounds. And it seems persuasive to those who don’t study the ancient world. These claims are either hilariously wrong, or describe religions that came into being *after* Christianity and cribbed from its influence and powerful stories.

On the positive side, I appreciated the animated comparison of the Resurrection stories that Fleming included. If I taught religion, I would incorporate it into the curriculum. While fundamentalists might think it blasphemous to show discrepancies among the gospel accounts of Christ’s rising, it’s not so at all. Mainline scholars have known of the differences for years. Whether proclaiming the appearance at the tomb of a young man (Mark), two men (Luke), or one angel (Matthew), the gospel differences provide important insights into the minds of the evangelists and the development of the early church. The fact that the early church retained such radically different accounts – when harmonizing them would have made it look better – is a testament to its high regard for truth, no matter how uncomfortable. But Fleming’s exegisis, while fun to watch, tells us nothing about the Resurrection and less about the gospel writers. He seems to believe that either the gospels (and the Bible) are literally true and thoroughly consistent, as he was taught, or that they are completely untrue. A subtle mind is needed to understand the Good Book, something Fleming sadly does not possess.

I admired that Fleming seems hell-bent on facing down the scars left by his fundamentalist education. It was courageous to enter the chapel where three times (after moments of doubt) he declared Jesus as his personal Savior. It was brave (if a little theatrical) to now deny the existence of the Holy Spirit there. But it absolutely excruciating to watch him assault his old school principal with his new and heretical beliefs. I can understand the catharsis that Fleming was after, but his confrontation (with a restrained, if pained principal) was an adolescent fantasy of patricide that did not advance Fleming’s thesis or argue well for his maturity.

I was disappointed by interviews taken out of context. Barbra Mikkelson, of the wonderful, legend-busting Snopes.com, weighed in to say that certain fictional stories, when heard by new listeners, are told as true. By extension, Fleming suggests, fictional stories about a crucified messiah, when heard years later, were taken as (pardon me) gospel. Certainly, it is not impossible that this kind of human error skewed the transmission of stories about Jesus. But Fleming’s claim that the Jesus stories are fiction relies heavily on the belief that for 35+ years after his death, everyone forgot about Jesus, and that around 70AD, a new batch of listeners heard the stories as true. This completely ignores the existence of Jesus’s apostles (whom even Paul admits to meeting) and a church community that personally knew Jesus and transmitted his story, however imperfectly.

“The God Who Was Not There” is a “cri de coeur” from a young man wounded by a twisted experience of faith. But he is in error to declare that the truth must be the polar opposite of whatever he was taught, and that everything he learned as a student, including the very existence of Jesus, was utterly false. Let’s hope that as he matures, Fleming does not make the mistake of others who held passionate, if erroneous, beliefs while young, and that he learns more nuanced way of understanding Jesus and the gospels.

Birth control control

So, what's missing from this panel of experts who testified before Congress about contraception?

Male religious leaders testify on February 22 before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

A few women, perhaps?


While a second panel did include two women invited by the Republicans, the atmospherics of inviting only men to the first panel were intriguing, to say the least.

While the Republicans continue to try to frame their attempts to limit contraception as "religious freedom," it seems that it is another instance of politics trumping the common good. In fact, one of my primary reasons for making birth control, abortion and homosexuality private matters is that they are so easily made into political issues, devoid of moral sense, common sense or economic sense.

The Devil, that "divider," must be howling with glee.

I have no problem with citizens being informed by the moral teachings if their particular religious tradition. But when the adherents of one particular strand of a particular tradition attempt to impose their will on the rest of us, it's time to raise our our collective hands and say "No."

There is no religious consensus about the start of human life, neither today nor historically. Extreme conservatives and the extremely careful try to define it as starting at conception. This may be true. But the fact that this definition is based on a theology of the person -- not on scientific data available to everyone -- should make us extremely wary of accepting it.

The Founders, products of the Enlightenment, were mostly allergic to allowing priests and ministers rule in America. They knew what happened when a church had state support. Citizens were taxed to pay the ministers of a sect they did not belong to or believe in. The state's police power was used to prevent members of other sects from preaching or converting. Evangelizers were be harassed, fined and imprisoned.

This is not hypothetical: it occurred in the American colonies prior to the Revolution.

Now, we see the minority party flirting -- in the name of the Founders! -- with a situation that would have raised the hackles of those same Founders.

The creeping insertion of religion into politics is a virus that must be exterminated. We must unconditionally oppose any attempt to make America a theocracy. Why? Because once God's laws become the basis of our democracy, the next question will be, whose God? And whose interpretation

of his laws? And that is the end of civilization.

I would rather be ruled by a moral-minded, common sense atheist than a fundamentalist believer any day.

Freedom of religion

Under the bombs in Syria

There was an inspiring story on NPR this morning about brave Syrian activists, like Danny Abdul Dayem (right), who are risking their lives to defy their oppressive government. These activists bring us footage of the bombardment of Homs, even as the bombs fall on their own homes, family and friends.

"What is the UN going to do about this? Nothing. They are going to sit and discuss and see whether we can solve this peacefully, with this murderer (Assad)," says Dayem.

"How can you stand and watch these children be like this?"

Good questions.

The Assad regime's attack on its own citizens is not unlike Muammar Gadaffi's suppression of dissent in Libya last year. That action prompted NATO to support those under attack, which effectively meant attacking the Libyan Army and supporting the militia. There's no question that intervention by the West gave legs to the revolution and ended in Gadaffi's rout and death.

Could something similar be in store for Bashar Assad's brutal and despotic regime? Or are we already too busy crafting plans to invade Iran to take notice of the suffering of the Syrians?

As the drumbeat of war with Iran picks up tempo in the US media and government, we might well consider why the bloodshed in Syria has our attention but so little action. Should the Arab League intervene to stop the loss of life? Should NATO? The UN? The US?

Aside from the democratic and humanitarian crises, there are real worries, Israel, Syria's next-door neighbor, cold take the brunt of an Arab backlash to our involvement. No doubt Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might be stirred to meddle if we invade or bomb Syria. A wider war is a real fear.


So what's a Christian, follower of a turn-the-other-cheek prophet, supposed to do?

It doesn't seem Christian to attack other countries and cause death and destruction. Neither is it Christian to stand by while the Syrian government kills its own. Are words, prayers and wishes enough? St, James (though not addressing the context of modern warfare!) thought that kind words were not enough:

If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?j(James 2:15-16)

In the context of a Sabbath healing, Jesus asked,

"Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil? to save life, or to kill?" (Mark 3:4)

More good questions!

Is it lawful to withhold aid, which saves some but causes others to die? Or is it lawful to provide aid, which saves the others and kills some?

As Christians, we are called to grapple with dirty, death/life decisions like these. And whatever way of death/life we choose, we owe it to the survivors to support ways of peace that prevent such decisions from having to be made in the future.

Untouchables

Thanks to Father Paul, our Jesuit homilist, who reminded us that in Mark's story of Jesus healing the leper, the operative sentence was,

Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, "I do will it. Be made clean."

 To touch a person who was considered untouchable was dangerous, transgressive, loving and courageous -- Jesus's stock-in-trade when dealing with human beings.

But the homily's kicker was this: whom do you consider untouchable?

A started on my own short list of people whom I am tempted avoid:

• The insane -- whether made mad by illness, rotten politics or strange religion
• The criminal -- people currently in jail, and people who were in jail
• The rotten -- people who, like a black hole, suck the life force out of everyone they meet

I've seen these people made into untouchables:

• The laid off -- There's nothing more like the Walking Dead than the guy who just lost his job. Don't let your boss see you're still chums! You might be next!
• Alkies and druggies -- don't want to get co-dependent!
• The Gay -- don't want to catch the AIDS!
• The pierced -- Are they as dangerous as they look?
• The wheelchair-bound -- so lonely, that they get super-clingy
• The Old -- the guy in Dunks who looks out the window all morning

I'm not suggesting that you give a hug to the next old alkie in a wheelchair, but at least think about the people who give you the willies. Can you afford to break down your barriers, even in a small way?

And who do they call the Antichrist?

Reflections on the story of the 10 lepers

Jesus walked the border between Galilee and Samaria
A No-Man’s land – far from shrine or temple
the in-between dangerous space
where demons and robbers lurk,
The desperate sick find pitiful refuge
And miracles happen.

Ten lepers – no labels – no distinction

– a tangled mass of abandoned bodies
Too sick for their village,
Too ill for social niceties
(Like who is in and who out)
Nobodies, wanted by neither camp
Finding company in their misery.

They cry out for mercy to all who pass

Most hurry on,
Some drop coins,
But One stops and says from afar
“Have yourselves examined!”

In a throw-away bit of divine power,

A temptation toward trust.
Jesus, the One, doesn’t say that they are healed.
He just refers them to the priest
The local health inspector who will
Poke and prod and scan and query,
And let them back into town
or boot them out again
Into the craggy, ravaged wilderness
To die.

A shock! They do as told,

These ailing, ragged folk
They move on in trust,
(we are not told otherwise)
And by rights should have been known as
The Ten Faithful Lepers
For so trusting their healer

But on the way, they see that spots and scales and sores

have vanished.
Overjoyed and relieved, they rush off,
Desperate to see their families,
To kiss their wives and children,
To eat like human beings,
To sleep in warmth,
To restart abandoned projects,
To rejoin the old circle broken by unwelcomed illness.

They go, all with a place to go, a town to call home,

Family, neighbors , friends.
All but one, the Samaritan,
the Outsider of Outsiders.
Then, did he suddenly stop?
Realizing in a sudden, shameful burst that
Once his friends had gone home,
he would no longer be welcome in their company?

What priest would ratify his cleanness?

Who would send him home?
Did he slow his steps then
Letting the nine speed off over the rocky ground?
Did he stop then, wondering where to go next?
Was it then that his thoughts turned to his healer?
Was it only with the way forward blocked
And loneliness tugging at his heart
That he made his way, more thoughtful now
To the one who brought him this blessing?

And so, a lesson
When the way forward is barred
There are worse things than to turn
Our minds and hearts back to Jesus
Who waits, patient, not blaming,
And ready to accept the gratitude.
Give him thanks for the mercy shown
and the blessing given
Receive the reward of your own trust
and the cure
that goes deeper
than mere physical healing.

The Angel of the Green Line

Yesterday, my wife and I were waiting on an outside platform for the T's Green Line to show up. It was a coldish day, gray, with a few stray flakes in the air. We were carrying DD ice teas -- incongruous in chilly weather, even for we hardy New Englanders. A middle-aged black woman approached the stop and after a few moments, piped up to commend us on our bravery -- drinking cold drinks outside in February. After a little small talk, she misunderstood something innocuous I made, hearing is as a sardonic commentary on the state of the world. She became inquisitive -- "What is your religion?" she asked. "We're Catholics," we answered, though she was looking just for the generic -- "Christian" would have been fine. For the next half hour -- as the T arrived, we three boarded and she was dropped at her stop -- we chatted delightedly about the sorry state of religion and politics. We were all horrified at the way that our putatively Christian candidates were outdoing themselves to brutalize the poor, in utter opposition to the gospel we all supposedly shared.


Ah, birds of a feather -- or was she an angel is disguise? Or were we all angels to one another?


Angels -- Greek ἄγγελος,or "aggelos" -- are God's messengers or delegates. They need not have wings and can come in human form. From time to time, we may all be angels of God's love, healing and grace.

Our angel came unexpectedly and unbidden with a message that we are not alone -- that God's good news really is one of forgiveness, healing and unity -- not judgment, dimishment and division. It was a welcome message, and warmed us for the rest of the day.

God knows what message we might have carried for the woman we met. I hope we delivered it!

The Christ of the Constitution

I ran across a piece in Salon yesterday about Jon McNaughton, a conservative artist who gave up the unprofitable business of painting landscapes for the lucrative trade of painting right-wing allegories.

The Salon interview was a masterpiece of trying to get information from a man who was clearly either not too bright, or was borderline dangerous. You could almost feel the interviewer trying to back out of the room with the mad painter.

Anyway, the painting on the right, "The Forgotten Man, is a recent example. Obama, in the foreground is standing defiantly on the Constitution while James Madison looks on in horror and disbelief. Presidents Clinton, FDR and Teddy Roosevelt applaud Obama on the right, with G.W. Bush standing blankly nearby. JFK is raising a mild objection in the middle foreground while Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Reagan angrily gesture toward a dejected figure, the Forgotten Man of the title, who sits disconsolately and alone on a park bench. Most of the rest of the presidents mill about without gesture or expression.

McNaughton's web site provides more info on the painting, including the artist's perspective on list of Obama's unconstitutional actions. These include the stimulus bill (its real purpose: to increase the size of government!), ObamaCare (pushed through against public opinion), appointing 30 czars to "control every aspect of the country" and even the popular "Cash for Clunkers" program, which McNaughton decries as a pointless give-away.

You have to admire the man for putting his ideas into tangible form.And you have to admire his nerve, too, for showing Teddy (a progressive Republican who got better wages and shorter hours for mine workers and signed the Pure Food and Drug Act) and FDR (whose New Deal saved the US economy) as Constitution-breaking enemies of the working man.

But I was especially taken by another painting in McNaughton's portfolio, "One Nation Under God," a portion of which is shown here:

The painting is filled with soldiers, presidents and notables like Frederick Douglas, several of the Signatories of the Declaration of Independence and Abigail Adams. But the religiously-minded might be surprised to see a virile, haloed Jesus Christ, front and center, holding a copy of the Constitution. Clearly, the Lord is not only "on our side" but he founded the team as well! On his site, McNaughton explains that the document being bequeath to us by Christ was "inspired of God and created by God-fearing patriotic Americans."

The inspired wrongness here is almost endless. America was founded (by Deists, closet atheists several sects of Christians) as secular land, free from the vile and violent squabbling of religious people in Europe. To show the Founders (especially Ben Franklin, roué of roués!) pledging allegiance to Christ is at once absurd and historically false. And the judgement of the artist on Supreme Court justices, lawyers, politicians and liberal media reporters (all of who share the lower right corner with Satan) is hardly subtle.

And for goodness sake, Abe Lincoln is on his knees, like Al Jolson in "The Jazz Singer." Mammy!

Anyway, the paintings are so bad as to be comical. But the mindset that inspired them, shared by many on the right, is alarming. For those of us who worship Jesus Christ as cosmic Son of God, it's disquieting to see him allied so strongly with America and its causes. America, like all empires, needs to realize its capacity for being fundamentally disjoined from the gospel. The dark American values of individualism, greed, racism and jingoism mesh rather badly with gospel values of love, generosity, pacifism, and forgiveness.

The day that America actually believes that it has achieved alliance with the Jesus Christ shown in the painting is the day it has lost its way for good.

Punked

Admit it, it was a brilliant move.

...Obama finally announced what the White House is proposing an accommodation of religiously affiliated employers who don't want to offer birth control coverage as part of their insurance plans. In those situations, the insurance companies will have to reach out directly to employees and offer contraception coverage for free, without going through the employer. Insurance companies are down with the plan, because ... contraception actually saves insurance companies money, since it's cheaper than abortion and far cheaper than childbirth. Because the insurance companies have to reach out to employees directly, there's very little danger of women not getting coverage because they are unaware they're eligible.

HHS Secretary Sibelius and Obama

Obama coaxes the Catholic bishops and conservative Republicans to call for unpopular limits on contraception (used nearly universally by American women) and then finds a way to give the bishops what they want (avoid the taint of giving birth control to their employees) and give women what they want (a cheap, effective and insured way to manage conception). For the price of losing votes from ultra-Cs who wouldn't vote for him anyway, he gets props from millions who would

As I mentioned in my previous post,  regardless of the merits of contraception, the bishops were in a no-win situation. They could not agreed to pay for the Pill, and they couldn't challenge Church teaching either. Turns out that their third option -- threatening to make a political issue out of Obama's health care plan -- blew up in their faces. While they can keep their own hands clean from providing birth control, they lost control of the  ability to prevent their employees from getting free BC from their insurers.

For the bishops, it's a mixed bag. On one hand, they get to keep their place on the track to an archbishopric or a cardinal's hat. But on the other hand (and, oh, how this must sting!) they have lost the ability to directly control the lives of their female employees.

I'm not sure whether the balm is enough to soothe the bruise.

For those bishops who loathe Obama, this must be a bitter pill (yuk!) to swallow and may lead to further efforts to derail his health care plan and his presidency. But the way ahead is perilous. If they take credit for Obama's move, they risk being seen as people who abet evil, as long as they don't have to be involved personally. If they campaign too obviously for the Republicans and against the health care bill, they risk appearing mean-spirited and partisan.

Given Obama's obvious brilliance at out-maneuvering his opponents, the bishops might want to think twice about taking him on again.

Obama riles the bishops

There's nothing like a good old-fashioned fracas with the Catholic bishops to spice up the election season.  Usually, the Bs are a quiet lot, churning out position papers urging peace in the Holy Land or flogging National Vocation Awareness Week, or dreaming up tweaks in this or that prayer in the lectionary. But this month, President Obama touched the Bishop's third rail -- by trying to push US Catholic institutions -- hospitals, etc, -- to include coverage for contraception in the health care plans they provided for their employees.

It was the flap hear round the nation, much of it missing the point:

• Yes, after years of mishandling cases of child rape, the bishops hardly have a moral leg to stand on when it comes to dictating morality
• Yes, as celibate and pampered men, they have little first-hand insight into the lives of ordinary Americans, especially women, and most especially the sexual lives of normal people
• Yes, it's true that 98% of American Catholics use birth control (count the number of 2-child families at Mass lately?)
• Yes, it's true that contraception should be part of a woman's total health and wellness program
• Yes, the Church's no-abortions-at-any-cost teaching is a mindless simulacrum of an subtle moral position

But what the president did not count on was the that bishops get to be in their positions not so much because of their innate holiness, but because of their obedience to the Church. Which, said in another way, means that their past advancement as well as their their future advancement within the Church is fundamentally predicated on their willingness to toe the line. To support every teaching that the Church teaches, to oppose any foe that the Church fights and to uphold every position that the Church proclaims. While your local parish priest might go light on some kinds of sinners, there is little room for such latitude at the top.

And whatever mental or moral gymnastics are required to maintain this pose are rigorously and joyfully performed. Or, you could just be a brainless lout with no moral sensibility who is good at repeating and looks good in purple.

But aside from personal ambition, the bishops are hemmed in by some truly awe-ful church (or canon) laws.

Here's the biggie:
Canon 1398: “A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication.”


Latae sententiae means basically means "in and of itself." That means you don't have to wait for a church tribunal to declare you excommunicated. You just are.

To "procure" an abortion has a wide meaning as well. Procuring an abortion does not just mean having one. Driving a person to the abortion clinic counts, as does counseling a woman who then gets one, as does contributing to an abortion provider, as does (in theory) holding and sharing pro-abortion views.

And disbelieving the church teaching on abortion can get you into hot water too, even if you don't actively help anyone to get one. Heresy, according to the Catechism, "is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same." Obstinate means that you persist in error even after someone teaches you otherwise. Heresy  -- the ultimate thought crime -- gets you excommunicated as well.

So imagine the poor bishop's dilemma. If they accede to the Obama administration's directive, they are guilty procuring an abortion, in that they allowed their health plans to pay for one -- an excommunicable offense. If they insist that the Church needs to broaden its outlook and change its teaching, they are heretics -- also an excommunicable offense.

So whichever way they turn, they are excommunicated, and in short order, no longer bishops and no longer on the fast track to a cardinal's hat or papal tiara. Seems like their only option (since none is courageous enough or sensitive enough to dissent) is to keep teaching that abortion is a grave sin, loud enough for all to hear.

Is it any wonder that the bishops are fighting like the Dickens against this regulation?

Obama made a HUGE political error here, and the word is that he is looking at a way out of the mess he has made. There is NO WAY the bishops will back down -- no matter how many blogs urge them to. When the focus of America should be on the Republicans eating each other alive during the primaries, we are stuck in an anti-Obama frenzy, talking about this obscure provision in the health care law. Already, the Republicans are turning this issue into a political hammer with which they will gleefully pound the president until he changes his mind.

Which he will. And I predict very soon.

Another day, we will have to discuss whether caving to a religious group is wise. Shall we now have to allow Christian Scientists to stop paying for blood transfusions? Jews to refuse to pay taxes because they pay for ham sandwiches in the Capital cafeteria? Muslims to protest if our driving laws prohibit their women from driving while covered?

This situation could open the door to all sorts of shenanigans. But if Obama is looking for a reasonably easy path to a second term, he'll give in one this one -- just enough to make the bishops stop swinging their crosiers.

Healing and hope

Today's readings deal with Job's hopelessness in face of sickness, Paul's desire to be a slave to all (to win some to the gospel) and Jesus healing Peter's mother-in-law and countless others.

 

My liturgy prep group, tasked me with writing intentions. Here they are:

 

• For our Church, that it never waver from its mission to bring comfort to the ailing, hope to the despairing and companionship to the lonely, we pray to the Lord.
• For our Church leaders, that like Jesus and Paul, they be slaves to all, preaching the gospel of healing and hope to a God-hungry world, we pray to the Lord.
• For the leaders of the our community, that they find joy and meaning in their service and comfort from the community in times of distress, we pray to the Lord.
• For those with longstanding, debilitating or chronic illnesses, that they maintain courage, patience and hope as they bear the burden of disease and addiction, we pray to the Lord.
• That we use our times of health to bring laughter and companionship to those who suffer, grasping their hands and helping them up to lives of greater joy and purpose, we pray to the Lord.

Tying the hand of God

I've been listening to a truly horrid little audio book called "The Complete Infidels Guide to the Koran." The book has an imprint from the conservative Regnery House, which was the first red flag that this might not be a totally unbiased look at Islam and the Koran. And I was right. But more about that later when I finish the book.

What caught my attention and got me thinking was a series of supposed Koranic quotes about Allah considering it heretical for people to believe that the hand of Allah was tied." (Sura 5.64) I'm no Koranic scholar, but I saw in this the sense that it was important to preserve the idea of Allah being fully capable -- the Lord of all creation -- with nothing that happened on earth being out of his control or contrary to his will.

Which got me to thinking about what is often heard in Christian circles when bad things happen -- that God has a plan, and that he is in control. This belief is supposed to calm the afflicted, and perhaps often does. But it is a problematic stance -- does God send earthquakes, floods and tornadoes? How about financial meltdowns, wars and poverty? Disease, storm and oppression?

A number of fundamentalist preachers, notably Pat Robertson and the late Jerry Falwell, turned God into an avenging machine -- raining down destruction indiscriminately on evil cities, nations and people. Hurricane Katrina, which famously inundated New Orleans in 2005, was seen by Robertson as a judgment by God on the US for allowing abortion. That Robertson's dislike of abortion may have helped his TV ratings or his political ambitions id not come up.

But is this vision of God biblical? Or is it just the creation of those seeking to make God into their own image -- malevolent, bigoted and violent-minded? The God of the Bible does cause his hare of havoc -- the Flood of Noah being the most extreme example. But after wiping out nearly all humanity (not to mention tweety birds, frogs and bunnies) God self-limits his own power, promising never to devastate the world by water again. One  might wonder whether fire or earthquakes are still OK. But the more gentle of us might suggest that God was ruling out world-wide destruction of any kind. But does that leave the door open to smaller cataclysms? Would our loving God still be OK with wiping out a whole continent or city -- as long as the destruction as not global?

This would make God into an attorney -- always angling or the loophole -- but not a loving, forgiving father.

So what does this say about storms and wars being vessels of God's judgment?

It came to me that in the end, we would be judged not on whether we claimed to see God's wrath in the weather, but in how we responded to destruction. Would we be judgmental, high-handed and dismissive like the Pat Robertsons of the world, seeking personal or professional advantage from disaster? Or would we see the end of the storm as the opportunity to build a rainbow of charity, love and comfort for those afflicted?

To me the choice between a) a vengeful, all-powerful God who rains destruction on people I already hate, and b) a God who claims no power except the power to move hearts to love, is an easy one. Whether Jew, Christian, Hindu, Muslim or atheist, the call to respond to people in need -- and to image a God who approves that choice -- is the only sure way to love one's neighbor as oneself. (Matthew 22:37-39, and Leviticus 19:18).

The beating of Romney's heart of pure silver

Poor Mitt, Born with a silver foot in his mouth.

This week, he got into trouble during an interview with Soledad O'Brien when he said this:

This is a time people are worried. They're frightened. They want someone who they have confidence in. And I believe I will be able to instill that confidence in the American people. And, by the way, I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich, they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of America -- the 90-95% of Americans who right now are struggling.

In his ham-handed way, Mitt was actually sounding compassionate, even if he was wrong. The rich, with their wealth and connections, are fine. The poor, with their safety net (however threadbare and inadequate) are also fine. He wants to focus on the middle class, which has enough money to pay its own way, but not enough to move ahead or up.

Though I am far from being a Mitt supporter, I can almost see where he is coming from.

To me, the fire should be directed, not at Mitt, but at the rest of the field, which does not see the need for a social safety net at all. Mitt may be a bumbler, but the rest -- with their insincere talk of replacing the safety net with a trampoline -- are positively poison for the poor. Not that the poor shouldn't have the chance to bounce out of poverty. Other than by metaphorically, none of the Reps have proposed any means -- except to lower taxes on millionaires-- that could bounce the poor anywhere but down the rocky slope of destitution.

So give Mitt a break -- he grossly overestimates the value of the safety net, but at least he says he believes in it and has pledged to patch it. But I am a realist: Let's see how long it takes for him to walk back this little sliver of compassion!

A prayer for the pietistic

Lord,

You who predicted that not all those who cry out
"Lord, Lord!"
Would be sheep of your flock,
Bless us in this season of politics and piety,
That we may courageously and lovingly correct those
Who worship you in church
While
Cursing you in the streets;
Who honor those giving only of their excess
While casting aside the widow with her mite;
Who speak of their rebirth in your name
While dooming to sickness, death, poverty and solitude
Those who bear your visage.

May we, who call you savior, hero, brother or friend
Never fail
To speak in clear, clarion phrases
In defense of the poor, the outcast and the friendless.
May we count our value in your eyes as the
Price paid
For worthlessness in the eyes of the hateful.
May your courage, strength and holiness
Be ours
As we battle against greed, unholiness and hypocrisy.

May we bear the wounds of insult and being despised
As you did,
Forgiving those who trespass against us,
In the hope of advancing the cause of the kingdom,
Where all are ruled by justice, truth, dignity and love.

We pray this in your holy name. Amen.