Bending the Pope's ear

A couple of years

ago, my wife scored tickets to a free James Taylor concert. She was working for an outfit that gave assistance to Haiti after the devastating earthquake of 2010, and the concert was Taylor's than you to her group and others. We had a great view -- balcony seats that overlooked the stage. And after the concert, we had a chance to go backstage to meet James Taylor himself!

He was gentle, kind and terrific. He came around to each person on our entourage and shook our hands. When he got to me, I was just star-struck, and babbled on and on about how we named our own "Sweet Baby James" after him, etc. etc. He smiled politely. But without warning, and mid-gush, he simply moved on to the next person in line.

It was a humbling experience for me. I guess I hoped that he would recognize me in some way. But I was just another face in the crowd.

It was an experience (among many others) that made me look at my own need to be recognized, but also at how desperate I might appear to people who have acheived actual greatness. Who am I to think that James Taylor would want to chat me up after a two-second introduction?

But what if instead of James Taylor, it was the Pope who would greet me in line? What if I had five seconds to say something to him? Or would it be better to say nothing?

What would you say to him?

Hoping not to be as goofy as I was with Taylor, I hope I could to keep a leash on my nervousness and say something that would express my needs as a Catholic. But there are so many topics to choose from -- imperialistic tendencies in my own country, anti-intellectualism in my nation and Church, the hatred of many for the poor, our Church's continued diminishment of women and homosexuals, the sad state of vocations. The list goes on.

But in  my 5 seconds, I would ask the pope to look at an area that might represent the bad faith and shoddy arguments underpinning too many Church practices and teachings. I would say this: "You must reexamine the intellectual support for a total ban on birth control."

Birth control has long been a sore spot for the Church. But ever since 1968, when Pope Paul VI promulgated Humanae Vitae, which reaffirmed the Church's ban on artificial BC, it has become a cornerstone of the Church's teachings, its entree into the culture wars that have divided churches and nations, and one of the main reasons that many Catholics -- priests and sisters included --left the Church. The teaching about birth control ignores so much about human life -- population growth, the nature of love between men and women, the need to soften the impact of young lust in an open and unsupervised society. The encyclical is an ignorant and deeply flawed document that only a theologian can love.

Today, because of Humanae Vitae, we have gained yet another a litmus test for Catholics. If you accept the teaching, you are a good Catholic. If you don't, you are a sinner and even an apostate. People, myself included, have kept ourselves out of the priesthood and the diaconate because we refuse to sully our integrity by swearing that we believe in the teaching. Catholics have to hide their use of contraceptives from each other, though every Catholic family with "only" 2 or 3 kids should be suspect. Meanwhile, the teaching has drawn the not-too-bright and not-too-virtuous into the clergy. I have met precious few deacons who are even intellectual lightweights -- never mind contenders or heavyweights. These men, good though they are, believe what the Church teaches, because the Church teaches it. As for priests, even for the brilliant and scholarly, their choice is to accept the belief and advance in rank, or question it and see their careers stall. There are few truly courageous men in the priesthood. Which is an irony for men who follow a savior who chose crucifixion to standing for his message.

In my five seconds, I would ask the pope to look at the totality of the teaching on birth control. Not just it theological ramifications, which involve spirit and the will of God, but the way it plays out in the real world of men, women and relationships. I would ask him to honestly study how the use of the Pill in the last 50 years has not been the unmitigated disaster that its critics believe it to be. How it has broadened women's choices, allowing them to use their God-given faculties. How it has relieved Catholic families from unwanted and unsupportable children. I would stress how Catholic parents are still capable and more than willing to cooperate with God in the creation of human life -- just not an endless series of pregnancies. I would ask him to sever the Church's ties to natural law as a means of regulating every aspect of human existence. We no longer need this medieval system of "science" -- especially in light of what we have learned about our bodies from medicine (we are by and large machines), evolution (sexuality is a biological imperative, not a pure gift from a loving Father) and psychology and anthropology (sex helps men and women maintain a pair-bond). It's past time to abandon the pseudoscience of natural law, an to top insulting the intelligence of educated laypeople.

I would ask the pope to take into account the real-world consequences of the Church's teachings as well. The overcrowded favelas in Brazil and the overpopulated streets of Manila and other great cities challenges the teaching that every human sexual act must be open to procreation. Those in Catholic countries have been forced into that situation. And it has not increased their human freedom or tapped their human potential. It has merely created an army of souls that can be registered in the church rolls and given the Church someone to succor as they toil in poverty and want.

I don't think Jesus would approve of a system that creates poor people -- especially when the only winners are churchmen in cassocks and frilled robes. He warned of those who:

"Tie up heavy burdens and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they will not lift a finger to move them.All their works are performed to be seen. They widen their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels.They love places of honor at banquets, seats of honor in synagogues, greetings in marketplaces, and the salutation ‘Rabbi.’" Matthew 23:4-7

Replace "phylacteries" with "mitres," "tassels" with "red capes," "synagogues" with "church banquets" and "Rabbi" with "Father," and you have a good sense of what Jesus might have to say about our current Church. Humanae Vitae has made fools and liars of us. It diminishes the Church's authority as arbiter of morals. And it has brought out the worst in Catholics. The destructive urge to seem better than the people you serve is what drives so much of what is wrong with the Church. It is what allows weak teachings to be accepted when they bear no relevance to the lives of the faithful and to be institutionalized when they harm the very people they are trying to help.

Perhaps it's time to be a little less starstruck when "Father" or "your Eminence" or "your Holiness" comes to town. And more demanding that the teaching they promote has some basis in gospel values and in lived experience.

First Amendment Follies

Oh, why are people so confused?

This week, Robert Copeland, the 82-year-old police commissioner in Wolfeboro, N.H., resignedl under pressure after publicly and loudly using the N-word to describe President Obama. He not only admitted to doing so and refused to apologize, but doubled down.  "For this, I do not apologize -- [Obama] meets and exceeds my criteria for such."  

Wow.

I have known all my life that know there are racists in lily-white New Hampshire. I grew up among them. Jokes about blacks were a staple of one branch of my extended family. I have a cousin who loves n*gger jokes; he actually told one to me at the collation after my mother's funeral in 2002. Maybe he thought it would cheer me up. Shame on me, but I smiled politely, not wanting to cause a fuss. We haven't spoken since. I also had a grand uncle who didn't understand what the big deal about the N-word was about. Speaking about a black coworker from the 1930s or 1940s, he said, "Yeah, we had a guy we called 'N*gger Charlie,' and it didn't bother him." Thanks for the civics lesson, Uncle Al. Blacks in that era who objected to their treatment were listened to politely, right?

Anyway, there are several responses to the Wolfeboro story. One is outrage. It can seem a bit mindless, and consists of people upset, on principle, about any use of the N-word. Not having grown up among blacks, they know its a bad word used by bad people. Hence it's verboten. It's a well-meaning response, but a little shallow and scary since it has so little thinking or experience to back it up.

But other varieties of responses go into the weeds. I have run into those who won't deal with what Copeland said, but demand that his detractors address racist language used by Copeland's foes. "How about Al Sharpton, huh? He said racist things and the liberals didn't call for him to resign." That's pretty pathetic reasoning. These folks obviously didn't pay attention when their moms told them that "two wrongs don't make a right." But they aren't really interested in justice for all sides. Intentionally or not, they end up defending people like Copeland, since they have a bottomless well of perceived slights that must be addressed before they would consider admit wrongdoing. And who knows whether they would apologize even after their wounds have been completely healed? People like this have a permanent sense of grievance that no amount of apologizing will assuage. They like to be victims. They enjoy feeling persecuted. It gives them a sense virtue to be harassed by the mob -- like Christians in the arena. Problem is, their cause is not very Christian. And it's not very convincing to sit in a culturally privileged position and think you're being persecuted.

But then there is the curse-on-both-your-houses group that might be unhappy with Copeland's use of the N-word, but think that outrage against him is also silly. They argue that outrage against using the N-word is itself a crime against the First Amendment, and is just a form of political correctness.Whatever happened to "Sticks and stones my break my bones, but words will never hurt me"? This shows appalling ignorance of a period in living memory (I would argue that it is happening today) when mere names gave rise to laws and cultures that promoted segregation and violence against blacks.Throughout history, the N-word has served as a potent means of denigrating blacks and denying them their civil rights, often with the complicity of the police themselves. Using the word has social, political and economic weight that makes it especially fraught. Avoiding a word that was used to harass, intimidate and disenfranchise an entire class of human beings is not a matter of liberal oversensitivity. It's a matter of civics and American values.

If our society is to stand for fairness and equality under the law, we should expect that the people charged with enforcing those laws to do so with fairness and equality. Any suggestion that they might favor one group over another should be challenged. In the conflict between speech rights and civil rights, the free use of the N-word has to be limited. Tell your idiot friends all the black jokes that you want to. But when you are charged with protecting the public -- all of the public -- at least have the brains to keep your bigoted opinions to yourself.

Sticks and stones aside, words do hurt, because they communicate how worthy or worthless we are in others' eyes. Words (and the social constructs behind them) affect the places we are allowed to live, the banks that will serve us, the schools that will educate us and the jobs that will sustain us. Words haunt our past, bedevil our present and shape our future

I'm glad that Robert Copeland had the brains to resign. It would have been better if he had the heart to see his mistake and to apologize too. But if he thought his words would have found a better reception, he was wrong. For that, and for the citizens of Wolfeboro who demanded his ouster, I give thanks. The fight for civil rights and a civil society is not something that happened in the 1960s and has been settled. We are not yet in a post-racial society. Not by a long shot. The fight for justice will continue to be fought as long as there are people who seek to vest only those like themselves (whether by race, religion or gender) with more civil power than is afforded to others.

Private and Public Pentecosts

It was liturgy prep time for Pentecost today. What was strange about this year's readings (or maybe I just noticed it today) was that both Luke's and John's Pentecost stories were told on the same Sunday. And the stories bear little resemblance to one another.

Luke's Pentecost is the one that is familiar to most Christians. The Eleven (and others) are in hiding. It is just weeks after the Crucifixion, and they are terrified for their lives. Even an appearance of the Risen Lord hasn't taken the edge off their terror. They are trapped in Jerusalem, if not by a Roman/Sanhedrin dragnet, then by their own fears. Suddenly, the wind picks up and there's a loud sound -- think of sitting under at the edge of a Logan runway as a 757 takes off:

When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together.And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. (Acts 2: 1-4 )

The once-fearful disciples are transforrmed in a trice to bold declaimers of the Good News. They rush out to preach to the masses of Jews assembled to celebrate the feast and make 3000 converts in a single day. A noisy, carefree and raucous affair!

John's account is much more lowkey and intimate. It is the evening of Easter Sunday. Again, the disciples are gathered and in hiding "for fear of the Jews." Suddenly, without fanfare, Jesus is among them. "Peace," he greets them -- great news to allay fears that they are being haunted by the spirit of the one they abandoned.

When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” (John 20:19-21)

Two greetings of peace, and a job offer.

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” (John 20:19-21)

Remember that this story takes place two days after the Crucufixion. The disciples are in fear of their lives, and likely guilt-ridden about their inbaility to protect their master. They loath themselves and each other. The wild story of the women about an empty tomb seem cruel -- they can't even keep track of their teacher's corpse. Now, comes Jesus, ignoring their failings and refusing the opportunity to recriminate. These disciples, desprately in need of forgiveness themselves, are commanded to offer forgiveness to others. Out of the depth of their own inadequacy and woundedness, they are ordered to pour a bounty of healing upon others.

There is something comforting about the way that John and Luke tell their Pentecost stories. One offers a glimpse ino the public face of the Church -- preaching, teaching, fearless, expanding outward. The other offers a complementary vision of inner healing, restoration and reconciliation with Jesus, and thus with God. The disciples of Jesus, before they embark on their mission of evangeliziong the world, are not gifted with instant feelings of "let's let bygones be bygones," but with a forgiveness that comes from becoming agents of forgiveness. Theirs is not a forgiveness that comes instantaneously like magic, but one that requires time, effort and application. This is much like our own experience of forgiveness. It's not an immediate result of prayer or abosolution, but requires struggle and reflection. Perhaps, like Christ's guilt-ridden disciples, it comes through the active forgivenss of the sins of others. "By his stripes we are healed" becomes, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

There is no free lunch or instant salvation implied in John's Pentecost narrartive, but a slow transformation that is dependent on our willingness to practice that forgiveness and normalization of relationships that Christ offered his disciples on that first Easter/Pentecost.

The Little Way of Renunciation

A biker on a loud Harley drove by the laundromat. It was one of those bikes with the upswept handlebars. The biker's feet were planted forward of his seat. And he wore black, WWII German-style helmet on, sunglasses and a graying goatee. He roared by me, neither looking left nor right. The king of the parking lot.

I was loading my clothes in the washer when a timid older woman lugging two baskets of laundry asked, "Is that your car?" I had parked in front of the laundromat to make unloading easier. I had intended to move the car after I had started the wash. "Oh, do you want to park there?" She nodded. "I'll move it right away." And did.

Yesterday at the library, I was thumbing through a new biography of Mohandas Gandhi, India's great leader and the architect of non-violent resistance, by Ramachandra Guha, called "Gandi Before India." The book covered Gandhi's early life, including his years as a barrister in South Africa and his time as an advocate of vegetarianism in Britain. I had not realized that groups of English and Indians were committed to the ideas of renunciation of bodily comforts. They refused to eat meat or drink alcohol. They avoided sex, at least the promiscuous kind. One Englishman even decided to live on pennies a day, sold his home and moved into a one-room flat above a music store.

While the cultural impetus for each person's choice of renunciation might have been different, the impression was the same: giving up one's comforts was beneficial -- whether to expand one's consciousness, to emulate Christ, get closer to God or whatever.

I realized that I was not likely to ever be a renouncer. I like my comforts, my alone time, my popcorn and my chai tea. I enjoy a run punch and a Jameson & ginger. I love my wife's home-cooked meals and the softness of her body next to mine. And holding her hand. And her kisses!
But the biker made me think about renunciation in another way. When I saw him, I was reminded of how we devalue the kindness and the disruption of our comfort that the older lady's request meant for me. I had to make a tiny break in my plan. I had to bend my will to that of another. I had to reject the option of a cruel word or a brushoff. Aren't these renunciation too? To choose the path of kindness over the path of cruelty, of self over selfishness, or disruption over comfort?

I often hear about people complaining about political correctness. How certain terms and words are no longer considered appropriate in normal conversation. The N-word (for blacks), the B-word (for women) and the R-word (for the mentally disabled) are all considered to be harmful to their targets, and have been discouraged in polite speech. This leads, naturally to a sense of resentment on the part of those who enjoy using those words. They feel aggrieved and persecuted about having limits placed on their free speech. They thrill when others, whether on the radio or in chat rooms or in private conversation, get away with using these forbidden words.

But if words can hurt others, shouldn't we choose to renounce their use? If words shackle certain groups from success, shouldn't be abstain from their use? The great renouncers of yesterday sought to purify themselves by cleansing themselves of meat, sex and alcohol. Maybe this kind of renunciation still has value. But there is undoubtedly value in renouncing the use of language and terms that destroy esteem, that enforce evil cultural norms and that brand individuals and groups as unworthy.

Today, renounce a bit of your unneeded freedom of expression. For God's sakes, if not your own.

Echoes of Eve: Francis the Misogynist

A troubling article by the NCR's Jamie Manson appeared this week with the startling headline, "Time to face facts: Pope Francis agrees with the doctrinal assessment of LCWR." The piece came down to the fact that Francis is pretty much on board with his predecessor's attempt to muzzle the Leadership Conference of Women Religious -- the group that represents most of America's nuns. Seems Francis has the same misogynistic fears of women as many in his profession:

I am wary of a solution that can be reduced to a kind of "female machismo," because a woman has a different make-up than a man. But what I hear about the role of women is often inspired by an ideology of machismo.

Female machismo? What on earth is he talking about? This sounds more like a toned-down version of Rush Limbaugh's "feminazi" smear than the reflections of a mature churchman. Maybe a woman who talks to a man as an equal is guilty of unpardonable arrogance. Otherwise, it's hard to imagine the sisters as wild radicals ready to bring down the Church.

But then, Cardinal Gerhard Muller, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (B16's stomping ground when he was Cardinal Ratzinger) has similar fears of the ladies diving into untested and heretical waters:

The second [worry] is over a gnostic current. These pantheisms ... they're both currents of elites, but this one is of a more formed elite. I knew of one superior general who encouraged the sisters of her congregation to not prayer in the morning, but to give themselves a spiritual bath in the cosmos, such things. ... These bother me because they lack the Incarnation!

So he knows of one superior general who made a strange remark. Is this something that is catching on with sisters across the globe? Is it even true? Why the existential panic? Is this all about Eve and her apple again?

Managing women based on rumor and fear is an old weakness of the Church. It's what led to witch burnings. In the face of this reactionary fear of all things female, it's amazing that the sisters have kept their cool and continued the respectful conversation. I'm just afraid that dialoguing with the CDF (and maybe Francis himself) is like trying to talk your Tea Party Uncle Frank to take off his tin hat and come down from the ledge.

The Devil's paint brush

All this talk of Black Mass at Harvard has me thinking about the Devil. Again.

When our New Hampshire house was newly built in 1988, but before we had moved in, I drove over alone one winter night to do some painting. There is something both magical and terrifying about being in a house at night, where only one room at a timer is illuminated with work lights, while the rest of the place perches in the gloom.

While in what would one day my younger son's room, a sudden fright came over me. A feeling that I was not alone and that a malevolent presence was in the house with me. Though not a churchgoer at the time, I reached back to my boyhood faith and started saying Hail Marys to myself. Until the fear passed. Whereupon I packed up my paint brush and paint can and decided to finish the job another day.

In this day and age, and in my secular culture, it's fashionable not to believe in the Devil. He seems associated with the kinds of people who view our current president as the Antichrist. Or with those mentally ill parents who beat their "possessed" kids to death or burn them with hot water. For the less insane, there are many reason to think that a Devil is not necessary to explain the chaos and "evil" in the cosmos -- gravity and soil cohesion explain landslides, nuclear fusion explain solar flares and supernovas, and evolution explains animal predation. Greed, stupidity and pettiness seem enough to explain most human evil.  Besides, there's the possibility that natural selection favored populations that perceived evil beings lurking out of sight and beyond the safety of community fire. Maybe a little built in paranoia and fear of the dark is good for us a a species.

But what if there's more to it? In my experience, just talking about evil is enough to begin to feel defensive and aggressive -- evil, in short. I wrote a snarky letter to the Harvard group who wanted to stage a Black Mass. I was grumpy and on edge for a week until my wife got me to look inward at what was making me such a touchy jerk. Had I just generated an interior sense of peril? Or had I attracting something dark and unholy into my soul?

If there is Devil, or a dark force impelling us toward evil, it is incredibly weak. And it works in the moral universe, since evil in the physical world has its explanation elsewhere. And it is not chased away by sprinkling it with holy water, since any number of evil churchgoers is unchanged by the spray from the aspergillum. The Devil works by sowing discord, and by persuading us of adopting a framework of fear and paranoia by which we view the world.

In my experience, the Devil is not chased off by incantations or oil or water, but by a change of perspective. The Devil's flowers bloom in a soil of fear. His blighted garden blooms when we are afraid of those different from ourselves -- whether in skin color, language, religion or modes of thinking; when we see persuade ourselves that we are victims and persecuted; and when we accept that progress, cooperation and reconciliation are impossible. It's when we accept that hope is gone that we give in to the terrified reactions that bring about the evil in our homes and communities.

Let's commit ourselves to abandon that darkness, and allowing ourselves to bathe in the light of new hope, possibility and progress,

The Black and The Crimson -- or the Devil and the damage done

From the Harvard Extension Club:

An independent student organization, the Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club, plans to host a controversial student event involving a historical reenactment of a black mass ceremony that has a narrator providing historical context and background.

The Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club has issued the following statement regarding the event:

We are hosting a reenactment of a historical event known as a Black Mass. The performance is designed to be educational and is preceded by a lecture that provides the history, context, and origin of the Black Mass. While a piece of bread is used in the reenactment, the performance unequivocally does not include a consecrated host. Our purpose is not to denigrate any religion or faith, which would be repugnant to our educational purposes, but instead to learn and experience the history of different cultural practices. This performance is part of a larger effort to explore religious facets that continue to influence contemporary culture.

Sincerely,

Harvard Extension Cultural Studies Club

My letter to the Cultural Studies Club, with a cc to Harvard president Drew Gilpin:

To the Cultural Studies Club,

A Black Mass. Are you kidding me? Were you guys celebrating Rastafarianism and partook too heartily of the ganjan sacrament? Observing a Hopi rite and took one too many hits off the mushroom pipe? Giving groovy thanks to Tim Leary (another fine example of Harvard genius) and had a bad acid trip?

I am amazed by the choice of a Black Mass as a way to "to explore religious facets that continue to influence contemporary culture." Really? The Black Mass is on your short list of influential religious practices? Is there a significant subculture of Americans who attend Black Masses? Do you think that the Black Mass has had any significant effect on America journalism, ethics, literature, culture or legislation? I don't.

And what a motley collection of religious practices you are exploring! A Shinto tea ceremony (how very elegant and sedate!); a Shaker exhibition (how practical and wholesome!); a Buddhist presentation on meditation (how chic!) AND A BLACK MASS! Three exhibitions that show the positive aspects of foreign and local cultures, and one that is a barely-observed perversion of the rites of a significant religious community in your host country. In the game of "Three of these things belong together" from Sesame Street, the Black Mass would be the item that does not belong -- at least in an educational experience about religion in America. It's an attention-getter, sure, but is as emblematic of American religion as the religious rantings of a smack-addicted street preacher.

A Black Mass MIGHT have a place with other perversions of religious practice, like a cross burning to show off the oddities of southern US Christianity or a seppuku disembowelment to display the skewing of traditional Asian values or Rwandans slicing up their countrymen with machetes to show how African religion failed to stop genocide. But not as an exemplar of standard, let alone influential religious practice.

The only good thing I can say about this whole affair is that you had the good sense not to steal a communion wafer from a Catholic Church. Then, even I, most liberal of liberal Catholics, would have come down on you like chips on a Bingo card.

Cambridge offers any number of real-life opportunities to experience actual religious ceremonies. Next time, pop into a local Church, mosque or synagogue instead of mining the tapped out, sensationalistic lode of fringe religion.

Sincerely,

Jean Pouliot

Hoc est SCOTUS meum

Someone has to explain to me how SCOTUS decided that a prayer at the beginning of a public meeting does not put us far, far down the slippery slope of established religion, in contravention of the First Amendment.

Actually, I don't need an explanation.  The conservative wing of the Court is made of five men, all of whom are economically privileged, all of whom are ROMAN CATHOLIC, and all of whom are white, including Clarence Thomas. It's no wonder that people who have grown up in the bubble of privilege have no idea what it feels like to be treated diffrently because of their faith or their skin color or their wealth or their gender. That lack of experience makes them immune to the idea that laws means different things in different contexts. If you haven't had the experience of being treated unfairly because of your gender or your race or your faith, you will be utterly tone deaf to the complaints of people who have been.

Paraphrasing Justice Elena Kagan (a woman and a Jew) imagine being an atheist at a Town Hall meeting where you wanted to get some issue dealt with. The meeting starts with a Christian prayer, asking all to prayer in the name of Jesus, our God and Savior. Are you going to tell me that, as Justice Kennedy would have it, you would leave the room during the prayer, after which your absence would not be noted by the religious people who did pray? Are we to accept the fact that people of faith are so tolerant that they would take no notice of the fact that someone would not participate in their little ritual? If you do, I have a Crusade to sell you. And do we really think that these good people would then rule completely impartially on the atheists's petition?

That's asking a lot of our fellow citizens -- and more than the Founding Fathers did, who had to TRAVEL TO AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT CONTINENT -- never mind to the next room -- to be able to worship as they pleased.

This ruling is pure idiocy, and will be abused, and soon. Just wait for the first Muslim to offer a prayer to Allah, or a Wiccan to insist that everyone thank the Three-Faced Mother. Then you'll see how tolerant our religious siblings really are.

We pray to the Lord -- intentions for May 4

For our Church and those in positions of leadership within it, for the dedicated priests who service our community, and especially today for Father Tom Leclerc: may they always be examples of faith and prophetic witness, especially in times of trouble and heartache, pointing always to the hope of resurrection and renewal, we pray to the Lord...

 

For our world, fractured by ethnic, political, religious and economic strife, that in the breaking and sharing of bread, all may recognize their shared membership in the family of God, we pray to the Lord...

 

For those who struggle with doubt and uncertainty, that like Cleopas and his companion, they may find the fire of faith in unexpected places, that they may recognize Christ in the face of the stranger and in the company of the unknown, we pray to the Lord….

 

That in our community, we always choose to follow the example of the early disciples who sought reconciliation with those who crucified the Lord -- that all divisions may cease, all hurts be healed, and that all walls between people and groups be torn down, we pray to the Lord…

 

For those in mourning, in pain, in sadness or in distress, that the example of the Emmaus meal be a soothing reminder that divine comfort and hope may be as close as our next human encounter, we pray to the Lord.

 

If you desire, please now say aloud any intentions you might have. (pause) For all these intentions, for those expressed in the silence of our hearts and for those written in the book of intentions, we pray to the Lord.

Never out of sequence: An accessible adaptation of the Easter Sequence

Every year, I try to make the Easter Sequence accessible by setting it to the words of a well-known hymn. This year, I set the words to Filii et Filliae, more popularly known as the Easter Alleluia. (If you aren't famliar with the tune, check out this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p1NM_tjtJc)

The Easter Sequence is one of two (the other being sung at Pentecost) that is mandated at those feasts. It is sung immediately after the second reading, and followed immediately by the gospel acclamation, which can lead to a complex transition if the two pieces are in different musical styles (Gregorian chant v blues) . Anyway, feel free to use the adaptiation below, if used with the proper copyright and attribution info.

He is Risen. He is truly Risen!

Easter Sequence (to Easter Alleluia)

Refrain: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia! 

Christians, give voice to our joy, let us sing

Hymns to the Paschaltide Victim and King!

Praises and thankfulness o-offering. Alleluia!

 

Lamb saving sheep: let all ravening cease;

Christ, the Just, granting the guilty release;

Sinners return to God’s table in peace. Alleluia!

Refrain 

Death and Life grappled and bitterly vied;

Life won the vict’ry -- deep, lofty and wide;

Now reigns the Lord of the Living who died. Alleluia!

 

Mary, what saw you as day was restored?

“The empty tomb of my Ri-isen Lord;

I saw Christ Jesus, alive and adored!” Alleluia!

Refrain 

Angels swear: grave clothes and shroud cast away;

Christ, my hope, risen in glory today;

Galilee-bound, he is making his way. Alleluia!

 

Share the good news, with rejoicing now sing!

From his death, vict’ry forever will spring;

Show us your mercy Lord, Victor and King. Alleluia!

 Refrain

Text: Victimae paschali Laude, attributed to Wipo of Burgundy. D. 1048?

Adaptation Copyright © 2014, Jean Edouard Pouliot

 

Kent State and our era of paranoia

Every May the 4th, I can't help but to think back to a warm spring afternoon in 1970 when the Ohio National Guard suddenly and inexplicably gunned down 13 college kids at Kent State University, killing four.

 

What I find intriguing and disquieting are the parallels between that time and ours. In the 1970s, many young people felt that their government had slipped its moorings and was not being responsive to their voices. Perhaps because they felt personally threatened by the possibility of service in Vietnam, many of the young believed that President Nixon and his generation could not be trusted to represent their interests. The unexpected widening of the war by the president, who campaigned on a platform of ending it, seemed like an enormous betrayal -- one that might land young men in combat and into a body bag in a war they didn’t  believe in. Government leaders, like Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes, assumed that campus protests were being organized by shadowy outsiders who were no better than the Klan or Nazi Brownshirts.  The level of distrust and paranoia on both sides, I believe, led directly to the sense of anger and betrayal felt by students, which fed to the panicky emotional state of the guardsmen, which cleared the way for the shootings.

Luckily for the country, Kent State was the worst of the relatively few violent clashes that occurred during that tumultuous period.  After the shooting , it's as though the country collectively drew back from the brink and rethought the way it wanted to deal with dissent. It was clear that the grownups had to take control from the reactionaries, and find less lethal means to deal with political protest. By and large, we have all benefited  from this downgrading of lethality.

What I worry about is how certain well-funded and highly organized elements of our society are anxious to ratchet up the divisions in our country and to make it more acceptable to use violence to solve political problems. In 1970, it was unthinkable that a major television network would foment insurrection and hatred of our legally elected leaders. That might have been true of underground papers on the fringe, but not of CBS, NBC or ABC. Today, an influential news outlet pumps fear-filled, insurrectionist and often false content into the minds of millions of Americans. Sean Hannity's recent espousal of the feeble-minded, racist, anti-government tirades  of Cliven Bundy are just the latest example of how the pot of paranoia and white entitlement is stirred by the media. Folks like Hannity , Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and like-minded others have reversed the social currents of the 1970s -- siding with the powerful and rich while denigrating "feminazis," the poor and non-whites.  They have inverted the counterculture's playbook, giving permission to encourage the majority's sense of entitlement by giving the go-ahead to express what until recently would have been interpreted as racism, jingoism, anti-feminism and pro-imperialist propaganda.

The anti-government forces of the 1970s could only have dreamed of this level of influence and power. The Hannity/Limbaugh/Beck demonizing of federal agents, minorities and women is far more polarizing than anything that the admittedly paranoid Left ever pulled off.

After May 4, 1970, the country began to back away from the lunacy of the paranoia and civil strife that nearly tore our nation apart. We began to find new ways to talk to each other and to institutionalize our new leanings -- that minorities, women and dissidents could find a voice in a democratic society. Cops stopped being "pigs" who protected the privileged, and became enablers for ordinary people to lawfully and safely express their views.

My prayer is that we do not have to experience another spasm like Kent State to bring us to our senses; that people of good will can curb their enthusiasm for those who want to turn us against one another -- whether for political advantage or just for ratings -- and learn to try to understand their neighbors who have divergent views.

The stakes are high. The next civil war will  not be between regions of the country, but will be fought house to house, between neighbors whose political views are informed by those with a political or economic interest in dividing us. We the people have an interest in heeding the lessons of Kent State and making sure that doesn’t happen.

The death penalty becomes us?

The recent execution fiasco in Oklahoma has the death penalty in the news again. And not in a good way.

Inmate Clayton D. Lockett was being injected with an untested, supposedly lethal drug. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the drug didn't do its job. As the sedating drugs were supposed to be taking effect, rendering him unconscious, Lockett gasped and moaned and strained at his restraints. As the drug was injected that was supposed to stop his heart, a vein exploded and the execution was suspended. Forty-five minutes after the start of the process, Lockett had a heart attack and (mercifully) died.

I guess this is where this good liberal is supposed to express horror at the fact that America still executes convicts. Not to mention that my own Church supports a total ban on the death penalty. But I have to confess that, as with many total bans the Church teaches (abortion, contraception, death penalty) I am not completely on board. It seems that, in theory at least, there are some criminals whose crimes are so heinous that keeping them alive serves no useful purpose.

Charles Manson comes to mind, with his stabbing murders of 9 people. The surviving Boston bomber, with 3 deaths, multiple traumatic amputations and to 200 injured to his credit. The Green River Killer, convicted of 49 murders and corpse defilements and confessing to twice that number.

Why let people like this live? Why should they enjoy the gift of long life (Manson is close to 80) when they cut short the lives of so many?

Yet, there are problems with the death penalty.

It shouldn't be a surprise that our justice system is not impartial in the way it deals out death. If you are poor or a person of color, you are disproportionately likely to get death than if you are well-off and white. Science is bearing witness to the unreliability of witness evidence; even witnesses who are absolutely sure of their identifications can be wrong. Prosecutors and judges are often unwilling to reexamine cases when new evidence surfaces -- whether out of ideology or the dislike of being proven wrong. And is it right to kill crazy people?

For all these reasons, the likelihood of executing an innocent person should give death penalty proponents pause.

Then there's the means of inflicting death itself. The human body is a fairly resilient thing. It takes a lot of trauma to kill someone quickly. Take the Boston bombings. The blasts immediately killed 2 people who were standing near the bombs as they went off; they took the life of another in a few minutes. But due to quick bystander intervention, even the most seriously injured were able to survive the 20 minutes of so it took to get them to a hospital. Even President Kennedy, who suffered a massive head wound, "lived" about 30 minutes before succumbing at Parkland Hospital.

So how about killing convicts? Hanging can be gruesome and slow if done badly. Beheading is quick -- if you're OK with being conscious for 30 seconds after the blow. A bullet to the brain, as done in China, might be quick, but who knows? Lethal injection is relatively painless and quick, but still involves the psychic pain and terror of knowing your life is about to end. Not to mention possible feelings of panic as you can't take a breath.

So where does this leave us? Do we avoid imposing death sentences because killing people strikes us as immoral? Is the alternative -- forcing someone to slowly go mad while living in a tiny cage for years or decades, and drastically limiting their interactions with loved ones -- seem any more moral? Any less cruel? There are times when a quick death seems preferable to a lingering and unproductive one.

It's a no-win situation. Oppose the death penalty, and you run the risk of hypocrisy -- of doing it because it makes you feel morally superior. Support the death penalty and you feed your sense of vengeance while putting innocents at risk of death based on their skin color and the size of their bank account.

Some people do not deserve the gift of seeing another sunset or enjoying another meal. And I don;t buy the idea that we should let people live so they show remorse for their crimes, maybe saving their souls in the process. I don't accept the premise that only one's actions in this lifetime count toward heaven. "Saving" someone before they die is not only something that is in human hands. God can surely deal with the murderer who dies in a traffic accident while fleeing the scene of the crime, as well as he can handle one who has forty years of life to repent.

The infliction of death can be made painless. But the imposition of justice will ever be marred by human racial and economic bias, human limitations about visual identification and human susceptibility to ideological and professional hubris. If we hold back from dealing out death, it should not be because some people do not deserve to live, but because of our own inability to act with infallible justice.

Overlaps

Once, I dreamed I had killed a man, and was worried that the police would find out. Another time (the night after I had swung my cat in a grocery bag) I dreamed of being hurled around by a T-Rex. I dreamed of being violent to someone I loved.

Each time, I felt that I was being guided by a higher power, a being who forced me to look at my own capacity for evil. By a being whose ethical standards, to which I aspired, were higher than my own.

This touching of my personal experience with that of a separate being or force is what I call "overlap" -- where my life is touched by that of a loftier dimension.

Many of us look to these experiences for validation of the existence of divinity. These God moments give us the sense, if not the assurance, that God is present in our lives. A dream becomes more than a series of images, but a message from beyond. Dream of a dead person, and you are inhabiting a middle world between the world of our senses and that of ... whatever.

I got to thinking that people rely on overlaps to ground their faith. Some look to experiences, like dreams or voices, to supply the overlap between dimensions. Others rely on the devotions, or the Eucharist or a church building or the Bible to give them that sense of a place where human and divine experience dwell together. No wonder some are reluctant to consider any change that might disturb the relationship! Suggest that the Bible is not a history book, and some people feel that their relationship with God is being taken away.

But is overlap real?

What if we find out someday that dreams are not messages from beyond ourselves, but simply the brain trying to make sense of experience -- even to broaden knowledge without having to endure an experience? What if communities with dreamers are more adaptable because some of its members have brain-generated terrifying experiences that aren't real, but impart real lessons?

I would love it if overlaps were real. If the Bible was real history, real science and real morality. If dreams foretold the future or (better yet) gave actual insights into the present. If near death experiences weren't just neurons shutting down, but a glimpse into life beyond death. If the expensive feeling that comes with intoxication was more than the selective enervation of the brain's pleasure center.

But I am prepared to accept that there are no such easy overlaps between me and God. That my brain is a jellied machine capable of generating its own set of weird impulses. That evolution has crafted a human social structure that rewards ethical behavior and has developed a brain capable of imposing a measure of self-governance.

But while a God that is aloof from human concerns is theoretically possible, it is the insight of thousands of years of human history that suggests he is not aloof. Say what you will about Bible stories, but none of them show a God who is indifferent to his people. The overlap between God and humanity may be far more subtle than dreams, or the literal truth of a particular book. In fact, reliance on these might be a form of idolatry, in which a material object or an experience is worshipped instead of what it represents.

Better to prepare for a time when dreams and books are not manifestations of God, than to lose one's faith when they are shown to be something less than God.