Current Issues – Page 32 – About Things That Matter

Charlie Hebdo: Pourquoi?

Pourquoi? Why? Why do they hate us? This question always seems to surface for westerners following attacks like the one last week where 12 were heinously slaughtered at the offices of the satirical publication, Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

The question of why surfaced for Americans following the attacks of September 11^th, 2001. Then President Bush’s infamous answer was that the “terrorists” hate our freedoms.

Those claiming responsibility for 9/11 had other answers. They said that the attack was a retaliation for innumerable Muslim deaths caused by 80 years of brutal western imperialism following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. It was motivated by U.S. support for the horrors of Israeli occupation of Palestine. It was a response to the deaths of half a million children killed by “American” sanctions imposed on Iraq after the first Gulf War. It was retribution for defiling Muslim holy sites in Mecca and Medina by establishing U.S. military bases there.

Most in the west never heard those answers.

The question “why” was posed again in Paris on Sunday – this time in gigantic letters attached to a statue in the central Place de la Republique where hundreds of thousands gathered to protest the barbarous slaughter of innocents at Charlie Hebdo last Wednesday (Jan. 7^th): POURQUOI?

President Francois Hollande and leaders from Germany, Italy, Israel, Turkey, Britain and the Palestinian territories were in attendance. Even Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Natanyahu, fresh from butchering 500 Muslim children in Gaza while injuring 3000 others and traumatizing an additional 373,000 solemnly marched against the criminal barbarism of killing 12 westerners. No doubt he was as puzzled as others in the vast throng. Why on earth do the Muslims hate us? Why are they so barbaric?

Perhaps he might ask the perpetrators themselves. After all, they were jihadists who enlisted in the war against the United States long before the emergence of ISIS (the so-called Islamic State). Their motivation? Abu Grahib and the torture pictures that shocked the world. With that in mind, do you suppose that the release of the “Torture Report” on December 9^th had anything to do with catalyzing the Kouachi brothers in their decision to do something about it? Or the drone killing of 13 Yemeni wedding-goers on December 12^th?

And as French nationals, why not choose Charlie Hebdo. It symbolized their own country’s participation in the war against Islam. Since 2006 the magazine had been publishing what the Kouachis evidently understood as virulently anti-Muslim propaganda to justify a military campaign against their co-religionists which the French air force joined on September 19^th of last year.

None of this is to defend the killers at Charlie Hebdo. They were absolutely barbaric, absolutely indefensible. The point is rather to second the idea expressed by Gilbert Achcar, the renowned Lebanese-French professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He observes that what the world has experienced since 9/11 is a not a “clash of civilizations,” but a “clash of barbarisms.”

And the reactionary barbarisms of the east cannot be understood without first understanding the causal barbarisms of the west.

By comparison, the latter are wholesale; the former are retail.

Twenty Lessons I learned from My 40 Years of Teaching Social Justice

During the fall semester of 2014, I taught a Religion course at Berea College called “Poverty and Social Justice.” The course was personally significant because it rounded off 40 years of teaching at Berea, where my first class convened in 1974 – exactly 40 years ago. I remember how I came to Berea, fresh from leaving the priesthood, on fire from Vatican II, sensing the increasing importance of liberation theology (see below) and (naively) ready to change the world.

In this 2014 semester, nineteen students (mostly juniors and seniors) participated in REL 126. The students were engaged, committed, funny, energetic and smart. They, along with our readings, films and required community activism, taught me a great deal. And that, by the way, has been my consistent experience since 1974 – I’m the principal beneficiary of the courses I’ve taught. (I’m thankful every day for the path Life has so gently led me follow.)

In any case, I’d like to share twenty of my own specific learnings here. Of course, none of my students would be able to draw these conclusions. After all, they were exposed to the underlying historical events and to the resulting ideas for the first time during the course. However for me, as I’ve indicated, REL 126 represented a kind of capstone to forty years of teaching and nearly half a century of trying to understand the world from the viewpoint of its disenfranchised majority. Grasping that understanding, I’ve come to realize, is the only hope of salvation our world has.

But before sharing those conclusions, let me tell you a bit more about the course itself. Like all of my courses over the years, its basic purpose was to stimulate critical thought about poverty, hunger and what the Christian tradition teaches about social justice. Our readings included Ron Sider’s Just Generosity, Cynthia Duncan’s Worlds Apart, and the Bread for the World 2014 Hunger Report. We also analyzed the (still relevant) 1973 Pastoral Letter by the U.S. Catholic bishops of Appalachia, “This Land Is Home to Me.”

In addition, all of us attended monthly meetings of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) and volunteered for their “Get out the Vote” actions. A KFTC activist spent two of our class periods leading us in a game of “Survive or Thrive,” a wonderfully instructive game she had invented to replicate the problems of international “free trade” agreements. The activist wasn’t our only class guest. A grass roots entrepreneur from a clothing factory in Nicaragua and a Glenmary priest-activist campaigning against Appalachian mountaintop removal also graced our classroom.

Inspired by Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, and taking Plato’s Allegory of the Cave as our guiding image, the course had us attempting to re-vision U.S. history from the viewpoint of the poor and disenfranchised rather than “the official story” of presidents, generals, the rich and the famous.

So we made sure that our current events source reflected those usually neglected viewpoints. To that end, students watched and reported regularly on “Democracy Now.” We even spent some class time watching and discussing a number of interviews with street-level newsmakers by the show’s anchor, Amy Goodman. Additionally class participants researched and reported on issues highlighted on the program including climate change, police militarization, prison privatization, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, reparations to descendants of African slaves, the campaign for a living wage, the rise of ISIS in the Middle East, and Israel’s bombing of Palestinians in Gaza.

In line with our commitment to understanding the experience of the actually poor and disenfranchised, our approach to the Christian tradition in this religion course was that of liberation theology – understood as “reflection on the following of Christ from the viewpoint of those working for the liberation of the poor and oppressed.” Our readings here were drawn from a series on the topic which I had authored and published on my blog site.

A screening of the film “Romero” along with some other shorter documentaries, put flesh on those intentionally brief to-the-point readings. The documentaries emphasized U.S. sponsorship of third world dictatorships under genocidal U.S. allies like Pinochet (Chile), Saddam Hussein (Iraq), the Duvaliers (Haiti) and Somozas (Nicaragua), Mobutu (Congo), and Diem (Vietnam).

Together our intentionally subversive approaches to history and faith were intended to expose students to the untold history of the United States, and to the untold story of Jesus of Nazareth. From all of this, I drew the twenty conclusions I mentioned earlier. Remember, my students could never reach such conclusions. My hope is that someday (if they continue reading outside the dominant culture) they might:

Historically speaking, the United States is the country Adolf Hitler and his backers imagined Germany would be had they triumphed in World War II – the absolute ruler of the capitalist world at the service of corporate interests. In short, the U.S. has become the fascist police state Adolf Hitler aspired to lead.
As such the principal enemies of the United States are those Hitler imagined being the protégés of “Jewish Madness”—viz. the world’s poor and disenfranchised.
These are (and have been since the end of World War II) the objects of what C.I.A. whistle-blower, John Stockwell, has termed the ”Third World War against the Poor” located throughout the developing world. It has claimed more than seven million victims.
This war by the United States has made it the principal cause of the world’s problems in general and especially throughout the former colonial world, as well as in the Middle East, Ukraine, and in the revived threat of nuclear war, along with the disaster of climate change.
Its war against the poor has made the United States a terrorist nation. Compared to its acts of state terrorism (embodied e.g. in its worldwide system of torture centers, it unprovoked war in Iraq, illegal drone executions, the unauthorized bombings in Syria, its preparations for nuclear war), the acts of ISIS and al-Qaeda are miniscule.
Far from “the indispensable nation,” the United States is more aptly characterized (in the words of Martin Luther King) as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Without the U.S., the world would be far less violent.
At home, “our” country increasingly tracks the path blazed by Nazi Germany. It has become a state where corporate executives and their government servants are excused by one set of laws, whereas U.S. citizens are punished by another. Following this regime, law-breakers go unpunished; those who report them are prosecuted.
This type of law is increasingly enforced by a militarized police state in which law enforcement officers represent an occupying force in communities where those they are theoretically committed to “protect and defend” are treated as enemies, especially in African-American and Latino communities.
As a result, new wave of “lynchings” has swept the United States at the hands of “law enforcement” officers who execute young black men without fear of punishment even if their murders are recorded on video from beginning to end.
In addition, disproportionate numbers of blacks and Latinos have been imprisoned in for-profit gulags that rival in their brutality Nazi concentration camps.
The point of the militarized police state and prison culture is to instill fear in citizens – to discourage them from constitutionally sanctioned free speech, protest and rebellion.
As in Nazi Germany, the dysfunctions of “America’s” police state (including poverty, sub-standard housing and schools, drug addiction, and broken families) are blamed on the usual suspects: the poor themselves, especially non-white minorities. They are faulted as undeserving welfare dependents and rip-off artists. Systemic causes of poverty are routinely ignored.
In reality, welfare and other “government programs” represent hidden subsidies to corporate employers such as Wal-Mart and McDonalds. These latter pay non-living wages to their workers and expect taxpayers to make up the difference through the programs just mentioned.
Government programs such as food stamps could be drastically shrunk and limited to the disabled, children, and the elderly, if all employers were compelled to pay their workers a living wage adjusted for inflation on an annual basis. Currently, that wage must be at least $15.00 an hour.
Moreover, since education quality and achievement are the most reliable predictors of students’ future poverty levels, the U.S. education system should be nationalized, teachers’ salaries should be dramatically increased, and all facilities K through 12 regardless of location should enjoy highly similar quality.
All of this should be financed by declaring an end to the so-called War on Terror, withdrawing from foreign conflicts and reducing by two-thirds the U.S. military budget.
Instead, the current system of corporate domination, state terrorism, war against the world’s poor, and lynching of minority men is kept in place by rigging the nation’s electoral system in favor of right wing extremists. They control the system through practices such as unlimited purchase of government (the Citizens United decision), voter suppression tactics (e.g. voter I.D. laws), redistricting, and rigged voting machines. They do not want everyone to vote.
U.S. citizens are kept unaware of all this by a mainstream media and (increasingly) by a privatized system of education owned and operated by their corporate controllers.
As a result, revolution has been rendered inconceivable.
The only hope and prayer is for a huge general economic crash that will awaken a slumbering people.

“The Interview”: Dumb and Dumber Do Regime Change

Recently I spent an hour and 52 minutes watching “The Interview.” I expected having to grit my teeth through nearly two hours of anti-communist propaganda. After all the film was produced by Sony whose CEO, Kaz Hirai, sits on the board of the CIA think-tank, the Rand Corporation. According to investigative journalist, Tim Shorrock, Sony directly consulted the CIA about the screenplay. Langley gave specific approval to “The Interview’s” graphic assassination scene.

Nevertheless, I justified the apparent waste of time on the grounds that the controversy surrounding “The Interview” had made it a cultural event not to be ignored. President Obama’s initial belligerent remarks about Pyongyang’s (completely unsubstantiated) hacking of Sony’s corporate data seemed hasty to say the least. They had made an international incident out of the release of this light-weight comedy.

North Korea’s response, of course, was predictable. Like Cuba, it has for decades been the object of CIA attempts at regime change and sanction. And the hair-brained method proposed in the film for disposal of President Kim Jong Un was completely reminiscent of past CIA attempts on world leaders like Fidel Castro. Moreover, President Obama’s pivot towards Asia, especially with Okinawa bases under threat of expulsion from Japan, has necessitated a high-profile enemy in the region. And North Korea conveniently fit the bill as enemy du jour. No wonder its leadership felt threatened by what they saw as yet another CIA plot to foment rebellion.

As it turned out, however, “The Interview” came across as a more effective send-up of U.S. culture, politics and the CIA than an indictment of North Korea. Whatever the intentions of its producers, its basic take-away was this: U.S. foreign policy is run by provincials who have no understanding of the regimes they routinely attempt to change. Much less do they grasp those regimes’ historical and political contexts.

In fact, the political understanding of the film’s dumb and dumber protagonists, Seth Rogen and James Franco, is summarized in a single slogan repeated throughout “The Interview,” “They hate us ‘cause they ain’t us.” That’s it – a completely ignorant and self-congratulatory level of analysis whose depth rivals Bush 43’s explanation of 9/11, “They hate our freedom.”

However, contrary to their expectations, Rogen and Franco discover in Kim Jong Un (as portrayed in the film) someone totally like them. He’s a frat boy, shallow, insensitive and entirely obsessed with sex, drugs, and American celebrity culture.

Moreover Jong Un’s crimes mirror those of the CIA itself. That is, according to the Langley, the North Korean president’s policies are reprehensible because they starve his people, keep them under constant surveillance, torture his enemies, and threaten the world with nuclear weapons. He therefore deserves to die.

But as North Korea’s “dear leader” himself points out in the film’s climactic interview, those are the very crimes of which the United States itself is guilty – but on a much larger scale. The Americans, he observes, are not just responsible for starting the Korean War. Their decades-long sanctions on the country along with their unrelenting policy of regime change have attempted to create famine throughout the northern part of the peninsula.

Jong Un might have added that the U.S. is one of the world’s most egregious actors when it comes to cyber-warfare and that NSA surveillance hacks into private communications across the globe not just in a single place. The U.S. also maintains torture sites world-wide; it has more prisoners per capita than any other country (including North Korea). It is the only nation to have used nuclear weapons, and is in the process of modernizing its entire nuclear arsenal.

This means that the decision to kill Kim Jong Un represents a subconscious act of self-destruction. Its logic actually justifies attacks on the United States, whose crimes (once again) mirror and dwarf those of the “international criminal” destroyed at the film’s conclusion. This makes the assassination a kind of suicide by proxy – an expression of a death-wish.

What I’m suggesting is that the film’s (so far) overlooked message is this: They don’t hate us ‘cause they ain’t us; they hate us because we are us. And attacking us is far more justifiable than any attack on North Korea.

All of that makes one wonder about Kaz Hirai. Might he not be a double agent? Perhaps he has cleverly tricked the CIA into approving a self-parody that unwittingly makes a laughing stock of the organization’s criminality and idiocy.

Such satire represents the essence of “The Interview,” whether that’s intended or not.

Judging the Torture Report

Let me get this straight.

We’re supposed to believe CIA director John Brennan when he says the 6000 page document is wrong when it indicts him and his organization for lying, brutality, torture, head slamming, crimes against humanity, and sadistic practices such as “rectal hydration,” “rectal feeding” (?), “threatened” rape and execution?

This is the same John Brennan who before his own Inspector General proved him a liar, claimed that the Senate Intelligence Committee Chair, Dianne Feinstein, was wrong about him last July. That’s when she charged that Brennan’s agency tried to undermine her Committee’s investigation of the CIA torture program by breaking into the investigators’ computers.

At that time Brennan contradicted Feinstein with feigned offense and a straight face saying, “Nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn’t do that.”

Oh, but now I guess he’s changed. Now we can trust him. He’s telling the truth this time – as head of an organization whose very job description is to dissimulate, equivocate and outright lie.

But that’s not the half of it. In fact it’s less than 10% of it.

You see, Brennan is treating the heavily redacted 600 page executive summary of the Torture Report as if it were the whole thing. However more than 90% of what the Senate Committee found (the worst 90%, we’re told!) will never see the light of day. That’s because our public servants are convinced that if U.S. citizens and the world knew “the rest of the story,” general outrage would know no bounds.

Imagine what that might mean. That is, if we’re all outraged by the “rectal feeding,” “threats” of rape, and by untold numbers actually killed under torture, what do you suppose is contained in the 90% of the report that’s too gruesome to reveal?

Let me offer some suggestions: actual rape, sodomy, burnings, electric shock, routine killings and systemic sadism beyond any practiced in Abu Ghraib.

No wonder Mr. Brennan (like all criminals) claims innocence. No wonder he would rather forget about the past and “look to the future.” Criminal trials and jail time aren’t attractive to any “perps.”

By the way, here’s how to evaluate the torture report and Brennan’s denials. Ask yourself, what if an identical document were published about the “enhanced interrogation” techniques (EITs) of Cuba, Russia, Iran, North Korea, China, or ISIS ? What would we think of such practices then? Would we wonder whether they constitute torture or not? What would the Fox News pundits and politicians say about Russia’s (EITs)?

What value would we give to the official denials of John Brennan’s counterparts among our designated enemies? And why should we believe that their crimes are any greater than those of the CIA – or that our official culture is somehow superior to theirs?

Oh, I forgot, it’s because the CIA tells us so.

(Sunday Homily) Black Lives, Muslim Lives Matter: Obama’s as Guilty as Wilson & Pantaleo

Readings for Second Sunday of Advent: IS 40:1-5, 9-11; PS 85: 9-14; 2 PT 3: 8-14; MK 1: 1-8. http://usccb.org/bible/readings/120714.cfm

Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice. . . .

The very mention of those names calls to mind the protests that have filled our nation’s streets over the past week – in Ferguson Missouri, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and places in between. The teenager, the father of six, and the sixth grade child represent deeply racist and unjust social structures where criminals and thugs masquerading as law enforcement officers have implicitly been granted a license to kill with impunity.

The nation-wide demonstrations on behalf of black and brown victims of the resulting “American” police state remind us that our country is decidedly on the wrong track. Like John the Baptist in today’s gospel excerpt, statements by New York’s Mayor de Blasio, Eric Holder, President Obama, and the U.N. special rapporteur on torture call us all to what the Greeks called metanoia – a drastic change of direction.

Ironically however that call to repentance is especially addressed to Messrs. Holder and Obama themselves. They, after all, find themselves in charge of a national and world-wide police state of which Mike Brown’s Ferguson and Eric Garner’s Staten Island represent merely the tip of an iceberg. The call to repentance invites all of us to apply pressure for profound systemic reform that far surpasses anything those “leaders” have in mind.

Today’s liturgical readings inspire such thoughts. Listen to the prophet Isaiah as he cries out for repentance and a restructuring of reality so intense that he imagines mountains being levelled and valleys filled. The point is to smooth the way for the advent of a profoundly non-violent God in our midst. The peace-filled change Isaiah envisions is not trivial.

Listen to Jesus’ mentor, John the Baptizer, as he echoes Isaiah word-for-word. (Needless to say, neither Isaiah’s nor John’s words have anything to do with the artificially excited anticipation of our culture’s Winter Festival and its orgy of selling, buying, and conspicuous consumption – even though “Christmas” deceptively continues to somehow associate itself with the homeless child from Nazareth.)

As a matter of fact, the cult of materialism and “Christmas cheer” couldn’t be more antithetical to sincere recollection of the birth of Jesus who had more in common with Mike Brown and Eric Garner than with the white middle-class culture Christmas celebrates.

More specifically, Jesus was the embodiment of nearly everything “good Christians” (presumably) like Officers Wilson and Pantaleo (the executioners of Brown and Garner) give evidence of despising. After all, the working man from Nazareth was not only the poor son of an unwed teenage mother. He was an immigrant whose family took refuge in Egypt, the penniless friend of prostitutes and drunkards, and the prophet drummed out of his faith community as villain possessed by demons. He was the victim of torture and capital punishment who was treated as a terrorist by the reigning imperial power.

To the authorities of their day, both the Baptizer and Jesus even looked like Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Both were dark-skinned, either black or brown; they were not white men. Today’s gospel emphasizes how poorly John was dressed.

To repeat: during his life Jesus was impoverished, homeless, unemployed, accused of being subversive, placed on death row, and ultimately executed. As a Jew, he was considered as “other” and worthless to Roman authorities as Mike Brown was to Darren Wilson or Eric Garner to Daniel Pantaleo. He was as worthless as Abdulrahman Al-awlaki (pictured above) was to Barack Obama.

And that brings me to today’s real call to repentance.

It can’t merely be:

A superficial call to “trust” – an echo of Rodney King’s “Can’t we all get along?”
A reform of police culture
A de-militarization of police arsenals
A mandating of special independent prosecutors to handle incidents like those in Ferguson and Staten Island
Or even prosecution and conviction of police thugs like Wilson and Pantaleo

Instead, our nation has to address the root of the problem which is a world-wide policy of extra-judicial killings of racially-profiled Muslims and dark-skinned poor people. (That’s what a “signature strike” means as executed by drone “pilots.”)

Put otherwise, President Obama, Eric Holder and their minions are as guilty as Wilson and Pantaleo. All of them place themselves above the law. They kill with impunity those “others” they consider expendable. They answer to no one. They refuse to investigate much less prosecute such crimes.

John the Baptizer’s call to repentance summons us to publicize such guilt and completely withdraw support from the policies of the thug leaders of the world-wide U.S. police state.

That, I think, is what metanoia and repentance mean for “Americans” this particular advent.

Thanksgiving Table-Talk: Immigration Reform

I’m not looking forward to Thanksgiving. Oh, it’s not that I don’t like turkey and won’t eat my share. It’s just that, like most of you, I’ve got this Fox News brother-in-law, and he gives me indigestion. I see Harry once a year, and for the past six Thanksgivings it’s always the same: complaints about Obama. You know the drill; just read Rush Limbaugh’s current talking points. They’re all sure to surface at Thanksgiving dinner.

This year, no doubt, we’ll end up arguing about immigrants, immigration reform, and the imperial presidency. My brother-in-law will complain about “illegals” (that’s what he’ll call undocumented workers), the law, amnesty, border security, and Obama’s failure to reach across the aisle to well-meaning and otherwise cooperative Republicans.

But most of all, my dear relative will complain about the disruptive effects of “the brown peril” – waves of immigrants pouring over our borders and disrupting our economy. “I mean,” he’ll say, “if we keep giving amnesty to ‘those people,’ they’ll disrupt everything. You just can’t let everybody into the country without rules. ‘Freedom’ like that is simply anarchy. And anarchy is destructive. They’ll eventually take all the good jobs.”

Well, here’s what I plan on telling old Harry this year:

“You see, Harry, we’re finally getting a taste of the disruption economies like Mexico have experienced since 1994 and the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It was then that in the name of “free trade” tsunami waves of capital investment were unleashed across the Mexican border. To Mexican farmers it was an onslaught of “white peril” that dwarfs any threat you and I might experience from brown people.

“For instance, cheap American corn (actually subsidized in the NAFTA agreement) drove Mexican farmers out of business. True, a relatively few of them got employment in maquiladoras (assembly plants). But many of those factories soon closed when it became possible to hire lower wage workers in China and Vietnam. And in any case, working in the maquilas meant moving from the countryside to polluted and dangerous cities. It also meant accepting wages of $1.50 a day with no bathroom breaks. Conditions like those inevitably cause desperate workers to relocate to where the money is – to where the jobs are. And that’s the United States.

“Remember, Harry, there are two main components of the economic equation – not just capital. Labor is just as important. So any “free trade agreement” that allows capital to move without regulation should allow the same liberty to labor. Instead, the NAFTA insisted on free movement of capital alongside a captive labor force.

“Workers implicitly recognize the injustice of all that even if they can’t say the words. So despite ‘state law’ forbidding it, the labor force will obey the dictates of capitalism’s Sacred Law of supply and demand – of self-interest. Like capital, labor will migrate to where the money is. And you can’t really stop it. That’s capitalism.

“So here’s the way to stem the brown peril:

Renegotiate the NAFTA recognizing labor’s freedom of movement as well as capital’s.
That will mean electing governments on all sides of “free trade agreements” that truly represent working people and not just the corporations.
Make sure that ALL stake-holders are represented at the negotiating table – including male and female workers, children, environmentalists, and trade unionists.
Make sure the final product protects the environment and addresses climate change.
See that the newly elected people’s governments establish a living NAFTA wage of $15.00 an hour – indexed to inflation rates.

“Without such provisions, Harry, I’m afraid workers will look abroad to better their condition. They’ll continue (like their capitalist counterparts) to act in their own self-interest relocating quite naturally to where the money is. Really, we can’t do anything about it.

Like I say, that’s capitalism.”

Pope Francis and the Revolutionary Significance of the Lateran Basilica

Yesterday the entire Roman Catholic Church celebrated the feast of the dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome. That’s right Roman Catholics everywhere turned their attention to a seemingly obscure building in Rome. Pastors from every pulpit, I’m sure, took the occasion to urge us all to explore the wonders of the basilica the next time we find ourselves in Rome. (I’ll try to remember that on my next visit to the Holy City.)

But there’s more to the commemoration than we’re led to believe. That’s because the arch-basilica of St. John Lateran (named for both John the Baptist and John the Evangelist) is actually the pope’s parish church. Yes, Pope Francis’ parish church is not St. Peter’s; it’s St. John Lateran. Pastors yesterday, no doubt, told us that too.

They also probably said that St. John Lateran has enjoyed such prominence since the arch-basilica was first built in the early 4^th century. Its original site was a gift of the Emperor Constantine who awarded the Lateran Palace to the pope of the time. His name was probably Miltiades. The palace got its own name from the Laterani family, the citadel’s proprietors. They were trusted bureaucrats who faithfully served Roman emperors for many years.

And that’s the point I’d like to make here – the Constantine connection. St. John Lateran offers archeological evidence of the tragic moment in history when the would-be followers of the poor working man, Jesus of Nazareth, sold the soul of the church to the highest bidder. The buyer happened to be the Roman Empire – the very agency responsible for the execution of the one Christians pretend to follow. Constantine paid in the coin of land grants and palaces like the Lateran castle.

Can you spell “co-optation” in its most debilitating form?

The result was the nearly complete corruption of the church. Popes started to act like kings and emperors themselves.

In other words, the Church got into bed with Constantine in 313 (the Edict of Milan). Sadly, it didn’t escape till the second half of the 20^th century with the development of liberation theology – which the current pastor of St. John Lateran, Pope Francis, has embraced.

That’s right. The pope has embraced the strain of theology repudiated by his two immediate predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. On this please check out the wonderful article by Newsweek’s Paul Vallely. He published it less than a month ago under the “The Crisis that Changed Pope Francis.”

The pope’s conversion is mirrored in his apostolic exhortation, “The Joy of the Gospel,” published last year at this time. The document calls for a “new chapter” in the history of the Catholic Church and for the church to embark on a “new path” (Joy of the Gospel 1, 25). On this new path, the pope says, things cannot be left as they presently are (25). Instead they must include new ways of relating to God according to new narratives and new paradigms (74) – including new customs, ways of doing things, times, schedules and language (27), and with emphasis on better prepared and delivered homilies (135-159). According to the pope the roles of women must be expanded, since women are generally more sensitive, intuitive, and otherwise skilled than men (103, 104).

All of this the pope said quite clearly. And he called for the laity to take the reins.

As far as I can see, NOTHING at the parish level has changed since last November.

As lay people called by Francis to exercise our power, what should we do about that?

The feast of the dedication of the pope’s parish church is a good occasion for answering that question.

About Last Night: Reflections on the Mid-Term Results

Like many Progressives, I woke up on Wednesday quite depressed. The drubbing the Democrats took in the mid-term elections was enough to bring to mind thoughts such as:

•Wow! Even Scott Walker . . .
•The tide of discontent represented by the mid-terms is absolutely disastrous for:
– The poor
– Working families
– African-Americans
– Women
– The elderly
– Young people
– The uninsured
– The imprisoned
– Tribal people who continue to be the victims of “America’s” unending wars
– And, above all, the environment!

But those were just the discouraged, cobwebby ruminations of a sleepy radical clearing his head to face a country whose senate will now be led by Kentucky’s own Mitch McConnell.

However, watching the morning-after report on “Democracy Now” put matters in perspective. There Amy Goodman interviewed John Nichols, a political writer for The Nation. His report on the election aftermath is entitled “Obama Need Not Accept Lame Duck Status.”

In his piece, Nichols recalls that the last five two-term presidents – Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II –all faced in their final two years, a Congress with both houses controlled by the opposition. Yet all five finished strongly with quite high approval ratings (except for Bush II) and significant accomplishments during what was supposed to be their “lame duck” years.

This is not the time to give up, Nichols insisted. Instead it’s time to double-down on grass-roots issues making it clear to the President and to the Congress that the people’s concerns are not governed by the left/right ideologies that play into the Corporate State’s obvious strategy of Divide and Rule. Instead on the issues that mean the most to us, the grassroots is guided by a sense of fair play, the Golden Rule, and simple justice.

In this Nichols was echoing the thought of Ralph Nader in his recently published book, Unstoppable: the emerging left-right alliance to dismantle the corporate state. There Nader argues that ordinary Americans come together on a broad range of issues that transcend left-right divisions. Nader enumerates 25 of them including most prominently:

•The necessity of overcoming government gridlock
•Minimum wage increases
•Equal pay for women
•Infrastructure rebuilding
•Affordable college tuition
•The need for health care reform
•Retaining Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid
•Resistance to the surveillance state
•Protection of government whistle-blowers
•Repeal of Citizens United
•Skepticism about bloated military budgets and resulting wasteful foreign adventures
•Opposition to nebulous free trade agreements
•Rejection of further tax breaks for the wealthy
•The urgency of addressing global warming
•The futility of the war on drugs
•The scandal of voter suppression

On these issues, Nader says, all of us have to (1) join local conversations and form little alliances where we live, (2) make sure those conversations bubble up into the media, and (3) get the issues on the table for the next election cycle.

This is not the time to give up. Rather, it’s time to join together across the chasms that the plutocracy fosters to divide us. It’s time for grassroots movements to address our country’s real problems and to force politicians to do the same, but on our behalf.

(Sunday Homily) Happy Day of the Dead: Remembrances & Prayers

Readings for the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed (All Souls): WIS 3:1-9; PS 23:1-6; ROM 5: 6-11; JN 6: 37-40. http://usccb.org/bible/readings/110214.cfm

Today is the feast of All Souls – or as they call it in Latin America, the “Day of the Dead.” In Mexico, the commemoration of “the faithful departed” is really a triduum that begins on Halloween, proceeds through the Feast of All Saints (Nov. 1st) and finishes today with “All Souls Day” (Nov. 2nd).

In Mexico there are parades and costumes, and skeleton manikins dressed up in silks and finery. In a mocking, light-hearted way, the day reminds everyone of the shortness of life, the impermanent nature of pleasure, prestige, profit and power, and the inevitability of our own fast-approaching demise.

Since death is inevitable and an integral part of life, the Day of the Dead invites us all – “believers” or not – to recall those who have gone before us to “rest in the sleep of peace” and to ready ourselves for The Great Transformation by looking death square in the face.

So to begin with, think about your own loved ones who have passed away. No doubt, there’s some pain in doing that. After all, we loved them. In those terms, today I’m thinking especially of a dear friend and mentor of mine, Glen Stassen. He died unexpectedly this last year. He was a great scholar, teacher, author and peace activist. He taught me so much. And then there are those public figures – like Pete Seeger, Maya Angelou and Robin Williams – whom we all recently lost.

We miss people like that. Nonetheless, death does not wound us without at the same time offering new understandings and appreciations of the ways the lives of those loved ones continue in and around us. In some sense, the ripples of their stories have influenced not only us, but the entire universe.

That’s especially true of the mother and father figures in our lives (not always our biological parents, of course).

Allow me to set the tone by recalling (and honoring) my own parents for a moment.

I am fortunate to be able to identify my original Gift-Givers as my actual mom and dad – Edith and Ray Seul. I owe so much to them and the innumerable ways their lives and deaths have made me and my three siblings what we are. They were wonderful parents – not perfect to be sure – but wonderful all the same.

I think of my mother as my spiritual teacher. She was lovely and gentle, light-hearted, but at the same time quite serious about doing the right thing. Above all her simple faith governed her life. She was a convert to Catholicism having been brought up a Swedish Lutheran – as Edith Swanson. And while she was serious about being Catholic, she somehow made it clear that Protestants were O.K. too. Along with my female grade school teachers (the faithful Sisters of St. Joseph) mom’s example started me on the path to the priesthood and to ecumenical thinking. I love her for that.

I think of my dad whom I had the privilege of attending full time during the final weeks of his life. Dad was strong, a truck driver, and fun-loving. His brothers say he was a wild street-fighter in his youth. But then (they’d joke) he met my mother and she “made a man of him.” That’s how they put it.

Like my mother, Dad took his faith quite seriously too. He was a member of the Holy Name Society and went on spiritual retreats several times, I recall. He brought us back medals and “holy cards.” Dad clearly wanted to live a good life. That was true to such an extent that when I left the priesthood and decided to marry my wife, Peggy, he chose not to come to our wedding. I’m convinced it was a matter of conscience for him. Peggy and I would be living in sin, he thought, and he could not appear to give his approval. None of that however prevented him from later accepting Peggy and loving her.

Yes, I’m grateful for my parents. I love them, and miss them. Not a morning passes without my offering prayers of thanksgiving for mom and dad. So on this Day of the Dead, my mind is filled with nostalgia (rather than sadness) over their loss.

The Day of the Dead also brings that urgency I mentioned earlier – around my own fast-approaching death and the need I feel to use these declining years to make my contribution to a world careening towards disaster as never before. It’s also a time for imagining what awaits me after I breathe my last.

For the past few years the great fifth century mystic, Augustine of Hippo, has helped me think about death, its process and what comes after. He wrote a very long sentence I’ve found so helpful in thinking about death that I’ve committed it to memory and often use for meditation. Here’s what Augustine said. See if his words help you:

Imagine if all the tumult of the body were to quiet down, along with all our busy thoughts about earth and sea and air; if the very world should stop, and the mind stop thinking about itself, go beyond itself, and be quite still;

if all the fantasies that appear in dreams and imagination should cease, and there be no speech, no sign:
Imagine if all things perishable grew still – for if we listen they are saying, “We did not make ourselves; he made us who abides forever” – imagine then, that they should say this and fall silent, listening to the very voice of the one who made them and not to that of God’s creation;

So that we should hear not his word through the tongues of men, nor the voice of angels, nor the clouds’ thunder, nor any symbol, but the very Self which in these things we love, and go beyond ourselves to attain a flash of that eternal wisdom which abides above all things:

And imagine if that moment were to go on and on, leaving behind all other sights and sounds but that one vision which ravishes, absorbs, and fixes the beholder in joy; so that the rest of eternal life were like that moment of illumination that leaves us breathless:

Would this not be what is bidden in scripture, “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord?

So that’s what happens in death, is it? The end of the world – bodily sensations, thought, and fantasies; great stillness within and without; no sound from human voice or nature itself; but immersion in wisdom, light and breathless joy. That’s what awaits us. At least Augustine thought so.

How different (and so much more consoling) is that vision from what I once anticipated in terms of “the last things” as so wonderfully, but (for the naïve) misleadingly expressed in Dante’s immortal Divina Comedia: death, judgment, heaven, hell. I can no longer believe that as literally as I once did. In fact, I’m persuaded to make my own the prayer of a medieval mystic. (This is another passage I use for my meditations):

Lord, if I love you because I desire the joys of heaven, close its gates to me. And if I love you because I fear the pains of hell, bury me in its depths. But if I love you for the sake of loving you, hide not your face from me.

The mystic’s prayer is a rejection of the childish, hedonistic, and self-interested beliefs about the after-life that I was brought up on. It’s an embrace of the mystical vision that recognizes harmony with God (or Ultimate Reality, the Ground of Being, or Nature with a capital “N”) as the purpose of life. All those other goals (pleasure, profit, power, prestige), I’ve found, are empty and quite misleading.

That learning was reinforced in India last year during our four months in Mysore. The idea of reincarnation, I learned, is not far-fetched and is in some way supported by the theory of evolution. And so on this Day of the Dead, I make my own the prayer that my meditation teacher, Eknath Easwaran recited on his own death bed – once again using the personal term “Lord” to address the mysterious Origin of the things that matter: Life and Love:

Lord, fill my heart with love and devotion for you. And burn out the seeds of selfish desire and sense craving from my mind. Grant that I might be carried by you from this life to the next without suffering, and that I might be born into a holy family with my hear overflowing with love and devotion to you from my earliest childhood onward.

I want that to be my prayer on my death bed.

There’s a final thought I’d like to share with you on this day of the dead – this one from the great American poet, Stanley Kunitz. “The Long Boat” is a poem that reminds me strongly of my father in law, Bob duRivage, who was a sailor and (in my opinion) a sage, and a saint. He loved life and left this world reluctantly. Because of its sailing theme and the poem’s last line, I committed it to memory in Bob’s honor. Because the poem is about death, I hope (on this Day of the Dead) that it may also you think deep thoughts about your own approaching demise and make decisions accordingly:

When his boat snapped loose
from its mooring, under
the screaking of the gulls,
he tried at first to wave
to his dear ones on shore,
but in the rolling fog
they had already lost their faces.
Too tired even to choose
between jumping and calling,
somehow he felt absolved and free
of his burdens, those mottoes
stamped on his name-tag:
conscience, ambition, and all
that caring.
He was content to lie down
with the family ghosts
in the slop of his cradle,
buffeted by the storm,
endlessly drifting.
Peace! Peace!
To be rocked by the Infinite!
As if it didn’t matter
which way was home;
as if he didn’t know
he loved the earth so much
he wanted to stay forever.

(Sunday Homily) Jesus Endorses “Slow Money”

Readings for 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time: IS 45: 1, 4-6; PS 96: 1-5, 7-10; I THES 1: 1-5B; MT 22: 15-21. http://usccb.org/bible/readings/101914.cfm

Well, it’s time for your pastor to trot out those well-worn platitudes around Jesus’ famous “Render” riddle. So after reading this morning’s gospel about payment of taxes to Caesar, your priest or minister will say something about separation of church and state. Ho-hum. Caesar’s realm is the political, he’ll say; God’s is the religious. Caesar’s is less important than God’s, of course. But be sure to vote (Republican) on November 4th anyway – just to make sure that the anti-abortionists win. Never mind that their policies are pro-war, anti-life (apart, I suppose, from their single issue) and suicidal in terms of climate change. Those are merely political concerns. See ya next week.

Problem is: all that has nothing to do with today’s reading. In fact, it entirely misses the point of Jesus outwitting his questioners in their attempt to entrap him with a question about taxation that had no good answer – except the unforeseen one that Jesus gave.

Jesus is smarter than his opponents. That’s the obvious point.

The less obvious one is that Jesus’ response attacks the Roman Empire itself. It undercuts its economic base by rejecting Rome’s “fast money” in favor of the Jewish insurgency’s “slow money.”

Have you heard of that concept – I mean slow money? It’s explained in Woody Tasch’s book, Slow Money: Investing as if food, farms, and fertility mattered (White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing 2008).

Building off Carlo Petrini’s idea of Slow Food, Tasch’s book presents the case for divesting from the haste of the global economy whose lightning fast computerized operations are necessarily devoid of thought about things that really matter. “Fast money,” as Tasch calls such transactions thinks of nothing but the corporate bottom line.

The outcomes of such inattention are evident for all to see. They include climate chaos, topsoil loss, water waste and pollution, as well as loss of jobs at home in favor of low labor costs abroad. Fast money causes inequalities which give 35 men as much wealth as half the world’s population. Fast money is like “fast food” which fills bellies but destroys health.

Slow money, on the other hand, invests locally, thoughtfully, and at a pace that imitates the very leisurely processes of nature. So Tasch’s book calls for a correspondingly paced economy. The slow money approach preserves family farms, encourages the growth of organic foods, and prevents waste of soil and water, while eliminating the contradiction of widespread hunger existing alongside fast-food induced obesity.

Once again, I bring that up because Jesus’ response to his interlocutors in today’s gospel represents rejection of Rome’s fast money. At the same time, it implicitly endorses a local form of slow money that almost everyone overlooks.

Recall the story’s pivotal question. “Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”

If Jesus answered the way your pastor says, the Great Teacher would have fallen into the trap set by an unlikely alliance of Herodians (pro-Rome lackeys) and Pharisees (anti-Rome populists).

Saying “Yes, pay taxes to Caesar,” would have discredited Jesus in the eyes of the poor who comprised his main audience hanging on his every word. The hated Roman tax system cost them as much as 50% of their yearly income.

On the other hand, if Jesus had said “No,” that would be reason enough to have him arrested and turned over to the imperial authorities on charges of subversion. [In fact, that did become one of the charges at Jesus’ trial: “We found this man misleading our nation and forbidding to pay taxes to Caesar, and saying that He Himself is Christ . . . (LK 23:2)] Does that sound like Jesus ever said “Pay your taxes?”

So instead of saying “yes” or “no,” Jesus turns the tables on his questioners in a way that convicts them instead of himself.

“Show me an imperial coin,” Jesus asks; “I, of course, don’t carry any.”

One of the interrogators (probably from among Rome’s collaborating Herodians) obligingly reaches into his pocket and pulls out a shiny denarius. By that very act, he’s already fallen into Jesus’ trap. All bystanders can hear the cage door slam, as the insincerity of the Pharisees and Herodians stands exposed for all to see. Jesus’ follow-up question makes clear why.

“Whose image and inscription is on that coin, he asks?

“Caesar’s” his antagonists reply.

“Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s,” Jesus says, “and to God what is God’s.”

Case closed.

You see, no good Jew would carry Roman money. (And here comes the part about slow money.) Instead, Jewish nationalists did business using coins minted by Jerusalem’s Revolutionary Provisional Government. On its face was the image of a palm branch – the Provisionals’ “flag.” Such money was of no use to the Romans and could only be used locally to support the Jewish economy.

In fact, the insurgents forbade using Roman currency at all. That’s because doing so benefitted the Romans by giving them control over the Jewish economy.

And besides, carrying Roman coin recognized Caesar’s claim to own Judea which in Jewish eyes belonged only to God. In fact for good Jews (as today’s first reading and responsorial make clear), EVERYTHING belongs to God. That leaves absolutely NOTHING for Caesar – except his own idolatrous servants clutching his pathetic coins in their bloated hands.

Even more, the face of Roman coins displayed a forbidden image – that of Augustus himself with the inscription surrounding the image identifying the emperor as “the Son of God.” The image and inscription made carrying the coin not only unpatriotic, but an act of idolatry. That in turn meant that the bearers of the coin themselves belonged to Caesar not Israel’s God, Yahweh.

Again, case closed.

All of this should remind us that our attitude towards money and its connection with imperialism is a spiritual matter of deep concern to those wishing to follow the Way of Jesus. As today’s readings remind us, everything belongs to God who (as Isaiah puts it in today’s first reading) is concerned about the welfare of “all nations” and not about the 1% or any abstract corporate bottom line. Empire’s God (as in “in God we trust”) is the God of fast money and not the God of Jesus who stood with those resisting the wholesale robbery that empire always represents.

So how do we avoid empire’s fast money when our wallets’ contents and those of our closets and garages convict us of idolatry? Here are a few of Tasch’s suggestions:

• Imitate Nature and her pace.
• Slow down everything – from your thinking processes to the way you walk and wash dishes.
• Change thinking patterns from fast money’s quarter and years to slow money’s seasons and eons.
• Where available (as with “Ithacash” in Ithaca, New York) use local currencies instead of greenbacks for local purchases.
• Adopt role models like poet, Wendell Berry, and Amish farmer, Scott Savage, rather than Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
• Change allegiances from institutions and organizations (like “America” and members of its military-industrial complex) to land, household, community and place.
• Grow a garden and eat its produce.
• Stay away from fast food and out of Wal-Mart’s and Lowes’ Big Boxes.
• If you must invest in the stock market, “create a portfolio of venture investments in early-stage sustainability-promoting food companies.”

Like Jesus’ response to the Pharisees and Herodians, such practices undercut empire and its destructive haste.

What other strategies can you think of to subvert fast money structures and practices?