Category: Current Issues

As a former Roman Catholic priest, liberation theologian, and emeritus professor of Peace and Social Justice from Berea College in Kentucky, I find myself smiling a lot lately. That’s because my daily prayers are at last being answered.  Evidence is pouring in on every side that the world I grew up in is crumbling at its very foundations. And good riddance! The Catholic Church, the most important institution of my youth and early adulthood, and one of the most politically conservative forces on the planet, finds itself in irreversible crisis and decline. The world economy shaped by the free trade doctrine of the “Washington Consensus,” has reached and exceeded the limits of corporate globalization. And most importantly, U.S. Empire lately acknowledged and embraced as such by Washington and the U.S. media, is coming apart at the seams. All of this is caused or accelerated by the ICT (information communications technology) revolution that has changed the world especially over the last fifteen years. Again, this is just what I’ve been praying for. Wikileak’s Julian Assange embodies it all.

This week let’s explore the demise of the Catholic Church.

The Defunct Church

Since all critique begins with religion, take the Catholic Church for starters (please!). It hasn’t been the same since Vatican II. Following the Council’s closure in 1965, cornerstones of its organizational structure have simply disappeared. The ranks of its priesthood have been decimated. Seminaries have been downsized and virtually emptied. The sisterhood which staffed Catholic schools has all but vanished. In my day, every good Catholic boy and girl at least briefly considered entering the “religious life.” Talk to your children about becoming a priest or nun these days, and most will laugh in your face.

And with the marginalization of Catholic schools and the disappearance of sisters in the classroom, Catholic piety and morality has changed profoundly as well.  For instance, time was when Catholics like me would line up for confession on Saturdays once a week or once a month. The less pious were obliged to confess at least once a year “under pain of mortal sin.”  No more. Catholics have voted with their feet. That balloting shows they no longer believe in confession. In the real world (as opposed to the de rigueur confessional sequences in innumerable movies) few indeed darken the confessional’s door. After doing so weekly from the age of 7 to 30, I myself don’t even remember the last time I did. It must have been 25 or 30 years ago.  

Another example: before the Council, it was a mortal sin to “miss Mass” on Sunday or holy day of obligation, like the just-past Ascension Thursday. Presumably, there are millions of people in hell right now because they didn’t attend Mass on those days as legislated.  However, if they’re like the pastor of my church, priests today don’t even bother to remind the faithful that the “holy day” obligation exists at all; much less that ignoring it means an eternity of suffering in the after-life. The clergy has learned that few out there are any longer persuaded. So priests have just stopped talking about it.

And why not? Hell, even the pope has cast doubt on eternal punishment. In a series of Lenten reflections shortly before his own death, Pope John Paul II observed that “heaven” and “hell” are not places like those pictured in Dante’s Paradiso and Inferno. Instead, he said, they refer to spiritual or psychological states of being in this world. Then, immediately reverting to the spatial model, he went on to say that we can’t even be sure that anyone actually inhabits hell. (That, of course, prompts the question about the difference between a hell with no one in it and no hell at all.) In other words even if only unconsciously, Catholics including the pope have rejected the traditional afterlife as nonsense.

And then there’s the matter of sex, the perennial obsession of the Catholic Church – and most other denominations. Of course given the pedophilia crisis, good sense would dictate utter silence about sex on the part of church “leaders.” Nonetheless, they garrulously insist on pronouncing on this topic at every opportunity. But here’s another area where hardly anyone’s listening.  I mean, look at any relevant survey. Catholics in apparently good conscience resort to abortion and divorce just as frequently as their “non-Catholic” counterparts. And (Be honest!) despite your own posturing and parental sermons, have your kids even pretended they were “saving themselves for marriage?” Probably not.  Even “good Catholics” are making up their own minds here. The availability of cheap and effective contraception has changed everything for almost everyone. Catholics are no exception.

Make no mistake about it. Vatican II is not entirely to blame or praise for all of this. A new awareness of the world fomented by computer technology and especially by its dispersed, bottom-up iterations over the last 15 years has played a pivotal role.  I’m talking about personal computers, file sharing, wireless, Wi-Fi, Skype, Facebook, and Twitter.  They have made us all more aware than ever what others think and do even in cultures far distant from our own. And if we remain in doubt, Wikipedia can answer our questions instantaneously. So, when an independent commission published its lengthy and devastating report about widespread pedophilia among Ireland’s Catholic clergy, people were reading it first-hand within hours. Within that same time frame, comment and analysis flew across the web.  Letters, phone calls, and e-mails of protest were flooding the Vatican. No doubt thousands made resolutions to leave the church or never to put another penny in the collection plate.     

All of this made undeniably clear the extent to which the church has failed to adapt to profoundly new circumstances. “Lapsed Catholics” and others long ago achieved that clarity. And their numbers have grown proportionately. Indeed “former Catholics” have become our country’s second largest denomination. Don’t be fooled: this is a major cultural shift that affects not just the Catholic Church but Christianity and religion in general. According to scholars of evolutionary Christianity, it’s even bigger than the Reformation, and more akin to the change that occurred when Judaism morphed into Christianity in the first century of our era. Here the center of belief is not tradition as it was for Catholics. Nor is it the Bible as it has been for Protestants since the 16^th century.  Instead the basis of altered faith (or lack of it) is evidence provided by experience, by more widespread education, and by the newly available means of information and communication. You can’t change those things without profoundly changing consciousness.

The question is, will the laity and/or the (very) few enlightened clergy that remain care enough to take the reins of power and decision-making into their own hands to reform the church – beginning at the local level. Or is the church truly on an irreversible descent into total irrelevance?

  Last week the Obama administration admitted publicly for the first time what the entire world has long known. Through its spokesperson, John Brennan and then personally, the President disclosed that the United States has been using remotely controlled drone technology to carry out targeted extra-judicial executions in various countries in the Middle East, Africa, and elsewhere. Such capital sentences were, the President assured, careful, deliberate, responsible, and in full accord with the law.

                Apart from questions international lawyers have about that latter claim, and despite the President’s assurances, the criteria for targeting foreign nationals – and now U.S. citizens – remain extremely loose. Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin and others have shown that their application inevitably results in the killing of civilians. In fact, hundreds of such instances of “collateral damage” have been recorded in Pakistan alone. Faulty intelligence, misidentifications of targets and failure to understand local cultures are among the reasons for such slaughter of innocents by remote control.

                According to Benjamin in her book, Drone Warfare, the criteria for drone attacks on suspected terrorists are basically two. The targeted are first of all known leaders and members of terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda. Those falling under a second criterion fit a profile of suspicious activity such as keeping company with known terrorists, lending them support, or carrying weapons in a suspicious manner.

                These, of course, are the same rules of engagement empires have always supplied their death squads to justify their murders of insurgents and the rebels-against-occupation whom empires routinely label “terrorists.” As a matter of fact, they were the same ones used by the Roman Empire two thousand years ago to justify the assassination of Jesus of Nazareth. In Rome’s eyes, he not only associated with insurgents and terrorists, Jesus was directly guilty of stirring up the people and of threatening institutions including the Jewish Temple system and the Roman Empire itself. His incendiary statements and messianic claims also made him a prime target for elimination.

If there were drone technology in Jesus’ day, a first-century equivalent of Wikileaks might well have published the following memo from Pontius Pilate to Caesar Augustus about the well-known insurgent and terrorist, Jesus of Nazareth. (Biblical references have been anachronistically added to document sources for the memo’s accusations):     

Your Majesty Exalted Son of God:

You have advised that we here at the Jerusalem Praetorium should identify targets for Rome’s careful, deliberate, responsible, and entirely legal drone operations. I write to inform you of one such target. This one goes by the name “Yeshua ben Miryam,” though his nom de guerre is “Son of Man” (more about that below). The memo which follows is of unusual length, I concede. However its detail is a measure of my desire to assure you that the evidence against ben Miryam is so overwhelming that no mistake is possible in my designating him for elimination. In fact, of all the terrorist subjects recently reported by this office, this one most clearly fulfills the protocols for our very precise remotely controlled operations. This Yeshua is not only a terrorist himself, he runs a gang of terrorists, and is armed and dangerous.

To begin with, Yeshua (aka the Master) comes from the town of Nazareth in the Galilee. As you know from our country’s experience about 20 years ago with the Jewish rebellion in Sephoris (just 5 miles from Nazareth) this has always been a hotbed of insurgents against our entirely peaceful purposes. You remember too that our policy in Sephoris was to presume that everyone in the area was somehow involved in the insurrection. That justified our death squads and scorched-earth policy. Somehow, this Yeshua escaped. I mean he should have been killed then, because no doubt he was some kind of message- runner (all the child-soldiers in his age cohort did that).

In any case, they say that his mother, Miryam, was some kind of insurgent poet. One of her pieces of cheap doggerel identifies a “mighty” jihadist God “who put down the powerful from their seat,” and who “fills the hungry with good things, while the rich he has sent away empty” (Lk.1:46-55). What I’m saying is that this character Yeshua was fed insurgent doctrine with his mother’s milk, if you will.

Besides, they report that this Yeshua of Nazareth has taken on your title “Son of God” (Mk.l:1). He apparently adopted this imperial pretension after he took over the “Baptizer Gang” run by that nationalist cult leader called John Baptizer. (Remember, he was a highly suspect character finally arrested and executed by our man in Galilee, Herod.)

Since then, our subject has not only been called “Son of God,” he’s been speaking everywhere about establishing an alternative to the Roman Empire. He calls it the “Kingdom of God.” When questioned about his intentions, he speaks vaguely in code (they call it “parables”) – an evasive technique commonly used, as you well know, by insurgents everywhere. “Kingdom of God” seems to refer to what our Palestinian Province would be like if Yeshua’s God rather than you, our august Emperor, were king. In any case, story has it that following a ritual baptism by John, this Yeshua had a vision informing him that he, not you august Caesar, is God’s son (Mk.1:9-11). Here we clearly have a rival who must be eliminated.

And if his friends are killed in the process, don’t worry; they’re all terrorists as well. The name of one, Simon the Zealot, says it all (Mt.10:4). He’s obviously a member of the Zealot insurgency that played such a destructive role against us in Sephoris and elsewhere. As for the others (there are 12 in the gang), it’s difficult to identify them, because they all carry noms de guerre. Two of them are called “Sons of Thunder” (Mk.3:17). Another is “Rocky” (Mt.16:18). Still another is probably a Sicarius (one of those knife fighters responsible for assassinations of Roman soldiers). His code name is Iscariot — note the “sicarius” reference (Jn.6:71).

As I indicated earlier, ben Miryam’s own nom de guerre is “Son of Man” (e.g. Mk8:27-38).  Our temple informants tell us that this name bears high significance in the Jewish resistance. Apparently, it comes from some “Book of Daniel” these people hold as “sacred.” In that book, the Son of Man is a Jewish hero responsible for the destruction of imperial enemies, past, present, and future. Needless to say, anyone assuming that title is a sworn enemy of Rome and its most peaceful benevolent order.

Yeshua’s own hatred for Rome and vendetta against us is unmistakable. At one point he openly identified our young servicemen as demons. He is said to have used magical powers to symbolically drown them in the sea. But first he drove them into a herd of pigs, the filthiest animals these Jews can imagine (Mk.5:1-20). Not only was that insulting to our heroic young servicemen, they say it reminded many of Yeshua’s compatriots of the first such drowning in their legendary history. Apparently, that was when Egyptian “legions” were drowned in the sea more than a thousand years ago. Once again, all of this was unambiguous code for Yeshua’s intention to overthrow our empire.  

Not only that, he has promised to bring down to rubble the Jews’ Temple in Jerusalem (Mk.13). How he’d achieve this is unclear. True, his men are armed – reason enough to eliminate them (Lk.22:36-38). It must be that he is part of the insurgency planning vengeful attack on those they see as collaborators among the Jewish clergy, especially the high priesthood. And a central target of their retribution is the temple. In fact, recently Yeshua took part in (and probably led) a demonstration there aimed at the merchants who make their living selling religious items (Mk.11:15-19). He and his violent demonstrators used whips against the peaceful temple entrepreneurs, overturned stalls and tables – no doubt a preview of the more extensive destruction this violent man has promised. And don’t mistake the depth of his violence. He makes no pretensions to be a man of peace. I have it on the best authority that he has said “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword” (Mt.10:34-36).

As you can see, august Emperor and Son of God, Yeshua ben Miryam unmistakably meets both of our cautious criteria for the use of our new drone technology. If not a member of the Zealot insurgency, he has close associates in the organization, and is probably an important adviser of theirs. His connection with the Sicarius assassins has already been noted. On top of this, he travels with an armed gang, and has targeted both our troops and temple property for destruction. More than that, his “Son of Man” and “Son of God” pretentions have designated the very empire itself for annihilation. (It must be that he hates our freedom.)

My advice is to stop him now before he can do further damage. Do not worry that any of the information contained in this memo might be inaccurate. It has been supplied by Jewish “holy men” whose Commandments forbid “false witness” of any type. They have been working with us for years, and can be trusted implicitly.

I had a strange dream last night. Just before retiring, I had read Maureen Dowd’s New York Times (NYT) piece on the Vatican’s hysterical attack on U.S. nuns (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/dowd-bishops-play-church-queens-as-pawns.html?hp). According to Pope Ratzinger and His Holy Office of the Inquisition (now renamed “The Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” – or something like that) the good sisters are spending too much time on social justice issues and the poor.  They’re not giving enough attention to the crucial issues that so concerned Jesus — contraception, abortion, and same sex marriage.

Dowd was having none of that.  And her editorial was right on target. But it was the responses below the on-line version of the column that I found even more compelling. Comment after comment not only supported the nuns, but expressed outrage at a church that covered up and minimized the importance of male pedophilia, while attacking its hard-working, self-sacrificial women for following the example of Jesus himself. New York’s Cardinal Dolan attempted explanation by pointing out that only a “tiny minority” of priests has been involved in raping young boys. Technically he was right, I guess. One responder to the Dowd article said the figure is “only” 5-8% of priests worldwide.

With that comforting reassurance in mind, I closed my eyes. My dream soon unfolded.

There I was in my local church in Kentucky. I was sitting in my usual place in the third row on the lectern side of the aisle. Our pastor was preaching about abortion again, and I suspect my thoughts had wandered off. . .

But then I was suddenly snapped-to when just across the way from me, Mary Kelly (a former Sister of St. Joseph) stood up. Her husband, Ken, himself a resigned priest from the archdiocese of Chicago was standing beside her.

In a firm but gentle and clear voice, Mary called out: “Excuse me, Fr. Philip.” She was interrupting the priest!

Flashbulbs erupted in the church. Three strangers who appeared to be newspaper people had run down the aisle and were taking pictures of Mary and of our startled pastor.  

Mary repeated, “Excuse me, Fr. Philip.” Behind her about 20 voices echoed, “Excuse me, Fr. Philip.” When the people who had just spoken stood up, I realized something “organized” was about to happen. Even a quick glance showed me that the ones who had repeated Mary’s words all belonged to our parish’s Peace and Social Justice Committee. Its members were using the “mic-check” technique perfected by the Occupy Movement. This will be good, I thought. It’s like they want to occupy the church.

“With all due respect, Father Philip,” Mary continued.

Behind her 20 voices repeated, “With all due respect, Father Philip.”

“We cannot go on with business as usual (We cannot go on with business as usual)

Or ignore the mistreatment of women (Or ignore the mistreatment of women)

By the Catholic Church (By the Catholic Church)

As shown by the Vatican’s recent attack (As shown by the Vatican’s recent attack)

On American nuns (On American nuns).

I stand here to announce (I stand here to announce)

In the name of (In the name of)

Our parish Peace and Social Justice Committee (Our parish Peace and Social Justice Committee)

That we are suspending (That we are suspending)

Our membership in and support of this Church (Our membership in and support of this Church)

Until this problem is resolved (Until this problem is resolved).

Until apologies are issued (Until apologies are issued).

And reforms are made (And reforms are made).

In the meantime (In the meantime)

We will meet each Sunday (We will meet each Sunday)

In designated parishioners’ homes (In designated parishioners’ homes)

To celebrate the Eucharist there (To celebrate the Eucharist there).

We invite any of our fellow parishioners (We invite any of our fellow parishioners)

Who feel called to join us (Who feel called to join us)

To do so (To do so).

Please inform the bishop of our decision (Please inform the bishop of our decision).

We are leaving now (We are leaving now).”

With that, Ken unfolded a 3’ by 3’ newsprint sign that read “Justice for American Nuns!” He held it above his head and walked solemnly to the front of the church. There were more camera flashings. Soon Ken was joined by the 20 others lining themselves up across the front of the sanctuary. Fr. Philip looked embarrassed and confused.

Someone shouted from the congregation, “This is crazy! Sit down and shut up!”

“Hear, hear!” someone else added. There were murmurings all around.

Still, a few others from the pews joined Ken and the 20. The signs the demonstrators held made the pastor invisible.

One poster asked “Who Needs Reprimanding: Pedophiles or Our Sisters?

Another fairly shouted, “We’re gone till the Pope Apologizes: REPENT, Herr Ratzinger!”

More camera flashes.

Presently the 20 Peace and Social Justice Committee members and those who had joined them were processing – up the right side of the church, down the middle aisle and up the left side. They taped their posters to the narthex windows and walls. Soon they were gone.

Finally I awoke and thought “Hmm. . . Why not?”

Mike Tower recently wrote an article Op-ed News about the devastating effect of technology on the job market. We’re in deep sh*t, he wrote, since the large scale introduction of what used to be called “cybernetics.” Technology has eliminated jobs across the board on an alarming scale – from secretarial positions to auto workers. The resulting crisis is compounded by our culture’s deep denial of the basic problem. Even worse, our civic “leaders” at every level refuse even to name technology as playing anything but a positive role in the corporate global economy. What should we be urging them to do? Mike asked.

My first response is simply an expression of gratitude to the author. It’s about time that someone resurrects this problem which clearly is central to the current “jobs crisis” everyone professes to be so concerned about.  I say “resurrects” because I’m old enough to remember the ‘60s and ‘70s when so many pundits described the coming glories of the “cybernetic age.” Then computers would at last liberate us, they promised, from the drudgery of 9-5 jobs. Back then the worry was, “What would we do with all that leisure time?

However, as Mike Tower correctly implies, “all that leisure time” has proven frustratingly elusive. In its stead, most of us are working harder than ever as our employing firms “downsize.” Alternatively, we’re pounding the pavement looking for non-existent jobs to replace those that have been “outsourced” to Asia somewhere.

My second response to the Tower article is that the situation described there is both worse than the author portrays – and more hopeful.  It’s worse because as Jeremy Rifkin pointed out years ago in The End of Work, the destruction of jobs by technology long preceded the advent of computers. Think of the mechanization and industrialization of farming which, infinitely exacerbated by free trade agreements, have displaced small farmers worldwide.

  Additionally, so many of the “jobs” available to the more recently surplused labor force are not simply low-paying to a humiliating degree. In the end, they are nothing more than busy work – not only completely unnecessary, but positively destructive. Readers will know what I mean: weapons manufacture, the military itself, the advertising industry, “call centers,” insurance companies, fast food, and (above all!) Wall Street jobs connected with financial speculation. None of these occupations are truly productive. And naming them as I have represents only the tip of the iceberg.

Still other jobs can easily be eliminated by technology. Think of what happened to Encyclopedia Britannica that didn’t see Wikipedia coming. Think of the music industry recently involuntarily “downsized” by file sharing. And what about newspapers, currently in crisis because of the advent websites like Op-ed News and Information Clearing House? Similarly “distance learning” is having its own impact on higher education as bricks and mortar campuses find themselves sun-setting whether or not their trustees can yet see that train wreck on its way.

Even the oil industry is sun setting. Imagine what that means for an entire economy and lifestyle absolutely dependent on oil.  Here I’m not just referring to “Peak Oil Consumption” or to “Peak Oil” itself.  Again according to Rifkin (this time in The Empathic Civilization) the new technology will soon turn every building into a energy power plant. Surplus energy will be stored in hydrogen cells. And the energy produced will be shared person-to-person across a “smart grid”. The model here is file-sharing and the way it transfers information today. Think of the jobs that will be eliminated as a result – including those required by the energy wars that will be rendered superfluous.

This is not a pipe dream. The European Union has already committed to the model Rifkin describes. We are kept from discussing it only because our “drill, baby, drill” politicians have their heads so firmly stuck in the tar sands. Consequently, the U.S. economy is being left in the dust.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t productive work crying out to be done. The U.S. infrastructure is crumbling at an alarming rate. And then there’s that field of alternative energies I just mentioned. Green technologies in general and public transportation are obvious needs. The number of potential jobs connected with them is substantial. But there are not nearly enough green jobs to replace the ones that have been eliminated by technology and those that should be discarded because they are environmentally destructive and morally unsustainable.

So what should be done about all of this? Here is the hopeful part. Rifkin showed the way years ago. So did Juliette Shor (The Overworked American).  J.W. Smith (Economic Democracy: the Political Struggle of the Twenty-First Century) was even more articulate about the path ahead: SHARE THE WORK. None of us has to work that hard unless we want to. Thanks to the new technology, we could work four-hour days or three-day weeks, or for only six months a year, or every other year and still make a living wage.  We could retire at 40. And this is possible world-wide.

And how to pay for all of this? For starters, cut back the military budget 60%. That alone would make available more than a billion dollars every day just in the U.S. Tax the rich and the corporations – those who make up the “1%” that has ripped off the U.S. working class on an unprecedented scale over the last 30 years and more. (Remember the 91% top-level tax bracket that was in place here following World War II. We could reinstate that!) Share the wealth. Boldly restructure the economy. Embrace the new technology’s promise along with the life of leisure that it offers.

Recently, I’ve been working in Costa Rica. While there, I spent time at Manuel Antonio beach and watched ordinary people lying in the sun, wind surfing, swimming , picnicking with their families, flying kites, reading, playing futbol and beach volleyball. Life in general could be like that I thought – more time for rest and relaxation, for eating, playing, spending time with family and friends, for making love, for meditation and prayer.

It is all now within our grasp. We just have to recognize that and get the subject on the political agenda.