I am a longtime subscriber to the National Catholic Reporter – one of the top liberal Catholic newspapers. I get both the printed edition and online notices of recent articles. And I’ve always loved both for their coverage of liberal (I prefer “progressive”) Catholic news and opinion and their savaging of so-called “conservative” (I prefer pseudo-orthodox) Catholic news and opinion.
Yet when I glanced through the latest print edition, I had the strange experience of finding it of little interest. And I credit that lack of interest to what (in a previous blogpost) I called my “brainfog”. It’s not identical with memory loss, though clearly related to such. Rather it’s simply finding my mind and spirit caught in something like a fog, where nothing is quite as clear as it once seemed.
And, truth be told, I’m kind of happy about that loss of interest. Perhaps because I believe that, in the past, I have wasted far too much mental and spiritual energy on culture war matters, both in church and society.
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Of course, I still get caught up in these wars. Thus I recently wrote the following letter to the editor of the Denver Post:
I love Pope Francis, thus it pains me to disagree with him in a public forum. Were I still teaching, his many encyclical letters (really small books) would be required reading in many of my classes. Especially his two letters on our environmental crisis and his numerous letters and exhortations about immigration and economic justice. Yet I must disagree with his recent and widely reported comments about voting for the lesser evil in choosing between Trump and Harris. He criticizes the evil in Trump’s refusal to welcome immigrants and in Harris’ support for abortion. Yet he’s simply wrong to make this equation.
Harris is not promoting abortions but affirming the right of women to make a decision about whether to keep an unwanted pregnancy or to abort (the pope actually says “to assassinate”) an unborn fetus. Yet Trump is clearly calling for the evil not simply of refusing to welcome immigrants but of forcefully deporting them – starting with Venezuelans in Aurora and Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. Additionally, Trump’s economic and tax policies clearly favor the rich and reject the poor, while Francis himself has continually called for a redistribution of wealth and especially for an “option for the poor” (prioritizing the needs of the poor in economic policies). Harris’ economic plans, though admittedly still quite vague, clearly support helping middle class and working Americans.
Francis is not wrong in entering the fray of the US elections. And he’s clearly right in affirming the need for all to make serious discernments of conscience in voting, not simply to be swayed by personal passions. Yet he’s very wrong in suggesting an equation between the evils of Trump’s ideas and those proposed by Harris.
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I’m not happy about my brainfog condition, but it’s the reality I must live with. And, to repeat, it does on occasion have a bright side.
Thus I urge any of my readers, especially those who’ve thus far escaped any brainfog, to be wary of getting caught up in the culture wars. It’s difficult since polarizations on many fronts are so pervasive and seductive. Still, please try to resist the temptation.
Vaya con Dios.
Well said. It conforms not only to my own thinking but to my own experience. I experience what might be covered by the term “brain fog” also. I’ve been searching for a term that covers it comprehensively. I’m thinking that part of it is a function of the brain’s “mechanism” for deleting “irrelevant” or “obsolete” memories– a necessary function as anyone with an email inbox is well aware. But it also seems to exhibit a “reorganization of priorities,” perhaps a movement manifesting a move to what B. Lonergan called “a higher view point.”
Let me indulge a memory that continues to stick with me. When I was young I was involved with student-level journalism for a number years. During my university years, my colleagues and I would at times get very exercised about some issue or other. Our very wise, proficient and skilled Jesuit moderator. He would ask us to consider (usually in Latin) “What is the Good?” This was not only to ask for a clarification of the cause we were exercised about but for a consideration of the means we were going to employ, the probable effects of those means, including what things might actually be counterproductive to our purposes. We had to do the work, and usually we discovered better ways to achieve our ends.
On the good days, as we try to practice elderhood, I think the loss of enthusiasm or interest in certain things –issues, events, activities,—whatever— can be evidence of this sort of “reorganization of priorities.” This does not necessarily mean that we care less about the matters at hand, but perhaps that we realize better or more deeply their wider, deeper and more intractable qualities. If so, we can perhaps better share such gifts with those responsible for running things in their own quest to make the world a better place.
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Randy, thanks very much for your comments and illustration. John
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