Author: withacane

A good friend, in responding to my last blogpost about Roman Catholicism, noted among many other helpful comments, that:

• I was surprised when you refer to him as “the soi-distant sage, profit-making popularizer, and right wing bigot”. That is a strong judgement and I wonder about the basis for it. I went again to my expert advisor – Wikipedia which reports:

• Campbell has also been accused of antisemitism by some authors. In a 1989 New York Review of Books article, Brendan Gill accused Campbell of both antisemitism and prejudice against blacks.[82] Gill’s article resulted in a series of letters to the editor, some supporting the charge of antisemitism or accusing Campbell of having various right-wing biases, others defending him. However, according to Robert S. Ellwood, Gill relied on “scraps of evidence, largely anecdotal” to support his charges.[83] In 1991, Masson also accused Campbell of “hidden anti-Semitism” and “fascination with conservative, semifascistic views”.[84] Contrarily, the “fascist undercurrents” in Campbell’s work and especially its influence on Star Wars have been called “a reminder of how easily totalitarianism can knock at any society’s door.”[85] The religious studies scholar Russell T. McCutcheon characterized the “following [of] the bliss of self-realization” in Campbell’s work as “spiritual and psychological legitimation” for Reaganomics.[86]

My friend then continues:

• I am skeptical of the strength and basis for the charge if this kind of source is the basis. If anti-semitism is hidden, how does one know? The indication is that the sources of most of these were more conversational that in carefully thought publications. If he or we are to be judged finally judged by what may be such utterances, I shudder to think where we end up. How much of a racist or anti-semite could I be judged to be and is that then a fair summary of my life and views?

My response: I do admit that my initial comments were sweeping and too broad. And I agree with my friend’s final sentences just above. Beyond that I refer the reader to Wikipedia and other sources.

John

It’s been some time since I’ve posted on this site.  And I’m sad to report that one of my most careful readers and critics (who regularly posted responses on the blogsite) has died unexpectedly.  Rhett Segall, a former Marianist (as am I) was a teacher of Theology in Catholic High Schools for many years.  We university professors tend to look down our noses at “mere high school teachers.”  Yet Rhett knew and articulated more theological breadth and depth than many professors I know.  So to him I say, “Rest in Peace good Brother.  I will miss your feedback.”           

Now to the present writing…  Over the years I’ve often written about the Catholic Church. Of late, I’ve tried to draft an overview of what it means, for me at least, to be a Roman Catholic, yet I’ve never been satisfied with the results.  So here’s my final and still very inadequate attempt which, will much too lengthy, still leaves out too much.

A final introductory note: in what follows I make some sharp criticisms.  Yet these are criticisms of ideas and not of the persons who hold them.  I have good friends whose life has led them to embrace these ideas.  I am not criticizing them, and I welcome their critical responses to what I write.

I’m regularly asked why I remain Catholic even as I so often criticize the Church.  Those who ask me have criticisms which I share:  about patriarchy and abuse, boring homilies and uninspiring ritual, irrelevant rules and the absence of a strong sense of community in the parishes they know. Perhaps especially criticisms of Church teaching on sexuality and gender.

What follows is my response.  It’s a personal, not a scholarly or theological essay despite its length

It Begins With Jesus

1. There would be no Church without Jesus of Nazareth.  Many scholars argue (and I largely agree) that Jesus saw himself as Prophet trying to reform the religion of Israel and not seeking to establish a new church.  Many suggest that that Paul, with his mission to Gentiles, was the real founder of a new religion.  And that Paul’s ideas are reflected in the subsequent Gospels which give clear evidence of separation of the Christian movement from Judaism.  At times they also give indications of the beginnings of new rituals and new forms of leadership in the early Christian communities.

All who call themselves “Christian” — Orthodox, Protestant, and Catholic; liberal and conservative — consider themselves disciples or followers of “the way” Jesus called us to live.  Most seek especially to follow Jesus’ mission to uplift the poor, to work for justice, to bring the Reign or Kingdom of God into the social realities of his times.  Yet many find “the Church” irrelevant to that mission, often an obstacle to it.  Jesus is, for them, a guide and model, their teacher or rabbi, for some even their “master.” (In trying to pray, I often address Jesus as “boss.”) They commonly refer to “the Jesus of the Gospels”, while doubting or rejecting the “Jesus Christ” of the New Testament and subsequent Creeds – often dismissing (though they would say understanding) such beliefs as “myths.”

I admire and agree with all those trying to follow the Jesus of the Gospels who challenged us to help “the least of our brothers [and sisters].”  The itinerant rabbi who summarized all of Jewish Law with just two commands – to “love God with your whole heart, mind, and soul” and to “love your neighbor as yourself.”  Just as Pope Francis in his recent writings uses the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate what real discipleship means.

Yet I still find it a bit ironic that many such folks neither believe in God nor in any judgment or afterlife.  Ironic, too, that their sweeping references to “the Gospels” often ignores what those Gospels actually say.

2. Let’s be clear.  Jesus of Nazareth was, in both Gospel story and Church creeds, a fully human being.  Weeping, angry, tender, compassionate, courageous.  Born of woman, suffering a real death.  And even, as some today insist (on the basis of sketchy texts in the so-called “Gnostic Gospels”) a man who loved that (obviously beautiful) Mary Magdalene.  (As an aside: my own suspicion about such emphasis on Jesus’ sexuality has far less to do with these texts than with the modern exaltation of sex as the central criterion for full maturity or humanity.)

Yet it is also clear to me (again, from both the Gospels and the Creeds) that Jesus was/is God’s Word to us, Emmanuel (God with Us), our Christ (Messiah) and Savior.  And it is helpful for me to realize that Jesus himself, as a human being “growing in wisdom and grace,” only gradually came to a fuller awareness of his unique oneness with God. 

Jesus believed in the One God whom he called “Father.”  He was executed for preaching the revolutionary idea that God’s Kingdom should come to this world to transform or replace both Jewish and Roman power structures.

Yet what about the “myths” of Incarnation and Resurrection which reveal that  Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God?

I use the term “myth” because I am responding to those who insist on it, even though I find it is a very inadequate way of talking about religious beliefs.  The word “mystery” better catches the reality, though it too can be reduced to just something mysterious or “supernatural” in the modern TV sense of that word.  Christian use of “mystery” always refers to a particular event or belief which demands faith.  Yet today’s widespread use of the term “myth” generally lumps all such beliefs and events into a vague commonality.  Jesus and Buddha, Confucius and Mohammed, all become much alike as “mythic religious figures” thereby losing their unique particularity and, as a result, giving insult to believers of each particular religion.  The title of a book by one of these myth pushers says it all.  I refer to Joseph Campbell’s “The Hero With A Thousand Faces.”

One response is simply to observe that we would know nothing of Jesus without the New Testament writings which were written only because of those “myths.” Jesus would be but a small footnote in long forgotten Roman and Jewish histories without those mythologizing Gospels. Another blunt response would be to push a question about what is this “Gospel” that Jesus’ contemporary admirers talk about following?  Perhaps something like Thomas Jefferson’s own “expurgated” version of the New Testament which deleted every reference to anything “mythic.”

The modern attempt to discover the “historical Jesus” behind the mythic “Christ of Faith” has borne some significant results, but (and here are more fightin’ words) much of it – at least it’s supposedly scientific conclusions — is rubbish which leaps beyond evidence and has been spread by media ever-hungry for something “new.”

To be equally blunt and confrontational, most of the cotton-candy cant about myth, while perhaps derived from serious thinkers like Carl Jung, come from the soi-disant sage, profit-making popularizer, and right-wing bigot Campbell and his disciples. Again, there’s probably something to the myth idea, but it’s hardly a good basis for either serious historical scholarship, good theology, or serious faith. More like the slippery slope to watered-down Christianity and easy agnosticism.

5. I will not take up the truly difficult question about God’s existence other than to observe that there is no “problem of evil” if there is nothing like a Good God. Aquinas still makes good sense to me.  Even more does Jesus’ proclamation of God’s Kingdom.  As with evil, any notion of working for a kingdom of justice and peace on this earth is, as Thomas More famously said, utopian rubbish if God’s Spirit is not moving through our violent and unjust world “writing straight with crooked lines.”

6. As to the crucial claims about Resurrection and Jesus as Christ, in the end I believe those claims because of the creeds and traditions of the Church.  Chesterton said that tradition means “giving the ancestors a vote.”  That is, not allowing one’s beliefs to be shaped by the prevailing skepticism of our times.  Learn from that skepticism?  By all means.  Yet only with awareness of its own “myths” about reason, science, and freedom.  Yes, embrace reason and real science and freedom.  But be wary of scientism and individualism.  And above all bear in mind that our supposedly enlightened era is pervasively darkened by an “oblivion of eternity” which reduces reality to the savagery of history.

Then The Apostles

1.  It’s pretty clear to me that the notion of “the 12” is taken by New Testament writers to indicate representatives of the 12 tribes of the “New Israel.”  Jesus clearly chose and attracted many disciples.  Probably many more than twelve.  Including many women who played key roles, the beloved Mary perhaps first among them.  Yet such women are relegated to subsidiary roles by the NT writers  who were trying to address the patriarchal and misogynistic sensibilities of both Jews and Gentiles.

2. Also clear is that, as this new movement spread through the Gentile (Greco-Roman) world it adapted the structures of that world – by formalizing church leadership roles and ritual. 

It is likely that other movements, now termed “gnostic,” had from the beginning other ideas about Jesus and salvation, but these were condemned and buried by that same Roman power structure.  As is very clear from history, Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and for the same political reasons banished all those variants.

3. So our Bishops (including the Bishop of Rome) and priests are not direct descendants by the imposition of hands from the Apostles.  They are a development within the Christian movement (by now the Church). They continued to develop through Christian history and thus can develop and change in our times.

Pope, Bishops, Priests, and The Church

As a prefatory note, I think most of my friends reduce the Church a few simplistic images about archaic structures and rules which are experienced as increasingly irrelevant and often as seriously unjust and evil.  It’s akin to the mistake made by many who reject God because they have reduced the reality of God to similarly simplistic images of patriarch and punisher or master planner and distant designer.  To some objectionable “being” rather than to Being Itself, as Aquinas would have it.  Or the Power/Ground of Being (Tillich, etc.).  Or the “Vortex of Love” as Pope Francis recently put it.

1. One of the reasons for the development of a hierarchical church is, quite simply, that it worked.  I’d even go so far as to say that, just as we’d know virtually nothing about Jesus without the Gospels, we’d know little of Christianity without the hierarchical structure of the Church. 

Said differently, without a Pope and Bishops, and without the different but similarly clerical movement of Monasticism, Christianity would not have survived the fall of the Roman Empire and the subsequent, so-called Dark Ages.  Yet it not only survived but thrived, eventually leading to Christendom, the new Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages.

2. I’d say much the same about the periods of Renaissance and Reformation which succeeded Christendom.  Some “protestants” quite consciously saw the need to continue the structures of hierarchy and sacred ritual, and thrived because of these structures.  Of course the corresponding Catholic Reformation (or counter Reformation) very deliberately emphasized these same structures while also seeking to reform them.  And even the more radical “left wing” of the Reformation, while rejecting both priesthood and sacramental ritual, ended up by filling the vacuum with new but implicit forms of priesthood and ritual.

I think that it is a general law of human organization, whether religious or secular, that when we get rid of the corrupt clerics we end up replacing them with new forms of clerical leadership.  It’s simply what human organization requires.

3. While I’m extremely critical of most Bishops, especially the John Paul II appointed majority in the US, I nonetheless affirm the need for the office of Bishop in the Catholic Church.  The present Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis, is for me a great example of the importance of the office of Bishop, its significance for the Catholic Church, for other religious groups, and for our secular world.  He is, in my view, the most significant religious figure in the present world because of his work for the immigrant, the poor, and against our terribly unjust social and economic structures.

Of course Francis himself is working continually (may he live long and prosper!) for reform of both hierarchy and ritual within the Catholic Church.  He is doing this not by open and polarizing conflict with his opponents in the Vatican and in Bishops’ Conferences (above all in the US), but by slowly replacing them and by demanding a challenging process of “synodality” (gathering all God’s people to discern the path forward for God’s Church).

The Future of the Church

Predictions inevitably fail.  Yet we need, nonetheless, to try to imagine our future in hopefully realistic ways.  Here are transformations of Catholicism which I imagine:

1. Feminism, for all its too many stupid and ideological forms, is nonetheless one of the most important and humanizing movements sweeping the entire globe.  Changing, often with great struggle, the structures and rituals of politics, economics, religion, etc. 

Thus it seems to me inevitable that women will soon, though probably not in my lifetime, be priests and bishops in Catholicism as they already are in most forms of Protestantism.  Eventually, Pope Elizabeth or Jean or….

2. Pastors, parish priests and local bishops, will soon enough be elected/selected through some sort of back and forth – proposals and vetoes and more of the like – as they are today among Episcopalians and Presbyterians and other “protestant” groups.

3. There will be regular “synods” at all levels – in parishes, dioceses, individual nations, and (as at present) those called by the Pope for the entire Catholic world.  None of them will be perfect, but they will nonetheless involve the entire people of God in discerning the path forward.

4. Ecumenism will flourish, not necessarily by the joining of traditions within Christianity, but by real affirmation of the other and fruitful learning from each other. 

5. Interfaith dialogue and cooperation will grow, again by mutual affirmation and work for justice — as in Francis’ major push for dialogue and cooperation with Muslims in his latest writings.

6. Finally, the different religious faiths will join with humanists to affirm the legitimacy of the growing secularity of the world, while also criticizing the many dehumanizing aspects of the present process of secularization.  Criticizing, in other words, secularism but not authentic secularity which in its many forms simply means humanization.

As my mentor Lynch stressed, such affirmation and prophetic criticism of secularization is perhaps the most significant dimension of working for the coming of God’s Kingdom, on this earth as it is in heaven.

I close by repeating my constant request that readers who wish to send responses to what I’ve written might write them on this website (as my good brother Rhett always did) so that others might benefit from such further exchange of ideas.

It seems to have been a low-key protest. Welcoming as king this popular rabbi riding on a donkey. All of them waving palm branches. Yet that crowd had disappeared by Friday when another false messiah was executed. Of course, we Christians believe that we did indeed get a new King the following Sunday. Just one we’re not so sure about — with his riding donkeys and overturning tables in a Temple.

So some of us wave palms on this special Sunday. Many will hunt eggs and candies with their kids on Easter. Yet I suspect that most who enjoy such festivity are either unaware of or just don’t want to think about that the meaning of that first parade and the kind of king we’re celebrating. (I’m the latter.)

It really was a moment of revolution, against both the Temple Establishment and Roman Rule. Why else would those powers collaborate in crucifying him? Pilate’s sign on the cross made it contemptuously clear: INRI (Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews).

Of course, most of those original palm-wavers were hoping for some big miraculous event to change things. They were not insurrectionists.

And expectations of some such “apocalypse” lingered for years among both Jews and Christians. They still raise fear and hope in contemporary imaginations. Yet most of us have learned that real change for the better – for justice – comes slowly, with great difficulty and infrequent miracles.

Perhaps that’s why we’d rather enjoy chocolate Easter Bunnies.

Fortunately, the memory of that donkey and those over-turned tables has continued to provoke protest over millennia. And still today, if only implicitly, in our BLM and Me-2 protests, and in so many secular and religious movements for that “kingdom” Jesus was killed for preaching. And in the miraculous appearance among us of flawed saints like Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Dorothy Day, and the ordinary saints we all know.

A Brief Comment on a “Making Good Trouble” Zoom at Regis

At the end of a recent zoom session at Regis we were asked by the facilitator to write one concrete action which, as a consequence of the hour-plus discussion, we might resolve to make. I decided to write this blogpost. I want to celebrate that student-led zoom and add some comments I’d not had time to express during the discussion.

I hope that what follows might be of interest to the general reader in terms of what’s going on at Regis and at many other (Jesuit as well as secular) universities in response to the many crises of justice we face: on race, polarization, inequality, climate change, and so on. I hope, too, that it might be a form of affirmation for those involved at Regis though what I write clearly represents the thoughts of only one participant in the meeting.

• This particular session was the first of a “Making Good Trouble” series for the Regis community organized by the University’s Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion, History Prof. Nicki Gonzales. Titled after an historic “word” from now-deceased Rep. John Lewis, the goal of the series is to bring together different persons on campus (I think there were some 40 in the first session, a speaking-panel of ten so students and retired faculty, and 30 or more students and staff in the audience) to discuss issues students and faculty must deal with and to discern about “making good trouble” in response. It was, to my thinking, an expression of her passion for the importance of history that led Prof. Gonzalez to decide to kick off the series with a panel of retired faculty discussing their own experience of “making good trouble” during the 60s and since. And it was also my sense that a passion for justice among some student leaders actually brought the series to life.

• The hour-and-a-half went quickly, with spirit-filled and serious exchanges between young and old. Which makes it hard for me to summarize a very good conversation. As always, the elders spoke too much, but student leaders on the panel gave balance to the conversation. I know that I personally was not only impressed with student voices articulating their justice-focused studies and activities. I was also very impressed with their (the students’) use of the zoom vehicle (and of the internet more broadly) for facilitating this conversation. I’m retired now almost 11 years and can’t help but envy the present campus for the widespread “digital literacy” which makes such “zooming towards justice” possible. (Prof. Gonzales mentioned that doing “something like this” has long been a dream of hers.)

• I remember that one of the questions raised by an elder concerned the prevalence of digital/social media among students. Might this leave many students locked into “their own” information silos and sources, made thereby into consumer relativists led into indifference about justice or just swept up in some craze of agitation and protest? I honestly forget the way responses to this question wove through the subsequent conversation, but I suspect (perhaps because it’s my own view of social media) that on the one hand such media are seen as very important sources of important information and conversation about justice, but on the other hand they can be and often are precisely what the questioner feared.

• In my memory, the preceding topic linked directly with another thread that wove through the discussion: how do we (young and older) learn to become and stay involved with action for justice? How do we get educated for long-term action for justice? One of the panelists who has been a life-long activist spoke of “learning from the streets” – from engagement in street level protest at best from one’s youth. The short-student assembled slide show of images at the beginning of the zoom also featured images of street marching and protesting and I suspect that most of the students on the panel and in the audience had been involved in “service learning” (aka “street learning”) in connection with one or several of their classes.

• For me this emphasis on “street learning” was both important and I don’t hesitate to say dangerously one-sided. I did not find a way to express this concern so let me explain it here. I would say that the primary vocation of all those at a university is to be students in search of both knowledge and wisdom. Learning by involvement in the wider community, especially to respond to those most in need, is a very important aspect of being a student (one who desires truth and wisdom), but so are all the other more “scholarly” aspects of one’s life. And this is as much true for students as for their teachers. One learns from literature and religion, from sociology to history and politics, and from the physical sciences and professional disciplines – one learns from all these sources of knowledge and wisdom how better, more humanly and fairly, with more patience and more passion, to work for justice. One learns that there are many forms of such work – from protests and organizing to writing and studying. That is a small note of suggestion and criticism which I’d make to such university people and to all of us.

• And finally, I’d also note there was not much laughter in the zoom session. I tried several times to make a joke to lighten the conversation and it always fell flat. It was a very serious discussion. At one point someone mentioned music as a form of protest, and I’d add that music is a form of joy to lighten and leaven our protests. Yes, I remember the songs of the 60s which accompanied anti-war and civil rights marches. I was not at Woodstock, but remember it’s importance as a celebration of causes and protest (even though over time the memory of Woodstock has been reduced to little more than a celebration of sensuality). I digress. The point here is that the action for justice must involve humor, directed especially at ourselves, and celebration and ritual of many sorts.

Such, then, my brief report on a “Make Good Trouble zoom at my beloved Regis University.

Almost two years ago, I wrote on this site what I thought would be my final post about the conflict in the not-so-holy land.  I had said what I’d wanted to say about this conflict, over and over again.  Thus I summarized as succinctly as I could the major arguments for my long-held criticisms of Israel as THE rogue state in the region and as the oppressive Goliath now strangling a Palestinian David.  And I gave my sources for this criticism which I am absolutely sure is not anti-Semitic, but very much anti-Israel or at least against the brutal reigning political consensus in Israel.

Nothing has changed those convictions, though today I’d add the Saudi tyranny as THE other rogue state in the region. Of course, Trump’s support for Israel has only made the situation worse, and I fear that Biden will not do much better since he has been typical of US politicians supporting Israel, just less outrageous than Trump.  Indeed, the news as I write tells of Netanyahu authorizing even more expansion of “settlements” on Palestinian land.  Thus more land robbery, resulting in more Israeli violence, and further expansion of its apartheid regime.  And little response from US pols who are presently preoccupied elsewhere, though they’d probably not condemn this expansion of apartheid in any case.

Yet several things have led me to again try to articulate my sense of the tragedies and modest hopes for that land.  To articulate a change in attitude and feeling.

Some time back, as I was reading morning Psalms, something finally clicked, even though I’d read and prayed these words so many times.  A constant refrain throughout the Psalms is praise for Jerusalem as the city of God’s peace, one of the most physical incarnations of God’s covenantal love for human beings.  And a similar refrain involving prayer for Jerusalem.  Prophets calling Jerusalem to repentance and rebirth.  Psalmists imploring God for mercy on Jerusalem.     

I had so long been angered at that city and nation, what one historian has accurately called a “nest of vipers” from ancient times to the present, that I had forgotten, probably never appreciated, this biblical sense shared by Jews and Christians (and I think by Muslims in their way), that Israel, Judah, Zion, Jerusalem…whatever the many names…was a precious place, meant to be a place of peace and praise, and also of the weeping and wailing which so often is the only way to peace.

So I started, with my morning Psalms, to pray for Jerusalem’s peace.  For the present Jerusalem, the present Israel, that it may re-find itself as a place for peace radiating around the globe. 

I don’t believe there are actually “holy” cities, or perhaps I think all cities and villages and towns can be “holy” simply by being wonderfully ordinary and human – made in the image of God, warts and wounds and all.   In other words, when I now pray for “peace upon Jerusalem,” for a restoration of what the Psalms and the Prophets hoped, I do mean the actual Jerusalem/Israel, but I pray for that blessing on all other cities as well.  I pray for every little “place” where the lion actually does or might lie down with the lamb, that such places will not be destroyed but will gradually spread their light through the world.

So that’s the first “thing” that happened to jolt me out of an angry fixation on the bad guys and gals in Israel and in Palestine who remain trapped by an illusory yet violent nationalism.

Next has been my growing conviction, articulated often in these pages, that the only way forward for all of us human beings is through difficult dialogue.  That conviction goes back to Martin Buber but has grown during my study of Pope Francis’ writings.  Indeed, I mention in a recent post on dialogue that one place where dialogue is much needed today is in the Middle East, especially in Palestine/Israel. 

Then, thirdly, I’m reading a new book by the Irish author, Colum McCann, several of whose previous novels I’d much appreciated.  The book is Apeirogon, A Novel (Random, 2020).  It is mainly about dialogue, growing out of a story of the lived dialog between two fathers who’d had innocent and very young daughters murdered by opposing terrorists. One is an Israeli, the other a Palestinian. Both are mature and intelligent men who have fought for their side of the conflict and then suffered this terrible loss.  It is about their meeting and and their gradually becoming missionaries of dialogue among similarly aggrieved parents throughout Israel and Palestine.  And beyond.

It is by far the most compelling book I’ve ever read (and I’ve read a good number) about the terrible reality of the Israeli “occupation” of Palestine.  About the fundamental necessity of ending that occupation (through a two-state solution or in some other way).  And most fundamentally about dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis and Christians as the only way forward to peace.

It is a long and strangely organized book, but it also has helped to move me away from my prior angers (though not from prior criticisms) and has opened for me at least some hope. I urge you to take the time to read this magnificent book and hopefully be moved as I was.

OK, that’s it. 

Unless you want some comments about the book’s almost magical style and range and integrity.  If so, read on.

I have not read many reviews, but this is the third of McCann’s book’s I’ve read.  The others were Let The Great World Spin (2009) and TransAtlantic (2013). I suspect some might call them post-modern novels.  They are novels because much is fictional or, better,  fictionalized versions of interviews and other printed records and video recordings.  Yet they represent a break from the traditional form of the novel.  They not only use the now common technique of flashback or jumping back and forward in the story’s time sequence. Sometimes jumping centuries back and forth.  But McCann’s novels, especially this new one, also jump back and forth from contemporary people and events to historical reports — about biological evolution, about man’s constant violence to other men and to nature, about the Holocaust, the Crusades, and Middle Eastern history – and to texts from the Quran and the Bible, from Sufi wisdom sayings and poetry and philosophical asides.

Such “jazzy” writing could be dismissed as mere intellectual sensationalism, but for McCann it isn’t that.  Rather, through such “jumping” the story gradually develops – there are no chapters, just numbered paragraphs, some just a line or two, some running for several pages, one or two simply left empty – adding up to exactly 1000 numbered paragraphs on 457 pages. His title, Apeirogon, he finally tells us after 80 pages and 180 paragraphs, means a shape with a countably infinite number of sides.  The word countably, he then insists, is utterly central to the meaning of the shape of an apeirogon (think “octagon” infinitely extended yet countable).  Go figure.  I’m guessin’ it means that the shape of the story is very, very complex and many sided.

Yet it is an ordered or integrated whole.  Each of the many different parts, the historical and religious and scientific “notes,” contribute to the more central and usually longer passages which focus on these two men’s lives and thoughts.  They contribute by enlarging the perspectives or lenses through which we see and begin to understand more deeply the contemporary reality of the lives of these men and their call for dialogue between enemies. 

My mentor Lynch has written an important book about the nature of any good, honest work of drama or fiction – and about the many ways that contemporary writing (and cinema and TV) regularly fail to live up to the standards for such good writing.  That still-in-print book is Christ and Apollo (1960).  It was preceded by a shorter and simpler work about The Image Industries (1959) which presents similar criticisms about popular cinema and television.

The relevant point here is that a good work of drama (again, literary or popular) grows “analogously”.  That’s one of those terribly academic words, but its quite right.  It means that a good work of dramatic art (or storytelling) is not built around a constant repetition of the same ideas and feelings in each scene or episode.  Rather each element of the composition stands on its own – is different from the other scenes and episodes – yet simultaneously contributes to the larger effect of the whole. 

And so it is with McCann’s writing, again especially in this new book.  All the elements – the historical and scientific and religious passages (even seemingly irrelevant sections on the migratory patterns of birds across the Middle East) – all provide background and an enlargement of meaning for the central story of these two fathers.

‘Nuff.  If you want more about Lynch’s ideas on literature read Chapter 4, “Apollo – The Dramatic Imagination,” of my book about Lynch.

Better still, read McCann’s new book.

And let us all pray (or hope in some way if you do not pray) and also work for “peace on Jerusalem.”

Posted on the fourth Sunday of Advent, 2020.

No, this short and seemingly academic writing is not about all the damnable ironies of contemporary politics, embodied for me above all in the hypocritical obstructionism of today’s republicans.  Ironic, for instance, that the very folks who now profess deep concerns about deficit spending not long ago exploded deficit spending by their huge tax breaks for the rich.

No, this writing is about irony as central to faith – especially what my mentor Lynch even dares to call “the irony of Christ.”

For years I just skimmed the word “irony” while reading since I really didn’t have a clue about what irony meant.  Lynch challenged me to change all that with his last book Images of Faith, subtitled “An Exploration of the Ironic Imagination.” (Very academic wording, but spot on.)

We imagine and experience faith – both civic faith or trust in each other and religious faith – in many ways.  As joy, as consolation, as strength, as seeing through a glass darkly….  Yet these days we probably find the idea that faith must also be ironic to be almost incomprehensible, even scandalous.   Why?  Especially since some of our most important thinkers – from Socrates to Kierkegaard – have praised the central role of irony in living a good (and for SK, a good Christian) life.

I know, all this probably still seems very academic and not-understandable.  But bear with.

Lynch is among many who see ours as a terribly ironic age.  A culture filled with irony at every turn, from our comedians to our writers of both popular and serious literature, our talk shows and political commentary.  An ironic attitude seems to almost be the hallmark of sophisticated intelligence.  And, to the point, such modern cultural irony is essentially contemptuous.  The smart guys looking down their noses at all the fools.  Skepticism and contempt about piety and idealism and the intelligence of ordinary folks.  Etc.

Yet the predominance of such “ironies of contempt” in our days has blinded us to a much larger meaning contained in the earlier philosophical and literary and religious embrace of irony. 

What’s the meaning of that older understanding of irony?  Both the word and the attitude are hard to define.  So some examples. 

Cervantes’ Don Quixote was and remains a classic example of one writer “ironizing” a whole romantic tradition of “chivalry” by mocking it in his story of the Don.  The king has no clothes is a similar example.  Ironic observation pricks the bubble of pseudo-glorious pretension.  It throws the mighty from their thrones, to cite another magnificently ironic text from Luke.  Yet it does more than just puncture false magnificence.  As Mary also says, it raises the lowly.  At the start of the Don’s story, his servant Sancho Panza is a lowly figure trailing behind the glorious knight. By the end of the story of the Don’s disillusionments, Sancho has grown to be his one reliable companion, a man of good sense and real love.

In the classical Western tradition, irony is not about contempt but about healing and reconciliation, albeit in ironic ways.

So back to the irony of Christ which for Lynch is the very being of Jesus as the Messiah, the glorious and long-awaited savior.  For it’s terribly ironic that our truly glorious God (Blessed be God’s name, as Muslims pray), that this Godhead “chose” to save us, to lead us from death to life, to spread his kingdom among us, by having a poor woman of Nazareth conceive a son, soon fleeing for refuge, then becoming a lowly carpenter, and finally a wandering preacher, who ends up as a donkey-riding “king” soon executed as a political criminal.

And irony, of course, was not only central to the life of that unsuccessful savior, but to his teachings.  Blessed are the poor.  Really?  C’mon, get real.  Blessed those who suffer, who hunger and thirst, etc. etc.  And perhaps above all, the crazy idea that only through real and terrible death did that Jesus guy enter into a new and resurrected life as Christ, Lord and Savior.  True for us as well, for it is by and large only through suffering and being misunderstood and misunderstanding, and eventually of course by dying that we come to fullness of life.  Really dying. As we do through the many little deaths suffered during life and through that final death. It is for most of us only through such loss that we gradually come to understanding the real good of our lives, and finally (I believe) come to the great understanding given in the Beatific Vision.

More examples.

It’s a lived irony, for most of us, that the great sexual and romantic dreams that lead us to marry or bond in some wonderful or at least hopeful way, that these dreams are only realized – understood and actually embodied in our lives – by a long journey which involves loss, disagreement, disappointment, deaths great or small.  What little we come to know and experience as real love only happens over time and usually through much suffering.  Not a pleasant thought.  But true.

As also with career plans and paths.  With hopes for a good city and good politics.  We mostly experience shifts and reversals, some chosen paths revealed as folly, others becoming real only through suffering and disillusionment.  In such ways we as individuals and at times we as people move via ironic experiences to a more realistic common sense and sanity and yes trust in life and in others, and at least implicitly faith in God.

For real faith must embody (along with much else) a truly ironic sensibility.

A final example, or at least a hope.  We as families, as cities and nations around the globe…. we human beings are experiencing these days terrible, unexpected, unwanted suffering.  Yes, the pandemic, with its life and death chess game, and economic disaster for so many while the rich sit on their thrones.  And all of course against the backdrop of climate change, mass migrations, inevitable war and violence.

Let me stick with the pandemic. It’s not an ironic curse from God (as some scripture might suggest).  No it’s an ironic consequence of the processes of evolution.  Viruses, I’m told, are a central component in the evolution of life.  They live by living off biological life, or something like that.  And in this way, they prod biological life into adaptations for health and development.  They prod evolution, so to speak.  And always accompany it.  As we know from human history and again these days.

Yet it is just possible – this is my hope – that the pandemic’s destruction, at least for a significant time, of so many of our dreams and plans… its destruction of so much life through disease and poverty, might awaken us to see through many of those dreams, to come to see what’s really important.  To raise the lowly through attention to front line workers of all sorts – and through increased awareness of our elders’ frailty – and through attention to the needs of our kids so they might grow into the intelligent and sensible human beings this planet is going to need for dealing with our other forms of threat and suffering. 

And the rich and powerful, at least some of them, I hope, will be emptied of false pretensions (sent away empty) and take their rightful place amongst us as civic and business, religious and political leaders now working above all with and for the lowly.

Wouldn’t that be ironic? 

One of the constant and challenging words in the writings and speeches of Pope  Francis is “dialogue.”

He means real and challenging dialogue – face to face with those whose views we oppose.  Not only some official group of leaders, though I was for several years involved in a quasi-official Jewish-Christian dialogue in Denver. (It was a wonderful experience even as our differences regularly led to polarization about Palestine/Israel.)  Such official groups are good forms of dialogue, but far more needed these days are dialogue among the folks, those in the pews who are, as the recent election showed, deeply polarized between “red” and “blue” or Trump supporters and Biden supporters.

I hasten to add that by “the Churches” I also mean Synagogues and Mosques, Buddhist Sanghas, Hindu Temples, and other institutionalized forms of religion or spirituality.  My call and hope in this writing is that such religious groups might increasingly become places locally for dialogue across our not very peaceful polarizations.  For while there are other institutional settings where dialogue must continue to happen (in schools and universities, in some business and civic groups) I believe that “the churches” can be places where real dialogue is possible and might be especially fruitful.

I am sad to say that I am unable to add our media (print and screen) to that list of important places for dialogue.  There are occasional noble efforts to enable dialogue through the media, but by and large the more general (and more profitable) media focus has been on highlighting violent polarizations, often thereby exacerbating them.

Back to “the churches.”

I note that real dialogue can perhaps best begin by a focus on deep divisions within “the churches” – between, for instance, conservative and more liberal members of a congregation or between congregations within the same denomination which tilt more conservative and those tilting more liberal. Between, for instance, so-called called orthodox Catholics and so-called progressive Catholics.  Or between orthodox and other Jewish groups, and with the many secular Jews in this country.

An initial focus on such inner-church polarizations would not at all mean losing focus on the larger social need for Red/Blue dialogue since church polarizations largely embody those larger social polarizations.

I know of one Catholic church in Dayton, Ohio, which has begun such a dialogue process by first inviting (on Zoom, I believe) a group of Trump supporters to talk together about their ideas and passions; then inviting a similar group of Dems to meet; and finally on a third week to invite both groups to meet “face-to-face”.  The hope is that the process will grow if such initial groups continue to meet, and if other groups beginning a similar process.

Back to Francis. 

As I said the call to challenging dialogue pervades his papacy.  It’s fundamental both to his latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, available online and in booklet form, and to his latest book Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future (at present only in hardback). In the encyclical, Francis uses dialogue between Christians and Muslims as the primary example of his broader call.  Such dialogue is much needed throughout the Middle East — between Muslims and Jews and Christians in Palestine/Israel, for instance, or between Muslim and Coptic Christians in Egypt.  But the Pope’s focus seems especially on Europe with its refugee/immigrant crisis and too often violent polarizations.  This too is something that’s been building for decades as white Europeans have found the slow but large influx of African and Middle Eastern Muslims a formidable and polarizing presence.  In the book, I’m told by the reviews (I’ve not yet read it), that one clear but unnamed target of his call for dialogue is the US with its roiling political, cultural, and religious polarizations.

At the end of Fratelli Tutti’s short introductory section Francis says: “How important it is to dream together… By ourselves, we risk seeing mirages, things that are not there. Dreams, on the other hand, are built together. Let us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travelers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all.”  The book’s title obviously reiterates that call.  And later in the encyclical he warns that unless we really believe that such a transformation from polarization to “Fraternity and Social Friendship” (the letter’s subtitle) is a realizable dream, then everything he’s saying about dialogue and social trust will be no more than an escapist fantasy in our “real world.”

In my previous posting on this site I argued that “it would be a real step towards social friendship if, after the election mess settles back into ‘ordinary’ cultural warfare, the major church leaders here – senior pastors and bishops, senior rabbis and imams, along with representatives from other faiths, might kneel or stand together outside Union station in Lower Downtown Denver to beg our people to open their hearts to migrants as well as to refugees.”  For polarized passions about immigration run deep in Colorado and throughout the country, and will not ease soon.  And I repeat that such leadership collaboration will only be effective if it extends to “the folks in the pews”. 

Toward the end of that same posting I added: “I again mount my rhetorical pulpit and ask Denver church/religious folk to find ways to work for post-election peace. To take up the long road ahead to enable the divided sides of our people to listen more and excommunicate less.”

Real dialogue does not mean pretending to give up on our most fundamental convictions, but listening to the passions and convictions of the other – in an effort to find some common ground or at very least in order to put a real human face on such views and thereby move beyond the stereotypes of “them and us” which seem to dominate both our own imaginations and the rhetoric of so much of our media.

In an earlier posting this year on “Polarization and Our Better Angels” I reported on a face-to-face meeting (just before the pandemic ended them) sponsored by the Interfaith Alliance of Colorado. The meeting brought together national and local folks concerned to work against polarization by strategizing about how “we” (especially religious folk) might nourish a broad public sense that we really are all “together in this” and that we can and must work together for the common good — even with continuing and often very deep differences.

The afternoon break-out at that meeting, which I luckily, chose was led by a local volunteer for “Better Angels”, a national movement started after the 2016 election to bring together Trump and Clinton supporters. I urge you to explore their great website. For they have developed a variety of meeting formats which carefully bring together an equal number of “red” and “blue” participants (in churches, neighborhoods, and civic organizations) to meet as human beings and fellow citizens in response to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”  That group’s efforts, which continue today, are another very good examples of the kind of dialogue Francis urges upon us.

And Better Angels provides models of formats with which our churches might begin their dialogues.

Let me conclude – lest the whole idea of dialogue and my particular hope for the churches to take a lead in dialogue seem just idle fantasy – by noting some important groups encouraging dialogue in Denver.  I’ve already mentioned “The Interfaith Alliance.”  Now I add “The Institute For the Common Good” at my beloved Regis University, which for years hosted private dialogues between leadership opponents on issues about education and health care, race and gun control.  And “The Conflict Center” which also for years has worked with schools to educate teachers and students in the arts for peaceful settling of conflicts.  And then there’s “The Flobots,” a local group of hip-hop musicians who also work with students and other groups to overcome enmity.  Their most recent album and educational effort is called “No Enemies.” 

I’m sure that there are many other local dialogue-promoting groups that I’ve failed to mention and don’t know about.   

Many such groups have significant church and religious support and work on occasion in church settings.  That connection might also encourage the larger role of “the churches” in promoting dialogue which I’ve been dreaming about in this writing.

AS ALWAYS, I ASK READERS TO RESPOND BELOW ON THIS SITE – TO SHARE FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT THE NEED FOR DIALOGUE AND ABOUT FORUMS WHERE SUCH DIALOGUE IS HAPPENING.   

[An additional note on 1/27/21: Because of continuing divisions with Trump’s down to the wire protests that he was elected by a landslide, and then the storming of the Capitol, and finally Biden’s inauguration — because of such continuing and polarizing events, I keep finding other calls for dialog and examples of such. Here’s a noteworthy one from the British/International Catholic journal The Tablet: “Truth and reconciliation – what the Catholic Church needs after Trump” .]

This is the final section in a five-part series of commentaries about the significance of Pope Francis’ new encyclical for our human city (or town or neighborhood). As inevitable with a final chapter, it is way too long since I am trying to get everything in before ending. Apologies.

I also want to note that the encyclical is now available at bookstores in $12+ paperback editions as well as free online.

Finally, while I pause once or twice to raise critical questions about what the pope is saying, what I have written in all five of these posts is essentially laudatory and supportive of the Francis’ ideas. Yet he himself, with his continual emphasis on dialogue as a crucial form of social friendship, invites us into a critical discussion about those ideas.

****

Following his challenging second-chapter meditation on the Good Samaritan (see previous post below), Francis develops his letter with a series of chapters on major dimensions of our present world. He talks politics and economics, immigration and borders, dialogue and diplomacy, but these standard categories of analysis are woven into chapters united by Francis’ own social imagination and writing style.

Take, for example, the 15 well developed paragraphs on “War and the Death Penalty” at the end of the seventh chapter. They have so far received the most media attention discussion because they involve relatively recent changes in Catholic Social Teaching. Yet the preceding 30 hefty paragraphs in the chapter titled “Paths to Renewed Encounter” provide a larger framework discussing the inevitability of conflict, the architecture of peace, the need for both memory and forgiveness… before getting to final sections on war and the death penalty.

However well and persuasively argue Francis’ discussion of war and the death penalty, they are enriched immensely by the preceding parts of the chapter.

So, yes, you gotta’ read the whole damn thing, as I regularly told students who’d much rather be enjoying one of Denver’s watering holes.

And when you finally get to Francis’ strong reaffirmation of the Catholic Church’s clear and recent rejection of the death penalty – and his equally strong questioning of the whole idea of a just or morally justified war – you will run across challenging “zingers” like the following:

“Every war leaves our world worse than it was before. War is a failure of politics and of humanity, a shameful capitulation, a stinging defeat before the forces of evil.” (par. 261)

“All Christians and people of good will are today called to work not only for the abolition of the death penalty, leg al or illegal, in all its forms, but also to work for the improvement of prison conditions, out of respect for the human dignity of persons deprived of their freedom.” (par. 268)

*****

This rejection of moral justifications of violence the leads directly to the Pope’s final chapter on religion with its forceful critique of all religious justifications for jihad or crusade or retribution. Yet the broader focus of the chapter is less on the topic of religion and violence than on the immense resources religion does and could have in healing our world by sowing seeds of social friendship.

In the end, the discussion of this final chapter leads to a magnificent inter-faith appeal and then to a prayer to be shared by all monotheists (Jews, Muslims, and Christians) and finally to a concluding ecumenical prayer to be shared by all Christians

Before moving to the important discussion about religion and violence and to that concluding interfaith appeal, let me focus on the Pope’s evocation of the beauty of our interreligious world rather than its fragmentation.

I note the special emphasis both on migration and on Islam which has been present in this writing since the beginning and comes again to the fore in its final chapter. It also occurs to me that, while this dual focus on migration and religion is directed to the entire world, the Pope’s tone and framing of things still seems (to me) primarily European, Middle Eastern, and African. It calls for “Christian” Europe to be open to cultural and economic enrichment from Arab and African Muslim immigrants, and calls Muslims to live up to their faith in God and peacemaking – Salaam Alaikum — as they increasingly live with Christians in Europe and with Christians as minorities in their homelands.

I’ve already suggested that there are not that many Muslim Americans in Denver, though their numbers increase and their younger generation is making its impact felt. Indeed, a young Muslim woman whom I have met at interfaith gatherings was just elected to the Colorado House of Representatives. So too in many other parts of the US. Thus what Francis has to say about relations with Muslims is quite relevant to our North American reality.

Even more, his broader focus on migration and minorities is immensely relevant to Denver.

A good friend with some Spanish goes regularly to the Immigration jail here and develops a relationship with just one guy until that man’s status is decided. Just trying to be a friend to someone in the ditch, to help him on his way.

My Presbyterian wife is involved in a dual effort — both to get more churches in the Presbytery of Denver involved in work to help and advocate for immigrants – and to reach out to other church and religious groups to form a broader coalition of help and advocacy for immigrants.

It would be a real step towards social friendship if, after the election mess settles back to “ordinary” culture warfare, the major visible church leaders here – bishops and senior pastors, senior rabbis and senior imams, along with representatives from other faiths, might kneel or stand together (in LoDo outside Union station, for instance) to beg our people to open their hearts to migrants as well as to refugees. That would indeed manifest the beauty and the power of religious pluralism in Denver.

In this final chapter, the pope again tells us that he was accompanied in spirit as he wrote this letter by one of the world’s major Muslim leaders, Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, whom he had met in Abu Dhabi and with whom he signed a joint declaration calling all to religious and social peace. Francis shares the appeal for peace in that text by citing the it at the end of his letter (as I will do at the end of this post).

At the end of his letter, Francis also notes notes other religious sources of inspiration for his writing. St. Francis is, of course, the most significant among them. But the pope also notes inspiration provided by “brothers and sisters who are not Catholics.” He mentions “Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, Mahatma Gandhi and many more.” All more evidence of the beauty of religious pluralism and interfaith cooperation which is the chapter’s basic theme.

Yet lest I glorify this pope too much. For he does have his limits. I note with others that he fails to mention any of the great women leaders and saints, from different faiths, who have so beautifully and greatly contributed to social peace and who continue to do so. And yes, I am bothered by his failure to name any of those he refers to as “sisters.” His failure, for instance, to note and quote the likes of Dorothy Day or Sojourner Truth, Simone Weil or Etty Hillesum, as major religious voices for peace‘

****

The entire chapter can be read as a extended discussion of the relationship of religion and violence – a topic on the mind and in the imaginations of so many these days. Yet it is by stressing the real and very important role of religion in overcoming violence and working for a renewal of trust – by stressing the many goods which religion brings to public life – that this chapter frames its discussion of violence.

What, for Francis, are some of those religious goods? Here are several drawn from the larger picture of religion presented in this final chapter.

First, he argues that without a shared human belief in God or other “supreme and transcendental principles” – beliefs maintained or embodied in the world’s great religions – violence grows and rules. Without such an “ultimate foundation,” war and violence are the inevitable outcome.

He thus turns the secularist argument on its head – the argument that finds the source of violence and warfare in religious absolutism and dogmatism – by arguing that it is the absence of any shared human sense of ultimacy that opens the gateway to violence.

“It is wrong [Francis argues] when the only voices to be heard in public debate are those of the powerful and ‘experts’. Room needs to be made for reflections born of religious traditions that are the repository of centuries of experience and wisdom. For ‘religious classics can prove meaningful in every age; they have an enduring power [to open new horizons, to stimulate thought, to expand the mind and the heart]’.”

Secondly, Francis emphasizes that central to Christian identity are both religious freedom and openness to other faiths. For it is the strength of our roots in the Gospel which leads us to join with the other in service to those swept to the waysides of our world. And it is the freedom we seek in other lands to practice our faith which must lead us to accept and honor the religious freedom of those come recently into our homelands. And to work with them for peace.

Finally, Francis directly addresses the violence perpetrated by terrorists in the name of God. Clearly they are wrong, blasphemous, criminal. Yet once again, rather than focus on condemnation, Francis makes a long, thoughtful appeal to terrorist groups and individuals – appealing to them to see that, whatever the legitimacy of their grievances, the authentic beauty of their faith rejects what they are doing in its name.

So I again mount my rhetorical pulpit and ask Denver church/religious folk to find ways within their understandings and practices to work for post-election peace. To take up the long road ahead to enable the divided sides of our people to listen more and excommunicate less.

And I further note that, as part of that long road, we religious folk also need to listen better to each other.

For, at least as I see my city, Catholics and Jews remain cautiously friendly — each divided within its membership and leadership about interfaith interests and collaboration, and more fundamentally divided around controversial issues like immigration and economic justice, Middle East Peace and women’s liberation.

And it’s much the same between Catholics and other Christians. Catholics are deeply divided between so called “conservatives” and “liberals” as much as Protestants are divided between “mainstream” and “evangelical” or “fundamentalist.”

I don’t have much sense of group elations between Muslims or Hindus and Christians and Jews – the former being so far only small actors on the local scene.

Yet there seems to be a kind of “underground” relationship between Christians and Buddhists, at least liberal Christians, that is focused around contemplative practice and its contribution to social justice and peace.

***
As noted, Francis concludes his discussion of religion and social peace by ending with a long citation of the appeal he co-wrote with the Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyeb.

I also place it here, at the end of my text, with the hope that you might imagine your city or neighborhood as you read. Like the rest of the encyclical, this appeal is quite repetitious and best read slowly, even repeatedly.

“In the name of God, who has created all human beings equal in rights, duties and dignity, and who has called them to live together as brothers and sisters, to fill the earth and make known the values of goodness, love and peace;

“In the name of innocent human life that God has forbidden to kill, affirming that whoever kills a person is like one who kills the whole of humanity, and that whoever saves a person is like one who saves the whole of humanity;

“In the name of the poor, the destitute, the marginalized and those most in need, whom God has commanded us to help as a duty required of all persons, especially the wealthy and those of means;

“In the name of orphans, widows, refugees and those exiled from their homes and their countries; in the name of all victims of wars, persecution and injustice; in the name of the weak, those who live in fear, prisoners of war and those tortured in any part of the world, without distinction;

“In the name of peoples who have lost their security, peace and the possibility of living together, becoming victims of destruction, calamity and war;

“In the name of human fraternity, that embraces all human beings, unites them and renders them equal;

“In the name of this fraternity torn apart by policies of extremism and division, by systems of unrestrained profit or by hateful ideological tendencies that manipulate the actions and the future of men and women;

“In the name of freedom, that God has given to all human beings, creating them free and setting them apart by this gift;

“In the name of justice and mercy, the foundations of prosperity and the cornerstone of faith;

“In the name of all persons of goodwill present in every part of the world;

“In the name of God and of everything stated thus far, [we] declare the adoption of a culture of dialogue as the path; mutual cooperation as the code of conduct; reciprocal understanding as the method and standard”.

And let the people say “Amen.”

This is the fourth and penultimate segment of my extended discussion of Pope Francis’ new encyclical letter. It’s the first to address the economic critique of neo-liberal capitalism which runs through this new letter and has been a constant element in virtually all of his previous writings and speeches. Think “Throw-away economy” and “option for the poor.”

As I’ve said several times, the Pope’s letter is a complicated persuasive argument urging us to participate in its reflections about our world. It’s a moral argument made to all people, not a theological essay just for believers.

Yet the center of that persuasive argument is an extended meditation (the entire 2nd Chapter) on the meaning of Jesus’ parable about “The Good Samaritan.” Francis offers this parable to all of us, whatever our religion or ethics. He challenges everyone to shared reflection on the parable’s central question about who is my neighbor, and on the very human roles most of us play regularly in this iconic drama – the Samaritan who stops to help, the Priest and Levite who walk on by, the victim left on a roadside, and even the robbers who left him there.

I was especially struck by Francis’ discussion of the robbers. The pope enlarges the meaning beyond street thugs to the many ways in which the world’s economic and political systems rob people, especially the poor, especially those forced into migration – and so often thrown to the wayside by various new forms of so-called “nationalisms” and by the so-called “laws” of manufacture and trade and finance.

The Pope’s critique of political and economic ideologies is not simplistic, but probing and at times startling. Who, after all, regularly imagines bankers as “robbers” – the sophisticated equivalent of street thugs or, better, pickpockets and con artists. We may feel that way about bankers when there is news of some new fraud by any number of big banks. Yet when we deposit checks or withdraw money or receive a good mortgage from our local bank, we are less likely to think of robbery than of our shared need for reliable banks.

Yet Francis challenges us also to think of these systems from which so many of us benefit and in which we all inescapably participate as networks of organized crime. Or if that seems to harsh, to begin to see them as unwitting and at times unwilling collaborators in massive global forms of robbery.

To see the way that we, for all our efforts to be fair, for all our good intentions and good work as members of the white collar and managerial classes – or as members of blue collar working and service classes – to see that we all nonetheless participate in the robbery and casting to the wayside of so many of our poorer neighbors – at home and throughout the world.

This is, from compassionate and pastoral Francis, a very hard saying.

The dog walks me around the huge, full-square-block construction that’s only a half-block away, between us and Coors Field (baseball!). I’ve come to think of this interconnected set of towers as a beautiful monster. It is a hotel-office-condo-and-shopping complex being built by the Colorado Rockies et. al.: think big banks, a major construction corporation with extensive chains of suppliers and machinery and a very large labor force just for this site – and think as well, of course, government support (tax breaks?) and oversight.

Thanks to the dog, I’ve watched what’s named “McGregor Square” grow from a huge, 4-story deep excavation where once there was a baseball parking lot (with lots of good puppy-pee-places) to its present tri-tower structure.

I marvel every day at the immense collaborative effort involved – from the managers to the supply purchasers to the hole diggers with their immense machines to the endless truck drivers delivering construction materials to the guys and gals who’ve built the walls up and now are building wired internal walls for office and residential rooms…. (That’s a deliberately run-on yet still incomplete sentence.)

It could not be happening at this and at least five or six similar construction projects within walking distance…. It could not be happening without a network of trust and solidarity, agreements and contracts, between labor and management, between different forms of expertise and craft. Even as such an umbrella network of solidarity nonetheless involves major inequalities as well as the inevitable tensions and prejudices which fester along class and racial and ethnic and gender lines.

This beautiful monster will win awards. It will, as the planners and pundits keep saying, contribute immensely to the ongoing development of LoDo and of Denver as a whole. It will probably raise the value of my apartment just down the block. It will, as politicians and planners all agree, make our city more vibrant… (and perhaps eventually more confident in welcoming the halt and lame, the outcast and the immigrant, though this is my fervent wish, one not stressed much by the project’s cheerleaders.)

Yet Francis challenged me to realize that, for all such social goods, the project and its parallels all over the world also still play the robber’s role in the parable. That being the point of this long LoDo digression.

How does it rob? It adds to Denver’s widespread gentrification that is sweeping significant numbers of poorer folk out of the way of progress, casting them onto the wayside.

I remember once getting onto a bus heading back downtown. I sat in the front seats reserved for elders and eventually joined a conversation between two African American elders. Both were lamenting the fact that gentrification in Denver had forced them to move to Aurora, Denver’s sprawling and in parts heavily minority suburb. And now forces them to take a bus downtown where once they could walk.

Even more fundamentally, McGregor Square will be an economic success for Denver precisely because it is one small part of the global machinery of economic “progress” which we call by many names: democratic capitalism, neoliberal capitalism, post-colonial capitalism, even socialist and communist capitalism. This system, for all the many goods it has brought to humanity, nonetheless is based on what Francis at one point “the invisible dictatorship of money.”

I’m part of that system, as is Francis himself.

And with him, I and most of my readers also need to be able to see how our “system” involves an ongoing robbery which, for all the benefits in medicine and food aid, in education and communications, which it gives, nonetheless continues to disenfranchise and impoverish billions of our sisters and brothers around the world. To sweep them to the wayside. And thereby it makes robbers of us all.

Such active “seeing” of the bigger picture just might, with Francis’ insistent prodding, awaken us to the many economic and political changes needed if we are truly to become the neighbors raised by the parable.

As I said, this is a very hard saying – challenging, troubling.

Here’s one of the many ways Francis expresses this hard saying:

“Only when our economic and social system no longer produces even a single victim, a single person cast aside, will we be able to celebrate the feast of universal fraternity” (par . 110).

Yet, as I’ve already said, Francis’ discussion of our economy is not simplistic. He praises the vocation of business people even as he challenges them. He celebrates authentic forms of economic development even as he challenges other forms. He celebrates, to coin a phrase, the diverse wealth of nations – each with its cultural and natural resources — even as he urges the global system to benefit from such resources without robbing the peoples and nations who possess them.

Read and see the complexity of this economic critique, and be blessed with the wit and grace to understand its complex but still very hard challenges.