Archangels, St. Jerome, Morality, And God's Law

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

nor stands in the way of sinners,

nor sits in the seat of scoffers;

but his delight is in the law of the LORD,

and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

that yields its fruit in its season,

and its leaf does not wither.

In all that he does, he prospers.

The wicked are not so,

but are like chaff which the wind drives away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,

nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;

 for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will perish. (Psalm 1)

  

   The first Psalm gives us an interesting account of God’s law.  It is explained primarily in descriptive terms: if you follow God’s Law, and take it to heart, you will be happy, but if you choose wickedness, well, then your wages will be death.  Here is one of many indications in Scripture that while God allows us to conduct our own affairs, both on an individual and societal level, he wants to be involved, and he has created us in such a way that we in turn desire his presence in our lives (yet another occasion to quote St. Augustine: “Our heart is restless until it rests in you”).  And so he has created a variety of means for communicating with us without controlling us.

     We see God’s desire to communicate reflected in different ways in our obsevances over the next two days.  Today is the feast of the Archangels: our word “angel” comes from the Greek ἄγγελος, which simply means “messenger”.  The function of angels, at least as far as they concern us, is as carriers of God’s messages to us.  In addition to that, tomorrow is the feast of St. Jerome, who is known primarily for creating the first complete and reliable Latin translation of the Holy Scriptures, making the Bible available to all those inhabitants of the Roman Empire who did not know Greek. We honor St. Jerome because he made the word of God available to so many people.

      I couldn’t help thinking about the Archangels and St. Jerome the other day when I was reading this column [here] by Star Parker.  Parker is reporting on a recent survey by the Pew Center showing that: 

Over the last 12 years, the percentage of Americans that think religion is losing influence in American life has increased dramatically.  In 2002, 52 percent of those surveyed said religion is losing influence.  In 2014, 72 percent of Americans said religion is losing influence. 

Star Parker

     At the same time, Parker says, “fifty-six percent say that the waning of religion is a bad thing compared to 12 percent that say it is a good thing”, and she points to a Pew poll from 2012 that found that 58 percent thought religion was “very important” against only 12 percent who believed the opposite.

     What are we to make of these figures?  One would think that the large majority decrying the decline of religion must nonetheless play some part in that decline.  I suspect that we are seeing, at least in part, the struggle between our willing spirits and weak flesh within our restless hearts: “Lord give me chastity . . . but not yet” (St. Augustine has all the bases covered).  There are also more concrete considerations.  Parker, who was at one time a single mother on welfare, and who credits the welfare reforms of the 1990’s with rescuing her from a life of dependency on government largesse, sees the baleful moral consequences of such dependence as an important proximate cause.  Most Americans, largely out of a sense of Christian Charity, supported the enormous expansion of government assistance programs starting in the 1960’s.  

Who appreciated that the program would undermine the very religious, traditional values that keep families intact, essential for the work ethic that leads people out of poverty?  Massive increases of government in the lives of low-income black families were accompanied by a tripling of single parent households and out-of-wedlock births, laying the groundwork for intergenerational poverty. 

Now it’s happening in the whole country.  As we’ve gotten more government telling Americans how to save for retirement, how to deal with their health care, how to educate their children – American families have been damaged and out-of-wedlock births have increased six-fold from 1960 to 42 percent today.  Government has displaced family.

But it’s not simply about government.  In fact, Parker finds fault with both the Statists on the left and the Libertarians on the right who see the government per se as the issue, as if adding more government or radically cutting it will alone solve our social problems.  No, “you can’t have a free society that is not also a virtuous society”, and “we can’t separate our fiscal and economic problems from our moral problems.”  And where does morality come from?  Of course . . . God’s Law.

     I want to be clear that I’m not pushing some kind of “Gospel of Prosperity”, but the discussion above does offer an example of how God knows the truth about us, and that living by that truth leads to happiness, while denying it brings on ruin.  We know it from the messages carried by his Angels, the Scriptures he inspired, and the Church he established.  As the Lord Himself tells Moses:   

For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.  It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.  "See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil.  If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you this day, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land which you are entering to take possession of it.   (Deuteronomy 30:11-16)

  

Pope Francis Is Not A Communist . . . He's A Catholic

The other day, in one of his impromptu in-flight press conferences, Pope Francis assured the reporters on his plane that he was not a socialist, but was indeed a Catholic, and offered to recite the Creed as proof.  Perhaps more to the point, he explained that he wasn't saying anything new about economics, but was simply restating what his recent predecessors had said.  I suppose he must be reading my blog, because that's just what I conclude in this Throwback Thursday post from February 2014:
   

  Pope Francis certainly makes things interesting.  Aside from keeping former kremlinologists employed trying to discern the intent behind his appointments, he can’t seem to help saying things that get people in an uproar.  The most notorious case was an interview with Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari, in which the Pope seemed to be endorsing a rather generous (i.e., relativistic ) concept of conscience.  As it turns out, however, Scalfari, who is an atheist, did not record his discussion with the Pope nor did he take notes; the “interview” was actually his own recollection of the conversation (link).  He eventually admitted “some of the Pope’s words I reported were not shared by Pope Francis.” Oops.  The Vatican removed the interview from its website.  The Pope, it appears, is learning to be more careful.

Don't point the finger at Pope Francis . . . 

     More surprising (perhaps) is the uproar over a statement in the Pope’s Encyclical Gaudium Evangelii (Joy of the Gospel) that seemed to be a condemnation of Capitalism . . . at least that’s the way the press reported it, and considering the great gaudium sinistri (Joy of the Left) that accompanied it, how could they be wrong?  

     Easily, as it turns out.  We’ll get to that in a moment, but we need a little context for the Church’s teaching on matters economic.  Let’s start with four stipulations:

-1. The Magisterium of the Church in general, and the Pope (any Pope) in particular, claims no particular competence in economics.

 -2. The Magisterium and the Pope do, however, have the competence to teach authoritatively on moral principles that Catholics are to apply in their economic life.

-3. Since Leo XIII’s Encyclical Rerum Novarum in 1891 the Popes have been developing a body of Magisterial teaching on said principles.

-4.  A pope cannot simply reverse prior magisterial teaching, even in a formal proclamation such as an encyclical letter (and of course, he can’t say anything authoritative at all in a newspaper interview).

     Given that, the proper way to evaluate what Francis said about the free market economy is to consider his remarks in the context of the existing teaching.  A good place to start is Pope John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, issued one hundred years after Rerum Novarum (hence the name: “hundredth year”), in which he looks back at Leo’s encyclical, Pius XI’s1931 encyclical QuadrigesimoAnno (“The Fortieth Year” – do you see a pattern here?) and the economic events of the twentieth century.  While the scope of Saint John Paul’s encyclical is too vast to explore here, we can at least get a glimpse at what he has to say about socialism and capitalism.      

     Pope John Paul tells us, first of all, that the “guiding principle of Pope Leo's Encyclical, and of all of the Church's social doctrine, is a correct view of the human person and of his unique value, inasmuch as ‘man ... is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself”’ . . .and  “his essential dignity as a person.” (Centesimus Annus  5) These are not the concerns of socialism.  John Paul quotes from Rerum Novarum, which criticizes the socialists because they "encourage the poor man's envy of the rich and strive to do away with private property” and  

their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that, were they carried into effect, the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are moreover emphatically unjust, for they would rob the lawful possessor, distort the functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community. (Rerum Novarum 99) 

All of which proved true on the occasions when socialism was put into practice during the twentieth century. This is not to say, however, that the Church favors an unfettered free market: 

There is certainly a legitimate sphere of autonomy in economic life which the State should not enter. The State, however, has the task of determining the juridical framework within which economic affairs are to be conducted, and thus of safeguarding the prerequisites of a free economy, which presumes a certain equality between the parties, such that one party would not be so powerful as practically to reduce the other to subservience. (Centesimus Annus 15). 

The state’s role should be determined by the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity: 

. . . according to the principle of subsidiarity, by creating favourable conditions for the free exercise of economic activity, which will lead to abundant opportunities for employment and sources of wealth. Directly and according to the principle of solidarity, by defending the weakest, by placing certain limits on the autonomy of the parties who determine working conditions, and by ensuring in every case the necessary minimum support for the unemployed worker. (Centesimus Annus 15) 

The meaning of solidarity should be evident in the passage above; subsidiarity is described by Pius XI in Quadrigesimo Anno 79 as follows:

[I]t is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them . . .

Pope John Paul also says: 

It would appear that, on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs . . .  But there are many human needs which find no place on the market. It is a strict duty of justice and truth not to allow fundamental human needs to remain unsatisfied, and not to allow those burdened by such needs to perish. It is also necessary to help these needy people to acquire expertise, to enter the circle of exchange, and to develop their skills in order to make the best use of their capacities and resources. (Centesimus Annus 35) 

Notice that the Pope is not describing a particular system, but putting forward certain principles that should under gird the system: a relatively free market, a state that protects property and ensures the rule of law, protects the weak from exploitation, and in the process respects the appropriate freedom to conduct their own affairs that everyone possesses as part of his innate dignity as a human being made in the image of God.   The market (note well: properly regulated) is the best means of producing the most prosperity for everyone; as Christians we need to find ways to include everyone in its benefits.

     Which brings us back to our starting point.  No system can take the place of the “unique value” of each human person.  In the matter “of overseeing and directing the exercise of human rights in the economic sector”, for instance "primary responsibility in this area belongs not to the State but to individuals and to the various groups and associations which make up society.” (Centesimus Annus 48)  As John Adams said of the U.S. Constitution: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other”, so can we say of the market economy. No system can be truly just apart from the free choices of those who populate it.  As Pope John Paul says in another place: 

It is not therefore a matter of inventing a "new program". The program already exists: it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition, it is the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its center in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved and imitated, so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfillment in the heavenly Jerusalem.  (Novo Millenio Ineunto 29) 

     Pardon the lengthy excursus into papal documents, but this is the backdrop against which we need to look at Pope Francis’ remarks on economic systems.  In Evangelii Gaudium 54 Pope Francis says, according to the official English translation:

In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably  succeed in bringing about greater justice and  inclusiveness in the world. 

Catholic blogger extraordinaire Fr. Z rightly points out (link) that the Spanish phrase por mismo, translated “inevitably” above, is more accurately rendered “by itself”.  That is an important distinction, although even with the less accurate translation any objective observer can see that what New Model Pope Francis is saying is completely consistent with the teaching of the rigid, right-wing, authoritarian, pre-Vatican II neo-Torquemada John Paul II in Centesimus Annus: The system can’t do it alone, no system can, it can at most provide the opportunity.  In fact, the system is only as just as those people who animate it, who can only find true justice in the Good News of Jesus Christ.

     So, what’s all the uproar about?  The key lies in the phrase “objective of observer.”  As I pointed out in an earlier post (link), those on the left, both in the Church and in the secular world, need to protect their worldview at all costs, and will often cite in their own support authorities who, on even cursory inspection, don’t support them at all.  I once knew of a high school campus minister who had previously been a 100% pro-abortion state legislator, but nevertheless would brandish (I mean physically brandish) a copy of John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae when arguing against capital punishment.  She seemed unaware (or maybe she just didn't care) that abortion comes in for much harsher treatment in that document.

     That’s the story here.  The secular press and their religious counterparts will continue to snatch up and loudly trumpet any remarks by this Pope that can even remotely be construed to support their heterodoxy.  So if you want to know what the pope really said, go to a more sober source.

Archangels, St. Jerome, Morality, and God's Law

(This Throwback was first published on September 30th, the day after the Feast of the Archangels, 2014.)

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

nor stands in the way of sinners,

nor sits in the seat of scoffers;

but his delight is in the law of the LORD,

and on his law he meditates day and night.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water,

that yields its fruit in its season,

and its leaf does not wither.

In all that he does, he prospers.

The wicked are not so,

but are like chaff which the wind drives away.

Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,

nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;

 for the LORD knows the way of the righteous,

but the way of the wicked will perish. (Psalm 1)

  

   The first Psalm gives us an interesting account of God’s law.  It is explained primarily in descriptive terms: if you follow God’s Law, and take it to heart, you will be happy, but if you choose wickedness, well, then your wages will be death.  Here is one of many indications in Scripture that while God allows us to conduct our own affairs, both on an individual and societal level, he wants to be involved, and he has created us in such a way that we in turn desire his presence in our lives (allow me to quote St. Augustine once again: “Our heart is restless until it rests in you”).  And so he has created a variety of means for communicating with us without controlling us.

     We have seen God’s desire to communicate reflected in different ways in our celebrations of the last two days.  Yesterday was the feast of the Archangels: our word “angel” comes from the Greek ἄγγελος, which simply means “messenger”.  The function of angels, at least as far as they concern us, is as carriers of God’s messages to us.  In addition to that, today is the feast of St. Jerome, who is known primarily for creating the first complete and reliable Latin translation of the Holy Scriptures, making the Bible available to all those inhabitants of the Roman Empire who did not know Greek. We honor St. Jerome because he made the word of God available to so many people.

      I couldn’t help thinking about the Archangels and St. Jerome the other day when I was reading this column [here] by Star Parker.  Parker is reporting on a recent survey by the Pew Center showing that: 

Over the last 12 years, the percentage of Americans that think religion is losing influence in American life has increased dramatically.  In 2002, 52 percent of those surveyed said religion is losing influence.  In 2014, 72 percent of Americans said religion is losing influence. 

Star Parker

     At the same time, Parker says, “fifty-six percent say that the waning of religion is a bad thing compared to 12 percent that say it is a good thing”, and she points to a Pew poll from 2012 that found that 58 percent thought religion was “very important” against only 12 percent who believed the opposite.

     What are we to make of these figures?  One would think that the large majority decrying the decline of religion must nonetheless play some part in that decline.  I suspect that we are seeing, at least in part, the struggle between our willing spirits and weak flesh within our restless hearts: as St. Augustine also said,  “Lord give me chastity . . . but not yet.”  There are also more concrete considerations.  Parker, who was at one time a single mother on welfare, and who credits the welfare reforms of the 1990’s with rescuing her from a life of dependency on government largesse, sees the baleful moral consequences of such dependence as an important proximate cause.  Most Americans, largely out of a sense of Christian Charity, supported the enormous expansion of government assistance programs starting in the 1960’s.  

Who appreciated that the program would undermine the very religious, traditional values that keep families intact, essential for the work ethic that leads people out of poverty?  Massive increases of government in the lives of low-income black families were accompanied by a tripling of single parent households and out-of-wedlock births, laying the groundwork for intergenerational poverty. 

Now it’s happening in the whole country.  As we’ve gotten more government telling Americans how to save for retirement, how to deal with their health care, how to educate their children – American families have been damaged and out-of-wedlock births have increased six-fold from 1960 to 42 percent today.  Government has displaced family.

But it’s not simply about government.  In fact, Parker finds fault with both the Statists on the left and the Libertarians on the right who see the government per se as the issue, as if adding more government or radically cutting it will alone solve our social problems.  No, “you can’t have a free society that is not also a virtuous society”, and “we can’t separate our fiscal and economic problems from our moral problems.”  And where does morality come from?  Of course . . . from God’s Law.

     I want to be clear that I’m not pushing some kind of “Gospel of Prosperity”, but the discussion above does offer an example of how God knows the truth about us, and that living by that truth leads to happiness, while denying it brings on ruin.  We know it from the messages carried by his Angels, the Scriptures he inspired, and the Church he established.  As the Lord Himself tells Moses:   

For this commandment which I command you this day is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.  It is not in heaven, that you should say, 'Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.  "See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil.  If you obey the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you this day, by loving the LORD your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his ordinances, then you shall live and multiply, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land which you are entering to take possession of it.   (Deuteronomy 30:11-16)

  

Morality and Poverty (from Nisi Dominus)

Some political commentators like to draw a distinction between between "economic issues", among which are political approaches to poverty, and what they call "social issues", including things like marriage, family, abortion, sexual morality, etc.  In the Catholic view, it is clear that all of these issues are connected; for secularists, whether coming from the right or the left, it is not so clear although, occasionally, one of them stumbles upon it. This piece is about one such discovery. An earlier version of it first appeared last April under the title "In Mother Jones, of All Places" on my blog Principium et Finis.

The Left-Wing Rag

Radical activist, the original Mother Jones

     Back in my secular, radical college days I used to enjoy a leftish publication called Mother Jones, your proverbial Left-Wing Rag.  I had not so much as gazed upon said publication since somewhere around the transition between President Reagan’s first and second terms, when the other day  I happened across a recent copy, and decided to look inside, for old times’ sake.  There among the expected articles about the balefulness of the sinister plastic companies, and a hit job aiming to show that Louisiana’s Republication Governor Bobby Jindal is a wacko because he’s a believing Catholic, and so on, I found a most unexpected piece called “What If Everything You Knew About Poverty Was Wrong? [link]”  I say unexpected not because everything I know about poverty is wrong (necessarily), but because the factual content of the article actually validates much of what is being said about poverty by people on what its author, and the magazine, would consider “the right”.  I take this as a hopeful sign that maybe, maybe, we can start having a conversation about poverty that rises above the usual political divisions.

You Never Know What You Might Find . . . 

     The article, written by Stephanie Mencimer, is a profile of poverty researcher Kathryn Edin, a Johns-Hopkins University sociologist who decided she could better understand the poor if she moved into the most poverty-blasted area of East Camden, New Jersey (although herself a Methodist, one of Edin’s long-time heroes is St. Francis of Assisi).  The article would have us believe that in doing so Edin discovered things previously unknown . . . 

(Read the entire piece HERE at Nisi Dominus)

Can The Good Be The Enemy Of The Perfect?

     Like many of my fellow Catholics, I tend to focus on particular issues (for instance, life and family issues) as an expression of my faith and as a means of evangelizing.  But there is always the danger of losing sight of the Big Picture when we commit ourselves to specific causes which are necessarily finite and subordinate to Eternal Truths.  For example, one criticism of the “Abortion Myths” series that I have been posting is that we are in danger (or I am in danger) of reducing Catholicism to nothing more than an anti-abortion crusade.  One commenter suggested that we should instead simply preach the Gospel, and once we have converted the world the abortion problem will solve itself.

Leonard Porter, "Saint Paul Preaching on the Areopagus".

Admonish The Sinner

     There is a degree of truth in such criticism: there is always a possibility that we will be governed more by our own limited enthusiasms than by the will of God.  On the other hand, it is God’s will that we act against wrongs being committed in our own time and place.  This is stated over and over again in Holy Scripture, as in this Old Testament passage:

"So you, son of man, I have made a watchman for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. If I say to the wicked, O wicked man, you shall surely die, and you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand.  But if you warn the wicked to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way; he shall die in his iniquity, but you will have saved your life.  (Ezekial 33:7-9)

And here we see the same principle in the New Testament:

My brethren, if any one among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins. (James 5:19-20)

     Saint Peter gives us some guidance on how we can address particular situations without neglecting the Full Gospel:

But even if you do suffer for righteousness’ sake, you will be blessed.  Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord.  Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and reverence; and keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are abused, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. (1 Peter 3:14-16)

By exemplifying in our manner and mode of address respect for the dignity of our adversary, we are preaching by example the Gospel of Christ’s love.

Practice What You Preach

     We very often see wonderful examples of this approach in some of the Church’s teaching documents, and in a special way in those addressing a particular wrong.  These magisterial correctives take advantage of the interest generated by a particular “hot topic” as a teachable moment both to gently yet firmly invite back those who have strayed, and also to give a positive lesson on how the Church’s teaching in a particular area is grounded in the greater principle of God’s all-embracing love.

Pope Paul VI and Cardinal Ratzinger
(now Bl. Paul VI and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI)

     One such document is Pope Paul VI’s 1968 Encyclical Humanae Vitae [here], to which I will be returning in the near future.  Another less well-known one is the 1984 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith document called Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation” [here], signed by the CDF’s then prefect Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.   The main purpose of the document is to correct errors in the Liberation Theology movement similar to those described above, specifically that it tends to give worldly “liberation” from material want and suffering precedence over the Liberation from Sin that is the true core of Christian belief, and also that it associates itself too closely with the anti-Christian political Philosophy of Marxism.  At the same time, the document acknowledges the areas where Liberation Theology is right, particularly its focus on very real problems of poverty, suffering and injustice in many parts of the world.  Finally, the document takes the opportunity to present a wonderfully concise mini-lesson in the Catholic understanding of poverty and our responsibility as Christians to work actively on behalf of the poor and oppressed.

     This document is but one of many examples of the fact that the Big Picture and finite issues are inextricably intertwined.  If our attempts to address and correct particular wrongs are not first grounded in Christ’s Love, then we are no better than “a noisy gong or clanging cymbal” (1 Corinthians 13:1), or worse than that if our lack of charity actually drives people away from the Gospel.  On the other hand, if we simply preach the Love of God without applying it to concrete situations, it becomes an insubstantial abstraction, and our Faith is as good as dead (see James, chapter 2).  Our role as Catholics is to be both/and, body and soul, and to witness to the Word made Flesh.  In no other way can we, as Saint Paul says (1 Timothy 6:12), “Fight the Good Fight”.

(An earlier version of this post was published under the title "The Forest and the Trees" on June 4th of last year)

    

Being Christian in the Age of Esau

One Old Testament passage that has stayed with me for a long time is the story of Jacob and Esau from Genesis (chapter 27). As a little boy I was fascinated by Jacob’s trick (well, his mother Rebecca’s trick) of using goat skins on his hands to fool his blind old father Isaac into believing him to be his hairy brother Esau, and so obtain the father’s blessing. Later, when I was a father myself, I was also impressed by the obvious importance of the paternal blessing (which I have generously bestowed on all my children). But I was always troubled by the fact of Jacob’s dishonesty in obtaining it.  The Bible wasn’t condoning lying, was it?

     Of course, it’s not; but how to explain the apparent contradiction?  There are many cases in Scripture in which apparently shocking details serve to grab our attention and direct it to a main point.  We see Jesus do this in the Gospels.  In Luke, for instance, when he says: “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations.”  (Luke 16: 9) We know that Jesus can’t really mean that we should use “unrighteous mammon [wealth]” to make friends, or that such friends could possibly offer us “eternal habitations”.  We need to read on to see where he’s leading us:

"He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another's, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." (Luke 16: 10-13)

We are drawn into thinking about his point more deeply (which is that only God, not mammon, can save us), because we want to resolve the apparent contradiction.  We see something similar in the parable of the wedding guest who is “bound hand and foot and cast into the outer darkness” simply because he’s wearing the wrong clothes (Matthew 22:13) and in many other places as well.

     In the story of Jacob and Esau we need to look two chapters earlier to get the context for Esau’s loss of his father’s blessing:

Once when Jacob was boiling pottage, Esau came in from the field, and he was famished. And Esau said to Jacob, "Let me eat some of that red pottage, for I am famished!" (Therefore his name was called Edom.) Jacob said, "First sell me your birthright." Esau said, "I am about to die; of what use is a birthright to me?" Jacob said, "Swear to me first." So he swore to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils, and he ate and drank, and rose and went his way. Thus Esau despised his birthright. (Gen. 25:29-34)

Having read the earlier passage, we know that Esau doesn’t deserve his father’s blessing, because he “despised his birthright”; he willingly gave it away even before Jacob and Rebecca’s trickery.  He loses both birthright and blessing because he has his priorities reversed: he has given immediate material things priority over those things that are truly important. 

     We see this same basic message many times in Scripture, as when St. Paul says:

For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our commonwealth is in heaven . . .  (Phil 3:18-20a)

Esau and the people St. Paul speaks of are extreme examples; it is possible to fall into lesser degrees of the same problem, as we see in the case of the sisters Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42).  Martha is too distracted by the various details of hospitality to pay much attention to the Divine Guest in her house, while Mary, who sits at the feet of Jesus, “has chosen the better part, and it will not be taken away from her”.

     We know that in spite of what happens in this passage, Martha loves Jesus very much, and of course it is right for her to be concerned for the comfort of her guest. The problem is that she becomes so tangled up in means that she forgets about the end to which they are directed.  Her example should be a warning to us: we don’t have to be an Esau to get our priorities reversed.  We all have causes that are important to us, but we can’t let them become our guiding principles: our actions in these causes should be an expression of our faith (see James 2:18), not the focus of it.  While this failing may be endemic to the “social justice” wing of Catholicism (the CDF document Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation”, here, explains beautifully; thank you yet again, Cardinal Ratzinger), the rest of us are susceptible, too: it’s a rare Catholic indeed who has not been a Martha, or worse, on more than one occasion (mea culpa!).  We need to be on guard all the more because we live in an Age of Esau that exalts Action and the Here and Now, and denies the Transcendent.

     So, what to do?  How to avoid falling into the trap?  Someone with much more experience in such things once directed me to this passage from the Gospel of Matthew:

And one of them  a lawyer, asked him a question, to test him.  “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment of the law?  And he said to him. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And the second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.  (Matthew 22:37-39)

We must always remember that the “great and first commandment” is to love God; that takes priority.  If we put loving our neighbor before, or instead of, loving God, then our actions will be disordered and won’t bear the intended fruit.  Therefore, we need to pray first, make sure our course of action is guided by the teaching of Christ through his Church and the Scriptures, and remember that "here we have no lasting city, but we seek the City which is to come" (Hebrews 13:14) if we wish to avoid being a Martha or, even worse, an Esau.

An earlier version of this post was first published on May 9th of this year.

Marriage, Family & Liberty

     There are few societal issues or problems today that are not related, very often closely related, to the well-being of families; the family itself is dependent on the health of the institution of marriage; stable marriage, in turn, only flourishes in an environment shaped by sound morality.  This is a principle I’ve addressed numerous times, from various angles (here, here, here, and here, among others), but the most direct way of putting it is this: our moral choices do not affect ourselves only, but have an impact on society as a whole.  For this reason, issues that seem to be economic or political are often, at their root, the product of moral trends; the political and economic aspects are really only symptoms of the underlying cultural problem.  To the degree that our religious freedom is tied to liberty more generally (and I argue that it is), we ought to be concerned about some of the things that are brewing in the culture.

     Let’s start with something that is normally discussed as a partisan political issue here in the United States, but is actually something that goes much deeper: the so-called “gender gap”. In federal elections in the U.S. for the last forty years women have cast proportionally more votes for Democrats (who are generally more amenable to welfare state policies than Republicans) than have men, and since 1992 the overall female vote has gone to the Democratic candidate every time.  But there’s more here than meets the eye: as Kay Hymowitz points out in an article in City Journal [here],  women who are married have voted for the Republican every time, except 1996 when they chose Bill Clinton over Bob Dole by a slim margin; single women always have broken decisively for the Democratic candidate every time. In reality, the gap is between married and single women, and as the proportion of adult women who are not married grows, the apparent gap between women and men follows.

Rome in decay: The Roses of Heliogabalus by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

     Why the difference?  Meg McDonnell, writing at MercatorNet [here] offers the explanation that women who lack the support of a partner in the more traditional person of a husband are more likely to look for help from the government, and so support the candidate who’s offering more government services.  Hymowitz argues instead that the difference results from the fact that marriage is less prevalent in minority groups, who tend to favor the Democrats.  I don’t see the two causes as being contradictory; there are any number of factors in play, including the possibility that fewer intact families are among those things that draw minorities to the Big Government party.  Also, pollsters don’t seem interested in breaking down married women by race, but the information I’ve been able to find suggests that single white women do lean more to the left than their married sisters.

     Naturally, it is perfectly understandable that single women, who might be raising children alone or facing the prospect, would look for support.  I know from experience that even in a household with two healthy, well-educated parents who are committed to the family it can be overwhelming at times.  But this is also a reason why encouraging and supporting intact families is essential for maintaining freedom (which means not just political but religious liberty).  Not only are single mothers more likely to be dependent on government than women in intact families; their children, on average, are more likely to suffer from a whole host of issues, as detailed in my post “Where Have All The Fathers Gone?” [here], problems involving  “poverty, emotional/behavioral problems, maternal & child health, crime & incarceration, sexual activity & teen pregnancy, child abuse, drug & alcohol abuse, childhood obesity, education”.  In other words, they will be more likely to need government assistance, or other (less friendly) attention from the government.  Either way, the result is a bigger and more intrusive government, and citizens less equipped to take care of themselves.  And this problem is growing. McDonnell tells us that “for the first time in Census history, marriage rates are below 50 percent with only 48 percent of households married.”

     I have previously [here] quoted John Adams to the effect that “Our constitution was made only for the government of a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”  In other words, not everyone is equipped govern themselves.  Or, as Ben Franklin said after the Constitutional Convention, when asked whether the United States was going to be a monarchy or a republic: “A republic – if you can keep it.”  We could easily lose it, and with it any protections we have from a rapacious and ever more secularist government. The ancient Romans “kept” their republic for five centuries, twice the time that has elapsed since Franklin’s remark.  In the end, their republic collapsed, undermined by moral disintegration and the refusal of leading families, who were too busy with various amusements and self-satisfactions (and killing each other), to perpetuate themselves.  The direction of public affairs that had been in the hands of free Romans was subsumed by a sprawling tyrannical bureaucracy while ambitious generals killed each other for the brief honor of sitting at its head.  The same nation that produced Cincinnatus eventually gave itself up to Heliogabalus. Don’t think it can’t happen here.

      Today’s post is a revamping of an earlier piece published on May 5^th called “Marriage and Liberty, part II", a follow-up to "Traditional Marriage: The Liberty Argument" [here].   

On Being A Christian In Public Life

An earlier version of this post was published on the 29th of April this year.

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

     One need not buy in to the confusing and often intentionally obfuscating "Wall of Separation" language here in the Unites States to acknowledge that the proper role for a believing Christian to play in public and political life can be a complicated question, and today more than ever with political structures that are both democratic and pluralistic.  As in other areas of decision-making, we need to apply our personal judgment in determining how to act in specific situations, but those judgments must be informed and guided by the moral law and the teaching of the Church.  One teaching document that I have found to be enormously helpful in sorting out this question is the Doctrinal Note On Some Questions Regarding The Participation Of Catholics In Political Life [text here], published November 2002 with the authorization of Pope (now Saint) John Paul II, an under the name of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI).

     The Doctrinal Note, despite its narrow focus (it’s only about eight pages long) is a wonderfully rich yet concise discussion, as one would expect from Joseph Ratzinger.  It’s worth a much fuller treatment than I can give it today (I may address that in the future), but right now I want to look at just a couple of points as a sort of follow-up to my post last week about the Maine State Republican Convention [link].

     First of all, participating in public and political life is a good thing:

It is commendable that in today’s democratic societies, in a climate of true freedom, everyone is made a participant in directing the body politic. Such societies call for new and fuller forms of participation in public life by Christian and non-Christian citizens alike . . . The life of a democracy could not be productive without the active, responsible and generous involvement of everyone, “albeit in a diversity and complementarity of forms, levels, tasks, and responsibilities”. (sec. 1, citations omitted)

As Catholic Christians, however, we have a particular mission to fulfill, a “proper task”:

By fulfilling their civic duties, “guided by a Christian conscience”, in conformity with its values, the lay faithful exercise their proper task of infusing the temporal order with Christian values, all the while respecting the nature and rightful autonomy of that order, and cooperating with other citizens according to their particular competence and responsibility. (sec. 1, citations omitted)

In other words, we need to recognize our mission to be Salt and Light to a world in desperate need of the Truth (see Matthew 5:13), while at the same time respecting the freedom of those who might disagree. 

     The Doctrinal Note goes on to say that such involvement on our part in not only good, but is in fact essential if democratic governance is to survive:

At the same time, the Church teaches that authentic freedom does not exist without the truth. “Truth and freedom either go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery.” In a society in which truth is neither mentioned nor sought, every form of authentic exercise of freedom will be weakened, opening the way to libertine and individualistic distortions and undermining the protection of the good of the human person and of the entire society. (sec. 7, citations omitted)

This last point also indicates the limits of politics and political systems, and actually reminds me of something John Adams once said.  As it happens, my son and I were listening to a recorded version of David McCullough’s excellent biography of Adams while travelling to and from the convention last week.  Adams lived a fascinating life: he was a leader in the movement for American independence, a well-travelled diplomat in 18th century Europe, the first Vice President of the United States under George Washington, and Washington’s successor as President.  He was also a deeply religious man (although not, alas, Catholic) with solid moral convictions who thought seriously and incisively about the nature of government and the proper relationship between the government and the governed (all of which he put into practice as the chief architect of the constitution for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the world’s oldest written constitution that is still in use).

The eminently quotable John Adams

     He was, in addition to all that, an outspoken man of considerable wit.  One of my favorite Adams quotes comes from his legal defense of the British soldiers on trial for shooting Bostonians in the Boston Massacre.  Said Adams: “Facts are stubborn things.”  More to the point of this essay, in reference to the Constitution of the United States he said: “Our constitution was made only for the government of a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”  While Adams believed that a republic is the form of government most suited to the dignity of men, and that the republic established by the U.S. Constitution was the best the world had yet seen, such a system could not succeed if those who were participating in it were more interested in feeding their appetites than they were committed to furthering the good, the true and the beautiful.  True freedom, both the Church and Adams agree, is only possible for people who know, and who have been formed in, the Truth.

     And that leads us to the limits of politics and government.  Our actions as citizens in a republic are guided by, and in that sense subordinate to, our properly formed consciences; likewise, the policies of the government are subject to a higher moral law.  If our consciences are not properly formed, no law can make us good (I approach this idea from a slightly different angle in my post “Hidden Law: Society And The Church” [link]).  At best, we can hope to encourage good behavior by providing incentives for it, and discourage bad behavior by providing disincentives.  And when you have a large number of people with improperly formed consciences combined with government incentives to bad behavior, you face societal and political break-down. 

      What that means for us is that our first and most important task is to be the best Catholic Christians we can be, before we ever cast a vote or sign a petition.  To the degree that we create a more Christian society, we make possible a more just government. We should approach direct political action with the understanding that whatever we do politically (and not, certainly, to subordinate our consciences to majority opinion or the party platform), it is guided by, and in service to, the Higher Truth. Government can do many good and essential things: provide for a common defense, nurture a secure environment for civil society to flourish, build and maintain infrastructure, help alleviate the temporary effects of poverty and abuse. It can not do everything, however, nor should it try: in keeping with the Principle of Subsidiarity [link], we should beware of the the government subsuming responsibilities that rightfully belong to individuals or other associations, especially the family or the Church.  Finally, as Christians we have to know that, however much the state can do, only Jesus Christ can bring about the kingdom of God.