#377: What Would Jesus Say?

The 2012 election gives new relevance to the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John (Chapter 9, verses 1-3)… 
     I had not intended another election piece.  But then Mitt Romney’s post-election analysis provoked so much commentary I felt impelled to join the crowd.

What struck me most was the response of those defending Romney’s claim that it was “gifts” from the Federal Government, and specifically from the Obama Administration, that induced many voting blocs (college students, single women, immigrants, and minorities) to provide Obama with his victory margin.

I personally found Romney’s claim exaggerated and simplistic--but like many such claims it contained a kernel of truth.  Chris Matthews, by contrast, exaggerated the opposite way, interpreting Romney to mean that Obama “bought” the election.  The truth lies in the middle.

On the level of simple facts, the government actions Romney cited did benefit many Obama supporters.  But so what?  Politics has always been about serving your constituent base.  Romney also promised to help folks if elected.  The difference is that Obama, as the incumbent, could do more than promise--he could act.  The field was not level. It never is when an incumbent runs for re-election.

But some Romney reporters read his remarks on a deeper level.  They took them personally not as describing how politics works, but as describing how our society has declined.  They took it as a moral judgment which they agreed with--a judgment against, not Obama, but against those who supported him.  Take this letter to the Boston Globe as an example:

President Obama and Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren won because too many voters buy into the Democrats’ message that the people need their help.  Too many think they are incapable of navigating a world of business, real estate, and commerce.  The Republican message--let government help you help yourself--doesn’t resonate when so many people are on the receiving end of federal benefits…

America is no longer a nation of independent, entrepreneurial, responsible individuals.  We are fearful, lazy, and looking for the government to make the tough decisions and take care of us.

This letter echoes many commentaries since the election, which in turn echo Mitt Romney’s earlier remarks about the 47% who will not take responsibility for their own lives.

The implied moral judgment is clear: the Democratic Party appeals to voters who lacked the virtues of independence and self sufficiency.  It wins elections by catering to the lazy, the weak, and the irresponsible. Such politics takes us down the road to national perdition

I admit I now understand this perspective better than I used to--but I still find it senseless and even repugnant.

I recall how mystified I was when, as a young boy, I first heard this gospel passage:

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth.  His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”--John 9:1-12

The disciples’ question made absolutely no sense to me.  Why, I wondered, would anyone connect misfortune and misery with wrongdoing?  Why would anyone link sickness with sin?

It seemed to me then that Jesus’ response was just plain common sense.  To me, it was more than obvious that people often suffered misfortune through no fault of their own, and needed the help of others.  Didn’t the Parable of the Good Samaritan confirm precisely that point?

And Catholic tradition has long since interpreted Jesus’ remarks to mean that the suffering of others is God’s way of inviting our compassion.  Their suffering means, not that they have done wrong, but that we must prove ourselves to be our brother’s keeper.

As I grew, however, I met more and more people who thought just like those who challenged Jesus (in this case, his own disciples!).  They presume that people in dire straits, especially people who need others’ help (and particularly public sector help), have brought this misfortune on themselves, through some fault of their own.  Such people therefore deserve no help.

The logic still escaped me: how could one think backwards from an outcome of misfortune to its root in moral failing?  But I realized that many people did, in fact, think this way.  As time went by, the gospel passage thus seemed increasingly relevant, as a Christian rebuke against such logic.

I eventually learned, of course, that one strain of Protestant fought employed just this kind of logic in its moral theology.  Some Protestants professed belief in “predestination”--the notion that the identity of those to be saved (as well as those to be damned) is already known to God.  It was almost as if a list had already been drawn up.  This naturally begged the urgent existential question: “Are we on the list of those saved?”  And this led to the more practical question: “How can we know if we are on this list?”

So some Protestants begin to draw conclusions based on observation.  But while the Catholic tradition of “natural law” and always drawn conclusions about God’s will by observing the facts of nature, those Protestants begin to draw conclusions about God’s will by observing the condition of people.  To oversimplify: people observed to be wealthy, successful, thriving were judged to be blessed by God—a sure sign of their salvation.  Those struggling or downtrodden, by contrast, could be judged to be suffering God’s neglect or even punishment--the likely sign of their damnation.

Such a distortion of the gospel message was certainly not what Luther or Calvin had in mind, yet once this oversimplification hijacked the label “Protestant Work Ethic,” it validated the prejudices and moral arrogance of millions of Americans over many generations.  It appears that many Americans still distort the gospels this way.

Last week I mentioned the declining demographic of the American “mainstream” that peaked in the 1950s and is now falling to minority status.  The post-war decade they dominated, the 1950s, achieved a kind of happy “normalcy” many Americans still yearn for as a kind of “golden age.” But this “normalcy” was possible only by ignoring the plight of millions of citizens outside the mainstream.  I’m not just referring to the discriminated minorities that provoked the Civil Rights movement; I’m referring especially to the millions in poverty whose shocking portrayal in Michael Harrington’s landmark 1962 book The Other America triggered the Kennedy administration’s War on Poverty--a war we are still waging 50 years later.

Since the 1950s, those needy millions have not only become more visible, they have become more numerous as new people arrive from Vietnam, Cambodia, Haiti, Latin America and the Caribbean.  Moreover, even the middle class has seen its self-sufficiency threatened: since 1970, real wages have steadily declined, wealth has concentrated into a smaller portion of our population, and the 1950s’ ideal of a family supported by one wage earner has become increasingly rare.

It is little surprise, then, that even before The Great Recession the political climate favored candidates willing to respond to the needs of the poor, the immigrant, young, the single women.  It made political sense, even for candidates who were not motivated by moral concerns.

By contrast, to ignore all those Americans in 2012,  to write them off, and to criticize opponents for offering to help them makes no political sense at all--the election results proved that.

So why would smart politicians deliberately oppose and ridicule such “gifts” to those in need? Why act in a way that makes no political sense? I can only think that the old judgmental mindset of the disciples in John 9:1-3 is still at work.

Those in need, that mindset thinks, suffer misfortune due to their own failures.  They have brought their hardship upon themselves.  They demonstrate themselves incapable of responsible behavior.  They do not deserve the government’s help.  And those who promise such help are pandering to the basest instincts of a society in decline. 

What would Jesus say to people who take this point of view?  We don’t even need to ask what he would say--we already know the answer.  These people should read the gospels.

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012

#376: Our Double Demographic Dilemma

The 2012 election provides ample evidence that we face a spiritual challenge to our national unity.
 
If the Obama-Romney election had happened in 1918 (when only white men could vote), Obama would not have won a single state or electoral vote.  White male voters in 2012 favored Romney by almost 30 points: 64% to 36%.

Only ONE voter here!

If the election had happened in 1960 (when women could vote but most Blacks could not) Obama would have won some states and electoral votes, but Romney would have won the presidency in a landslide.  White voters favored Romney by 20 points, 59% to 39%.

If the election happened in 1972, when Blacks could vote but before large numbers of Latinos, Asians, and young people had not yet entered the electorate, the race would have been much closer but Romney would still have won.

Yet in 2012 Obama was able to win a tight popular vote and a comfortable electoral college margin by winning the majority support of all those “recent voters”: women, blacks, Latinos, Asians, and young people. 

In this sense, the “snapshot” of America that the 2012 election represents is both misleading and revealing.

Why misleading?  Because the close 50% to 48% popular vote gives the superficial impression that Americans are evenly divided between Democratic and Republican voters, between liberal and conservative.  But in fact the divide within various voting blocks was not even or close at all.  Even though Obama’s overall victory margin was only 2%, this was the mere mathematical coincidence of a lot of conflicting “landslide” margins.  Among women, the margin was 11%; among voters under 30 it was 27%; among Latinos it was 52%; among Asians it was 56%; among blacks it was 86%.

In other words this election featured yawning gaps between the candidates among almost any group of voters you care to select.  The same is true for Catholics: overall, the Catholic vote was (like the overall vote) 50% to 48% for Obama, but white Catholics favored Romney by 13% while Latino Catholics favored Obama by 43%.

Why is all this revealing?  Because it shows a country sharply split in two: on one side is the older, white, especially white male population that dominated political life for most of the 20^th century.  On the other side is everyone else.

In that sense, the election reveals, not a country closely divided on by its political priorities, but a country deeply divided by its demographics.

Moreover, the election suggests that the close popular vote is not merely an ironic mathematical coincidence of all these wide demographic gaps.  Rather, the close vote is a passing phenomenon, a phase our country will soon leave behind.  Why?  Because the older white (especially white male) voters are being overtaken, slowly but surely, by all those other groups combined.

In other words, as America becomes a white-minority country, future elections that follow the same demographic splits will produce a wider and wider gap in the overall popular vote.  Indeed, it is not an accident that between the elections of 1988 and 2016--28 years!--the Republicans will have won the popular vote only once (in 2004).

It is almost as if America is evolving into two distinct countries: (1) the “mainstream” white society that shaped America after World War II and is portrayed in 1950s movies and TV shows, and (2) the “diverse” society that emerge beginning in the 1960s and has now achieved majority status.

THE MAINSTREAM

For better or worse, Barack Obama has come to represent this new, more diverse America.  More kinds of Americans judge him to be “more like us” then his opponents in 2008 and 2012.  And more of the world now sees America as a more diverse and “global” culture because Obama, as our head of state, has changed the face of our nation before the world.

THE NEW FACES

 But many Americans have struggled to accept the new face Obama puts on our national identity.  They resist even his legitimacy as president.  They challenge his birthplace, doubt his eligibility for office, label him a “socialist” or “fascist,” and paint Hitler mustaches on his image.  They insist he is an Arab, or a Muslim, and persist in repeating his middle name as if that proves something.  They urge friends and colleagues to “vote for the white guy.”

So perhaps it is fair to say that the demographics of 2012 revealed two things: the dominance of the white “mainstream” is passing away—and as it does, our unity as a people is being challenged.

Of course, increasing diversity is a constant in the history of our immigrant nation.  But now, for the first time, we have reached a tipping point.  When my father was born, in 1918, the very groups that ensured Obama’s victory had no voice at all in our national politics or leadership.  Now, less than a century later, they can pick our leaders even when the “mainstream” wants someone else.

It seems to me that this demographic shift poses a double dilemma--one for Republicans, and one for Democrats--and together these raise a profound spiritual and cultural challenge for our country.

For Republicans, the dilemma is between (1) clinging to its current “mainstream” support base and (2) reaching out to the new “diverse” electorate with policies that may attract them but alienate their mainstream base.  The choice Republicans make may depend on how pragmatic they are. Can they acknowledge that depending solely on their mainstream base has no political future, or will they sink into denial, as if merely recruiting a few Spanish speaking or black candidates will end their decline?

For Democrats, the dilemma is between (1) riding the rising tide of a diverse electorate with no regard for the national polarization it has provoked, and (2) acknowledging that our current “gridlock” means that even the victors cannot really govern.  Their choice may depend on their willingness to understand that, while a new demographic “coalition” can win elections, making good public policy requires a broader consensus, beyond one’s own base.

In short, if both parties cling to their bases, Republicans will find it harder and harder to win elections, and Democrats will find it harder and harder to govern.

Beneath all this, at the ground of our national life, is a challenge that is more cultural and spiritual than political.  It is the challenge of reconciling diversity and unity.

The root Christian view of this challenge, from St. Paul, has always been that diversity and unity belong together.  Paul’s image of the “Body of Christ” pictures a society in which many diverse gifts build up a single, united community.  Modern Catholic Social Teaching consistently proclaims that the “common good” is the most constant measure of good public policy and social justice.  And since 1980, “solidarity” has become a Catholic buzzword (drawn by a Polish pope from his activist countrymen) for the popular spirit that embraces the common good as its goal.

But as John-Paul II said, “Collaboration is the act proper to solidarity.” In other words, the proof of solidarity is when we actually work together.  And millions of Americans know that “working together” has seldom described our leaders in recent years.  Our low opinion of their job performance, confirmed in poll after poll, reflects our observation that too few of our leaders make the common good their priority.

Sure, these leaders love to spout “the American people want” this or “the American people believe” that. But the demographics of 2012 prove that when leaders generalize this way about “Americans,” they are really referring to whatever demographic group they seek favor from.  The truth is that, given the yawning gaps among demographic groups, there is very little that all Americans think or believe in common.

Can our Republican leaders finally realize that diversity is here to stay?  Can our Democratic leaders realize that diversity is no substitute for national unity?  Can they work together to collaborate in modeling and promoting a spirit of solidarity that will make the common good the unified goal of all Americans? 

Let me suggest that, even if they try, they cannot do it alone.  Reconciling the fact of our diversity with our need for solidarity is not primarily a political challenge.  Solidarity cannot be legislated. It must be both preached and practiced--not only by politicians, but by churches, communities, and even families.

Sadly, we Americans seem to rise to solidarity only during catastrophes like 9/11 or Superstorm Sandy.  At least those moments prove that we’re capable of pulling together--but a thriving future will depend on making solidarity the rule of our national life, not merely the exception to the more general rule we call “gridlock.”

Whether we are governed by Democrats or Republicans, the question of our future remains: will we allow our demographics to divide us into two peoples who have nothing in common—or will we be governed by solidarity, and live together for the common good? 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012

#156: Our Most Generic Holiday

I am reprising this November 2006 piece since it becomes timely once in every year.

Since Thanksgiving came early this year, so did “Black Friday” (when stores finally begin to turn a profit after eleven months in the red). And so our free enterprise system’s official generic “holiday season” got underway a week earlier than usual.

But this year I had special reason to notice that, of all our holidays, perhaps the holiday most diluted of all meaning actually arrives a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving: November 11.

For most Americans under 50, November 11 is simply “Veterans Day” –a legal holiday largely indistinguishable from “Memorial Day” in May, and generally understood as a sort of blanket remembrance of all those who have served in war. The subtle difference endures, I suppose, that while Memorial Day honors the war dead, Veterans Day focuses especially on those still surviving.

But of course the holiday’s origin is anything but generic, as Europeans know all too well. For it was on “The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month” of 1918 that the “War to End all Wars” finally ended after the signing of an Armistice. Hence the original holiday for November 11 was “Armistice day.”

For me, Armistice Day 2006 held a doubly nostalgic significance.

First, it was the first time since my junior year in college that I spent the holiday in France, where that war had largely been fought. In fact, my year there (1968) happened to be the 50th anniversary of the Armistice itself.

The lady from whom I rented my Paris room in 1968 was a war widow, and accordingly she received an invitation to attend the Armistice Day solemn high Mass and Te Deum at Notre Dame Cathedral in the presence of “Monsieur le Président de la République,” Charles de Gaulle. But she had family plans in Caen, so she offered me the invitation and I gladly accepted.

Notre Dame de Paris

 With some difficulty, I found the side entrance to which my invitation entitled me, waded through the mob to squeeze myself into a spot just next to the cathedral’s great sanctuary, and then climbed a wooden barrier propped against the wall that enabled me to stand a good 4 feet above the crowd.

It so happened my perch placed me in direct line with the prie-dieu reserved for the president. And so it was, after great fanfare and a solemn military procession, that on “The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month” of the 50th year following the signing of the Armistice, I found myself attending Mass at Notre Dame directly before the gaze of Charles de Gaulle. In a year when rioting students nearly toppled his government, he did not seem pleased to see me there.

But this year, for Armistice Day 2006, I was not at Notre Dame. Not even in Paris. I was in Chartres—and Chartres was the source of my second nostalgia.

You see, when I arrived as a student, the program I was enrolled in sent us all on a one-week field trip, which began by transporting us directly from Orly Airport to Chartres. The result: the Chartres cathedral, long considered the most beautiful of all gothic cathedrals, was the very first building I entered in France!

Sitting awe-struck near the rear, knowing full well that medieval Chartres was a modest town of 20,000 people – the same size as my own hometown—I wondered: What sort of people, what sort of culture, what sort of faith could ever have produced this marvel?

Chartres Cathedral, Armistice Day 2010

Now in 2006 I found myself seated once more beneath the famous deep blues and reds of Chartres’ glorious stained glass, but this time for the solemn chanting of the Te Deum in honor of those who died to make the peace of 11 November 1918.

Michel Pansard, Bishop of Chartres, presided over the service, and preached the homily. He wasted no time pointing out that the gospel just read was the gospel for the Mass of the day, for the feast of St. Martin—and he pointed out that Maréchal Foche, leader of the allied forces dictating the armistice terms, had chosen St. Martin's day deliberately. For St. Martin, long established as one the most beloved saints in France, began his 4th century adult life as a Roman soldier. Only later did he convert to Christianity, become a priest and then Bishop of Tours renowned for his simplicity and his devotion to all who suffer (he is, in fact, not only the patron saint of soldiers but also the patron against poverty).

Bishop Michel Pansard at Chartres, Armistice Day 2010

Bishop Pansard used St. Martin’s conversion as the focal point of his homily. Those who died in 1914-1918 died hoping to build a lasting peace, he said, and that left but one choice for Christians who wish to honor their memory and sacrifice. “We must become Artisans of Peace and Justice,” he said, “to construct the future they hoped for.”

That challenge, as St. Martin's example shows, means devoting ourselves to the suffering, to those Jesus called “the least of these”—that is, all who suffer anywhere. In the face of their cries, the bishop said, “it cannot pass that we who have eyes do not see them, that we who have ears do not hear them.”

Peace, he observed, is not the mere absence of war. It is a thing built on virtue. In France, of course, the chief civic virtues are “Liberté, Egalité, Fratenité.” And the bishop linked those patriotic ideas to Gospel values, pointing out that liberty and equality cannot work if fraternity is lacking.

We cannot ask, like Cain after killing his own brother, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”—since Jesus has already answered the question for us. For us, all war is fratricide.

Fraternity is, of course, the opposite of fratricide—so if war is fratricide, then fraternity requires a dedication to peace. But fraternity cannot be legislated. It must be inspired.

What does it take, he asked, to become “artisans of peace and justice?” It is not an easy task, nor is it a passive thing. Above all, it requires a commitment to the common good, a good that goes beyond the good and the interests of individuals or groups or classes. This means thinking of the greatest good for all, whatever the sacrifices. It also requires a dedication to dialog that never shrinks from using civil discourse as the main instrument of peace—a dialog that never yields, no matter how grave the conflict, to the despair that leads peoples to take up arms.
For me, this Armistice Day gave renewed proof that my faith—our faith—speaks loud and clear to our age as it groans for peace amid the sad memory of those dead in war.

And while many Americans passed the generic “Veterans Day” in passive idleness, I found renewed inspiration in retrieving the original tradition of honoring the millions who fell right up until “The 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month” in that horrendous, anything BUT generic "war to end all wars."

As I listened to Michel Pansard share the wisdom of our faith, I thought: our country could use this holiday. Our country, torn for forty years between isolationism and reckless interventions (like Iraq and Vietnam), could use the lesson I was hearing. We need not choose between a “going-it-alone” or “staying the course” of invasion and occupation. There is a third way: we can choose instead to join other peoples as “artisans of peace and justice.”

But I also thought: “Veterans Day” as we observe it will not teach us this lesson—and I regretted our national amnesia about the “Armistice” of 1918.
© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2006

#375 The Catholic Platform

This is not about the election.  This is about the electorate. 

In the last week of the 2012 campaign I offered a parish presentation that distilled my thinking about the connection between US politics and faith.  That thinking has been developing since 2007 in a number of CrossCurrents articles and in several parish talks in the United States and France.  The result last week was a simplicity and clarity that my listeners found especially helpful.  It occurred to me that I should share the basic concept with my readers.

Here it is: US politics typically presents a two-dimensional approach to public issues, polarized between left-and-right, liberal-and-conservative, Democrat-or-Republican.  But Catholic Social Teaching offers a three- dimensional approach.  This “Catholic Platform” offers a dramatically richer and wiser vision of the future society we should expect than anything we find from our major party platforms.  That vision cannot be shoehorned into the conventional US two-dimensional framework.  In fact, the Catholic Platform moves simultaneously to the right of the Republicans and to the left of the Democrats.  (This also gives the lie to the common popular misconception that the Catholic Church is simply a conservative, backward-looking institution.)

In the light of this Catholic Platform, my own view is that both the Democratic and Republican platforms fail us in two ways.  First, on many issues they offer analyses that are wrong-headed and strategies that are simply wrong.  Second, on many other important issues (like peace, human rights, and economic and social justice) they say nothing at all.

This situation frustrates me in two ways.  First, the Catholic Platform has little impact on US voting, or even on Catholic voters, so it remains mostly just good ideas that fail to change anything.  Second, Catholic leaders (especially our bishops) have squandered so much of their moral authority that their attempts to communicate the Catholic Platform fall largely on deaf ears. 

Their mismanagement of clerical sex abuse has neutered the potency of the Catholic Platform.  Moreover some of them have undermined the Catholic Platform itself by reducing it to a narrow focus on one or two issues—which is only a small portion of its true, broad scope.

The real power of the Catholic Platform—its potential to reshape our politics—depends on both its depth and its breadth.  Taken whole, it conveys a clear vision of and American society all of us would envy and most of us would sacrifice for.  Taken whole, it could create solidarity not only among Catholics but across a wide spectrum of the American electorate. 

But when Bishops and others cherry-pick the parts of the Catholic Platform they find appealing, and neglect or ignore the rest, they polarize the Catholic Community along party lines and weaken the Church’s mission.

The Catholic Platform makes me proud to be Catholic, but our Church’s self-inflicted impotence to communicate the rich wisdom of our tradition saddens me profoundly.

So, for readers who wish to explore the Catholic Platform in more detail, I am offering the selection of CrossCurrents articles below, most of which appear in the archives of this blog.  In cases where only excerpts appear, you may obtain the complete article on request by emailing me at bfswain@juno.com.  In cases where an article is older than the archives, just ask me for it at bfswain@juno.com.  I’ll be happy to send along anything you need by email.

The articles below are listed in reverse chronological order:

#374: What Foreign Policy  10-26-12 

#373: Which Catholic Candidate  10-19-12 

#371: Manipulating the Catholic Vote  10/3/12

#  83: Freedom’s Façade is Not Enough  9/8/12

#353: Endless War—part I  3/23/12

#352: For God and Country?  3/12/12

#350: Is the Obama Administration Forcing Catholic...  2/9/12

#349: 2/3/12 Expanding the Religious Option

#341: Warfare—or Justice?  9/30/11

#339: Ten Years Later  9/17/11

#295: Scapegoating “Illegals”  06-02-10

#290: The Missing Antidote  04-15-10

#288: New Pro-life Profiles 4/3/10

#282: Today's Moral Prejudice  2/12/10

#269: Benedict Goes Outside the Box—Part 2  9/25/09

#268: Benedict Goes Outside the Box 9/15/09

#256: Do People Care?  6/22/09

#257: No Ordinary Changing of the Guard  06-15-09

#254: Crossing the Charity Line  05-07-09

#253: Holy War Crimes04  28-09

#249: Catholicism’s _Obama Problem  03-30-09_

#340: The Biggest Tent  01-14-09

#237: Which Rights  12-15-08

#232: Catholic Guilt Redux  10-31-08

#231: NOT rendering unto Caesar  10-22-08

#197: An Examination of Conscience  11-24-07

#196: The Silly Season  11-16-07

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2012