#390: The Blasts Heard ’Round the World

Initial reflections  on the day after the bombs went off...

      Patriots day is perhaps the quintessential American holiday, even though (or perhaps because) it is celebrated only in Massachusetts.  It marks simultaneously the beginning of the end of Britain’s occupation of the American Colonies and the birth, in rebellion and blood, of a new country. 

The iconic images surrounding Patriots Day are familiar to all Americans.  “One if by land, two if by sea.” “The midnight ride of Paul Revere.” “The British are coming!  The British are coming!” The shot heard round the world.  The Minutemen. Lexington and Concord.

And so each year, just after dawn, the Redcoats arrive again at Lexington Green to be confronted once more by the local Minutemen.  A shot rings out, and a skirmish ensues.  Men on both sides fall, and the colonial militia is driven back, and the Redcoats proceed toward Concord.  But along the way the British troops are terrorized by the rebels harassing them along their route and sniping at them from behind trees and rocks.  Meanwhile tourists follow the rebels, clicking photos of the reenactment.  Local churches offer pancake breakfasts for the visitors.

Schools and most workplaces are closed, so baseball fans leave home early for the annual 11:00 Red Sox game.  With luck, the Red Sox will win and the game will end early enough for the Fenway faithful to stream into Kenmore Square in plenty of time to watch the runners passing by.

More than 20,000 of those runners begin their day early far from Boston in the small New England Town of Hopkinton.  They’ve come from all over the world, and the runners with numbers have qualified for Boston by running other marathons with impressive times.  For many years, Boston was the only non-Olympic marathon that required runners to qualify this way.  It is, after all, the oldest annual marathon in the world. It was a sacred tradition here long before marathon running became popular.

More than 200,000 fans line the streets along the 26-mile route from Hopkinton to Boston. Boston’s quarter-million college kids take Patriots day as an annual rite of spring, cheering on the runners while partying outside for the first time since football season.

Patriots Day is the day Boston’s cityscape finally returns to vibrant life after the relative quiet of the long cold New England winter. It is the day Bostonians remember why they are blessed to live here.

Given all this, the crowds along the entire length of the marathon course are unrivaled for numbers, enthusiasm, and hospitality. The day I observed the 100^th running with my youngest son, we joined hundreds of thousands of spectators cheering for passing runners for five hours until we had clapped our hands raw and yelled our voices hoarse. For participants, Patriots Day is the day Boston opens its arms to the world and offers a running experience no other marathon can match.

But Patriots Day 2013 was unlike any other.  In Lexington and Concord, the battle reenactments were long finished. The winners of the wheelchair races had finished; the women’s and the men’s winners (both from Africa) had already earned their victories, the Red Sox had already won a walk-off 10^th inning victory, and the mass of “weekend warrior” runners were approaching the finish line flanked by the world flags lining Boylston Street.

And then at 2:50 the bombs created a new kind of Boston massacre.  These truly were blasts heard ’round the world, since the heavy media presence guaranteed that the images and sounds of explosions would achieve global reach within minutes. It is hard to imagine a more symbolically-rich venue to attack. 

As of this writing, there’s no public information about who did this or why.  But as shock gives way to outrage, two difficult truths are worth keeping in mind.

First, while the victims were innocents (including a family from my own Dorchester neighborhood) we should not project their innocence onto ourselves as a collective nation. It is tempting to pretend that such villainy is only for “others,” that we are only the victims and never the perpetrators of violence, and that America never attacks innocent victims. This is, unfortunately, just not true.

In fact, American has proved especially prone to using revenge as a pretext for killing innocents. After Pearl Harbor took nearly 2000 American lives, Harry Truman thought the Japanese got their just deserts when our atom bombs killed more than 100,000, mostly civilians—and most Americans agreed. When 9/11 killed nearly 3,000, Many Americans accepted the death of more than 150,000 Iraqis (mostly women and children) as just vengeance. We Americans are proven masters of overwhelming retaliation. Perhaps some of us are proud of that, but we cannot pretend we do not have blood on our hands.

Even now our country inflicts suffering on innocent victims. Some even make the case that American violence is the evil twin of the Boston bombing: http://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2013/04/15/the-boston-marathon-and-u-s-drone-attacks-a-tale-of-two-terrorisms/ . So while our outrage is certainly justified, we do well to avoid becoming self-righteous about our place in a violent world.

Second, while the perpetrators of the marathon bombing must be caught and punished, we should resist thinking that destroying all evil-doers will solve the problem of terror and violence in our world.

For Christians, this is an impossible dream. We believe we belong to a fallen humanity, a race who by nature can never completely purge evil from our midst. We can never destroy all the bad guys, for there will always be more of them in the next generation.

This means that true security only comes when we learn how to deal with evil even while knowing we cannot eradicate it.

This is, of course, what Jesus meant by his terrifying saying “Love your enemies.” He and his followers believed—and still believe—that evil and violence are NOT the strongest powers in our world, that retaliation is not the ultimate solution, and that there exists a love that can conquer hate.

For us, this poses a simple but tough challenge. Either Christianity is right, that love is ultimately stronger than violence, or else it is wrong. Either Gandhi and King and Jesus were right, that we must love our enemies, or they were wrong. But what we cannot doubt is that stamping out all evil people is a silly, naïve, and dangerous dream.

Martin Richard, 8, killed in the bombing

Bostonians are already acting to “retaliate” with love. The stunningly rapid and effective action of the first responders (some of them mere bystanders) seems to have reduced the death toll to unthinkably low numbers. The heroic marathon-like services of those working Boston's emergency rooms and operating theaters likewise minimized death and suffering. The flood of blood donors to Boston blood banks, and the widespread offers of housing and hospitality reflected the depth of Bostonians' care for the victims.

Some people have decided to join the ranks of the 8500 marathon volunteers in 2014. Some have vowed to run again. Some will host visitors. Some will simple turn out to observe, determined that next year’s crowd will outdo 2013.

Maybe someone will even propose making Patriots Day a national holiday.

After all, this is the city where the Revolution began. We know there are villains in the world, and we know it took force to expel the occupiers before. We are determined not to be occupied by villains again, and not to be driven by terror, but to live as we should, as a joyful and peaceful people, and thus deprive the villains of their victory.

And when we prove that no one can defeat the courageous hope and generous spirit of Boston, that message will be heard ’round the world.

  © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2013

#389: Getting 3 Issues Back Into Focus

Recent weeks have seen three events provide strong evidence that Americans, and especially American Catholics, need to focus on some key issues that have gotten badly out of focus for too long.

Faith Beyond the Rule Book.  On Holy Thursday Pope Francis washed the feet of 12 people, including non-Christians and women, in a Rome detention center.  But his willingness to do this sends an important message.

In my work, I continue to meet people who are still haunted by a Catholic upbringing that treated Catholicism as a set of rules (especially, and often, rules about sex).  In recent years the US Bishops have often reinforced that old notion with major campaigns against same-sex marriage, contraception funding, and by their juridical behavior in covering up for priests guilty of sex abuse.

But the pope’s foot-washing gesture was “beyond the rule book” in three ways. First, it was not the customary location for the Holy Thursday service.  Second, by including non-Christians he reminded us that Jesus’s own act (washing the feet of his 12 apostles) was not merely a literal service to them; it was also a symbolic act demonstrating his ministry and mission of service, sacrifice, and love—which was destined for all people.  Third, by including women, Francis was breaking a liturgical rule. In all this, he sent the message that our faith is much more than a set of rules, and that sometimes those rules are trumped by more important things, like the symbolic value of including all people in the pope’s own ministry of service.

Recovering “The Common Good.”  Jim Wallis, longtime leader of Sojourners magazine and organization, the flagship of progressive evangelism in the US, has returned from his 2012 sabbatical with a new book: On God's Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn't Learned about Serving the Common Good. Catholics need to know this book and Wallis’ argument.

Wallis is promoting his book with an extensive media campaign and a nationwide tour of "Common Good Forums."

Inevitably, interviewers begin discussing the book by asking Wallis to define what he means by “the common good,” and just as routinely Wallis answers this way: He quotes from the 4th century saint John Chrysostom, an early father of the Church.

This is the rule of the most perfect Christianity, Its most exact definition, its highest point—namely the seeking of the common good. For nothing can so make a person an imitator of Christ as caring for his neighbors.

And then Wallis often cites a more modern source:

“I love…Catholic social teaching on the common good: ‘The common good is the whole network of social conditions which enable human individuals and groups to flourish and live a fully genuinely human life. Otherwise described as integral human development, all are responsible for all.’ ”

It just so happens that Wallis is paraphrasing  language from the social encyclicals of both Pope Paul VI and Pope Benedict XVI.

CrossCurrents readers have long known that Catholic social teaching is centered on the common good.  Now a prominent Protestant activist has spotlighted how Catholicism’s social vision can offer a powerful and wise antidote to the current political deadlock.

As Catholic Americans, we need to applaud and support Wallis’ effort and concentrate on educating our own people and those around us to the central importance of honoring the common good in building a just society.

Afraid of the Dark.  Last Friday night, CNN finally devoted a lengthy program-segment to the scandal surrounding Kermit Gosnell’s Philadelphia abortion clinic, but host Anderson Cooper admitted it was the first time CNN had covered the story.  CNN is not alone, for this man’s trial went on for more than a month without significant coverage from mainstream media (as noted in this commentary  http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2013/04/10/philadelphia-abortion-clinic-horror-column/2072577/ ).

In retrospect, the horrific story of an alleged murderous abortionist in Philadelphia has acquired three dimensions: (1) the alleged criminal behavior itself and the plight of its victims; (2) the failure of both Philadelphia and Pennsylvania to take any action against the alleged crimes; (3) the failure of US mainstream media to cover the story.

Two questions loom large: 1. Why did no government agency act?  2. Why did media ignore the story?  In both cases one disturbing possibility is this: abortion has become so delicate and controversial an issue that neither public officials nor professional journalists have the requisite courage to face a story that disturbs the conventional wisdom about abortion.

For this story exposes the dark side of the Roe v. Wade era.  For more than 40 years we have lived with the myth that legalized abortion ends gruesome “back alley” horrors and serves women so safely that we can simply relax about the moral and medical risks that are inherent in abortion itself.

Polls showed that while Americans are generally unenthusiastic about abortion itself, they remain split about whether and how to regulate it.  But too many Americans have come to regard abortion lightly, and prefer not to face the real possibility that abortion’s “collateral damage” is (at least sometimes, if not always) the killing of babies.

U.S. Society needs to look long and hard at all three of these issues.  We can no longer afford to think that the Christian faith is accomplished merely by obeying rules.  We can no longer afford to let the mantra of individual “freedom” trump all concerns about the common good.  And we can no longer afford to pretend that abortion, even when legal, is a casual matter that poses no danger to public safety or human rights.

  © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2013

#388: Are the Pope’s Hands “Dirty”?

Pope Francis is the target of some backlash to his generally favorable media coverage.

Over the years I have criticized Catholic bishops repeatedly for lacking prudence.  Long dubbed the queen of all virtues, prudence knows when insisting on the right principle can do more harm than good.  Too often the hierarchy becomes preoccupied with crusading for some particular cause in a way that, by displaying a strident or even arrogant tone, diminishes their influence.

But the hierarchy has no monopoly on such failings.

Some progressive Catholics become so possessed of their own agenda they become blind to all else.  Like some bishops, they push their point so aggressively they lose much of their potential audience.  They end up, like the bishops, preaching to the choir.

A wise Jesuit once offered me constructive criticism: “You are very convincing,” he told me, “but you are not very persuasive.” He meant I was good at making a strong case for my point of view, but not good at making people want to agree with me.  He meant I lacked prudence.  This distressed me, and I’ve spent 25 years trying to fix that.  It also distresses me when progressives commit the same error, because I often agree with them at the beginning but end up not wanting to be their ally.

My inbox recently contained an example of this.  The email contained theologian Mary Hunt’s critique of Pope Francis I from her website (http://www.waterwomensalliance.org/ ). On many issues we have common ground, but her argument does not do them justice.

She describes calling a friend in Buenos Aires “to join in that country’s pride” in the election of their archbishop, yet in the next paragraph makes it clear that she already judged the entire papal election fraudulent:

 The process was flawed on the face of it by the lack of women, young people, and lay people. It was flawed by a dearth of democracy. Not even the seagull that sat on the chimney awaiting the decision was enough to persuade that the Holy Spirit was really in charge.

There is no basis here for “pride,” so her earlier remark rings contrived and disingenuous.

She follows by calling for “structural changes in the kyriarchal model of the church” rather than “cosmetic” or “symbolic” changes.  She argues that the conclave elected a Latin American as a “good business decision,” since European Catholicism has “lost market share”--but then notes that mass attendance in Argentina is as bad as in France!

Perez Esquivel Receiving the Nobel Prize , 1980

She says she “got an education about social justice” working with Nobel Peace laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel in Buenos Aires, then devotes 1/3 of her article to linking Francis (Jorge Bergoglio) to Argentina’s brutal “dirty war” even though Pérez Esquivel himself has dismissed such slander:

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel assured today that elected pope Jorge Bergoglio "had no links with the dictatorship” that ruled Argentina between the years 1976-1983.

Francis and Perez Esquivel, 2013

 Speaking to BBC News, Perez Esquivel said that “there were bishops who were accomplices of the dictatorship, but it was not the case of Bergoglio.”

Hunt employs a classic “red herring” tactic that echoes McCarthyism. Alluding to the case of two Jesuits kidnapped in 1976 by the military junta, she asks:

Did the Jesuit superior-now-Pope Francis call the military dictators and agree to their kidnapping? No one is accusing him of this.

Then why does she ask, if “no one” is making the accusation? But of course Bergoglio HAS been accused of this, and Hunt’s question dredges up the slander once more. Then she adds that “Padre Jorge [Bergoglio] is alleged to have intervened with military leaders for the release of the two Jesuits.”

I confess, this is the first time I have ever seen anyone “alleged” to have done something good!  All my dictionaries link “alleged” with either bad things (murder, rape, burglary, conspiracy) or doubtful outcomes (a cure, a miracle)--never with a past good deed.  Hunt’s cynicism is thinly veiled by such language, and anyhow it ignores the known facts.

The evidence is that Bergoglio (then Jesuit provincial, not a bishop) judged the two Jesuits to be in danger, and acted to protect their safety.  When they ignored him and were kidnapped, he acted on their behalf, as he described to biographer Sergio Rubin:

Bergoglio Rides Transit in Buenos Aires

“Because of their work with some priests in the slums they were exposed to the paranoia of the witch hunt…That same night when I heard of the kidnappings I started to move. I saw [dictator] Videla twice and I saw [dictator] Massera.

 The Associated Press adds more details:

Both men were freed after Bergoglio took extraordinary, behind-the-scenes action to save them, including persuading dictator Jorge Videla's family priest to call in sick so that Bergoglio could say Mass in the junta leader's home, where he privately appealed for mercy. His intervention likely saved their lives, but Bergoglio never shared the details until Rubin interviewed him for the 2010 biography.  Bergoglio told Rubin that he regularly hid people on church property during the dictatorship, and once gave his identity papers to a man with similar features, enabling him to escape across the border. But all this was done in secret, at a time when church leaders publicly endorsed the junta and called on Catholics to restore their "love for country" despite the terror in the streets.

Following Bergoglio’s election, journalists located the surviving kidnap victim Franz Jalics, and he provided these statements:

Franz Jalics Today

With the permission of Archbishop Aramburu and the then-Provincial Fr. Jorge Mario Bergoglio I moved together with a confrere into a “Favela,” one of the city’s slums. From there we continued our teaching at the university….In the civil-war-like situation back then…the two of us in the slum had contact neither with the junta nor with the guerrillas. Partly due to the lack of information and through targeted misinformation our situation was also misunderstood within the church.…

 These are the facts: Orlando Yorio and I were not reported by Father Bergoglio…It is thus wrong to claim that our capture was initiated by Father Bergoglio…Before, I too tended to believe that we were the victims of having been reported. By the late ’90s, however, it became clear to me after many conversations that this assumption was unfounded…”

It was only years later that we had the opportunity to talk with Father Bergoglio…to discuss the events. Following that, we celebrated Mass publicly together and hugged solemnly. I am reconciled to the events and consider the matter to be closed. I wish Pope Francis God's rich blessings for his office.

At that time, Burgoglio was Jesuit provincial.  Nevertheless, Hunt compares the Argentine bishops’ dirty war behavior to the U.S. Bishops in the sex-abuse scandal, and compares Bergoglio to Bernard Law.  Thus she paints Burgoglio with a wide brush of guilt by association, much like the Argentine journalist Gabriel Pasquini, who attacked Burgoglio with this critique:

Never, in the years he headed the Catholic Church in Argentina, did he acknowledge its complicity in the dictatorship, much less ask for forgiveness. Will he do so now, from the Vatican?

But Pasquini is wrong. Bergoglio became Archbishop of Buenos Aires 1998, and in 2000 was party to this statement from the Bishops conference of Argentina:

We want to confess before God everything we have done badly…We share everyone’s pain and once again ask the forgiveness of everyone we failed or didn’t support as we should have.

Apparently Hunt believes such guilt by association is relevant because it links Bergoglio’s refusal to support liberation theology with the past and current plight of Latin American society.  The premise is that only liberation theology is acceptable; other theological positions “deepen and entrench social injustice.” Specifically, she decries Burgoglio’s opposition to “divorce, abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage,” and then claims:

He shows no evidence from his Argentina actions that he will be any more responsive than his predecessor to changing policies and structures that oppress the world’s poor.

This line of attack troubles me on several grounds.  First, Hunt’s list of social justice issues focuses narrowly on the sex-related issues of our U.S. “culture wars.”

Second, she ignores the “theological positions” entrenched in the social encyclicals of the past 50 years, which (as I’ve detailed many times before) include positions on human rights, health, income inequality, immigration, trade, and arms that are well to the left of the Democratic Party. 

Third, as prominent a liberation theologian as Leonardo Boff (himself once silenced by the Vatican) has expressed support for Francis despite their theological differences:

With Pope Francis, a Church of the third millennium is being inaugurated--far from the palaces and in the midst of the peoples and their cultures.

Asked about the “dirty war,” Boff got more specific:

I'm wondering what interest some groups have in raising this question and not talking about the serious crisis in the Church and its meaning in the face of the crisis of humankind.

Leonardo Boff

Maybe -- this I'll concede -- he could have been more prophetic, like Bishop Hélder Câmara and Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns were in Brazil.…The question is political and for me, it's which side the person is on--the side of the poor, of those who suffer evil inequality? Or of the status quo that wants unlimited growth and a culture of consumption?...Bergoglio took the side of those victims and demanded social justice. If we don't understand this, we're getting away from the main point.

[read more: http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/03/qa-what-matters-isnt-bergoglio-and-his-past-but-francis-and-his-future/ ]

Finally, Hunt’s attack backfires by betraying the very fault she decries.  You might have wondered, earlier in this article, what “kyriarchal” means.  It’s a recent coinage from the Greek word for “Lord,” referring to lordly behavior that anyone uses to impose their views or will on others. Feminist theologians use the term to suggest that unjust treatment is not just limited to sexism, or even to men.  Anyone can abuse their relationships with others in this way.  Indeed, even feminists can be prone to “kyriarchal” behavior, as one feminist blogger explained [http://myecdysis.blogspot.com/]:

Let's not pretend that just because there are not many propertied males mucking around the fem blogosphere, there aren't queen bees and wanna bees exercising the same kind of behavior.  So when we talk about woman asserting power over other womyn, we're talking kyriarchy.  When you witness woman trying to dominate, define, outline the "movement" or even what an ally should be - that's the kyriarchal ethos strong at work. 

For me, Hunt’s case suffers precisely from this problem.  So sure is she that only her “theological positions” can serve justice, she feels free to impose her perspective with  a version of events designed to convince us that anyone who differs with her views at best unwittingly promotes injustice, or at worst is complicit in it. 

She does not persuade. She plays with facts. She asserts, “The controversy over Bergoglio’s role in the kidnapping of two Jesuits during this period is instructive”—but only instructs us that character assassination is alive and well.

Hunt decries “papal theatrics” which “keep the focus on the personal and spiritual, off the political and theological”--as if Catholic Social Teaching does not focus on both, and as if Bergoglio himself has not spoken of them both together:

Bergoglio as Archbishop

We live in the most unequal part of the world, which has grown the most yet reduced misery the least. The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many…..
[To a gathering of Latin American bishops in 2007]

Hunt opens her final paragraph this way: “It is early to opine about the pontificate of Pope Francis”--but of course that is exactly what she has already done!  Her devotion to her agenda is so blinkered she cannot see how transparent it is--and how her credibility suffers

  © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2013