#412: Pete Seeger: Forever Young

We have lost one of America’s great prophetic voices—a sort of secular saint.

When I was a kid my father belonged to the Colombian Record Club.  It had begun in the mid 1950s with the advent of LP vinyl records, and offered a new record each month.  If a member did not reject that offer, the record would arrive automatically two weeks later.  Sometimes, we just didn’t reply fast enough, or the offer got lost in the shuffle.  In such cases we would get a record we knew nothing about, or at least had no interest in.

In 1960, one of those records was “Children’s Concert at Town Hall,” featuring a banjo-playing singer named Pete Seeger.

   
 We had no idea who he was, and he played what I had always thought of as “hillbilly music.” At first, listening evoked images of the Appalachian back country.  But before long his clear voice, his compelling songs and even his plinking banjo had seduced me.  Little did I know that Pete Seeger had primed me for the folk revival about to explode upon me and most of America.

My first Pete Seeger concert was in 1962 at the old Boston Arts Festival, held outdoors in a makeshift fenced-in theater on Boston’s Public Garden.  The singer had just returned from a voyage in search of music in Africa, and shared many songs with us that today would qualify as “world music.” I remember being struck, at age 13, by several things: the immediacy of his stage presence, the rapt attention of his listeners, and his ability to engage us and the performance by getting us to sing along.

Over the next 50 years I would see Pete Seeger several more times: at Fenway Park in 1968, in the Victory Gardens on Boston’s Fenway in the 1970s, and a union-benefit concert in 1982 in Athol, Massachusetts.  By that time I would be grown, married, with two kids, and by that time Pete Seeger’s legacy would already be part of my life in more ways than one.

BOB DYLAN WITH PETE

The most obvious way was folk music itself.  My adolescence and early adulthood were profoundly enriched by the recordings and concert performances of Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, the Band, Jim Kweskin, Tom Rush, and Arlo Guthrie--all inspired by Pete Seeger’s work.

SPRINGSTEEN

CABREL

 Part of that enrichment, of course, included a socially significant subset of folk music: protest songs.   That tradition, linking music with social justice, extended to other prominent artists from the 1960s (Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs), and beyond that to the 21st century (Bruce Springsteen) and even abroad (France’s Francis Cabrel).

This link between music, art, and social awareness crystallized at the 1963 march on Washington, where folkies Peter, Paul, and Mary grafted urban folk onto the civil rights movement, and where Pete Seeger’s version of “We Shall Overcome” (which he first performed for Martin Luther King in 1957) became the movement’s national anthem.

And that song, more than any other, certifies Seeger’s status as the greatest song leader in American memory.  Pete was simultaneously so controlled and so charismatic that he could teach a song’s lyrics, leave the main tune to the crowd, and accompany them with two harmony lines--all it once, and with no accompaniment but his thundering 12 string guitar.  To hear Pete in action is to witness breathtaking genius paired with fervent conviction. I know no more powerful example of song leading than Pete Seeger's profoundly moving AND mobilizing, absolutely inimitable rendition of this song:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b24Ewk934g

Audiences were simultaneously galvanized and mesmerized. I recall the story from the Newport Folk Festival, back in the 1960s days when crowd control often broke down and rioting sometimes ensued. One night, in the middle of his concert, the lights went out in the stadium, but Pete kept them rapt and safe for more than 30 minutes in the dark.

And Pete Seeger’s skill as song leader did more than inspire audiences and social activists.  It also inspired an entire generation of sacred musicians, who launched the popular form we came to call “Folk Mass.” In parishes across America, song leaders playing guitars replaced choirs, or organ music, or no music at all.  Few of them possessed Seeger’s gifts, and many played faddish music that no one remembers, but it nonetheless marked a dramatic, even profound shift in Catholic worship.  In the best cases (of which they were thousands), it led to a substantial increase in participation in the Mass by Catholic congregations who were previously accustomed to mere passive observance.

My college years were deeply marked by this shift.  Each night at 11:00 PM, 100 or so students would gather for Mass in the campus chapel to sing along with Paul Quinlan, S.J. and his small ensemble.  Quinlan had set dozens of the Psalms to music in folk style, and the mimeographed lyrics served as our prime musical resource night after night.

 Less than five years after my first sight of Pete Seeger (which came just weeks before the opening of Vatican II in October 1962), Catholic liturgy was already transformed from a silence-bound, hidden, “sotto-voce” ceremony into a vibrant community celebration.  This was, of course, exactly what Pete hoped for his music in general, though he never had any direct involvement with church music:

At our college baccalaureate, Quinlan led the gathered graduates and families in singing “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”—Seeger’s poignant lament for war’s waste of life.  The selection was neither random nor political.  It was pastoral: we sang it in memory of the 17 alumni already killed in Vietnam as of 1970, with--we assumed rightly--more to follow.

Years later, as a parent, I was pleased to raise my kids in the “folk-mass” environment provided by Ken Meltz and Boston’s downtown Paulist Center.  For them, the first post-Vatican II generation, Mass was from the very start a communal exercise in active participation.

Seeger did not, of course, write much sacred music, yet ironically his two most famous works had sacred roots.  The Los Angeles rock group The Byrds scored a #1 hit by recording Pete’s “Turn, Turn, Turn,” which was based on the book of Ecclesiastes.  And Pete’s version of “We Shall Overcome” was adapted from a traditional gospel song, which itself was probably based on the old Latin (and Catholic) hymn “O Sanctissima.”

But as powerful as Seeger’s musical influence was, his cultural impact was far wider.  Whenever I struggled in my role as a father, I could hear Pete remind me that “parents have the most difficult and important job in the world.  But they also get the best pay: hugs and kisses.”

Beyond that, Pete taught me a number of valuable life-lessons. 

He taught me the value of participation--in public life, in liturgy, and in collaborative leadership.

He taught me the value of authenticity, displaying the same kind of natural humility that has made Pope Francis so instantly popular.

He taught me the value of healthy discontent--not as an ideological posture, but as an antidote to hide-bound conformity.  Here is how he introduces a final new verse of “We Shall Overcome”:

The best verse is the one they wrote down in Montgomery, Alabama: “We are not afraid.”And the young people taught everybody a lesson—all the older people that had learned how to compromise, learned how to take it easy, and be polite, and get along, and leave things as they were. The young people taught us all a lesson.

He taught me hope, if only because he chose a life of fearless struggle and was unrelenting well into his 90s.

He taught me the value of irreverence--how not to idolize authority.  In a real way, he was the wisdom figure behind the iconic 1960s bumper sticker “Question authority.” 

 Finally, Pete Seeger taught me the value of preserving one’s youth well into old age.  Against the old adage “youth is wasted on the young,” Pete refused to lament as he aged.  Instead, he recycled his own inner youth all through his life.  Even at 93, with his singing voice gone, his youth had not yet been wasted, as he proved in this “ageless” version of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezyd40kJFq0

“You’re never too old to change the world”

  © Bernard  F. Swain PhD 2014

#411: Cover-Up

Ever Since Watergate, Americans have believed that “The cover up is worse than the crime.” Has the U.S. Catholic hierarchy STILL not figured that out?

Two events this week remind us that not only is the Church’s sex abuse crisis still with us; it is also still cause for worry.  For there is fresh evidence that, even now, some members of the hierarchy just don’t get it.  In particular, this week’s events--one in Chicago and one in Geneva--show a hierarchy still torn, among its own members, between apology and denial. 

The denial came to the fore when Bishop Francis Kane, vicar general of the Archdiocese of Chicago, held a news conference concerning Wednesday’s court-ordered release of documents relating to cases against 30 priests accused of child abuse.

Bishop Kane began by apologizing for the abuse itself, and admitted that the archdiocese had been wrong not to act more forcefully, but then denied any cover-up by Chicago bishops:

It was just they didn't realize that it was such a terrible thing, and so I think they did relocate people, but it was not intended as a way of covering up things.

But Marc Pearlman, a lawyer representing 200 of the victims, took exception to the Bishops claim:

The issue is not when the abuse happened; the issue is what they did once it was reported….I think that the files will show a systemic plan over decades in this diocese, along with many other dioceses, to conceal sexual abuse, to conceal who the predators were, and to put the interests of the predators and the institution above the interests of innocent young children…Until there is public disclosure and transparency ... there is no way people can learn about it and make sure it does not happen again,"

Bishop Kane also said, “It's humiliating as a priest to know there were other priests who did something like that."

In both of his remarks, Bishop Kane speaks for many bishops (past and perhaps even present) who find it “humiliating” to acknowledge that priests abused children but impossible to acknowledge that bishops and others covered it up.  Of course, it was precisely this “humiliation” that induced bishops to keep such matters quiet—they were too embarrassed to admit the truth.

What they still don’t get is that, for the vast majority of Catholics who were not touched by the abuse itself, the cover-up is a much greater scandal, and denying it continues to damage the Church’s credibility.

So the question arises: how could Bishop Kane say there was no cover-up?  Perhaps it is a matter of definition. Perhaps he and others think that, if previous bishops underestimate the problem, the result was they did nothing about it—and that was not, at least intentionally, a cover-up. To me, such a view is disingenuous at best.

To clarify, it may help to use a concrete example, so let me tell a story.  A true story.

This happened more than 60 years ago in a small town in the Archdiocese of Boston.  One fine day the pastor of the local parish took a group of altar boys on a field trip.  At some point during the day he sexually accosted one of the boys.  The boy broke away, and had the presence of mind to hitchhike home, where he told his father what had happened.

On his return with the rest of the group, the pastor found the boy’s father waiting for him at the rectory--with a shotgun.  No violence resulted, but the diocese was contacted.  That night, a limo arrived at the rectory carrying the archbishop’s minions, who removed the pastor to the limo, thence to Logan Airport, and finally onto a night flight to exile in Ireland, where he arrived the very next morning.

A team of three priests was assigned to the parish, with instructions to calm the family involved and “avoid any scandal” over the event--that is, keep things quiet (one of those priests told me this story years later).  So the parish never knew what had happened or why their pastor had disappeared literally overnight.

Three years later, he returned from Ireland and became pastor of a parish in another part of the diocese.  No one there ever learned the story either.

Now this story, while dramatic, is not at all unusual.  In fact, it reflects a pattern that was remarkably consistent from diocese to diocese in the U.S. throughout the 20^th century.  In case after case where abuse was charged, the Church’s managers--the bishops--dealt with accusations by taking the following steps:

1. They removed the priest, usually on short notice, with either no public explanation or a phony one.

2. They bargained or bribed to prevent victims and their families from exposing the priest, often in the name of “avoiding scandal.” In many cases, families were promised the priest would never deal with parishes or children began.

3. The priest was sometimes sent away for “penance” and/or for “treatment,” often to a facility operated for that purpose.

4. The priests who remained or who replaced the abuser did not inform the parish about anything that had transpired.  In some cases, they themselves were not informed.

5. The accused priest was generally recycled to another parish or even diocese, either immediately or on his return from exile.  The new parish was told nothing of his record.  If he was assigned under a pastor, even the pastor himself was often not informed of the man’s history.

6. Of course, in a large percentage of cases the recycled priest repeated his offense, abusing more children in his new setting.

One is tempted to say: if this is not “cover-up,” what is?

Let’s grant that bishops honestly failed to recognize that a crime have been committed, so civil authorities were not notified.  Let’s even grant that bishops failed to understand the deep damage done to the children and their families.  The fact remains that no attempts were made to protect future victims, for that would have required notifying others--other parents, other families, other priests, as well as pastors (and sometimes other bishops) under which the recycled abuser was assigned.  Instead of taking steps to prevent further abuse, bishops acted to end each incident quietly and then keep the problem itself quiet.

In a 2010 novel that Robert B. Parker wrote as part of his celebrated “Spenser” series, private eye Spenser interviews a university police officer about the way the university handled the case of a professor named Prince, who had been seducing his students.  Spenser says, “So the university decided to do nothing about Prince.”--and the campus police chief replies: “No, they decided to keep it quiet…That’s doing something.”

Indeed, keeping abuse quiet is doing something--something called covering up.

Bishop Kane seems unable to acknowledge that, whether they “intended” a cover-up or not, bishops managed to cover up the problem so effectively, in diocese after diocese, that the history of abuse was kept quiet for decades (and probably generations) before it finally exploded into public view.  Over the years, dozens of bishops knew the facts and kept them secret.

One of the released Chicago documents, for example, includes former archbishop John Cody telling a priest not to worry about one girl’s 1970 accusation of prior abuse: “The whole matter has been forgotten,’’ he told the priest. “No good can come of trying to prove or disprove the allegations.’’

Sorry, Bishop Kane.  “Cover-up” is the right label for such behavior.

Meanwhile, Vatican officials were appearing before the U.N. Commission on the Rights of the Child in Geneva, where they had been summoned to explain their compliance with the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (which the Holy See signed in 1990).

While attempting to persuade the U.N. panel of their resolve to fix things, the Vatican’s envoy nonetheless refused to accept a “buck stops here” responsibility.  Instead, he passed the buck for responsibility back onto the local bishops, insisting:

Priests are not functionaries of the Vatican…Priests are citizens of their own states, and they fall under the jurisdiction of their own country.

Yet a U.N. Committee investigator pointed to cases where priests were transferred from one diocese to another, with Vatican approval.  And Vatican guidelines only require notifying local authorities if local laws require it.  Many bishops in the United States led efforts to prevent such reporting laws, including a 10-year legislative campaign to prevent clergy from being designated as “mandated reporters” under the Massachusetts law--a campaign which failed only after the Boston scandal broke in 2002.

The Vatican denials of responsibility ring hollow for one simple reason: while not responsible for the management or discipline of individual priests, the Vatican is responsible for the performance of local bishops.  And since the practice of recycling accused abuses was so widespread, we might ask: by failing to remove or even discipline bishops who covered up, did not the Vatican become complicit in enabling abusers?

In short, both local bishops and Vatican officials fell prey to the same failure: because they did not act to be part of the solution, they made themselves part of the problem.

As the U.N. Committee chairperson said:

The view of committee is that the best way to prevent abuses is to reveal old ones--openness instead of sweeping offences under the carpet…It seems to date your procedures are not very transparent.

Transparency, accountability--these are the hallmarks of a solution.  The failure to employ them is the failure of those who remained part of the problem, not by abusing children but by covering up the abuse by others--and in doing so, enabling abusers to abuse again.

It is high time to stop denying that cover-up happened and enabled abusers.  It is time to begin the long process of rehabilitating the crippled credibility of the U.S. hierarchy.

The last thing we need now is a cover-up of the cover-up.

  © Bernard  F. Swain PhD 2014

#410: Who Wants Peace On Earth?

Pope Francis is first and foremost an evangelist, not a politician.  But Catholic Social Doctrine has always carried political implications. And the politics imbedded in Francis’ statements so far are quite clear, especially when it comes to committing ourselves to a realistic program for peace.

For Christians, peace is always a timely topic, but especially so now, as the 12 days of Christmas unfold.  The Christmas narratives themselves tell the birth of Jesus bringing the promise of “peace on earth,” and on January 1 the church also observes World Day of Peace.  In addition, Christmas 2013 ended the 50^th anniversary year of Pope John XXIII’s landmark encyclical “Pacem in Terris.”

Pope Francis thus finished his first calendar year in office by issuing a message (dated January 1) entitled “Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to Peace.” This document, together with Francis’ November message “The Joy of the Gospel,” offers a broad view of this pope’s vision for the world, as well as a powerful challenge to the world’s leaders.

One consistent theme emerges from these documents: peace is not possible using the current political and economic models that dominate world affairs.  In this, Francis echoes every previous pope of the last 50 years.  But if he (and they) are right, it means that the price of peace is to reject those models and replace them with something better.  But who among our leaders is willing to do that--or even suggest it?  In short, we must ask: who among them really wants peace on earth, and is willing to pay the price?

Specifically, Frances proposes that we will have to pay for peace in two ways.  First, we will have to reverse inequality.  Second, we will have to establish a culture of fraternity.

Inequality. In The Joy of the Gospel, Francis calls inequality “the root of all social evils,” and argues that peace will not be possible as long as inequality continues:

Until exclusion and inequality in society and between peoples are reversed, it will be impossible to eliminate violence…This is not the case simply because inequality provokes a violent reaction from those excluded from the system, but because the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root…Inequality eventually engenders a violence which recourse to arms cannot and never will be able to resolve…In the end, a peace which is not the result of integral development will be doomed.

To be concrete, Francis argues further that our current system is unjust “at its root” because of its blind-faith belief that free-market growth will solve our social ills:

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. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.

In light of this, the pope calls for urgent reforms to our current models:

 The need to resolve the structural causes of poverty cannot be delayed…As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.

Fraternity.  In his January 1 message, Francis is equally clear that fraternity is essential to peace:

A lively awareness of our relatedness helps us to look upon and to treat each person as a true sister or brother; without fraternity it is impossible to build a just society and a solid and lasting peace…Fraternity generates social peace because it creates a balance between freedom and justice, between personal responsibility and solidarity, between the good of individuals and the common good.

He refers once again to the danger of living in a world marked by “the globalization of indifference,” and cites Benedict XVI on the paradoxical challenge posed by the new globalized economy: “Globalization, as Benedict XVI pointed out, makes us neighbours, but does not make us brothers.”

Francis laments that “contemporary ethical systems remain incapable of producing authentic bonds of fraternity,” and cites the Biblical story of Cain and Abel:

The story of Cain and Abel teaches that we have an inherent calling to fraternity, but also the tragic capacity to betray that calling. This is witnessed by our daily acts of selfishness, which are at the root of so many wars and so much injustice: many men and women die at the hands of their brothers and sisters who are incapable of seeing themselves as such, that is, as beings made for reciprocity, for communion and self-giving.

Only by fraternity, Francis argues, will we outgrow inequality and poverty.  Noting the need for policies which can lighten an excessive imbalance between incomes, Francis invokes a teaching that has been part of Catholic tradition for seven centuries:

One also sees the need for policies which can lighten an excessive imbalance between incomes. We must not forget the Church’s teaching on the so-called social mortgage, which holds that although it is lawful, as Saint Thomas Aquinas says, and indeed necessary “that people have ownership of goods,” insofar as their use is concerned, “they possess them as not just their own, but common to others as well, in the sense that they can benefit others as well as themselves”... In this regard I would like to remind everyone of that necessary universal destination of all goods which is one of the fundamental principles of the Church’s social teaching. Respect for this principle is the essential condition for facilitating an effective and fair access to those essential and primary goods which every person needs and to which he or she has a right.

Once again, this leads Francis to conclude that our current models must change:

The succession of economic crises should lead to a timely rethinking of our models of economic development and to a change in lifestyles

All this provides much food for thought.

For one thing, Francis is the first pope from the third world, where the gap between rich and poor, and the absence of a stable “middle class,” has been widespread since the colonial era in both Latin America and Africa.  Francis himself is eyewitness to such inequality, for until his election he lived and worked in the notorious slums of Buenos Aires.  Thus his condemnation of inequality strikes close to his home.

But it also strikes close to our home too.  For among all advanced industrial countries of the so-called “first world,” the U.S. has by far the greatest inequality--hence the now-familiar references to some Americans as “the 1%” and to the rest of us as “the 99%.” In this, the U.S. resembles most third world nations more than it resembles its peers in Europe and Japan.  This is not because we never had a middle class, but because the real income of most Americans has been falling since the 1970s, while a small percentage have enjoyed astronomical increases in income.

Yet if anyone suggests aggressive measures to redistribute income, cries of “socialist!” And “Marxist!” explode on the airwaves, the Internet, and in the press.  What the new pope is making crystal clear is that his call for reform is rooted, not in political theories or parties, but in centuries of Catholic tradition.

In fact, it every pope in the last 50 years has decried growing income gaps.  Even during the Cold War, pope after pope called for less obsession with East-West conflicts and more concern about North-South relations - - since the prosperity of the first world came largely at the expense of poverty in the third world.

The call for fraternity is also deeply rooted in Catholic tradition.  Catholic social doctrine has long taught that the common good trumps private interests and profits.  Christians have always believed the gospel notion that we are, in fact, our brother’s keeper.  We believe that if privileges exclude others, then privilege must be rejected.  We believe that love of neighbor is our second commandment, and is “like the first” (love of God).  We have always believed that the poor are blessed, and that caring for the weak is a hallmark of authentic Christian faith.

We Americans are proud to proclaim ourselves the world’s champion of “freedom,” but Pope Francis is saying that this is not enough to create peace.  Freedom can allow us to exclude others, to fail in brotherly love, and to promote competitive “survival of the fittest” systems that create winners and losers (Martin Scorsese’s new film The Wolf of Wall Street depicts the excesses this can produce).

Ironically, the pope’s view reflects neither Marxist-socialist perspectives nor America’s one-eyed focus on freedom.  If we must find a political partner, recall that the French Revolution proclaimed not only “Liberty” but also “Equality” and “Fraternity.” Without arguing the merits of that revolution and its legacy, it reflects this pope’s conviction that freedom untempered by equality and fraternity cannot bring us peace on earth. Francis is first and foremost an evangelist, not a politician.  But Catholic social teaching has always carried political implications. And the politics imbedded in Francis’ statements so far are quite clear, especially when it comes to committing ourselves to a realistic program for peace.

First, Francis has positioned the Catholic Church as the largest anti-capitalist voice in the world.  Second, he has positioned the papacy as the one public office capable of commanding a global audience for his inspiring vision. Third, he has challenged us to embrace fraternity and equality as the essential foundations of a peaceful world. 

Practically speaking, this means that peace on earth will only come if we alter the current capitalist model to reverse inequality and restore concern for the common good.  And it means placing concern for others above self interest. This is precisely the plea Francis makes for the world’s leaders:

I ask God to give us more politicians capable of sincere and effective dialogue aimed at healing the deepest roots – and not simply the appearances – of the evils in our world!..I beg the Lord to grant us more politicians who are genuinely disturbed by the state of society, the people, the lives of the poor! It is vital that government leaders and financial leaders take heed and broaden their horizons, working to ensure that all citizens have dignified work, education and healthcare.

The question is: if this is what it takes to get Peace on Earth--who wants that?

  © Bernard  F. Swain PhD 2014