Lattices

 

        A lattice is a structure around which climbing plants can grow. The image suggests an inanimate thing, the lattice, providing a means for a living thing, a plant, to flourish.

        Churches are lattices.

        A church provides a structure within which people can experience God. The life is in the people and their experience, not in the structure.

        Take the Catholic Church. It provides places where people can gather, and gathering is essential for experiencing God. It provides scripts for behavior when the people gather. It provides resources like books and music that enrich the experience. It uses life events like marriage and death as hooks on the lattice to catch passersby. It creates a lattice of time (celebrating the story of Jesus in the liturgical year) that keeps reminding people of where their lives can go.

        Within the lattice, all kinds of different experiences occur. Some people experience God through mysticism, some through acts of service to others, some through a disciplined routine of prayer with others. Many withdraw from the lattice but continue to find God through memories of their experiences in the lattice.

        People who have never had contact with the lattice never benefit from what the lattice can provide. They are like athletes who grow up without coaching, and whose abilities may not ever fully develop, or like musicians who have not had people around them to nurture their musical gifts. Some people will overcome such disabilities and develop a relationship with God in their own way. Many will not.

        That is the cause for regret on the part of us religious people. We are like people who love music and regret that some people never get to experience the wonders of musical performance.

        That regret is the motive for what we call evangelization. We do not evangelize for the sake of numbers—statistics about church membership and ritual attendance miss the point. We who manage the lattice are managing wood and nails, not living things. God is moving in our structures, we hope, and sharing abundant life. Our role is to let mushrooms and plants grow.

        We of the structure are human beings, which means that we are sinful. We develop pathologies of structuring. We fall in love with controlling other people, or with pride in creating beautiful buildings and objects. We love creating rules, because rules let us gain power over other people. We get into fights with other religious people. This is especially true when we merge our lattices with political structures. Church and state merge, and smother life instead of nurturing it.

        For some reason we church people got the idea that we have to control the world in order for people to come to God. No. We just have to provide the lattice and get out of the way.

 

A poem

 Weeds

 have sympathy for weeds

            flowers out of place

true, not so pretty

            don’t look like flowers

            have to look close

but persistent

            even in sidewalks

 

God works that way

            life out of place

often not pretty

            have to look close

churches are sidewalks

            weeds are life

Jesus talks with a capitalist

Jesus:

Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Capitalist:

I'm sorry, but I have to take exception to that. In a capitalist society, if you are a loser, that means you or your family haven't tried hard enough to play the game. The game has rules. You have to play by the rules or socialism will happen, and we know that socialism is the work of the devil.

Jesus:

But that doesn't fit with the way I treated people who were poor, right?

Capitalist:

That may have been true in your time, but that was before the United States and other industrialized countries discovered the marvelous power of capitalism to make lives better for the poor. You just don't understand today's world. We have come a long way since the first century. Adam Smith and Ayn Rand, you know.

Jesus:

I think it is you who doesn't understand the world. The way you see the world is not so different from the world governed by the Roman Empire. And I know that world, first hand.

Let me explain it this way. Your capitalism is founded on a fine insight: that people do better when they can compete in a fair game. People don't want to be spoon-fed. They want to compete. But the game has to be fair. When the game isn't fair, the players get discouraged and walk away from the game. Your capitalism makes people compete with one hand tied behind their back. Then you blame them for being poor losers.

Capitalist:

But look at all the good capitalism has done for the world! Billions of people lifted out of poverty, billions living healthier and longer lives.

Jesus:

True, but look at the billions who are living on the edge of deprivation. Look at the people who have to leave their homes because it never rains any more and their crops and animals can't survive. Do you think those people don't want to play in the game?

Capitalist:

If they are losers, they must not want to play in the game.

Jesus:

I would say that you need to change the rules of the game. You have to make the game fair for all the players, not just for the ones who got there first.

Capitalist:

I hate to say it, Jesus, but you sound like a socialist.

Jesus:

They have called me worse.

Look. How will you lose if you change the rules so more people can compete on a fair playing field? The way I see it, God creates every human being to live life with abundance. When more people can do that, you should be happier.

Capitalist:

I wish I could, but the world just doesn't work that way. You are too soft-hearted. Life is hard. I said it before and I'll say it again, people just have to play by the rules.

Jesus:

You sound like some Pharisees I know. They get carried away multiplying the rules so people can't get in the game. I tell them that it is not God's will that one person gets lost. Translated: not one of them gets kicked out of the game.

Here's the problem. The system you call capitalism has a fine insight into how people live. But a disease has infected the insight--call it a demon--that inspires people to take as much as they can get even when they ruin the game for others. I'd like to do something about that demon--I have some experience with such things. But these days I have to depend on human beings to drive out such demons. I suggest you pay attention to people who talk like I do. You can learn, you know. You can change your mind. We call that repentance. It can lead you to a more abundant life yourself.

Capitalist:

I'll think about it.

Jesus:

One more thing. This fine way you play the capitalist game, it is heading for disaster because it is making the world unlivable. It is chewing up resources and pouring things into the air that are making the whole world hotter. You say that capitalism has done more for more people than anything before it. But it is on the brink of doing more harm to more people than anything before it. That is the way things go when they are infected by a demon. You should think about that too.

Capitalist:

You are messing with my head. You would mess up the whole capitalist world.

Jesus:

That's the idea. I appreciate your honesty. Do think about it.

 

The great commandment

A recent homily in the Quincy University Chapel 

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength.”

There is an apparent contradiction in the way this commandment is stated. How can you command someone to love? Love is supposed to be given freely, as a gift to the other person.

Here is a restatement of that first great commandment that suddenly popped into my head. It contains language that may sound vulgar, language that preachers should not use in a homily, but I think it expresses something that is important. It is important enough to break the rule about vulgar language.

Here it is, the way I would re-phrase the first great commandment.

“Love me, dammit.”

Literally, that statement expresses a truth: if you don’t love the Lord, you are damned. But the spirit of the statement is the spirit of someone pleading to be loved. The Lord is showing vulnerability and frustration in the statement. The statement is saying that the Lord wants and needs us to love him.

When you look at it that way, the word “commandment” does not quite express what is going on. It is a commandment in the sense that the Lord needs compliance from us more than that the Lord is demanding something from us.

Vulnerability is part of love. Our God is pleading for our love. Our God needs our love. That’s the way our God has made us.

Love is a two-way street. When God commands us to love, God is telling us that our response is just as important as what God just said. We are to approach God the way a child approaches a parent. There is the child’s dependence in the relationship, but there is also vulnerability on the part of the parent. The parent needs the child’s love. The child knows this, and it is a source of the child’s dignity.

The reason that every child’s life is precious is that every child has the dignity of being able to love God and that God needs that response from the child. Don’t mess with the child, because the child is talking with God, and God is listening.

We all have that dignity, even when we are a long way from childhood, and even when we may have done things that can destroy a relationship. God is just as vulnerable to us when we have sinned as when we are children who haven’t sinned yet. Jesus’s favorite statement was “God forgives you.”

So the next time we think about the great commandment, to love God with our whole heart and soul and mind and strength, we might re-phrase it: God is saying to us: “Love me, dammit.”

 

The sparrow

"Not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.”

        What is a sparrow?

        It is a collection of atoms and molecules, a collection that grew out of much smaller collections (sperm and egg) in parent sparrows.

        An infinitely aware God, which is what we say that God is, would know not only when the sparrow falls to the ground, but would know the location of every atom and molecule in a single sparrow’s body, both its location now and where that atom or molecule came from, and where it will go when it departs from the sparrow. Almost none of those atoms and molecules would have stayed in the sparrow throughout the sparrow’s lifetime—the atoms and molecules are continually coming and going.

        So what is the sparrow?

        The sparrow is certainly a physical object that can be seen and touched. That relates the sparrow to organisms outside the sparrow. Those organisms could include other sparrows, other animals that the sparrow eats and that eat sparrows, and human beings who observe the sparrow.

        One way to look at a single sparrow is to say a particular sparrow is the history or story of how a particular set of atoms and molecules combined for a brief period of time (the lifetime of the sparrow) to result in the physical object that relates to all the beings in its lifeworld.

        From a course in ancient philosophy I recall that Aristotle would say that the sparrow is a combination of matter (the “stuff” from which everything in the world is made) and form (the pattern which the stuff takes to make a particular individual object).

        What Aristotle called the “form” I call “the story.”

        The word “form” suggests a pattern that is fixed in time and basically unchanged. The word “story suggests a “diachronic” pattern which is always changing and always unique.

        The sparrow is the story of one unique set of atoms and molecules coming and going to form an observable animal for the brief period of the animal’s lifetime.

        If God is truly infinite, God knows the story of every atom and molecule in the universe, and the stories of the various ways those atoms and molecules can clump together to form stars and planets and rocks, trees, animals, and human  beings.

 

The human being

        The particular set of atoms and molecules that make up a human being  is unique in that it results in the mysterious experience we call “consciousness.” It results in other unique experiences, such as a sense of freedom, of love and other emotions.

        Each human being has a story beyond the story of its atoms and molecules. Each human does things and experiences things in ways so unique that authors can write thousand page novels about one human person.

        From my standpoint as a Christian, each human’s story can include moments of praise and worship of the God responsible for that human’s life and for everything else in that human’s lifeworld.

        The ability to freely and consciously honor God makes each human and the human species in general unique in the natural world. It gives each human being a dignity and value that is not shared by anything else in creation.

        We are part of the sparrow world, but we are more than the sparrow. God knows each of us, and we can know God. God loves each of us, and we can love God.

 

 

Work

 

        Fr. Edward Lutz was the “sub-rector” during my high school years in the seminary at Westmont, Illinois. He was the friar most responsible for the day-to-day life of the students.

        One of Fr. Edward’s favorite quotations was “Man is made to work as the bird is made to fly.” It turns out that this is a faulty translation of a verse in the biblical book of Job, but that doesn’t mean the idea is faulty.

“Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfilment.”

        That is a quotation from Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si,” but in that letter he references several of his immediate predecessors: Benedict XVI, John Paul II, and Paul VI, all of whom had things to say about work.

        Work is any activity I do that someone else depends on.

        In my father’s declining years, he was able, once a week, to drive his older sister to the grocery store. That was about the only thing that someone outside his family depended on him for. That was work for him. It helped him maintain a sense of dignity.

        In some of the Franciscan communities in which I have lived, one of the brothers had the job title of “refectorian.” The refectory was the traditional name for the dining room, and the refectorian set the tables in the dining room. It was not a time-consuming job—it took perhaps a half hour, when the community had several dozen members. But it was work. It wasn’t paid work, but it was enough to provide dignity to the brother who held the position. Fr. Irenaeus Kimminau, now almost 103 years old, was still setting the tables for the six members in our community until he had to move to assisted living a year ago. After the meal he would pick up the cloth napkins and take them to the laundry room.

        Pope Francis again:

“We were created with a vocation to work. The goal should not be that technological progress increasingly replace human work, for this would be detrimental to humanity.”

        The problem is that in the way we do capitalism in this country, any activity that other people need has to be tied to money, or nobody can do it. That leaves many people with no way to contribute to the community, and with the loss of dignity that goes with that inability.

        Free-market enthusiasts would have us believe that everyone can be employed if they really want to. If they don’t want to, then they should starve.

“Yet the orientation of the economy has favored a kind of technological progress in which the costs of production are reduced by laying off workers and replacing them with machines.”

        Very true. It happened with my grandfather, who arrived in America with the job title of “cooper”—maker of barrels. The machine caught up with him. It drove him to spend his later years as a janitor and, I suspect, an alcoholic.

        Today the machine gets at our young people before they ever enter the work force. They know that, regardless of their personal gifts and dreams, they had better enroll in courses that are most likely to survive the machine or they will never be able to have a family. Teachers who can provide them with anything beside marketable skills are driven out of employment. We are left with nothing but trade schools.

        No wonder our Catholic schools seem to do a poor job of helping young people develop a vibrant faith life. What good is knowledge of God or God’s will on a job application?

        No wonder that Quincy University, where I have spent the last fifty years of my life, can no longer afford to support solid programs in philosophy or theology.

        Or, for that matter, in literature or history or foreign languages.

“The loss of jobs also has a negative impact on the economy ‘through the progressive erosion of social capital: the network of relationships of trust, dependability, and respect for rules, all of which are indispensable for any form of civil coexistence.’”

        Here Francis is quoting his predecessor, Pope Benedict, from Benedict’s letter “Caritas in Veritate.”

        We need societies that allow men and women, of all ages, to contribute to the common good, whether or not their contribution can be marketized into a paid position. That means that the community as a whole needs to support people whose contributions are not immediately monetarized. That requires higher taxes, but raising taxes is heresy in our culture. The reason that it is heresy is that we believe the dogma that unless people are threatened with starvation, they will not work.

        Perhaps people who fear that everyone else is a potential free-loader are projecting their own fears onto everyone else.

        For several centuries of European history, ordinary people could live lives of dignity and relative security and still enjoy periods of leisure. Even today, many European countries combine capitalist enterprise with government support for people and services that allow leisure and security—vacations and medical care.

        Most people want to contribute to the common good. Few people are free-loaders. The problem is what so many of us can contribute cannot be rewarded enough for us to live on. We have gifts that no one will pay for.

        Our customs and laws and tax policies should allow all of us to live with dignity, security, and leisure.

 

 

 

Hubris in the Democratic party

Who are the people supporting Donald Trump for a second term as president?

Theory Number One, which I have tended to accept, is that they are people who have been left behind in today’s culture, a culture that has turned a useful human invention, the market, into a demonic force. The divinized market has been immensely successful in allocating to itself an unfair share of the products of labor, and in the process has robbed a growing segment of the population of resources needed for a life of dignity and reasonable security. Theory Number One is that this latter segment, the “left behind” folks, the rust-belt casualties residing in mid-America, is rebelling against the system that is robbing them. Trump is their hero because Trump will blow up the system.

Theory Number Two is that there is another segment of our society that is not at all a casualty of the system. This segment is not disadvantaged. It is people who have done everything right—are blessed with stable marriages, are members of a faith community, have a decent education and a job that provides a dignified living—these people are also leaning towards Mr. Trump. Many of these people—most of the ones I know are Catholic—are speaking favorably about Mr. Trump for a different reason. 

People of faith accept as true the statement that human affairs are not totally under human control. There is something beyond human capability that needs to be taken account of, especially as we face unprecedented environmental disasters. People of faith take a higher power seriously. People of faith take God seriously.

Theory Number Two says that people of faith look favorably at Mr. Trump because his Democratic opponents look down on people of faith, mostly by ignoring them.

The Democratic leadership, and probably a lot of what middle America calls the “coasts,” suffer from a disability that keeps them from appreciating how most people in the world see the world. The sense that we are all responsible to some kind of “higher power” is common to men and women with religious roots in every part of the world.

The theory labeled “secularization” says that as a society becomes more industrialized or “modernized,” religious faith disappears. But as Ryan Burge asks, from his study of survey data about religion, why is it that the poor in our country are the least churched and most secularized among us? And that it is people who have done everything right, “checked all the boxes,” that are more likely to be members of a religious community?

Shaun Casey was appointed to a post in the Obama State Department, a post charged with making government officials aware of how religion can affect political behavior around the world. Mr. Casey, in his book Chasing the Devil at Foggy Bottom, quotes Madeleine Albright, in a book she published five years after her term as Secretary of State in the Clinton administration, a book titled The Mighty and the Almighty, regarding the role of religion in political affairs:

Drawing on her experience, she noted that while religion had played important roles in varied locations, including Vietnam, the Balkans, Iran, Poland, Uganda, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the State Department in her tenure had no experts for her to draw on.

 

Secularization theory has not fared well in explaining and predicting trends in modern history. A theory more accurately telling the story of modernity might be called “hubris theory.” As people become politically and economically successful, they move in circles that reward success, both real and imagined. They feel less responsibility to anything or anyone beyond themselves—they are self-made men and women. It is that attitude, “we can solve any problem,” that religions challenge.

Hubris causes people to think that they are the wave of the future, that the important people are all like them, that their opinions are self-evident. They do not realize that their world is limited in space and time. Not everyone is as self-made as they are.

It is that attitude that is infecting the Democratic leadership. They are discarding important segments of the voting public, segments that accept the idea that there is something or someone beyond themselves to which they are responsible. When those segments feel disenfranchised, they react by throwing bombs—casting their vote for Mr. Trump.

Some observers claim that the Catholic vote will be critical in November’s election. Many Catholics I know are turned off by the confident secularity of Democratic leaders, especially by their full-throated acceptance of abortion. They are influenced by an American Catholic hierarchy that has been cultivated too successfully by Republican leadership.

Abortion is evil. The term “pro-choice” used to mean that a decision about abortion should be made by the woman carrying a child, with or without the support of a physician. A Catholic can accept that as a morally legitimate position, because not all moral evils should be dealt with by governments and their laws. Democratic strategists have discarded choice and replaced it with a claim that abortion is a positive good. That is something that many Catholics see as morally repugnant. It enough to turn them into Trump supporters.

The Catholic vote is not the only such vote, though it is the largest in numbers. There is a huge ex-Catholic population that may be as religious as the Catholic faithful who are still committed to the church, and those two populations, ex-Catholic and Catholic, make up a significant voting bloc, more significant even than evangelical voters.  Democrats should not discard this important group that traditionally voted Democratic, and includes a growing Hispanic segment that, Catholic or ex-Catholic, takes the existence of God seriously.

Christians should not seek to control, but they do wish to be respected and taken seriously.  Few things anger human beings more powerfully than when people disrespect them.

A revised rosary

We call them “mysteries” of the rosary. I’d rename them “stories.” They are stories about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

I have grown up with three sets of five stories each: the joyful stories, the sorrowful stories, and the glorious stories.

The idea seems to be that you should think about those stories as you vocalize the prayers, one Our Father and ten Hail Marys for each story. I grew up thinking that the idea was to forget about the words of the prayers and just think about the stories. I discovered later in life that there is merit to thinking about the prayers and let the stories sort of float in the background.

I had one problem with the traditional three sets—they skip over all the events of what we call the “public life” of Jesus, the things he did as an adult in the years before he died. So I invented what I call the “public” mysteries or stories. Here are the five I created:

1. John the Baptist baptizes Jesus.

2. The devil tempts Jesus.

3. Jesus eats with sinners.

4. Jesus heals people.

5. Jesus teaches people.

Before I explain further why I chose those five, I should tell you that Pope John Paul II had the same idea, only I invented mine before he made his public. His five are:

1. John the Baptist baptizes Jesus

2. Jesus turns water into wine at Cana.

3. Jesus proclaims the kingdom of God.

4. Jesus appears to his apostles transfigured.

5. Jesus institutes the Eucharist at the Last Supper.

 

Why my five

Both John Paul and I chose the baptism of Jesus as the first story for reflection as we pray the rosary. It was a crucial event in Jesus’s life, with the voice of the Father and the Spirit appearing as a dove.

The temptations described in three of the gospels are surely a literary way of saying that Jesus continually faced three paths that would divert him from his mission. The first was to seek his own well-being (by avoiding hunger); the second was to focus on fame (through a dramatic descent from the height of the temple pinnacle); and the third was to bring about the kingdom through political power. That Jesus was tempted is a very important way in which he was “like us in all things except sin.”

Jesus’s eating with sinners was an important way in which he broke with people’s expectations. The Pharisees more than once complained about the way he ignored ritual rules about eating, and especially rules about eating with the wrong people. Table fellowship cements social friendships—look at how seldom interracial contact at work results in dinner invitations. The scripture scholar Robert Karris, who focused on the gospel of Luke during his career, said “Jesus was crucified because of the way he ate.” Karris meant that he was crucified because of who he ate with.

Surely Jesus’s healing was a significant part of his life in Galilee and Judea. “People kept coming to him,” says the gospel of Matthew, “bringing to him all those who were sick with various diseases and racked with pain, those who were possessed, lunatics, and paralytics, and he cured them.”

And finally, Jesus taught, especially through his parables about the kingdom of God.

 

Mystery revisions

I was fifteen years old when Pope Pius XII declared that Mary’s being taken up body and soul into heaven was a dogma of faith. At the time he said that her “assumption into heaven” was a reminder of a doctrine in the Apostles’ Creed, "the resurrection of the body."

The idea that we are to be resurrected in both soul and body led to much reflection on my part about the significance of the physical in our lives and deaths. So I replaced the term “assumption” with the phrase “resurrection of the body” for the fourth glorious mystery.

That was my first revision. Then my revisionism picked up steam.

The fifth glorious mystery or story, that Mary is crowned queen of heaven and earth, bothered me. First of all, there is no scriptural basis for this story. There is no scriptural basis for the story of Mary’s assumption either, but at least there is a more credible tradition of belief down through the centuries for that idea. Second, I have an American negative reaction to kings and queens.

So my first revision was to replace the coronation with the phrase “life everlasting,” based, like the “resurrection of the body,” on the last phrases of the Apostles’ Creed.

The Apostles’ Creed got me to think about re-doing the last three glorious mysteries or stories as follows:

Third glorious mystery: The Holy Spirit comes to the apostles at Pentecost, forming the holy Catholic church. (“I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic church . . .”)

Fourth glorious mystery: the communion of saints, and the forgiveness of sins. (“. . . the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins . . .”)

Fifth mystery: the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. (“. . .the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting.”)

 

The mysteries as doublets

Those last three glorious mysteries suggested ways of thinking about all the mysteries as doublets, two events each.

First glorious mystery: Jesus rises from the dead and appears to Mary Magdalene and others.

Second glorious mystery: Jesus commissions his followers to make disciples of all nations (the “Great Commission”) and ascends into heaven.

The Joyful Mysteries

1. The Angel Gabriel appears to Zachary,  and to Mary

2. After Mary visits Elizabeth, she prays her “Magnificat,” and Zachary prays his “Benedictus.”

3. Mary and Joseph cannot find lodging; Jesus is born in a stable.

4. The family is visited by shepherds; the family visits Simeon and Anna in the temple.

5. Magi visit Jesus; the teachers in the temple marvel at his wisdom.

The fourth mystery or story shows Jesus being acknowledged by less important people (shepherds and Simeon and Anna—Luke’s gospel does not say that Simeon was a priest).

The fifth mystery shows Jesus being acknowledged by important people: magi and teachers in the temple.

 

The public mysteries

1. Jesus gets in line with sinners for baptism; the Father and Spirit publicly acknowledge him as “beloved son.”

2. Jesus fasts; Jesus is tempted.

3. Jesus eats with ordinary tax collectors like Matthew; and with rich ones like Zacheus.

4. Jesus heals physical maladies; and possession by demons.

5. Jesus teaches using parables; and feeds thousands after his teaching.

 

The sorrowful mysteries

1. Jesus eats with his followers at the last supper , he suffers agony in the garden of Gethsemane.

2. Jesus is condemned to death by the Sanhedrin; and condemned by Pontius Pilate.

3. Jesus is spit upon; and crowned with thorns.

4. Jesus takes up the cross; and falls on the way to Calvary.

5. Jesus is nailed to the cross; and dies on it.

 

This revision of rosary mysteries is a work in progress. Most of the ideas have been road-tested, but I composed a few, especially the sorrowful ones, as I was writing this piece.

Anyone can change things about a private prayer like the rosary, in whatever way they find spiritually fruitful. Of course, when we pray together, any changes are a distraction for other people, and we shouldn't impose our innovations on them.

The spirit of prayerful adventure that allowed me to manhandle the rosary is something I got from Fr. Martin Wolter, a friar who invented a whole batch of ways to make prayer more meaningful for people.

A rule that I find useful for any prayer form, liturgical or otherwise, is one that I modify from the psychologist Erik Erikson. He was describing interactions between a mother and her infant, but the description fits prayer very well. His advice, modified for prayer: Prayer forms should be familiar enough that they don’t distract, and innovative enough that they’re not boring.