Christians and the Political System

A friend of mine thinks that God is laughing at us right now. By us he means registered voters in the United States - though there are other targets, for sure. Apart from possible motivations, this opinion is at variance with the saintly Fr. James Halligan, who was the spiritual director of the minor seminary of the Archdiocese of New York in the days I was a student there. God doesn't laugh because He doesn't have a sense of humor, according to Fr. Halligan, and the one would necessitate the other. Humor is a human quality and God is quite decidedly divine in nature, so therefore, no sense of humor, no laughter. Then there was Fr. Jerry Pellegrino, SDB, a Salesian who made his reputation on giving retreats dealing with the very topic of the divine sense of humor, where he would give a tour of the Scriptures highlighting the times when God, and Jesus in particular, used ironic wit to make his points. I never remember Fr. Jerry addressing the specific issue of God actually laughing, but since he did believe that the Almighty had a funny bone, I'll go with he idea that he thought that God did indeed chuckle, at the very least. Well, whatever the truth of the matter, both men are in eternity now, and that particular bet has been settled, for them anyway. Whether God is laughing or crying or sitting back in stoic bemusement, the reason for my friend’s opinion is based upon the presidential election that has a little over a week to go, and can't end soon enough. God laughs, all apologies to Fr. Halligan, because we are getting the general election campaign and the candidates that we deserve. 

If God laughs right now, I think it's directed specifically at many sincerely religious people, because over the last forty or fifty years we have placed our faith in the political system as a means of advancing our moral agenda, specifically in the area of social justice and, more narrowly, right to life issues. The Venerable Fulton Sheen, speaking fifty years ago, warned that, in a world that valued the material over the spiritual, religion would eventually get reduced to politics, and while generally speaking progressive minded Catholics are more likely to fall into that trap, conservatives or traditionalists are also guilty of this offense. In judging the right candidate or even party affiliation, one side puts general social welfare policy at the top of the Catholic voter priorities list, while the other has made abortion and other life issues the most important factor to consider when heading to the polls. I'll put my cards on the table, and say flat out that I've been in the latter camp: I can't imagine pulling the lever for a pro-choice candidate, especially one who makes abortion on demand a central part of his or her platform. Nonetheless, whether you are a Catholic who identifies as a social justice warrior or a pro-life crusader, we've been duped by cynical party machines powering a corrupt political system. In 2016 the curtain has been drawn back exposing, not one but two fake, unscrupulous wizards operating a system of holograms, smoke and fire - only many of us are still willfully ignorant of the reality. 

I recently wrote a critique of Adam Curtis' documentaries, and while I disagree with many particulars, he gets the essence of the situation - that we are living in a fake, manipulated political and economic system. I would disagree with him in so far as he will still place blame for the current situation on the doorstep of the Right, while pretty much giving the Left a pass. I believe that the real problem is that there isn't any real difference between the sides once we get to the establishment level, and people are seeing that more and more. Curtis sees the banks, the multinationals and civil governments as being in bed with each other, but he sees the financial and corporate institutions as steering, if not controlling, the governments. I tend to see it the other way around, or at least as an equal partnership. This three headed monster has colluded together to control the levers of democracy, leaving the people with the illusion of being in control. If there is a despair among the masses, a loss of hope in the future, it's because many can't  see any way out of the situation that we are presently in. Curtis sees the malaise, the hopelessness and understands that the embracing of "Trumpism" and the success of Brexit are reactions by people trying to regain control of a system they feel alienated from. 

I would argue there is another reason that he doesn't mention, possibly because he possesses a secular mind, and it's never occurred to him that the decline of religious faith in his home country, Great Britain, and the West in general, has contributed to the existential listlessness now being experienced. 

I again reference Fulton Sheen, who in the mid-1970's warned that:

"...we are now living at the end of Christendom. It is the end of Christendom, but not Christianity. What is Christendom? Christendom is the political, economic, moral, social, legal life of a nation as inspired by the gospel ethic. That is finished.


“Abortion, the breakdown of the family life, dishonesty, even the natural virtues upon which the supernatural virtues are based, are being discredited. Christianity is not at an end. But we are at the end of Christendom. And I believe the sooner we face up to this fact, the sooner we will be able to solve many of our problems."

This appraisal was apart of a larger historical analysis that Sheen had, in which he thought that we were at the end of one era and entering into a new one. At least initially, this new epoch was going to see the Church, and Christianity in general, lose its influence on public life. While the culture was still informed by Christian values so would its politics be. In the past it was possible to appeal to Gospel values when advocating for social reform, as the abolition and labor movements did in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Those who thought of themselves as progressive in the 19th century were often against abortion as well (yes, abortion was an issue, even back then). Now Christians are more and more seen as just another advocacy group within the society. Rather than being intimately commingled with the culture, Christianity is now distinct and separate. 

Modern Christians in the West have always took for granted that the culture and the faith are married to one another, to the point that we have trouble distinguishing one from the other. But the Enlightenment signaled the great divorce of culture and faith. It took a long time for the papers to get served here in the United States, but in the last fifteen or twenty years the decree of dissolution has been finalized, and what was a slow, at times imperceptible separation, is now complete. It's for us to understand this and learn how to influence the culture in asymmetrical ways, since the direct approach won't work anymore. Even people we thought as allies look upon us as being strangers.

Four years ago I was asked by a different friend to write some pieces for his fledgling website of conservative opinion aimed at the under 30 years old set. He didn't want me to write political pieces as such, but to explain Catholic social thought, and how conservatives might be able to apply its central principles. I was surprised when I received responses from self identified young conservatives who told me that abortion and gay marriage were "losing issues," and besides, religion shouldn't influence legislation. In essence I was told, very politely, that it's the economy, stupid, not social conservative morality. The thing was, I never wrote about abortion or gay marriage using religious reasoning or appealing to Scripture or Magisterial pronouncements. The articles were all argued from the standpoint of natural law, anthropology and, the social sciences, yet the readers (mostly millennials) were so conditioned to seeing these as strictly religious issues that they never bothered to actually address my points. The culture has shifted - that faith is still a leaven influencing the political life of the nation is past. Equating conservative or Republican with Christian and pro-life and traditional marriage is a mistake.

The Democrats and the Republicans are more than happy to use Catholics to promote their agendas, while never really delivering on their promises. Progressives push for greater social spending on federal programs, and they are in control of the levers of power in our inner cites where they want much of the spending directed. But can we really say that places like Chicago, Detroit and Newark are better off than they were fifty years ago? In many ways yes, but large swaths of these great cities are still stuck in a desperate rut of unemployment, violence and decay. Blaming Republicans has always seemed a bit odd since none of these places have had GOP leadership in decades, if not for over a century. Yet there are many Catholics who think that the moral thing to do is to vote Democratic because they're the party of the poor.

On the other side I'm told that I need to vote Republican because they are for Life and family values. Yet forty three years after Roe we are no closer to getting that tragic decision overturned. There has been some progress on the state level, but we must face facts: Roe is never getting overturned, short of a Constitutional amendment - and I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. A 5-4 majority "conservative" Supreme Court couldn't find it's way to overturn sections of the Affordable Care Act - with the GOP appointed Chief Justice essentially rewriting the plan from the bench to make it fit. If a Court dominated by Republican appointees couldn't strike down a questionable portion of a relatively new piece of legislation, what makes conservative Catholics think that future Republican appointees to the bench will have the courage to overturn forty-plus years of legal precedent - 50 if you trace the reasoning behind Roe back to Griswold v. Connecticut?  

There are sincere Democrats and Republicans who's faith influence their political life. And maybe political parties are necessary evils that helps those principles to get embodied, at least partially, in practical legislation. But, to paraphrase Russell Kirk, we need to not mistake the wine with the bottle that holds it. For us, Catholic social teaching is the wine, the respective political parties may be needed to serve as the bottles that carries and delivers it. Right now this isn't happening. Both are more than happy to slap a label on their products claiming that they are Roman Catholic Approved - like a bottle of ketchup with a special mark claiming that it's kosher for Passover. The difference is that those kosher labels are pretty trustworthy - party promises aren't. While individual Catholics may be sincerely trying to harmonize their faith and public life, the party machines are another story. They are happy to have our votes and then forget about us until they need those votes again.

I believe that Fulton Sheen was right: we are at the end of an epoch right now. Pope Francis has said the same thing, though when many people hear that they tend to put a positive, almost utopian spin on it. In the long run this will be a positive change, but in the short to medium term the seas will be rocky, to put it mildly. Anytime an established system breaks down there is displacement and confusion at first. What will come, I'm not enough of a prophet to say, but I believe that for Christians it will be a great opportunity to re-evangelize a broken culture. It will only be so if we get back to a spiritual vision of the world. 

We have tried to use politics to advance our agenda and it's failed, because the political system really doesn't see us as a partner, but as a tool. As an institution the Church has tried to adopt structures borrowed from the business world, to mixed effect. We certainly have something to learn from corporate culture, as long as we don't actually adopt the culture. I don't think we intended it, but by putting so much stock in being politically savvy and corporately professional, we have been sowing in the flesh and reaping, if not corruption, then a grossly limited yield.

No matter who wins a week from Tuesday, the system as we know it will collapse in short order. By collapse I mean anything from the end of the two party system as we know it today, all the way to a full blown constitutional crisis. We will either have a president-elect who took a scorched earth path to the presidency - who will never be supported by a large segment of the people who feel insulted and defamed by his words, who will never be convinced that their president isn't a racist. The other possible winner will have a continuing FBI investigation hanging over her head as she takes the oath of office (unless the sitting president pardons her before inauguration day). And even if a pardon is forthcoming, it will not take away the stain of scandal that taints her and her fledgling administration. I can't see the status quo surviving either eventuality and I've only highlighted a few of the possible difficulties facing the next president, whoever that person is. And if this turns into another 2000, with contested results, I shutter to think of the chaos that will ensue. 

If I'm wrong, and Election Day ends up being business as usual, and the customary orderly transfer of power happens without protest or delay, Catholics will still need to rethink our relationship with the system. We must face up to the fact that we are no longer living in a culture informed by the faith, and the political system reflects that. We must stay engaged, but without lending our loyalty to parties that really aren't looking out for our interests or share our values. We best serve the Gospel from the outside putting pressure on the powers that control the system, making them earn our vote because it was gained by a track record of real change, not empty promises. 

Adam Curtis: Cyber Age Seer or False Prophet?

Please don't call the UK's Adam Curtis a documentary film maker. He is a journalist, he argues, who happens to use the medium of film to investigate and share his stories. About a week or two ago I wouldn't have called him anything, because I'd never heard of Adam Curtis before a buddy of mine posted the trailer to his new BBC documentary, HyperNormalisation, to his Facebook page. 

It's an engrossing five minutes, where Curtis proposes that we are living in a political and economic system that isn't real, and everybody knows it. The politicians aren't really in control of events nor do they really have a handle on the economy. The masses are trapped in a social media loop that, because of the power of algorithms, only feeds us content that we already agree with. We go along for the ride because we can't think of any alternative. He references the last years of the Soviet Union, when the term hypernormalisation was coined, not, as he says in an interview, to make a direct comparison between the situations, but rather to simply give an example of the phenomenon. 

What makes the ideas that Curtis proposes so engrossing isn't simply the ideas themselves but their presentation. While he demurrers from being thought of as a documentarian, he uses contemporary news accounts, interviews - both historical and current, archival stock footage of material both related and unrelated - at least directly so - to the topic, music and, movie clips that harmonize thematically to create a video and sound montage that draws the viewer in. Over this phantasmagoric basic track he overlays his own rather canny, classically BBC style narration of his own composition, which ties all the seemingly disparate parts together. 

After seeing the trailer I was eager to catch the entire program. It was released officially on one of the BBC's web platforms last week, but unfortunately was blocked in the US market. I contented myself by binge watching several of his previous films on YouTube. Then, over the weekend, I saw that HyperNormalisation had been surreptitiously uploaded by several YouTubers. After seeing and being intrigued by Curtis' Everyday is Like Sunday (2011), The Mayfair Set (1999) and The Living Dead (1995) I was ready for his latest offering. And, sadly was left very disappointed. 

While coming from a left wing family background, Curtis claims to be a-political. If pushed he'd say he would be open to some form of "lefty libertarianism." In spite of his rather amorphous political self-identification, his work reveals him as a man of the Left who is disappointed that it all didn't seem to work out. 

A theme which seems to cut across much of Curtis' work is that there are no longer big ideas that guide political and economic policy. The failure of both the political Left and Right (though he focuses in a more detailed way on the Right's shortcomings) to successfully shape a lasting and stable social progress has put them effectively in retreat. 

The days of social reformers, who sought to change society for the better, and often accomplished their goals in spite of popular resistance, are gone. Many of these nineteenth and twentieth century reformers in Great Britain were members of the elite aristocracy who saw it as their responsibility, their birth right even, to use their positions for the good of the people. They were going to drive ahead with establishing a progressive program because they knew what was best for the masses more than the masses did. But neither these elites, the technocrats, the politicos, the communists nor the capitalists who followed were able to successfully read, analyze and adjust to the historical, economic and social forces swirling about them. They may of had a vision, a guiding idea, but too often these were overly simplistic and, or ridged.  In the realm of economics the modern West has never been able, either through central planning or free markets, to fashion a stable and prosperous economy, impervious to the great swings of boom and bust, and so we've given up even trying. What Curtis laments is that with the loss of idealism and a clear intellectual program that guides the ruling class we are left with governments that are simply trying to manage outcomes as opposed to offering true social development and economic change. 

Into this he mixes the effect social media has had on how political movements organize and quickly dissipate since they lack both ideas and a clear leadership structure. Contemporary society has placed the emphasis on the all encompassing self, and self identity, in a way unlike previous generations. Because we are radically individual, and the expression of this essential individuality is central to how we organize our lives, we have lost a true sense of community and collective action. To put it in the argot of Catholic social thought, people have lost a sense that there is a common good that needs to be promoted. 

Instead of connecting us, social media has made us atomized units fed exactly what we want to see and hear based on the all powerful algorithms. We are only fed the ideas we are in agreement with. In the end we can see no real alternative to the world as it is. Even supposedly radical movements like Occupy Wall Street are only looking for a new way of managing the system, not really changing it. The Arab Spring may have been spurred on by spontaneous demonstrations, whose participants were "organized" by way of Facebook and Twitter, but once the initial enthusiasm wore off the whole thing fizzed out. In Egypt, for instance, there were no leaders to guid the protesters, no real ideas or a concrete program to rally around. Into this void rushed the Muslim Brotherhood who had ideas and a program. Now there is a military government and one wonders, for all the upheaval, what really changed after all?

This is a very rough outline of where Curtis is coming from. His work is sometimes criticized as placing style over substance, but I don't know that I agree with that. I see him as following in the footsteps of Marshall McLuhan, who was accused of being somewhat obscure - not always connecting the intellectual dots - leaving it to the viewer or reader to make the inferences. Critics read this as there being less to McLuhan than met the eye. But both men are preceptive, trying to stand aloof from the scene to give objective social critiques others are too ideological to make. Both men have a point of view, for sure, even if they shroud them a bit. McLuhan was dismayed by post modernity and wanted to understand how the machine worked so he could turn it off. Curtis laments that the 1960's dream of social transformation never really succeeded the way it was intended and wants to find out how the machine broke down so it can get up and running again. To paraphrase McLuhan, in Curtis' films the style is the substance, and the consumer of his work must look beyond what is explicitly presented to grasp the meaning. 

As I wrote, I was left disappointed by HyperNormalisation, because Curtis, in spite of his attempts at dispassion, can't help but reveal his biases. He highlights the failures of the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations to make his points throughout the film. Nothing wrong with going after Reagan and Bush the Younger, but then he never mentions the names of Bill Clinton or, more problematically, Barack Obama. He posits that Republican administrations created overly simplified and downright false narratives of how the world works to push their Middle East agendas, both of which failed miserably. But previous and subsequent US policies under Democratic administrations are never identified as such, as if the lead up to 9/11 and the last eight years were products of some nameless faceless bureaucracy, disconnected from an administration policy. 

He spins a compelling yarn, connecting Syrian president Hafez al-Assad's then novel use of suicide bombers to expel the US military from Beirut in the '80s with their use now against his son Bashar in that country's ongoing civil war. He laments the missed opportunity of the Arab Spring, and the West's cynical use of Muammar Gaddafi over the decades. The Libyan strong man was portrayed alternately as a hero or a villain depending on how the West was benefitted. Gaddafi seemed content to go along with the charade, even to the point of being blamed for terrorist attacks he was innocent of, because it gave him a sense of importance that in reality he never had. These events were guided by the fog and mirror perceptions created by those in power for whom the truth was too complex for them to grasp, let along communicate to the people they ruled over. They were victims of events they thought that they could control, but couldn't. 

This would be a brave, prophetic work, if Curtis had told the whole story. While he goes after the Right in a calm, non-polemical way, assuming their sincerity while pointing out their folly, he is loath to point out the folly of the Left, beyond that their failures represent lost opportunities as opposed to simply being wrong. He treats the Occupy Movement as a well intentioned grass roots campaign that would have succeeded but for the lack of leadership and fresh ideas (damn you internet!), but he ignores charges that globalists like billionaire George Soros may have had a hand in funding their activities. While the blame for the present disfunction in the Middle East can be laid at the door of W, he hasn't been in office since January of 2009. Much water has flowed under the bridge since then, and pretending that the sitting president of the United States, and the woman who wants to succeed him, his former secretary of state, had nothing to do with how events have unfolded since is disingenuous.

Before you think I'm not recommending HyperNormalisation, let me say very clearly that it should be seen and discussed. It's just not as good as the other documentaries of his that I've seen so far (I just started watching 2002's The Century of the Self). That I disagree with aspects of his presentation is balanced by the fact that he makes many keen observations of culture and society that ring true. It's just that I would connect some of his dots in a different way. But then again, I have my biases too, which is OK. 

One of Curtis' main points, that I've inferred, is the need to break out of the dictatorship of the algorithms so that fresh ideas, new approaches to our political and economic problems can be found and, true social progress can happen. We may be people who lean Left or Right, but to be doctrinaire closes us off from seeing the world as it is, and not simply as we want it to look, or worse yet, believing that it looks just like us. 

The Signs of the Times (10/21/16) from AOP

Christ's Pure Bread (10/17/16) Apostleship of Prayer

Citizen Trump

I can't speak for Millennials, but for Gen-Xers and older of the male persuasion The Godfather remains, even forty-four years after it's initial release, a key cultural point of reference and a font of practical wisdom. This only partially absurd idea was played upon cleverly in the 1998 Meg Ryan - Tom Hanks romcom You've Got Mail. I certainly have an affection for the 1972 Francis Ford Coppola directed classic, but for me the even greater cinematic male centric I Ching is Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. It's the story of a man who rises from humble beginnings to become one of the richest and most powerful men in the world. It begins with his fall (death, actually) and meanders backward and forward as a series of witnesses give a reporter their take on this over sized personalty's life. 

And Kane does, as the Tom Hanks character observes of The Godfather, supply all he answers of life. How to spend Christmas break - go sledding. What to have for dinner - Lobster Newburg. When should a nation commit troops to battle - you supply the prose poems, I'll supply the war. 

Joking aside, both classic films offer personality studies of men who assume power and how it affects them, as well as the people around them. Any parallels between truth and fiction are going to break down at a certain point, but fiction can still offer us glimpses into the working of human nature, and even current events. Cinemasins, which playfully points out mistakes in popular movies, both fresh and rotten, drew a not so veiled parallel between Charles Foster Kane, the protagonist - tragic hero of Welles' film, and Donald John Trump, in their reverent take down of Kane. A subplot in the movie has Kane using his newspaper empire and flare for the sensational to attempt a gubernatorial run, in hopes of one day running for the presidency. In 2016 Donald Trump has used his real estate development empire and, yes, flare for the sensational, to skip over the preliminaries and make a go right for the White House. 

Of course any comparison I make here between Kane and Trump breaks down rather quickly because one is a fictional character and the other is a very real, living person. But fiction, good fiction, gains us an insights into universal streams of human nature — its motivations and complexities. Though imperfect, a good old fashioned compare and contrast of these two figures can be profitable — the strange fiction helping us to understand the even stranger truth.

Kane and Trump are both men of wealth, power and influence who also crave public recognition and acclaim. They are men of business—one a press baron, the other a real estate tycoon— whose respective fields do not inherently invite celebrity, but are still used as excuses to mug for an audience. Welles saw Citizen Kane as an indictment of the acquisitive society, with his protagonist’s constant collecting of art, property and, to some extent people, a vain chasing after wind, with no other purpose than to fill some emotional void. In the case of Trump, we have conspicuous consumption, along with the conspicuous placement of his surname in big, bold letters on buildings from cost to cost. He has been a public figure for over thirty years, self promoting his way into people's living rooms, by way of his highly rated television show. Both men seek political office, many would argue, for ego purposes alone, as opposed to any real desire to be a public servant.  

There are clear differences between the fictional Kane and the real life Trump, of course. Kane, in spite of his humble beginnings as the son of a boarding house owner, was a man of cultured refinement and high ideals. Trump, although one could argue of the mannor born, is boorish, with no discernible core beliefs. While Kane’s wealth corrupts his progressive ideals, Trump’s material excesses are right in line with who he seems to be. It may be true, as his friend Jed Leland tells him the night Kane loses the gubernatorial election, that the whole run was about feeding his ego’s craving for love on his own terms. In spite of this, Kane really did have a crusading spirit on behalf of the common people, even if his ideals were perverted over time. Trump’s run really does seem to be purely motivated by his over sized sense of self and need of center stage. He poses as a pro—lifer, yet his assertion that women who have abortions could be charged and convicted in a post Roe world shows an ignorance for how real right to life advocates see the issue. In the early 1990’s he testified before a congressional committee, critical of the Reagan tax reforms of 1986, yet today runs on an economic plan similar to that earlier bill. The truth is that the fictional Kane was a complex set of contradictions and missed opportunities, much like the man who played and  helped create the character. Trump possesses no such complexity. His ego and appetite are not covering for some emotional hole in his soul—it is a direct product of who he is at his core. 

Charlie Kane's political career is undone by a sex scandal. Trump's may well be ended in a similar way, though our changing social mores has made that process more difficult, though still very possible. 

Both men portray themselves as outsiders contesting against well entrenched political machines. And both men also threaten to jail their opponent if they are victorious in their respective campaigns. In a highly dramatic scene, in a movie filled with them, Kane and his first wife Emily are lured to the apartment of his mistress, and later second wife, Susan Alexander by his opponent "Boss" Jim Gettys, where the four confront each other. Gettys threatens to release details of Kane's extramarital affair if he doesn't bow out of the race quietly. The sequence climaxes with a shot of Kane at the top of the apartment's stairs shouting about how he is going to send the party boss to Sing Sing, a reference to the prison in Ossining, New York. 

Some critics have argued that the scenario of Kane being forced out of the race because of marital infidelity was unlikely since so many politicians and big business people at the time had mistresses left unmentioned because going after such peccadilloes would only assure the destruction of both candidates. Whatever the actual political climate of 1916, when the fictional campaign was set, may have been,  we know that in the 1960's Nelson Rockefeller saw his chances of winning the Republican nomination damaged because of a divorce, and in 1988 Gary Hart had to drop out of the Democratic primaries because of a sex scandal. Whether these social standards are cyclical, I'm not sure, but just a few years later, Bill Clinton won two terms as president in spite of questions over his personal life. There was a time when insinuations of homosexuality could've been a death knell to anyone's chances of winning office, and today there are candidates who make their sexuality a part of their campaign. In the case of Trump it's not so much what he may have done (though there is that) but rather over his attitudes toward women. This may be the first time where someone is disqualified because of sexual thoughts or words more than his actual conduct. 

A person's thoughts and attitudes are a window into his or her soul, so I'm not suggesting the they should be dismissed so quickly. But what disturbs me more is his not so subtle implication that the election may be "rigged." Trump is calling into question the legitimacy of the process, and with it the validity of the result. We should not be so naive as to think that the source of at least some of the stories coming out aren't connected to the Clinton campaign, even if they don't emanate directly from the candidate herself, which they most likely don't. Every campaign, including Trump's, engages in opposition research, trying to find embarrassing information on the opponent and releasing it at the moment it will hurt the person most. I'm not saying it's good or right, or that it shouldn't be reformed, just that this is the world as it is. It's also fair for Trump to fight back, but such a rejoinder at this particular moment in history is dangerous, and shows an clearer view into Trump's mind and temperament than his adolescent sexuality.

Both candidates are skating on thin ice in this area. The Clinton camp is accusing Russia of influencing the election by blaming them for the hacking and leaking of emails embarrassing to their candidate. In Kane, his newspaper runs a headline the morning after his defeat proclaiming, "Fraud at the Polls." It's a move, transparent to the viewer, born of sour grapes that's not to be taken seriously. But in this real life corollary, talk of rigged systems and stollen elections have been rife all through the primary season. Bernie Sanders used such rhetoric during his run. But many today do not see such talk as the last act of a desperate candidate, but believe that the political process is compromised. Both sides are setting in place a way of calling into question the legitimacy of the outcome. 

The peaceful and orderly transfer of power from one president to another is a custom we can be rightly proud of in this country. We've had the outcome of elections honored during times of civil war, economic depression and, social unrest. We had the presidency transferred to an unelected vice-president after the resignation of a president over a political scandal. We've had election results that were clearly questionable, but each time the loser accepted the results for what they saw as the good of the country, in the spirit of this time honored tradition. 

On Sunday Mike Pence, Trump's running mate, was pressed on the question of whether his ticket would accept the legitimacy of the results. He said they "absolutely would." In spite of the fact that the polls show her far ahead, in light of the talk coming out of her side, the Clinton campaign should be asked the same question. I don't think that it is an exaggeration to suggest that we may face a Constitutional crisis, especially if the victory is narrow. There are segments of the public, on both sides of the divide, who do not see things through the lens of politics as usual, or questions over legitimacy as a tactic to get out the vote, or knock an opponent. They really do believe that something is fundamentally wrong with the political and economic system. The only questions left are how deep is the discontent and, how passionate will the reaction be?

Is Trump a real life Kane? The simple answer is no. As is sometimes the case, the fictional character is more complex, and sympathetic. Kane wasn't based on one man, the newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst, as is usually described. Orson Welles and screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz incorporated the stories of several American industrialists into making a composite character. It's also been argued that Kane's personality had more in common with Welles than any of the other sources drawn on, thought the co-writer and director always denied it. Kane is a social reformer with a clear agenda. Trump doesn't have a coherent program and doesn't seem to really understand how the government works. Both men hit  a populist nerve in the electorate, a discontent with the system that fuels their political rise. The question remains if the flesh and blood Trump can succeed were Kane failed. 

St. Teresa of Avila from the Apostleship of Prayer

St. Callistus I (10/14/16) From AOP

Further Thoughts on Bob Dylan's Nobel

As I wrote yesterday, I can understand if people have problems with Bob Dylan winning the Nobel in Literature because they don't think he's a very good poet, or at least that his work isn't to the standard of an Eliot or Yeats. But to claim that song writing isn't really writing, or to imply that only authors of book length compositions should be considered for the award is ridiculous. Poetry can be but normally isn't a long form genre, yet 46 of the 113 winners of the Prize were granted the honor, at least in part, for their poetry (19 were cited for their poetry alone). 

Well, songs are listened to, not read, others argue. But dramatists have been awarded (29 times) and, though students are often assigned plays to read, it's indigenous medium is the stage not the page, where directors, set designers, wardrobe departments, makeup artists and, ultimately, actors interpret the work through actions, sets, props, lighting - not to mention by speaking the lines of dialogue to listening ears. Reading a play is like examining a set of blueprints: it gives you the basic design and intention of the architect, but the building isn't truly realized in full until it is actually built. It's the same with a play, or a song. The words do not live until they are dramatized or, in Dylan's case, sung. 

Four winners were cited, in part, for their screenplays, which are very rarely the work of a single writer, even if they are credited as such. And the mediation of the film art in delivering a screenplay to the screen is even greater than a stage company's in the production of a play. In both cases an actor's inflection or director's staging of a scene can change the meaning of the words. In film there is also the use of lenses, camera angles, aspect ratios, color or monochrome photography, among other possible factors, that can alter or change the meaning of the written text. There too is the question of how freely the director allows the actors to ad-lib. All these things wreak havoc on the written material. Considering all the corruption that could come to a dramatic work, and that plays for the screen and stage are not meant to be read by solitary readers to begin with, should such writers be considered for the award? You should know my answer by now.

The last objection I've seen is that Bob Dylan is already a popular artist who doesn't need the acclaim, or else he labors in a popular medium, so is unworthy of such a prestigious award. I addressed this yesterday, by saying many past winners had achieved commercial success and public fame by the time they won. It's essentially an award for a lifetime of achievement, not encouragement to keep plugging away, though that could be a part of it too. 

The objection also exposes a strange contemporary prejudice: that true art is that which only a few have actually experienced and even fewer can understand. It is the purview of the elite, of the few, of the cultural gnostics who possess the hidden knowledge that the pin head masses lack. If an artist's work has touched a broad spectrum of folks, its merits must be suspect. I'm sure there are worthy writers who never reach a mass audience because of any number of factors beyond their control: often it's because a publisher doesn't think the work is commercial enough and isn't willing to take a chance on it, which is too bad. But sometimes it's because they are writing about things that don't connect with regular people and their experiences. Maybe they are being obscure under the guise of being artistic. Maybe they are cultural gnostics speaking to other gnostics, and are so leaving the wider public behind, because they don't respect them. Good literature should open up the reader to a new world, but it should be accessible so the reader can actually enter. Too much contemporary art in general isn't interested in communicating, but seeks to validate the artist to his or her self and whatever small group of admirers who are in on the gag.  

I'm going to stop short right here, because I have more to say, but don't want to turn this thing into a book. First, I will finish a post I've been working on about the election, then I'll finish off my thoughts on Bob Dylan.

Anniversary of the Last Fatima Appearance // Apostleship of Prayer

Bob Dylan: Poet, Prophet, Nobel Laureate

Normally I would cringe at the idea of a pop culture figure being awarded a major artistic prize like the Nobel for Literature. And they don't hand out a bauble any more prestigious than the Nobel. It's winners include literary heavyweights like George Bernard Shaw, T.S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway, to name a very few. It's not a prize for a singular work, but takes into account the entire body of an artist's career, and the influence their work has had over other writers. So when I saw this morning that Bob Dylan was awarded the Prize my natural reflex, which would be to gag, didn't kick in. All I thought was, "Well, sure. I wouldn't have guessed it, but why not?"

Not everyone shares my opinion. Irvine Welsh, author of the novel Trainspotting, is critical of Bob Dylan winning the Nobel because Dylan is a musician, not an writer. If he wins the Nobel, Irvine reasons, then Don DeLillo should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. If DeLillo had rapped his novel Mao II maybe he would be. But song lyrics are poetry put to music, and Dylan's contribution was to lyrics, not the accompaniment. He used standard folk and blues forms, often utilizing traditional arrangements that had been around for decades, if not centuries, with words that spun a unique and mesmerizing blend of surrealism, spirituality and beatnik cool. He changed pop music, injecting its words with a poetic sensibility before unknown. Again, the revolution wasn't in the melody, but in the words, which, at their best, stand with some of the best contemporary poetry. 

I think there is also a block because Dylan is a popular artist. We have a strict separation today between what we consider high and popular art. But a hundred years ago, when the award was in it's infancy, the separation between broadly appealing, commercial entertainment and high brow music and plays was much narrower. Rudyard Kipling, winner in 1907 was the author of popular adventure stories enjoyed by generations of youth. Ernest Hemingway (1954)  wrote popular novels, which made them fodder for Hollywood movies. The same can be said of William Faulkner (1949) and Saul Bellow (1976). These weren't obscure writers writing to a rarefied audience, but authors who regularly appeared on the best seller list. If we go back further, many of Charles Dickens' novels were first serialized in magazines read by the masses, and Shakespeare's plays would have been seen by a wide swath of London society, from royalty to the lower middle class. We think of these writers' work as being high art today, but their contemporaries didn't necessarily see it that way.

The reason why we hold these and other authors of the past up so high is because their work has lasted. Their books are still being read, their plays are still being staged and seen, and, in the case of Dylan, his songs are still being listened to, and quoted, and covered by other artists who's rhetorical skills just don't live up to the master's. 

The breath of is work is staggering. His lyrics addressed politics, human rights, romantic struggles and faith, not to mention man and God and law. He was a prophet in the sense that he looked at society and spoke back exactly what he saw, unvarnished. He never looked to make people comfortable with things as they are, whether it was the state of race relations, or even the music scene he born out of. Some in the folk scene took offense, for instance, with his best known hit Like a Rolling Stone, because it seemed to present a negative image of the underground culture of the mid-1960's. He exposed hypocrisy whether it was in the White House or on 4th Street on the Lower East Side. He changed styles, going electric when such a move was considered an act of heresy against the folk tradition he was supposed to represent. His playing the prophet was no accident, since his work is drenched in Biblical imagery (pointed out by Bishop Barron here and here) painted with the brush strokes of Eliot (1948) or W.B. Yeats (1923). If someone wants to argue the he doesn't deserve this honor because he's not a poet of the same caliber as them, Ok. I'd have to listen, then. But to suggest that he's not a poet, not a writer, that his music wasn't simply an avenue by which to deliver his words is to miss the point. 

Needless to say, I'm pleased. And may Bob Dylan's words continue to be listened to and cherished. 

Jerry Garcia's version of Positively 4th Street

It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)

Like a Rolling Stone - The Rolling Stones (I just had to)

Maggie's Farm. Dylan going electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, and getting booed off the stage for it. 

Bishop Sheen on Blessed John XXIII

John XXIII: What Counts the Most // From AOP

When Popes Speak Unscripted, Defending Pope Francis and, Defining a Political Culture Part One

The Pope Unscripted 
Pope St. John Paul II (1978-2005) made very few public statements that weren't read from some well crafted, and often closely vetted, written document. While he was a genuine linguist, his conversational English was somewhat stilted, and he rarely went off script, at least on his trips to the States, and I'm pretty sure he didn't play the freewheeling raconteur in other settings either. He did on board news conferences while traveling by plane, but no one remembers much of what he ever said on those occasions, the answers were so bland. 

The one notable controversy caused by Pope John Paul speaking off the cuff came a year before his death, when he, in a private conversation, responded to a screening of Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ by saying, "It is as it was." The enigmatic comment, taken as an endorsement, was leaked to a member of the press, and immediately denied by the Vatican upon its publication. The journalist who broke the story stuck by his account though, and was eventually vindicated. The idea that a pope would give a public thumbs up to a movie, especially one so controversial, terrified the papal apparatus to it's core. The fear of such a statement being made public lies in the possibility that some would confuse the pontiff's personal opinion for an infallible declaration. For this reason popes have always been reticent to offer candid interviews, and, in this case, the Vatican press office was quick to try to squelch the pope's remarks.

Pope Benedict XVI (2005-2013) gave personal interviews more frequently, but often through email, where he would receive a question and have time to craft a thoughtful, measured response. Benedict faced his share of controversy, even over his written messages, because he is an academic who is used to offering professorial hypotheses, which the press often misinterpreted as some seismic shift in Church teaching or policy. So when he suggested once that a hypothetical gay prostitute choosing to use a condom as a way to avoid the spread of HIV, could represent some small stirrings of conscience, the press was set aflame with reports that the Church was now allowing condoms for gays. This missed the point, to put it mildly, and many in the Catholic press had to double back to clarify Benedict's argument.

Pope Francis (2013-), as I probably don't need to inform the reader, has never had an opinion, it would seem, that he's been afraid to express, be it in writing or off the cuff. His impromptu in-flight news conferences have never failed to be a source of media ready sound bites that make some rejoice, others cringe, and, quite often, his own communications and press officers duck for cover as they come up with an explanation for what the Holy Father "really meant." Do I have to mention his oft quoted "Who am I to judge?", the most well known and (I would argue) misunderstood of Pope Francis' quick draw remarks, made on the way back from the 2013 World Youth Day in Rio? 

We aren't accustomed to a pope who speaks freely, beyond the confines of official statements, and it can be disconcerting at times, even, and maybe especially, for some Catholics. Many others don't understand that papal infallibility is very narrowly defined by the Church, so that while Catholics need to take what the pope says in such informal settings to heart, they don't constitute teaching moments in the strict, doctrinal sense. This understanding of the difference between official pronouncements made from the Chair of Peter and private opinion offered by the man who is pope has never been as big an issue as it is right now. Pius XII (1939-1958) was possibly the most widely read pontiff before John Paul II - book length additions of his speeches were published almost yearly under the title The Pope Speaks - and Pius loved to talk, it seems, and weighed in on everything from evolution to nuclear war. But, again, we're talking about prepared, well thought out addresses that people had time to mull over and digest. Today the pope speaks through Twitter at 140 characters or less, and at such a pace it's hard to keep up. One "controversial" statement isn't clarified before the next one hits the web.

Defending the Pope
In the past I would comment on Benedict's more controversial pronouncements, but these would come at us about once or twice a year, so they didn't take up much of my time. Francis seemingly says something controversial almost every week, if not more frequently, and a blogger could dedicate an entire career to just commenting on and interpreting his statements. It seems that some do, and unfortunately these writers tend to be critical of the Holy Father. As for myself, I've given up defending every word that proceeds from the lips of Pope Francis. He's a big boy and doesn't need my help. And as I've said already, such a project could take all my time. So I pick and choose my spots, and in light of the upcoming election in the U.S., I'm choosing to comment now on something the Pope said on the way back from his Apostolic Journey to Georgia and Azerbaijan.

A Political Culture
During his customary in-flight news conference this past Sunday (October 2), Pope Francis was asked about how American voters should approach the upcoming presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I would quote the entire exchange, but the Vatican website, as of now, only has the interview posted in Italian and Portuguese, neither of which I read. But the pope's response, in part, has been widely reported as: 

"The people are sovereign. I would only say: Study the proposals well, pray and choose with your conscience...When in any country there are two, three or four candidates who don't satisfy everyone, it means that perhaps the political life of that country has become too politicized and that it does not have much political culture.  'People say "I'm from this party' or 'I'm from that party', but effectively, they don't have clear thoughts about the basics, about proposals..."

Pope Francis has come under fire for commenting on the election at all, even though his words here are pretty generic, and applicable to any number of national situations. In referring to the lack of a "political culture," he specifically mentioned the political climate of Latin America, not the United States. Earlier in the year, also on a plane ride, he responded to a question on Donald Trump's proposed wall between the U.S. and Mexico by saying that such a proposal was "un-Christian." Again, I think his words need to be looked at closely, and in a broader context, to be fully appreciated - a task that would take us too far out of the way right now. At this moment I want to focus on the idea of a "political culture," and what he might mean by it.

It's jarring to hear the suggestion that the U.S. may have a weak political culture. Whatever one might want to say about the United States, the peaceful and orderly transfer of power from one presidential administration to another that our nation has enjoyed since its founding in unique in political history. That we are a nation of laws, and not governed by the whims of individual leaders, may not be completely novel, but it does separate us from many other forms of government, past and present. We take pride in our Constitution, with its Bill of Rights, holding it up as a model for others to follow. We have a long, storied, while yes, imperfect political tradition, but one that we can rightly take pride in. So, in light of our long political history, what does the Pope mean to say that some countries, possibly including our own, lack a strong political culture?

The key to his words lie in his assessment of identifying too closely with political parties. Too many self identify with a party and its platform uncritically. Rather than really studying the issues (proposals) and judging the candidates based on the balancing of their positions and, as Catholics, seeing how they align with the Church's social teaching, we too often vote a straight party line. We identify as a Republican or a Democrat, conservative or progressive. Increasingly over the years the parties have tended to vilify each other. It's not that one side has better policies, it's that the other side represents the spawn of Satan while the other is a sanctuary for the children of light. I exaggerate, but not that much, I don't think. A disciple of Jesus should be an active voting citizen, and can even rightly participate in party politics, but he or she should be guided first of all by the values of the Gospel in their civic life, not a party platform. 

A faithful citizen engages in debate, but assumes the good will of an opponent. To pull the Hitler card on a candidate, any candidate, is to trivialize the atrocities of the Third Reich (as one commentator who opposes Donald Trump said lately, if Trump is Hitler, than Hitler wasn't so bad). The deficiencies of the current field are glaring enough without having to compare them to a genocidal dictator. 

***

I've been laboring over this post for almost a week, and as I get to this part of the article the news has broken about Donald Trump's 2005 "hot mic" capture of some incredibly crude comments he made concerning the amorous, and failed, pursuit of a married woman, along with an impromptu tutorial on his method of "wooing" women in general (an old fashioned boy, as Tallulah Bankhead might say). Now I'm on delicate ground here, because of course I condemn such comments (as if that really matters). At the same time, considering the political culture, why should they be disqualifying? I was told long ago, during Bill Clinton's impeachment, that sex was sex, and that there was no connection between some one's private sex life and his or her ability to hold high office. That now we should all recoil in horror at the boorishness of Donald Trump, that somehow his coarseness, his misogyny, his lack of propriety, and respect for the marriage bond should disqualify him shows how far we have fallen culturally more than Mr. Trump's actual transgression. 

Should not his lack of a coherent program, his inability to articulate a comprehensive vision, and manifest inability to demonstrate any grasp of what the responsibilities of the office of president involves have been the first things to disqualify him from the nomination? Should not his absolute disrespect for those running against him in his own declared party, his brutish and bullying demeanor from the outset have been the first indication that he may not be qualified for the presidency? If Mr. Trump is made to withdraw from or else loses the race because of this latest scandal, all it will prove is how far we have fallen as a people. If he withdraws or loses it wouldn't have been after a clear eyed examination of the issues and proposals, and a sober assessment of his abilities, but the public bowing to a fickle, vacillating, and hypocritical political correctness. Maybe Mr. Trump should go, but the real question is, should he even have gotten this far to begin with?

Before you accuse me of shilling for Secretary Clinton, let me add that we are in even a deeper mess than we think because she is the only viable alternative to Mr. Trump at this point - and it being so late in the game we might as well delete "at this point." I'm supposed to believe that someone who was considered too corrupt to aid in the prosecution of Richard Nixon, someone who served in the Senate and as Secretary of State, yet according to the FBI director wasn't sophisticated enough to understand the classification markings on sensitive government documents is the most qualified person to be president? I'm supposed to believe that someone associated with an administration that had scandal, both political and personal, attached to it from before the beginning, is somehow virtuous enough for the White House? Remember, Bill Clinton pledged in 1992 that his election meant a two for the price of one bargain, meaning that Mrs. Clinton came as part of a package deal. There is no separating her from her husband's scandals, which include alleged misogynies executed in words and deeds. 

While any questions about Secretary Clinton's health are often ridiculed as being the products of a conspiracy theory, I do have wonder about exactly how physically able she is to fulfill the rigors of the presidency. The episode on September 11 was unnerving. It doesn't help that, in the midst of one of the most hotly contested elections in decades Secretary Clinton has chosen to stay off the trail and out of the public eye so many days, making a relative few, brief public appearances over the last couple of months. It's been reported that she's only going to make a handful of personal appearances before the election. A joke put out there is that she's imitating William McKinley's 1896 "Front Porch Campaign." But in that case the candidate spoke to delegations of visitors from the porch of his house - a reported 700,000 over the course of that election season. Here she is out of sight, even if not out of mind: a situation that can only give fuel to the conspiracy theorists who ask why exactly doesn't she want to be seen in public?. 

That we have two candidates neither of whom, it could be argued, are qualified to be president is a direct reflection of our lack of a political culture. This is because we are confused and contradictory within our own minds. Though still by and large a religiously  minded people, as a whole we are unmoored from revealed faith (President Obama was correct when he said that, no matter what it once was, the United States is no longer a Christian nation), and have adopted faiths of our own designs, to suit our personal tastes. At the same time we no longer study our political heritage, specifically the Constitution. We only recognize an ever expanding roster of rights and entitlements that are divorced from personal responsibilities and the common good. We know that the nation isn't going in the right direction, but we have no standard outside of ourselves that we can appeal to, to guide us. In the absence of guiding principals we are grasping for a would be strong man or else the figurehead of a political machine. One's a blunt instrument, incoherent yet paradoxically easy to understand. The other offers a strange sort of familiarity, that we're not sure we really trust, but seems better than it's erratic alternative.  

I don't know what the short term solution to our present crisis is. I don't buy the "lesser of two evils" approach, not this time anyway. I do not believe that any of the men and women appearing on the top of the ballot this year are qualified to be on the ballot in the first place, let alone be president. I will vote on election day, I'm just not sure if I will cast vote at the top the card or not.  

The long term solution is a renewal of both our faith lives and our civic lives. This means breaking free of the dictatorship of relativism that ensnares us. There is another strange paradox we face. We do believe that all morality is relative, yet many supporters of both Mr. Trump and Secretary Clinton speak in absolute moral terms: that a vote for the opponent is a sin. We live in a relativistic culture, but this trend to moralize politics points to an instinct within us to reach out to an absolute. This is confused and disorientating. Part of the long term solution may be contained in recapturing the proper understanding of what truly is relative in life, and what needs the guidance of an absolute truth. 

Christ at the Center: A Reflection on the Rosary // AOP

St. Francis from "Who Cares About The Saints?" with Fr. James Martin, S.J.

The Life and Lessons of St. Thérèse of Lisieux from Bishop Barron