Barry Hudock's Blog, page 21

“The gap is growing”: The President on economic inequality

I was critical of President Obama the other day about remarks he delivered to movie execs during his trip to Hollywood last week. So today I’m more than happy to draw attention to an important speech that he offered yesterday that is full of important ideas that deserve the major attention he gave them. At the headquarters of the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, the President addressed at length the economic inequalities within the United States, the fact that, as he put it, “the basic bargain at the heart of our economy has frayed.”

The President cited plenty of relevant statistics and studies that indicate that economic inequality remains a pressing issue: staggeringly huge (and growing) gaps in income and net worth between a few and the many; the decreasingly possibility of upward mobility from the lower income ranges; workers without pensions or retirement savings; and more. And he said he intends to devote “all our efforts” during “the rest of my presidency” to addressing this issue. He said:

The opportunity gap in America is now as much about class as it is about race. And that gap is growing. So if we’re going to take on growing inequality and try to improve upward mobility for all people, we’ve got to move beyond the false notion that this is an issue exclusively of minority concern. And we have to reject a politics that suggests any effort to address it in a meaningful way somehow pits the interests of a deserving middle class against those of an undeserving poor in search of handouts.

One of yesterday’s most significant proposals was a raise in the national minimum wage. He helpfully cited Adam Smith to explain why it’s a good idea:

This shouldn’t be an ideological question. You know, it was Adam Smith, the father of free-market economics, who once said, “They who feed, clothe and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well-fed, clothed and lodged.” And for those of you who don’t speak old English — (laughter) — let me translate. (Laughter.) It means if you work hard, you should make a decent living. (Applause.) If you work hard, you should be able to support a family.

Of course, the issues the President raises here are not only political or economic; they are moral. He did not use the phrase social justice, but that’s what he was talking about.

Indeed, it was interesting to see that he even quoted Pope Francis’s brand new apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium:

Some of you may have seen just last week, the pope himself spoke about this at eloquent length. How could it be, he wrote, that it’s not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points?

In fact, there’s plenty in common between what Francis has to say in his recent document about economic morality and what the President was saying yesterday. The similarity of the message and the timing of the speech are close enough that if Obama were Catholic, he’d be running the risk of accusations of taking his cues from the Pope. (But he’s not, so I suppose some will see this as yet another instance of Francis “making all the wrong people happy.”)

One need not agree, of course, with all of the particular policy proposals the President advocates in this speech in order to “be a good Catholic.” But taking one’s Catholic faith seriously certainly does demand that we take seriously the concerns he raises, that we refuse to take part in the political game of rejecting or ignoring his concerns just because of the party membership he holds, and that we work to make them an urgent part of our national agenda.

The full text of the President’s speech is here.

New article in OSV: 450th anniversary of the Council of Trent

Besides being the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council’s promulgation of its historic Constituion on the Sacred Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium, today is also the 450th anniversary of the close of the Council of Trent. Our Sunday Visitor has just published a new article I’ve written to mark the date.

It would be a shame if all our Vatican II commemorations left the Trent anniversary completely overlooked, because Trent’s consequences on Catholic faith and life were every bit as epochal as those of Vatican II. As I note in the sidebar that accompanies the article:

The Council of Trent affected the life of the Church in many ways:

◗ It made the education of children and laypeople a much higher priority in parish life.

◗ It called for a catechism of Church teaching, which was later published as The Roman Catechism, a central resource for 400 years and important forerunner to today’s Catechism of the Catholic Church.

◗ It established that sacramental marriages had to be witnessed by a priest for validity.

◗ It brought the Sacrament of Penance to a more central place in the lives of ordinary Catholics. In the wake of the council, a new piece of church furniture, the confessional, was introduced and became common.

◗ In terms of practice rather than doctrine, it insisted that the Mass should be offered in Latin and that Communion should not be offered to the faithful via the cup (both contrary to positions that Luther had taken and that had already become aspects of Protestant church practice).

And there’s lots more; indeed, none of that could even be said to be the central work of the council!

The full article is in the December 8 issue of OSV; it’s also available right here. It’s worth a look, if only to check out OSV’s snazzy new website! Kudos to them on that!

‘In aula fit plausus’: At Pray Tell today

The Pray Tell blog has posted a guest post of mine that briefly explores a remarkable moment during the proceedings of the Second Vatican Council, on October 30, 1962. On that day, the most powerful cardinal of the Catholic Church was unmistakably slapped down by the bishops of the world during an intervention he offered before them all gathered in St. Peter’s Basilica. And he knew it, refusing to show his face again on the Council floor for over two weeks after that!

You’ll find the post here.

At Pray Tell today

The Pray Tell blog has posted a guest post of mine that briefly explores a remarkable moment during the proceedings of the Second Vatican Council, on October 30, 1962. On that day, the most powerful cardinal of the Catholic Church was unmistakably slapped down by the bishops of the world during an intervention he offered before them all gathered in St. Peter’s Basilica. And he knew it, refusing to show his face again on the Council floor for over two weeks after that!

You’ll find the post here.

“In Aula fit plausus”: At Pray Tell today

The Pray Tell blog has posted a guest post of mine that briefly explores a remarkable moment during the proceedings of the Second Vatican Council, on October 30, 1962. On that day, the most powerful cardinal of the Catholic Church was unmistakably slapped down by the bishops of the world during an intervention he offered before them all gathered in St. Peter’s Basilica. And he knew it, refusing to show his face again on the Council floor for over two weeks after that!

You’ll find the post here.

Obama goes to Hollywood

President Obama visited Hollywood last week. He stopped by DreamWorks Animations Studios, where he watched some movie production in action and met with many industry big-wigs. He also attended big-ticket fundraising events at several private homes (“mansions” is the word used in some of the coverage). These homes included those of music and TV producer Haim Saban (where guests included Tom Hanks, Paul Reiser and Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos, with attendance costing over $32,000 per couple); TV producer Marta Kauffman (a co-creator of Friends); and basketball star Magic Johnson (guests there included Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Keaton, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi).

Sounds fun, for sure.

But I have to admit to being a bit stunned by the comments the President offered in his formal address to the folks gathered at DreamWorks, several thousand strong. I mean, I know it’s important to be respectful of your hosts, and we should also acknowledge that the stuff DreamWorks puts out is far better than much of what comes out of the other Hollywood studios. But this was an address on Hollywood in general, and the people who gathered in his audience included (the Hollywood Reporter reported) ”executives from rival movie studios.” So much of what the President had to say strained credulity. (The quotes below are also from the Reporter coverage.)

“Believe it or not, entertainment is part of our American diplomacy. It’s part of what makes us exceptional.” That’s true, but there are too many ways our entertainment makes us exceptional that are nothing to brag about.
“You helped shape the world culture,” the President said, and mentioned tolerance, diversity and creativity as values that Hollywood has exported. True enough. He might also have mentioned, among the gifts we’ve given to “the world culture,” consumerism, glorification of violence, and the sexualization of anything and anyone with a pulse.
The President made reference to Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Will & Grace, and Modern Family as examples of Hollywood’s “remarkable legacy.” There are plentiful examples, of course, that add up to another sort of “remarkable legacy,” but again, not the kind we’d want to brag about.
Here’s the big eyebrow-raiser: “You can go anywhere on the planet, and you’ll see a kid wearing a Madagascar T-shirt. You can say, ‘May the force be with you.’ They know what you’re talking about. Hundreds of millions of people who may never set foot in the United States, but thanks to you, they’ve experienced a small part of what makes our country special.” Think about that last sentence long enough and hold it up to the light of what you and I know very well about much that we get from Hollywood, and you might get a little queasy in the stomach.

I’m willing to bet that observations similar to these have already been made by now by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity – and probably in tones that were far more rapacious! I don’t know for sure; I listen to/watch them less frequently than I have the oil changed in my car (and usually enjoy the oil change more). But if they did, I’d say that in this case, the President had it coming. Sure, Hollywood has done some good things, but to single the industry out for this kind of praise seems to be a little like praising bank robbers for having left a few coins in the drawers before leaving with the stash.

We certainly must, as I said, be willing to acknowledge the genuine contributions of our entertainment industry to society. I enjoy movies, and movie-going is a favorite choice of my wife and I for date nights; there are quite a few movies I’m pleased to see my kids enjoy; and I’m glad to be able to provide family movie night in our house from time to time. (I Am Number Four was a big hit here during Thanksgiving break.)

Still, Pope Francis offers a valuable counterpoint to the President’s comments. This from the brand-new Evangelii Gaudium:

In the prevailing culture, priority is given to the outward, the  immediate, the visible, the quick, the superficial and the provisional.  What is real gives way to appearances.  In many countries globalization has meant a  hastened deterioration of their own cultural roots and the invasion of ways of  thinking and acting proper to other cultures which are economically advanced but  ethically debilitated.  This fact has been brought up by bishops from various  continents in different Synods.  The African bishops, for example, taking up the  Encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, pointed out years ago that there have been frequent attempts to make the African countries “parts of a machine,  cogs on a gigantic wheel. This is often true also in the field of social communications which, being run by centres mostly in the northern hemisphere, do not always give due consideration to the priorities and problems of such countries or respect their cultural make-up”. By the same token, the bishops of Asia “underlined the external influences  being brought to bear on Asian cultures.  New patterns of behaviour are emerging as a result of over-exposure to the mass media…  As a result, the negative  aspects of the media and entertainment industries are threatening traditional values, and in particular the sacredness of marriage and the stability of the family.”

Our entertainment industry may indeed be, as President Obama pointed out last week, “one of the bright spots of our economy.” But Pope Francis has just reminded us, in same document, of the danger of “cultures which are economically advanced but ethically debilitated” (n. 64). It doesn’t take much of a stretch to think it’s our own culture that the Pope had in mind there or that our entertainment industry has something to do with that debilitation.

Commercial break

November 2013, it turns out, has been the busiest month, in terms of visitors and views, in this blog’s almost-two-year history. That’s exciting to me, and much appreciated. So thank you for coming by, and come back often, if you like what you’ve found here.

Something else to consider, if you like what you’ve found here, is grabbing a book of mine. I think you’ll find that they provide engaging and accessible presentations of some pretty important and exciting aspects of Catholic faith and life. They’d make a great gift for yourself or for a loved one who’s itching to get to know these topics better. I’ve heard from Catholic reading groups who have enjoyed discussing them with one another. And teachers find them to be good classroom resources because they offer very reliable content presented in an accessible way.

There’s The Eucharistic Prayer: A User’s Guide, which Fr. John Thomas Lane, editor of Emmanuel magazine, called ”scholarly, easy to read, pastoral, witty, very historical, practical, and helpful to a wide audience … on a very important topic.” This book explains why the eucharistic prayers we pray at Mass (yes, that’s “we pray” — not just the priest; we are not spectators for these prayers) are so central to Catholic living, what’s in them, and what they mean. Pope Benedict, on several occasions, emphasized how important it is for Catholics to understand better the eucharistic prayers. This is just the book to help you do that.

And there’s the still new Faith Meets World: The Gift and Challenge of Catholic Social Teaching, which was, to my delight, chosen as this month’s U.S. Catholic Book Club selection. The president of the St. Vincent de Paul Society in the United States has called it ”a great book,” and a gracious Amazon reviewer wrote, ”I have never found a book about the great tradition and wealth of Catholic social teaching that is as practical and as easy to read as this.” At a time when our remarkable Pope is emphasizing Catholic social teaching in some exciting ways and when it is becoming a crucially important aspect of living one’s faith in society (as if it ever wasn’t!), this book is a timely resource.

Finally, I’ve recently translated a more scholarly work — Andrea Grillo’s Beyond Pius V: Conflicting Interpretations of the Liturgical Reform — from Italian into English for publication. Grillo is a theologian at the Pontifical Athenaeum of St. Anselm in Rome. (I was a student of his there almost 20 years ago.) His book offers a look back at the origins of the reform of the liturgy that came out of Vatican II, notes its successes, and suggests important explanations for some of its failures. He also explores what the broadened access to the “Extraordinary Form” of the Roman rite provided by Pope Benedict means to the Church today. I enjoyed working on the book because Grillo’s approach is at the same time thoughtful, respectful, and critical.

You’ll find plenty more about each of these books here. I recommend purchasing them either directly from the publishers’ websites or from an independent bookstore. (In either case the purchase supports a small business; in the case of the publishers, or Catholic bookstores, you’re also supporting some wonderful Catholic ministries.) Such a purchase would also help support the family Hudock – nine of us strong and making our way by conviction as a one-income household — so thank you for considering a purchase.

(There’s more to come, by the way. I’m busy wrapping up another translation project these days, and then my next priority will be to finish researching and writing a biographical work I’ve had in the works for a while on the absolutely fascinating Fr. John Courtney Murray. I hope to finish the Murray book by mid-2014 in order to see it published in time to mark the 50th anniversary of Vatican II’s historic Declaration on Religious Freedom, upon which he had enormous influence; that anniversary is coming in late 2015.)

Sad

From CNN Money this morning:

Thanksgiving openings appear to succeed
The first takeaway from Black Friday 2013: Thanksgiving is changing.

For all the talk of shopping boycotts — on the grounds that family values exceed the desire to save a few bucks — American consumerism has triumphed. The crowds that typically appear before dawn Friday showed up at what’s traditionally dinnertime on Thursday.

Mall managers across the country said shoppers showed up in droves this year, only they all did it earlier. That led to a smoother flow of traffic throughout the night instead of the usual rush at midnight.

“Mater si, Magistra no” lives again

It’s been over 50 years since the conservative American magazine National Review, under the leadership of Catholic William Buckley, published its now famous ”Mater si, Magistra no” in response to Pope John XXIII’s just-published encyclical, Mater et Magistra. Good Pope John had, for the first time in that 1961 encyclical, moved the Church a few steps away from the socially-politically conservative institutions and ideas with which it had generally aligned itself until then and placed it more clearly on the side of policies and reforms that favored the poor. He voiced strong support for government involvement in issues like unemployment, and he called for respect for the right of workers to just wages and to a share in the wealth generated by the corporations that employed them.

National Review, committed to a very different gospel, was having none of it. Playing on the encyclical’s Latin title, which literally means “Mother and Teacher,” the journal observed wryly: ”Going the rounds in Catholic conservative circles: ‘Mater si, Magistra no.’”

It’s no secret that National Review‘s faith commitments have not changed much since then, and so not surprising that Pope Francis’s Evangelii Gaudium might not sit well with the folks there. This time it’s Catholic writer Samuel Gregg (author of the book Tea Party Catholic, which gets a mention in this post of mine) who gets to offer, so to  speak, today’s “Mater so, Magistra no,” albeit at greater length. Gregg finds the document’s positions on economic morality “less than convincing” and “hard to defend,” lacking “any consciousness” of the world’s economies.

Far more encouraging, and more truly Catholic, is the response we find today at the First Things blog. There Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry makes no bones about the fact that he would fall squarely in the National Review school of economics, which inclines him and those who think like him to “either plug our ears and ignore” what the Pope has to say on these matters “or else confidently and even irreverently dismiss it.” And yet, he insists, these are inadequate responses:

For if we are faithful Catholics, we do believe in the Spirit-led authority of the magisterium. Now this is usually the point when all of us suddenly become canon lawyers and note that the Church’s social doctrine is not endowed with ex cathedra infallibility and Catholics are allowed to dissent—and may even have a duty to do so. Sure. But is this most Gospel-driven way to relate to our “Mother and Teacher”?

To be a Christian is to be willing to be challenged, all the time, and to have the humility to let yourself be challenged—including, for Catholics, by the Church.

I’m tempted to quote Gobry at greater length, because it’s an excellent piece (though of course, it earns him a thrashing from FT readers in the comment box). But you can get the entire thing here.

As Pope John’s half-century old encyclical illustrates, the church has long been voicing the convictions about economic morality that Francis features in Evangelii Gaudium. But Francis is doing it in such plainly understandable words, and not hesitating to, in a sense, name names (calling out, for instance, the “trickle-down theories” of economics that are nearly sacrosanct to American conservatives), that he confronts American Catholics with a question that is hard to ignore any longer: to which do I give my allegiance — my Catholicism or my capitalism?

And that’s a question by which just about every American Catholic — not just the National Review subscribers — will inevitably be challenged.

The Joy of the Gospel — thoughts on chapter one

Even as someone who has deeply appreciated and been excited by the ministry of Pope Francis, I must admit I reacted a bit cynically when I read Fr. Jim Martin’s take on the new apostolic exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium, posted at CNN’s Belief Blog: “In all my years as a Catholic, I cannot remember a papal document that was so thought-provoking, surprising and invigorating. Frankly, reading it thrilled me.”

“Okay, Father,” I thought. “I get it. It’s a good document. But seriously, that’s a bit overstated.” (Like him, I have read a lot of church documents, and some are quite remarkable.)

Having now begun to read Francis’s new letter to the Church, with highlighter in hand, it is already (only one chapter in) entirely clear to me why Fr. Jim would write such words. It truly is quite stunning, if it’s to be taken seriously.

My free time left outside of work and family time is of course limited (I ended up putting the document aside last night, in favor of a family movie night, since the kids have no school tomorrow), and I don’t want to rush through it, so I’ve only read up to the end of the first chapter so far. Here are some initial reactions on the introduction and chapter one. Further comments to come, no doubt.

***

To this lifelong Catholic, many portions of this document sound to me like one of those great sermons you hear from the local black Baptist preacher when you end up getting a chance to be at one of their services — plain-spoken, enthusiastic, personal, and relevant to real life — and you end up thinking, “Why can’t my priest preach like this?” Right from the start, with the Pope’s compelling call for “a renewed personal encounter with Jesus,” the document had me ready to listen and wanting to grow.

That’s not to say that other papal documents are not good or even great, but in almost every case homilists, teachers, and others in pastoral ministry are left to figure out how to “translate” the documents into clear and accessible language for the regular folks in the pew, because if we just read a paragraph to them from the document, eyes would immediately glaze over and little would be understood. That is not the case here! Someone forgot to translate this into “encyclicalese.”

***

It is absolutely true that this document is a decisive rejection of “business as usual” within the Church. Given it’s clear words and Francis’s own style, it’s hard not to come away with a sense that it’s time to question a lot that we have taken for granted in our ecclesial structure, culture, and style.

If you read or hear some of our most prominent Catholic “conservatives” make light of this document, if they make as though there’s nothing here that makes them nervous — you know, the “move along, nothing to see here” – either they have not read it or they are being dishonest. There is much here to cause anxiety for those who have made a career of defending every little doctrine, tradition, and practice of the church. In the first chapter alone, sections 11, 16, 22, 26, 27, 32, 40, and 43 stand out for this. (My oh my, does #43 stand out for this!)

***

The vision that Pope Francis lays out here is practically the diametical opposite of the “smaller, purer church” thinking that is often attributed to Pope Benedict (though I’m pretty sure that particular phrase comes from people interpreting or explaining Benedict, and is not his own) — that is, the thinking that in today’s secularized world, where so many people question or reject so many of the Church’s doctrines, we should accept the fact that we won’t have so many people, but at least those we do have will be the true believers, not infecting Catholic life and teaching with the poison of doubt and disloyalty. Pope Francis’s words could not be farther from that:

The Church is called to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open. One concrete sign of such openness is that our church doors should always be open, so that if someone, moved by the Spirit, comes there looking for God, he or she will not find a closed door. There are other doors that should not be closed either. Everyone can share in some way in the life of the Church; everyone can be part of the community, nor should the doors of the sacraments be closed for simply any reason. (n. 47)

***

I recognize in Evangelii Gaudium a new expression of what I thought at the time that Pope John Paul II was really getting at when he originally called for “a new evangelization” (before it became a catchword in capital letters). I think this is what he had in mind. Not a resurgence of apologetics that demonstrate each and every doctrine, practice, and policy in a pat syllogism and that expose the errors of anything or anyone that does not fully support it all. Indeed, I suspect the latter approach is what Francis has in mind when he writes, ”There are times when the faithful, in listening to completely orthodox language, take away something alien to the authentic Gospel of Jesus Christ, because that language is alien to their own way of speaking to and understanding one another.”

Rather, John Paul was trying to get teachers and preachers to “constantly seek ways of expressing unchanging truths in a language which brings out their abiding newness” (n. 41) and who “[i]nstead of seeming to impose new obligations … should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet.” I’m afraid that’s not, in many cases, what we got.