Heads Goldman wins, tails you lose (and they win)

File this under the better late than never tab- Yesterday the Security and Exchange Commission, otherwise known as the compromised regulators who were asleep at the switch, announced yesterday that they were bringing a civil suit against our old friends, who, according to their chairman, Mr. Blankfein, do God's work in the world (just ask the Greeks), Goldman Sachs. The reason for the lawsuit is that it appears (brace yourselves) that Goldman was deliberately dishonest to their own benefit and the detriment of their clients.

The S.E.C. claims that Goldman sold securities related to mortgages that were designed to make Goldman a profit and stick investors with a loss. The investment vehicle, which is apparently a Toyota with a stuck gas pedal, was called Abacus 2007-AC1. Apparently, this specific product was a derivative-like instrument based on betting for or against the housing market. Goldman started Abacus in 2007 at the behest of one John Paulson, a hedge fund manager, who went on to make one billion dollars in this scheme. According to the New York Times, Paulson made an additional $3.7 billion by betting against the housing market in 2007.

Here's the rub, while Paulson held a stake in this investment scheme, Goldman told clients that an independent manager would choose the bonds. Here's what the S.E.C. alleges, as I understand it: John Paulson chose all the bonds, selecting those he thought most likely to lose value, this is how he made his money, by betting against the market. Whereas, Goldman allegedly sold these securities to foreign banks, insurance companies, and pension funds, but these institutions would only make money if the bonds, selected based on Mr. Paulson's "bet" that they would lose value, gained value! Get it? I mean this is the kind of scheme the mafia would be proud to hatch. Of course, Goldman Sachs made a profit while their clients lost their shorts because this, according to the S.E.C., was the intent. A Goldman Sachs vice president, Fabrice Tourre, is also named in the suit as the mastermind behind this scheme.

Goldman Sachs issued not one but two statements yesterday denying they did anything illegal. Much like the big financial cheeses, who Peggy Noonan recently took to task, they don't know how it happened that they made money on an investment on which their clients lost money. As one of the first bits of wisdom my Dad imparted to me goes: Figures don't lie, but liars can figure and often do. At the end of the day, it may turn out be yet another case in which there was wrong doing, but it was not illegal. Even this possibility demonstrates the need for a serious and comprehensive overhaul of financial laws and regulations, as well as an increased focus on enforcement and compliance.

I am glad that this is a civil suit because maybe the victims can reclaim some of what they lost. I am still waiting for there to be criminal charges filed based on the many schemes that led to our current melt down. I am sure the case hinges on many intricacies of security law, but I am not interested in that because there are enough attorneys to take care of the legal matter. I care about the gross immorality of playing around with insurance companies, banks, and pension funds. These are businesses and institutions on which the rest of us rely. We pay insurance premiums, we pay into 401ks, and we have our money in the bank. I really find myself asking, where is the concern about all of this?

Perhaps this is the beginning of a determination that will result in the decision that Goldman Sachs is too big and too destructive to succeed. In the meantime, maybe Goldman Sachs can brush up on basics, like revisting the defintion of the word fiduciary, which, according to Dictionary.com, is "[a] person [inexplicably-corporations are persons under U.S. law] legally appointed and authorized to hold assets in trust for another person. The fiduciary manages the assets for the benefit of the other person rather than for his or her own profits" (underlining emphasis mine).

The Economist also has a concise piece the S.E.C. lawsuit.

Christos Anesti

"He couldn't make her love him/Couldn't make her stay"

Tom Waits' Get Behind the Mule is our hard won Friday traditio.

"I'm diggin all the way to China
With a silver spoon
While the hangman fumbles with the noose, boys
The hangman fumbles with the noose."

Christos Anesti

"being able to do penance is a grace"

"I must say that we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word 'penance,' which seemed too harsh to us. Now, under the attacks of the world that speaks to us of our sins, we see that being able to do penance is a grace and we see how it is necessary to do penance, that is, to recognize what is mistaken in our life, to open oneself to forgiveness, to prepare oneself for forgiveness, to allow oneself to be transformed. The pain of penance, that is to say of purification and of transformation, this pain is grace, because it is renewal, and it is the work of Divine Mercy" Pope Benedict XVI in a homily at a Mass in the Vatican for members of the Pontifical Biblical Institute, 15 April 2010.

On this, his 83rd birthday, it humbles me to realize that I never doubted the Holy Father, not for one moment, which is why wrote this last Friday: "I can't pass up the opportunity on this Easter Friday to say that the resurgence of the sex abuse crisis, this time involving the Holy Father, is an opportunity for us to either show that we are serious about living this way or not. I think the jury is still very much out on this, the only issue that matters. I love the Holy Father very much and pray for him daily, more so these past few weeks. I have admired him since long before he became pope. Nothing has tarnished the high regard in which I have long held him. His silence at this point, I believe, is no accident. I really think he is taking it all as a penance. I stand in solidarity with his prudence."

Viva Il Papa!

I missed it a few days ago, but on 14 April 1990 I was baptized, confirmed, and received Christ in communion for the first time. So, twenty years of the life that is truly life, which is life in Christ.

Christos Anesti

Experiencing Christ's unbounded affection for me

While watching the British sitcom After You've Gone, which, while funny, is not really very good as it is too much like a U.S. tv show for my taste and not in the good way, like Sanford and Son, I saw something that moved me. The main character, Jimmy, whose flaws constitute the heart of the show, has made a mistake. He is trying to explain it to his girlfriend, Siobhan, in a very self-justifying way. Cutting to the chase, she tells him, "You're an idiot." He pauses, thinking, then nods his head in the affirmative and humbly confesses, "Yes." Siobhan then does something very unexpected, she smiles a big, warm smile and gives him a big, affectionate, and affirming hug. I was moved because not only have I been there and done that, but I had a similar experience just last week. I am so blessed to have a wife who shows me the face of Christ so often that I can never really forget the great affection He has for me, His idiot deacon.

From after the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Holy Thursday until the Vigil the only music I listened to, apart from chant at Morning Prayer on Holy Saturday, was Tom Waits' Mule Variations. In this context one song stands out, Get Behind the Mule, which contains these lyrics: "Well the rampaging sons of the widow James, Jack the cutter and the pock marked kid, had to stand naked at the bottom of the cross and tell the good Lord what they did." It's significant that as He hung on the cross Jesus' arms are open in embrace. It is only an embrace instead of brutal torture because Jesus abandoned his own will in obedience to the Father. In the words of a little book written several ago by Max Lucado, He Chose the Nails and He chose them for me out of great love, the only power stronger than my sins and inevitable death. Being quite idiotic at times is part of who I am and I have no problem with this as long as I am Christ's idiot.

Christos Anesti

Dead to sin and alive in the Spirit

Today's Scripture reading for Morning Prayer is from St. Paul's letter to the early Christian community in Rome, a community he did not establish, a community he was heading to visit intially because he was going to start working his way west from there. As it turned out he made it to Rome, but not as a free man who was able to organize a mission westward, but as a prisoner making an appeal to the emperor, an appeal he lost.

We ignore St. Paul at our own peril as Christians. Paul passionately connects faith to life over and again, to the extent that if it has nothing to do with your life, if it does affect you and effect the way that you live, then it isn't faith. So, this morning the Church reads: "But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you" (Rom. 8:10-11). What do I mean? Well, Paul writes that "if" the Holy Spirit, which is the mode of Christ's resurrection presence (i.e., the Holy Spirit is the way the resurrected Christ is present to us), is in you then your life will bear witness to this by the way that you live, which means living this way, in the manner of one who is dead to sin.

Of course, there is a very human tendency to immediately reduce this to morality. If I am dead to sin I keep the rules. Hence, being alive in Christ is about doing this and not doing that. St. Paul himself, even in Romans, exposes this deception. Any righteousness I have is given to me by God through Christ and realized by the power of the Spirit. It is important that Paul links this to resurrection, making dying and being brought to life something I experience now and not a dream, bordering on fantasy, that I defer until I die.

We die, are buried, and rise with Christ in baptism. We subsequently undergo many such deaths, this is inevitable. The question remains, do we continually experience being resurrected, being restored to the life that is truly life by the One who is "the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6)? We call grave sins mortal sins because evil kills. Baptism, as we all know from experience, is not the end of our sinning because baptism, like Eucharist, is not a magic trick that God performs for our amusement. Our post-baptismal attachment to sin is called concupiscence. Elsewhere in Romans Paul reminds us of something that makes most everyone uncomfortable: "where sin increased, grace abounded all the more" (Rom. 5:20). In the very next verse he points out that just "as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (5:21).

If looked only intellectually, which is to say in an abstract way, it seems puzzling and more than a little complicated, but certainly understandable. However, if we seek to verify this through our experience by acknowledging the great need that constitutes our humanity more than anything else, which we do by turning to the One who is "the life," then we not only see, but we are transformed, given new life, resurrected life. It is not too much to say that Christ killed Paul on the road to Damascus by blinding him. He killed him only to bring him to new life, true life, life everlasting. For Paul, this was truly an event that became for him a decisive encounter.

Christos Anesti

Living the sacrament of right now

I read something yesterday that made mention of the Jean Marie de Caussade's lovely book Abandonment to Divine Providence. I became familiar with this work when I was still a fairly new Catholic. It was brought to my attention by a Lebanese Maronite friend. Caussade was a French Jesuit priest who lived the eighteenth century.

For those who know me well, who have sat through many sessions on spiritual formation with me, you know that I am a bit disparging of the use of time-worn texts for spiritual formation. For example, personally I do not find either St. Francis de Sales' Introduction to the Devout Life or Br. Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God particularly relevant to the lives of contemporary Christian women and men. This is not to say these classic works are useless, it is just to say that their usefulness is limited and in need of some adaptation. Going out on a limb, I believe that the Carmelite spirituality of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, in order to be useful to most Christians, needs to be very carefully adapated. After all, there is a difference between living a cloistered existence and one in the world that does not permit hours of prayer and contemplation. I would say that the other Carmelite spirituality, that of the Little Flower, her little way is beatiful and very relevant to anyone. At the end of the day, the way of living written about in Br. Lawrence's little book is much like the little way of the Little Flower. De Caussade's book is of a different order and remains quite contemporary. The reason the Jesuit spirituality is translatable into lay spirituality, diaconal spirituality, is because the Jesuit life is a life of active apostolate.

It is in Abandonment that Caussade writes about "the sacrament of the present moment." This means that each moment of my life bears God's will for me. Hence, it is truly a waste of time to look for, to try to "discern" (scare quotes fully intended to capture the inauthentic nature of such a move), God's will for me over, above, or around what I am experiencing. Now, this differs from being fatalistic, just how it differs may be the subject of a later post.

The best description of a sacrament is a visible and tangible sign of Christ's presence in and for the world. What is more visible or tangible than what is right in front you right now? Of course, this is both the thrust and the vector of Giussani's method, though his language, thankfully, is a little less exalted.

Christos Anesti

"...a matter of our fellowship with Christ..."

There many Christian teachers, preachers, theologians, and Scripture scholars that I admire both from the Christian East and from the various Protestant, including the Evangelical, traditions. Among those I admire are Richard Foster, author one of the best books ever on living as a Christian, Celebration of Discipline, which remains one of the books I give and advise people to read the most. I once did a whole year of weekly adult formation using this book. Foster is a Quaker, but Celebration is a very catholic book. Another person I admire greatly is Dr. Dallas Willard, who in addition to being a committed disciple of Jesus Christ and a great Christian teacher, is a distinguished philosopher who is a professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California, as well as an ordained Southern Baptist minister. Willard is one of the leading expositors on the founder of the school of philosophy to which I most closely adhere, Edmund Husserl, father of phenomenology. Dr. Willard, to whom Foster turned as a young pastor for mentoring, is the author of The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives, among other books, like The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God.

I have long been associated with Renovaré, an international ecumencial institute founded by Foster to, well, foster the practice of the disciplines. As anyone who has heard me teach on practicing the disciplines of the Christian life can attest, I always begin by pointing out the connection between the words discipline and disciple. All disciples have a master. For Christians our Master is Jesus Christ, but there are throughout the Christian tradition masters and mistresses of the spiritual life, which is nothing other than life in Christ. These women and men do not only demonstrate that it is possible to live this way (i.e., as a disciple of the Lord Jesus), but they teach us how. Willard is one such person.

Yesterday I received the latest issue of Conversations, which is the journal of Renovaré. This is always exciting for me, just like when Traces shows up either at the Cathedral rectory or in my mailbox at home. The theme addressed in the current issue of Conversations is How We Change, or how God transforms us through Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. There are many points of convergence between Communion and Liberation and the approach of those involved with Renovaré (keep in mind that the first thing I ever read by Msgr. Giussani was He is if he changes).

In this issue Dallas Willard is interviewed by Gary Moon. The interview begins with a discussion of the main theories of atonement. As Christians we believe that by dying on the cross Christ atoned for our sins. Various atonement theories have tried to explain how His death works to atone, to make amends, for our sins. The main historical theories are Ransom, Satisfaction/Penal Substitution, and Moral Influence. Wisely, Willard sees that each of these theories offer us an important insight into understanding what Christ did for us, but that none of the theories are capable of explaining this aspect of the Paschal Mystery completely. Willard begins by pointing out how these theories have caused division in the Body of Christ, which is needless and pointless. He continues by saying that "there is an objective pull here, and that objective pull is that Christ died for our sins. Now, that is the fact that each of the theories tries to explain, and when you have to deal with a stubborn fact, then your theories have a limited range." So, one is foolish to think that a theory with a necessarily limited range can satisfactorily explain a cosmos-altering event, like Christ's sacrificial death.

More importantly he emphasizes that we cannot severe Christ's death from either His life or His resurrection, which is the effect of any undue focus on any theory of atonement. Otherwise, we "tend to see [His] death as an isolated aspect of His life." We run into error when we take any one of these theories, or all of them together, as definitive, which, as Willard observes, "is the underlying mistake when you try to take a fact and force a theory onto it," which is "attractive because human beings want to control the fact, and they do that by developing an image or theory that makes sense to them, given the whole background of their ideas and social realities." In other words, there is the constant temptation to reduce faith to our measure. Even a cursory study of the development of doctrine in the Church will reveal that heresy most often consists of mistaking a part for the whole, or at the very least putting undue emphasis on some aspect of faith. Stated simply, heresy is most often a reduction of one kind or another.

Willard wraps up this part of the interview with this keen insight- "I think you are always going to be troubled if you stay at the level of theories, even if you have several good ones, because atonement is, in the last analysis, a matter of our fellowship with Christ, the person."

Christos Anesti