UPDATED: Disruption and societal deconstruction

This morning while looking at my Facebook newsfeed (makes me sound very tech savvy, does it not?), I saw an article posted by one of my many insightful friends, Sharon. Her tumblr blog quaerere deum is really stunning. She daily demonstrates that a picture is not worth merely a million words, but can move us beyond words. When she resorts to words she posts only that which is worth reading and considering. The article she pointed me to, entitled "Travis Shrugged," by Paul Carr, is short, but no less profound for its brevity.

In his short piece, Carr goes some short distance towards explaining why so many people, especially fairly young, well-educated people, develop what I can only describe as a kind of solipsistic libertarianism. The broad features of this view strike me as economic Darwinism, and being societally atomic (i.e., individualistic), failing to grasp the inevitably interpersonal nature of human society and so leading to a kind of dystopia (i.e., how does letting X do A affect Y?)- a kind of socially destructive utilitarianism.

I certainly don't want to co-opt Carr for my own purposes, but reading his article, especially his description of the purpose of legislative regulation (i.e., "Laws don’t exist merely to frustrate the business ambitions of coastal hipsters: They also exist to protect the more vulnerable members of society"), brought to mind the fact, even the memory of which is rapidly fading, that at the root of Western civilization, what makes it identifiable as a single entity (i.e., "Western civilization"), is Christianity, which, among other things, affirms that we are each others keepers.

On a practical, even political level, this makes it important to identify those who hold or run for office who are willing to do the bidding of these folks, who can't have the common good in mind because, much like Heidegger's view of human nature, they don't see the common good as real, let alone binding. On their view, society is best served by everyone doing what is best for one's self and not worrying about how that might impact the other, the whole.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which, citing Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes (paragraphs 26 & 71), defines the common good as "the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily," also states that "In keeping with the social nature of man, the good of each individual is necessarily related to the common good, which in turn can be defined only in reference to the human person:

"'Do not live entirely isolated, having retreated into yourselves, as if you were already justified, but gather instead to seek the common good together'" (par. 1905).

Along these lines, it is not insignificant that Rand's most famous and influential follower ever is Alan Greenspan.

Concerning altruism, Carr points out that Rand wrote "the issue is whether the need of others is the first mortgage on your life and the moral purpose of your existence." In her ideological novel Atlas Shrugged, Rand famously wrote: "I swear by my life, and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." It's short step from there to Gordon Geckko's insistence

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures, the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge, has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed...

In Christian theology, of course, we do not call such an approach to life altruistic, but properly "Christian," characterized by selfless love, agapé, caritas, even kenosis, or self-emptying. We are only disciples of the Carpenter from Nazareth to the extent that we live an other-centered life.

The article concludes with a recognition that responding to this emerging state-of-affairs in a truly human manner is not easy:

I’ve written before that to be truly disruptive (small ‘d’) the startups must have a moral dimension, even when that jars with the pursuit of profit. It’s just hypocritical for me to argue that on one hand while sidestepping those same ethical choices myself. And so, as of about ten minutes ago, the Uber app has taken its place in the dustbin of services I’ll just have to live without, at least while the company’s founder continues to celebrate the ugliest face of capitalism

Carr's honesty is refreshing, recognizing, as he does, how easy it is to be complicit in all of this (the digital age variant of North/South polarization). He is quite correct, at least on my view, to describe this in his subtitle as "The creepy, dangerous ideology behind Silicon Valley’s Cult of Disruption" and not just because Halloween is almost here.

UPDATE: A friend, who is also a brother deacon, someone whose intelligence and judgment I trust, and who works in the tech industry, informs me that "disruption theory" as applied to business is not necessarily underpinned by Rand's Objectivist philosophy and so does not inevitably lead to the kinds of things Carr writes about with regard to Uber. I certainly claim no extensive expertise in any kind of business theory. Nonetheless, I do find myself wondering what effect this particular business model has on things such as labor. It is important to point out that that is not really the focus of my post, which is, rather, the attraction of Objectivist philosophy in a society and culture in the throes of not only losing any memory of its Christian foundations, but losing any transcendent understanding of the human person altogether, keeping in mind that, being the personalist I am, one person is no person.

"'Ere thrice the sun done salutation to the dawn'"

Since it's the Friday before All Hallows Eve, the first of our annual 3-day Fall festival, The Smith's "Cemetry Gates" is our Friday traditio.

I was going to see Morrissey on my birthday, but my plans fell through, which means always go with your original plans and don't ever double-clutch, things sounding great usually turn out terribly, or not at all, as Morrissey would no doubt tell you. Don't ever confuse optimism for hope or pessimism for despair. Optimism usually being the cause of me feeling hopeless.

They were born/And then they lived/And then they died/It seems so unfair/I want to cry

Morrissey's recent appearance on Colbert, was, well, interesting, which is what he brings to the table...

Suffice it to say there is much about which he and I would disagree, but I find him interesting, that is, not boring and I still love his music after all these years.

Kateri Tekawitha: In her, faith and culture enrich each other

Along with 6 others, Kateri Tekawitha was raised to the altar today by none other than the Holy Father himself. Kateri was a member of the Mohawk nation. She was baptized when she was 20 years old. She died at age 24. From the time of her baptism until her death, she worked at St. Francis Xavier Mission near Montréal, Canada.

It is precisely because Christ seeks to make us who God created and redeemed us to be that the only way we can really follow Him, be His disciples, is to be fully ourselves, which is why in his homily at today's Canonization Mass, BXVI said,

Kateri impresses us by the action of grace in her life in spite of the absence of external help and by the courage of her vocation, so unusual in her culture. In her, faith and culture enrich each other! May her example help us to live where we are, loving Jesus without denying who we are. Saint Kateri, Protectress of Canada and the first native American saint, we entrust to you the renewal of the faith in the first nations and in all of North America! May God bless the first nations!

Too often we make mistake being faithful to conforming ourselves to a faulty idea of what it means to be holy. Despite all of the cookie-cutter hagiographies of yesteryear, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more diverse group of people than the saints.

St. Kateri Tekawitha, pray for us!

Deacons: called, ordained, and sent to serve

Today marks only the third time in more than 6 years of blogging that Καθολικός διάκονος features a guest blogger. Our guest today is Deacon Norbert Wethington, Ph.D, a dear friend, who serves in the Diocese of Toledo, Ohio, the parish of St. Joseph in Fremont, a community he serves as Pastoral Associate. Dcn Norb is also deeply involved in diaconal formation in his diocese.

This week I made much of the fact that at the Synod of Bishops meeting in Rome to discuss the New Evangelization, it took an Anglican bishop, Dr. Steven Croft of Sheffield, England, to mention deacons as evangelists. Dcn Norb in his homily, which he will preach at this evening's vigil Mass, does a great job of turning theory into practice, making what can all too easily remain abstract concrete when it comes to just how deacons serve, that is, exercise diakonia, which, as Dr. Croft noted, is the theological root of evangelization, the ministry of deacons being "listening, loving service, and being sent on behalf of the Church." _______________________________________________________________________________

My story today goes back about ten years.

Summer was rapidly approaching and our Diocese had developed some urgency about recruiting qualified men to become a part of a new Deacons Class that was to be starting in the following Fall. The problem was, they had the applicants . . . and the interest. . . but most of those names they did have on file needed a “Prep School” – a crash course “Prep School.”

So a sense of urgency was created;
Mercy College in Toledo volunteered to provide the classroom space;
and instructors were lined up for the week-long program.

And, YES, it would be in the daytime . . . and, YES, interested applicants might have to take some time off from work to attend.

Much to everyone’s surprise and delight, well over thirty men signed up for this very intense series.

I had been tapped to do a 12 hour long block on Church History . . . BUT . . . this block also had to include a strong emphasis on how deacons flourished in our church throughout the almost 2,000 years that Christianity has ministered to the wider world.

In my opening remarks, I introduced my topic by talking about the fact that historically Deacons were ministers of service to the people of God.

The Book of Acts, for example, describes how the very first deacons were empowered to minister to the disenfranchised Greek widows of their era.

The history of the medieval church describes deacons as the almsgivers –- making sure the sick were taken care of, making the hungry were fed and making sure the homeless were housed.

Then, I reminded my class that these guys worked in the background . . .

. . .and this ministry to the poor . . . the disenfranchised . . . the marginalized . . . was done in such quiet ways that 99%+ of the everyday lay-folks in those moments of history simply did not even realize what was going on.

Finally, I jumped to late-twentieth century Northwest Ohio:

--I told them about one area deacon who, even now in 2012, ten years after my talk at Mercy College -– toils without any recognition as the Port Chaplain of the Port of Toledo. He meets every foreign merchant ship as they dock, helps the crew take care of personal issues, provides for their religious needs by making sure they got rides to their own houses of worship, or connects with local residents with roots in their home countries; provides books for their ship’s library and even gives each of those sailors simple gifts from Toledo before they depart.

--I told them about a second deacon, now gone to his eternal reward, who during the worst of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua ten years before that class, spent a great deal of his time working with un-documented immigrants who had fled Central America in absolute fear of their lives and were now living in our area. He was taking care of their food and shelter needs while others were working on the legal issues of political asylum.

--and lastly, I told them about a classmate of mine, a World War II veteran, who with his wife had a special ministry to the street people in Toledo: the homeless and the hungry . . . to pimps and prostitutes alike . . . spending most of his time walking the streets and finding those folks who actually hide in plain sight

and getting them connected to the help they need. The point I was making -- the same point that Jesus makes in today’s Gospel -- is that while personal ambition is the worst enemy for all sorts of pastoral ministers -- lay or clerical -- it is especially dangerous for deacons.

Deacons become great in the eyes of their God by ministering to the invisible -- ministering to the folks that society –- and maybe even some of its leaders -- dismiss as unimportant and meaningless and not worth worrying about.

At my first break, I got my expected reaction.

One of the guys in the class – whose size and “Type A” personality reminded me of a former professional football player –- came up to challenge me.

He accused me of being a “socialist” and even – far more dangerous in his eyes – a puppet for some political party or another.

        --No one in the Church had a right to tell him how to spend his money;
        --No one in the Church had a right to tell him who to associate with
            . . . at whichever Country Club he was a member;
        --No one in the Church had a right to tell him where to worship his God.

The rant went on for a good five minutes.

Finally, when he got it out of his system and managed to take a deep breath. . .

I said simply: “Deacons – you have to realize -- are ordained for service to a God who washes feet !.”

He walked away. The look on his face was one of amazed contempt.

______________________________

For a moment, let’s break away from this story and go back to the Gospel reading we used last Sunday:

Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the Kingdom of God!”

The disciples were shocked by his words. So Jesus again said to them in reply, “Children . . . It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.”
________________________________

Now, with that second scripture passage in mind, here is how my story-line for today finally ends up.

Deacon Norb Wethington, Ph.D.

My challenger . . . obviously . . . did not finish that class on Church History and . . . thus . . . dropped–out of that “crash” program to become a deacon.

Becoming a deacon did not seem to be important to him anymore. In fact, he wanted no part of it at all – perhaps it was far too threatening to the values that he held.

But the story does continue. Less than three years after that summer school I just described, my challenger died at a surprisingly young age.

When I read his obituary in the Toledo Blade, I found out some amazing things about him that I did not know . . . but probably should have suspected:

--As young as he was, he was an extraordinarily wealthy businessman whose name –- at that time -- was well known in northwest Toledo from Franklin Park Mall all the way out to Sylvania Township.

--He was very used to getting his own way and was not afraid to use his wealth as a source of his power.

--He apparently had been very involved in one of those smaller Toledo area Polish ethnic parishes that Bishop Blair closed at the same time that Saint Casimir’s locally was closed.

--Thus . . . I have every reason to believe . . . that his opposition to Bishop Blair’s decision –- over ten years ago now -- was very loud and very noisy and very VERY obnoxious.

You know, folks, there is a God out there who has the power to look after all of us. God does all that by using human tools.

Deacons are a part of God’s cosmic tool-box. From day one, deacon candidates are taught that in their formation program.

I have to wonder whether . . . when my former student did check-in with St. Peter a few years back now . . . the response might not have been something like this:

“My friend, let me remind you -- there is only one God ! And you ain’t it!”

You know, somehow, it seems to me that this would be a good teaching for all of the leadership in our church – whether we are the Pope, OR Bishops, OR Priests, OR Deacons, OR Religious Sisters, OR lay-folk. . . .

A teaching –- squeezed out of today’s Gospel -- to take really REALLY seriously!

“There is only one God ! And you ain’t it!”

Forgiveness is the ministry of all Christians

I apologize up-front for once again imposing what I am currently reading on both of my readers, but it's not possible for me to refrain from so doing when reading a really good book, like Fr. Radcliffe's new one (mentioned in my previous post). I teach about and encourage people to go to confession quite often. Of all the things Catholics do, going to confession is the most fascinating and probably the most scary. But going to confession is not scary, not in the least.

A few years ago, while preparing to teach on confession, it struck me that we don't go to confession to find whether or not God will forgive us. We go to confession in the confidence that, in and through Jesus Christ, we are always already forgiven. The natural response to this is, "If I'm already forgiven, then why go?" You go to realize, that is, make real that fact, to have an objective, first-hand experience of God's forgiveness. An -ology is "the study of" something (i.e., theology is the study of God, has God as its object), whereas an -urgy is something you do. As with all the sacraments, the sacrament of penance, or reconciliation (i.e., confession) is a simple liturgy. It's how we not only enact, but experience not what we believe, but Who we put our trust in.

I was very struck by how Friar Timothy describes forgiveness and how we experience it in confession. After describing how it "works," he writes that "It belongs to the priesthood of every Christian to forgive."

Forgiveness is not the scrubbing out of our sins, pretending that they never happened. Forgiveness is a blessing through which even our failures are taken up into God's grace and become part of our way to God

He also notes, "The priest offers this blessing on behalf of the whole community" because "[w]e cannot all crowd into the room, and so someone is ordained to represent the whole Body of Christ."

It is important also to note that someone is not only ordained to "represent" the rest of the Church, but to serve everybody else "re-presenting" Christ. The word "minister" means one who serves. Just as we Catholics tend to fixate on the priest acting in persona Christi and "confecting" the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the bread and wine to the exclusion of the other two ways that Christ is equally really and truly present in each Mass (i.e., in the gathering of the baptized and in the proclamation of the Word), we tend to forget what Fr. Radcliffe wonderfully notes here, something equally important, namely that the priest also acts in persona ecclesiae (i.e., in the person of the Church, the ekklesia). The Prayer of Absolution shows us this quite clearly:

God, the Father of mercies,
through the death and resurrection of His Son
has reconciled the world to Himself
and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins;
through the ministry of the Church
may God give you pardon and peace,
and I absolve you from your sins
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, +
and of the Holy Spirit.

(underlining and emboldening emphasis mine)

Life-giving water; giving water for life

Just like last Friday, I am feeling a burn for justice today. This burn, I am unashamed to say, was sparked by reading yet another very good book, the latest by Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, OP, Take the Plunge: Living Baptism and Confirmation, with a little fuel added by listening to Robert Griffo's personal tale, which he told to StoryCorps and that aired on NPR's Morning Edition today (click either link to hear it- go on, it's short!)- it seemed like symmetry to me that NPR named Griffo's story "'Black Monday' Plunge: From 'High Life' To Street Life."

Because he is writing about baptism throughout most of the book (despite our best efforts over the past century, it makes no sense to discuss confirmation apart from baptism), he can't help but write about water, which forces me to move from burning to thirsting. One of the biggest problems in the world today is access to suitably clean water. What I have offer is an excerpt from Fr. Radcliffe's book.

After observing with regard to account of the fall and expulsion from the garden in Genesis 3 that "those first gardeners failed and were thrust out of the garden," he writes,

The sign of our alienation is that the ground became sterile and brought forth thorns and thistles. But when Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac, and so destroy the fruit of his loins, he found a ram caught in a thorn bush. According to Jewish tradition it was in a thorn bush, burning but not consumed, that Moses encountered the living God and the summons to journey to the Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey. Finally the one who would free the land from sterility and bring the springtime of grace, carries on his head a crown of thorns. So it is in this symbol of the badlands, weeds that are neither beautiful nor useful that we find the promise of a new fertility. It is fitting that when, on Easter morning, Mary Magdalene comes looking for the corpse of of the one whom she loves, she meets someone she mistakes for a gardener

It is little known that one of the main points of contention between Turkey and Syria is the water of the Euphrates River, which, as Radcliffe also notes, along with the Tigris and the Nile, also sources of political dispute, is one of the great rivers according to biblical geography. Consider this fact conveyed by Friar Timothy: as of 2007 "the average amount of water used daily by one person living in Ethiopia, Somalia, Eriteria, Djibouti, Gambia, Mali, Mozambique, Tanzania, or Uganda equals that used by someone in a developed country brushing his or her teeth with the tap running."

While "the right to private property is not absolute and unconditional," (Populorum Progresso par. 23), at least according to Catholic social teaching, "the right to safe drinking water is a universal and inalienable right" (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church par. 485).

According to St. John's account of Jesus' crucifixion, our Lord's penultimate words were, "I thirst" (John 19:28). Many times Jesus commends those who, in the hot desert climate of the Holy Land, offer a drink of water to one who thirsts, telling His disciples that those who offer them a drink "will surely not lose his reward" (Mark 9:41). Among the corporal works of mercy is giving the thirsty a drink.

Math, physics, music, Vijay Iyer

Our traditio for this Friday that finds autumn in full swing here along the Wasatch Front is the Vijay Iyer Trio playing "questions of agency."

You've never heard of Vijay? Check out his recent Bullseye interview, or his new album Accelerando.

To get an idea of where Vijay is coming from, you can you read the article he wrote for the U.K.'s Guardian, which was published almost exactly two years ago, "Strength in numbers: How Fibonacci taught us how to swing." Here is an excerpt: "Fibonacci was a 13th-century Italian mathematician who brought the Indian-Arabic number system to Europe. He also wrote about this set of numbers that now bears his name. I became intrigued by these numbers some years ago, and have used them to structure much of my work ever since.

"The Fibonacci sequence begins: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144 and continues from there. Each number in the sequence is the sum of the previous two numbers, and it continues ad infinitum. If you look at the ratios of two successive Fibonacci numbers, and keep going up the sequence, you get: 1, 2, 1.5, 1.667, 1.6, 1.625, 1.615, 1.619, 1.618 … As you go up the sequence, this ratio gets closer and closer to a famous irrational number called the "golden ratio": 1.6180339887."