Francis disciplines the Curia UPDATED!

UPDATE

Cardinals and bishops to lose special legal privileges under new papal decree

Pope Francis has introduced a significant change to the law of the Vatican City State by granting jurisdiction to its ordinary tribunals to judge cardinals and bishops, like all the other faithful, in civil and penal matters. These tribunals, however, will have to obtain the prior assent of the pope.

According to Canon Law cardinals and bishops can only be judged by the Pope. In practice this meant that they were could not be tried by ordinary tribunals which in many cases have lay persons as judges. Instead they were tried by a special court composed of three cardinals.  From now on any court can try a cardinal simply by asking the Pope for permission. The speculation is that this will soon by used to try a cardinal in a financial abuse case.

Sigh. We're in Re-Run Season Again (Updated)

I'm actually not talking about summer tv programming (though that is a good subject for another day).  I'm speaking about the seeming one-issue obsession of some church leaders.  This article on  NCR, Villanova conference elevates calls for Biden to be denied Communion | National Catholic Reporter (ncronline.org), discusses "Taking Measure of the 'Biden Effect': American Catholics and the President," a virtual conference hosted by the Charles Widger School of Law at Villanova University.

Update:  Check out the article today by Michael Sean Winters, Confusion and canons at Villanova University law school conference | National Catholic Reporter (ncronline.org) on the subject of the Villanova Conference. I have included some excerpts at the end of this post.

Lawn care-induced stress

 This is a tale of suburban angst: a homeowner who can't get his grass cut.

Social Relationships and the Pandemic

This is an interesting NYT opinion piece. I checked out some of the "social science" data quoted. Feel free to disagree with it. I didn't find anything connected to a large body of data that could qualify as a lawful relationship that many social scientists might agreed upon. But the ideas and data are interesting as discussion points about our experience of relationships and  how the pandemic might have affected them. I have eliminated the author's speculation about what the future might or ought to be. 

The Pandemic Shrank Our Social Circles. Let’s Keep It That Way.

 The past year has forced a mass meditation on the nature and strength of our social ties. While our culture has encouraged us to accumulate friends, both on- and offline, like points, the pandemic has laid bare the distinction between quantity and quality of connections. There are those we’ve longed to see and those it’s been a relief not to see. The full reckoning will become apparent only when we can once again safely gather and invitations are — or are not — extended. Our social lives and social selves may never be the same.

My family ties have not changed much with the pandemic. They were all long distance phone calls before the pandemic and remain so with about the same frequency. They have become less frequent phone calls and  phone calls rather than visits as the closeness of the blood relationships have declined over the past two decades with the death of the older people in the family. 

Non family ties have declined during the pandemic as I have seen less of neighbors, church groups, etc. I have not missed talking to them, or going to their meetings.  

Research by Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist, shows that human beings have the cognitive capacity to accommodate only four to six close friends. These are the people in the top tier of your social network, for whom you have the greatest affinity and affection and who require daily or weekly interactions to maintain. Included in that group is typically your romantic partner and maybe a couple of family members.

Well maybe the key to interpreting Dunbar's point is cognitive capacity, to be distinguished from emotional  and situational capacities. For example through my entire life my parents were my two closest relationships. But there were many years and decades when I saw them or talked to them only a few times a  year, so that in those times they did not take up much cognitive capacity.  

Through my entire life there has been a whole network of family relationship, again people whom I saw only once or twice a  year or less. However once my parents died I kept up a phone relationship and personal visits relationship to two of my aunts, i.e. they replace my parents as my cognitive processing link to my family network, to keep up with what was happening.   

To be sure, there is a lot of churn in human social networks even in the best of times. Several studies show we replace as much as half of our social network every five to seven years. Little wonder when research also shows only half of our friendships are mutual. That is, only half of those who we think are our friends feel the same way about us. It just normally takes us a while to figure that out.

Certainly about half of my social network has changed over the years as I changed jobs, locations and involvement in various organizations such as parishes, Voice of the Faithful, Commonweal Local Community, etc.  

For example I was very involved as a voluntary pastoral staff member for a parish in Toledo for about four  years in the 1980s. Those relationships were very important for me then; I was also very important to the other staff members at that time, but it took me several years after I left the parish to live elsewhere to discover my importance to them. 

A lot of situational relationships — friends we’ve made through work or our kids’ schools and sports teams — have fallen by the wayside. And maybe that’s OK. “Once you don’t have those external forces making your contacts frequent, then you start realizing, ‘You know what? We really didn’t have that much to talk about,’” said Mario Luis Small, a professor of sociology at Harvard University who studies social ties. “‘And come to think about it, we haven’t actually confided anything deeply personal outside of that particular context.’”

Situational friendships are very interesting and comprise a large part of our lives. In my professional life I have always have a few fellow professionals who were basically situational friends. We processed with each other not only what was going in our professional lives but also our family lives as that impacted our professional lives. These would quality as part of Dunbar's few close relationships. However they also ceased once I left those professional environments.  At the time we gave each other our e-mail addresses, but without the situational environment of our professional lives there really was not much reason for the relationships to continue. We had not plugged into each others family lives or our religious lives (although we did discuss religion). 

Church related friendships are also very similar. Again a few close friends with whom I processed the parish, or other organization but not much reasons for the relationships to continue once the parish or organization was not longer important in our lives. 

William Rawlins, a professor emeritus of interpersonal communication at Ohio University, has interviewed people from age 4 to 100 about friendship and discovered that people have similar expectations when it comes to their friends: We want those who are there for us, who listen without judgment and understand what we’re going through. They may not agree with us, but they get us.

The underlined sentences are something I would connect to Dunbar's cognitive theory. A lot of the people in those close cognitive relationships are able to process certain environments (family, work, church) with us, understanding both us and their environments even though we might not agree on many things.  I could see a lot of evolutionary advantage to being able to do that in both the short and long term.  

Perhaps cognitive capacity explains the importance and the durability of this blog, that we are a diverse group of people who cognitively process certain environments with one another.  It does not really matter than we are not in the same physical situations, nor have the same personal networks, nor agree on everything.  We matters is with listen to one another, and understand one another, and our environments even if we do not agree with each other on some things.

The Afghanistan Timeline

 Both Democrats and Republicans have criticized President Biden's decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in September of this year.  Thomas Reese in an article in NCR, "Why President Biden is Right to Get Our Troops out of Afghanistan", disagrees:

10 years into the translation of the Mass

 I realized this morning that we have been using the current Mass translation for 10 years now (the anniversary date will be November 27).  How has the "new" translation worked out?

People are not being smart

I dined in a restaurant last night.  Now I understand why COVID cases are spiking again.

The case for the Resurrection

This is my homily for today, the 3rd Sunday of Easter, Cycle B.  The readings for today are here.

Getting the Vaccine to Poor Nations

Here is a good article by Doyle McManus on the challenges of getting the COVID vaccines to the poorer nations:

"Despite recent setbacks in Michigan and elsewhere, the United States is gradually approaching the day when we may be able to declare the COVID-19 pandemic under control — within our borders, that is. But that won’t mean the problem is over in the rest of the world — or even here at home in the long run. Until there is worldwide control of the virus, the pandemic will continue to affect our health, our economy and even our safety from terrorism."

Dolan Harangues Laity to Get Back to Mass

It’s Time to Get Back to Mass!

We have already had a long discussion on Mass obligation; this post is not about any obligations of the laity.  Rather since Dolan has decided to become aggressive with the laity, it is time we laity become aggressive with our pastors about high quality liturgy and safety in a pandemic environment that could be with us for at least months or  perhaps even years if the virus continues to evolve.

The vaccine changes the calculus about church going.  However it is not as simple as saying that if one has been vaccinated that means that one is only going to get a mild case of the virus. 

The virus is still very prevalent and so there is a good chance of being exposed to the virus if one goes to church. It is not the safe environment of a home in which everyone else may soon be vaccinated.  It is not a store where if one is exposed to the virus it will likely be for a few minutes at most. The same principles apply the more exposure to people the more likely one will get the virus, especially if these are the same people indoors for a hour. 

We know the virus is mutating and also that these mutations often become abundant for months before they are detected and analyzed.  Simply put, as long as the virus has not been driven to very low levels, those of us who are more vulnerable simply cannot risk possibly encountering a very dangerous form of the virus that the vaccine cannot handle..

My assumption is that parishes have done well at requiring masks and keeping social distance. Now is the time to begin to set aside certain Masses as restricted to those who have been vaccinated. That means among other things, no children. We don’t know how long it will take until we get sufficient adults vaccinated to achieve herd immunity and how long it will take to get safe vaccines for children. It would be far safer to go to Mass if everyone there were vaccinated.  Now is the time for pastors to urge people to be vaccinated and set aside certain Masses exclusively for those who have been vaccinated.

It is also time to consider resuming singing at Mass.  This will only be safe if all those attending the Mass are all vaccinated. So parishes need to begin instituting a sung Mass that will be restricted to those who have received the vaccine.

We are supposed to be a community, we should not be taking the position that it is up to each individual to decide whether or not to wear a mask at church, whether or not to practice social distancing, and whether or not to be vaccinated. Rather pastors need to create the safer conditions (vaccinated only Masses) and sung Masses (only be vaccinated people) that will make church going attractive again.  Dolan may want those going to restaurants and sporting events back in church; I don’t want to be with them unless they have been vaccinated and leave their children at home.

My companion and I have spent more than a year in total isolation.  Now that we have been vaccinated we are still not going to the grocery story, or restaurants, and we shop on line.  However we are beginning to consider interacting with carefully selected people  (friends and neighbors} whom we know have been vaccinated and like us live socially isolated lives.  

Francis accepts resignation of Crookston, MN bishop

In the wake of accusations that Crookston, MN Bishop Michael Hoeppner mishandled accusations of sexual abuse against his clergy, Pope Francis has accepted Hoeppner's resignation.

Vaccine Dilemmas

By now you have heard that administration of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine has been paused in most US locations due to a rare side effect of blood clots, pending further investigation. The AstraZeneca vaccine has also been dogged by reports of rare side effects.  It has not been approved in the US, though we have several million doses stockpiled. The administration has "lent" doses to Mexico, where the Astra Zenica is the most common vaccine.  

Gallup: Church Membership Falls Below Majority

I  find Gallup data interesting because they collect so much of it and also because they have been doing it for a long time.

U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time

In 2020, 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue or mosque, down from 50% in 2018 and 70% in 1999.

Note that membership is defined more concretely and institutionally than the question of religious preference.

Over the past two decades, the percentage of Americans who do not identify with any religion has grown from 8% in 1998-2000 to 13% in 2008-2010 and 21% over the past three years. As would be expected, Americans without a religious preference are highly unlikely to belong to a church, synagogue or mosque, although a small proportion -- 4% in the 2018-2020 data -- say they do

The decline in religious preference accounts for about half the decline in religious membership 

Given the nearly perfect alignment between not having a religious preference and not belonging to a church, the 13-percentage-point increase in no religious affiliation since 1998-2000 appears to account for more than half of the 20-point decline in church membership over the same time.

We should not assume that a decline in religious preference means that people do not believe in the God, or  pray. Gallup does not address those issues, however I suspect they continue to ask those questions and would likely have included them in the report if they helped explain the data. So I assume many people without a religious preference still believe in God, and many without a church membership continue to pray, even daily. For example in past data the percentage of people praying daily was about double those going to church weekly. 

The decline in church membership, then, appears largely tied to population change, with those in older generations who were likely to be church members being replaced in the U.S. adult population with people in younger generations who are less likely to belong. 

However churches are still losing people from all generations over time .

Still, population replacement doesn't fully explain the decline in church membership, as adults in the older generations have shown roughly double-digit decreases from two decades ago

Also, each generation has seen a decline in church membership among those who do affiliate with a specific religion

 Church Membership Decline Seen in All Major Subgroups

 However not equally:

Among religious groups, the decline in membership is steeper among Catholics (down 18 points, from 76% to 58%) than Protestants (down nine points, from 73% to 64%). This mirrors the historical changes in church attendance Gallup has documented among Catholics, with sharp declines among Catholics but not among Protestants. 

Implications 

The U.S. remains a religious nation, with more than seven in 10 affiliating with some type of organized religion. However, far fewer, now less than half, have a formal membership with a specific house of worship

Organizational relationships such as religious affiliation, membership in a specific house of worship, and attendance at worships services are becoming less important.  However religion can be expressed in all sorts of beliefs, values, and practices that are not tied so clearly to religious organizations. 

Sermons and homilies often seem aimed to promoting more religion in our daily lives. Perhaps people are  finding more of the transcendent in their daily lives in terms of family, friendship, and nature and therefore have less need of formal religion. That seems to be the opinion of those who have studied the Nones. 

Gallup does not think that its data was affected much by the pandemic because it extended previous trends. Religious organizations including parishes have certainly been online more since the pandemic. It remains to be seen if this is a temporary necessity or the beginning of better support for people where they live and work. It also remains to be seen if people have come to appreciate family, friendship and nature more during the pandemic, and whether this will impact their engagement with religious organizations.

Finally, the Catholic Church is doing more poorly than Protestants both in terms of church membership and attendance. Obviously this is partly due to trends that are affecting other churches such as the declines in affiliation and membership detailed here. But there must be other factors, too. Will the trend towards less attendance at Mass over the decades be increased due to the pandemic?    

 

 

Spring 2021 Hispanic Theology Series

The following is co-sponsored by Commonweal. It is produced by the Lumen Christi Institute which is associated with the University of Chicago. Looks to me like a conservative oriented think tank, especially since I don't recognize any of the staff or trustees. However among its advisers are both Bernard McGinn and David Trace from the University of Chicago, both top rank scholars  Betty and I watched something before from this Institute also sponsored by Commonweal and found it interesting. 

Spring 2021 Hispanic Theology Series

Schedule: All are on Tuesdays @ 7pm Central Time

I registered for the first three

APRIL 13   Teaching Catholic Doctrine en Español, with Hosffman Ospino (Boston College)

April 20   Globalization from the People: Fratelli Tutti and the Latino Social Teaching of Pope Francis, with David Lantigua (University of Notre Dame)

April 27   Was Something Lost? Thomas Aquinas, Intellectual Disability, and the 16th century Spanish Colonial Debates, with Miguel Romero (Salve Regina University)

May 4   Latino Youth and Evangelization, with Claudia Herrera

May 11   Beauty and Justice in the City: the Restoration of St. Adalbert's, in Pilsen, with Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado (University of Scranton), Peter Casarella (Duke University), and Juan Soto (Gamaliel)

May 18   Latino Christology, with Roberto Goizueta (Boston College) and Neomi de Anda (University of Dayton)

May 25   The Ethics of Immigration, with Victor Carmona (University of San Diego) and Nichole Flores (University of Virginia)

June 1   Our Lady of Café con Leche: The Catholic Imagination of Mexican women in America with Socorro Castañeda-Liles (Santa Clara University)

Religious Freedom and Authoritarianism

I have read two articles lately dealing with different aspects of the same dilemma: When does protection for religious freedom  cross the line into authoritarianism as an ironic safeguard for that freedom? 

The first article is this one on the NCR site, "European Catholics Fear Erosion of Religious Freedoms Across the Continent".  We know that religious freedom is a sometimes contentious issue for Americans. It turns out that the European countries, especially those who are members of the EU, have their religious freedom issues, too.  From the NCR article:

Gardening: Seedlings from Basement to Garage

 

During the winter my garage  houses my car and many of the things that are  used in gardening.

During February and March, the grow lights in the basement have been busy turning seeds into seedlings.

Now that April has come and snow is unlikely, the car is now out in the driveway, and the seedings have come up from the basement to set behind the south facing garage door to begin the "hardening off process" of gradual exposure to direct sunlight, and temperature variations.

They are actually upon four different pairs of shelving with wheels. I have combined several photographs so that it looks like they are sitting on one very tall set of shelves.

On the top shelf are the snow peas which are ready to set out in the garden. Actually another shelf is already in the garden. They have been grown this  year in peat pots, usually three or four to a pot. The pots have holes in them and will decompose into the ground. (We are told you have to completely bury the peat pot so it does not wick water out of the soil. The snow peas already have their tendrils which will attach to the fencing in the garden. You can get a better picture of each shelf by clicking on the photos. 

The next row below is broccoli and cabbage which have been grown in yogurt cups. They will be potted up in the next week or so into larger containers for the container garden. Beneath them are some lettuce, which we have already begun to harvest, and another container of late starting snow peas.

Then below comes a tray of peppers. Half are green bell peppers, and half are sweet banana peppers. About half of each will go into the container garden; the other half will go into peat pots to be placed in regular garden soil.  

Next to the peppers on the right below are three types of herbs (sage, basil, and oregano). They will need to be repotted into containers on the back porch.

Below them on the next shelf are some marigolds and petunias in one tray, and then a tray of rutabaga. This is our first year trying to raise rutabaga.

Then below in the bottom shelf are two containers of various types of tomatoes. Actually we have a total of six containers of tomatoes since we can a lot of tomatoes, and tomato juice.. 

We  have started to replace our regular florescent grow lights with LED grow lights. We tried two different grow lights, and one appears to work much better than the other.

We  have educated ourselves on YouTube and found out that there are two important things about them. First to get  your lights about two inches above the emerging seeds so that the plants do not get leggy, i.e. continue to stretch for the light. The second is to reduce the adaptation of plants to direct sunlight by giving them a hour in the sunlight every few days while they are very young. This also helps to stop them from getting leggy. 

We might still have a frost yet in April. We do both container and in ground gardens. So the job now during April is to get all those areas ready so that when all these seedlings are hardened and there is no more danger of frost (for the warm weather crops) we can then put them out hopefully around the first week of May. Historically the average date of last frost here was May 10th and the legend was to wait to Memorial day for your warm weather crops. But climate change has changed all that, and we now rely much more on the thirty, sixty and ninety day forecasts to make decisions about planting. 

 

The Human Family, the Family of Jesus, and Political Divisions

Homily of the papal preacher, Father Raniero Cantalmessa, at the papal liturgy on Good Friday. 

(He was  also commissioned by Pope Francis to give the retreat to the American Bishops, and was made an honorary Cardinal at the last conclave)

THE FIRST BORN AMONG MANY BROTHERS 

 (ROMANS 8:29)

His context is the recent encyclical letter of Pope Francis.

The Holy Father Pope Francis in the  Encyclical Letter, “On Fraternity and Social Friendship”..  has reawakened in many hearts the aspiration towards that universal value.... and has urged everyone – both people and institutions – to work for that goal.

The encyclical is addressed to a very wide audience, inside and outside the Church, indeed practically the whole of humankind. Given its universal scope, it correctly avoids limiting the discussion to aspects that characterize and belong exclusively to Christians. Towards the end of the encyclical, there is however a paragraph in which the gospel foundations of fraternity are summed up. Sparse in words but vibrant in meaning it reads:

Others drink from other sources. For us, the wellspring of human dignity and fraternity is in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. From it, there arises, “for Christian thought and for the action of the Church, the primacy given to relationship, to the encounter with the sacred mystery of the other, to universal communion with the entire human family, as a vocation of all"

He gives an excellent summary of the use of the Greek word "brothers/sisters." Unlike English where the words are totally different. In Greek an adelphos is a brother, an adelphi is a sister, and the plural is the same word adelphoi.  In other words in the plural you cannot tell if it refers to brothers, sisters, or siblings.

At times, the New Testament uses the term brother (adelphos) in its primitive, most common, meaning, that is, a sibling, someone who was born of the same father and the same mother. 

Secondly, people who belong to the same nation or people are referred to as brothers. Paul said that he would be willing to become anathema – separated from Christ – if it would benefit his brothers, his “kindred according to the flesh,” the Israelites (see Rm 9:3). 

In those contexts, as in other instances, brothers is a generic term that includes men and women, brothers and sisters.  

The horizon of meaning widens to include every human person, just in virtue of being such. Brother, in this sense, is sometimes translated in the Bible as neighbor. “Whoever hates his brother …” (1 Jn 2:9) means “whoever hates his neighbor.” When Jesus says: “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Mt 25:40), he intends to include every human person in need of help.

Besides all these nuances, the New Testament also uses the word brother to indicate a specific group of people. My brothers are Jesus’ disciples, those who welcome his teachings. “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers? [...] Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Mt 12:48-50)

Francis sent him to preach the retreat to the American Bishop precisely because he wants them to lessen political polarization in the  US. So the following may be considered to apply to them

Some practical consequences flow from this truth. We build fraternity in precisely the same way that we build peace, that is starting close by, with ourselves, not with great strategies and ambitious, abstract objectives. For us, that means universal fraternity starts with the Catholic Church. For once, I want to put to the side even the second circle, namely the fraternity that exists between all believers in Christ, that is ecumenism.

Fraternity among Catholics is wounded! Divisions between Churches have torn Christ’s tunic to shreds, and worse still, each shredded strip has been cut up into even smaller snippets. I speak of course of the human element of it, because no one will ever be able to tear the true tunic of Christ, his mystical body animated by the Holy Spirit. In God’s eyes, the Church is “one, holy, catholic and apostolic”, and will remain so until the end of the world. This, however, does not excuse our divisions, but makes them more guilty and must push us more forcefully to heal them.

What is the most common cause of he bitter divisions among Catholics? It is not dogma, nor is it the sacraments and ministries, none of the things that by God’s singular grace we fully and universally preserve. The divisions that polarize Catholics stem from political opinions that grow into ideologies after being given priority over religious and ecclesial considerations. In many parts of the world, these divisions are very real, even though they are not openly talked about or are disdainfully denied. This is sin in its primal meaning. The kingdom of this world becomes more important, in the person’s heart than the Kingdom of God.

I believe that we all need to make a serious examination of conscience in this regard and be converted. Fomenting division is the work par excellence of the one whose name is ‘diabolos’ that is, the divider, the enemy who sows weeds, as Jesus referred to him in the parable (see Mt 13:25).

We need to learn from Jesus’ example and the Gospel. He lived at a time of strong political polarization. Four parties existed: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Herodians, and the Zealots. Jesus did not side with any of them and energetically resisted attempts to be pulled towards one or the other. The earliest Christian community faithfully followed him in that choice, setting an example above all for pastors, who need to be shepherds of the entire flock, not only of part of it.

Pastors need to be the first to make a serious examination of conscience. They need to ask themselves where it is that they are leading their flocks – to their position or Jesus’.

 

Truth

 This is my homily for last night, Good Friday.  The readings are here.  I am sorry I was not able to post it in time to be read here on Good Friday; but right now it is Holy Saturday, hours before the Vigil, and we are still sort of in a Good Friday mode (kind of, anyway), so I hope this spirituality won't be amiss.

Bidenomics

 

Bidenomics Is as American as Apple Pie

By Paul Krugman

My comments in italics.  Henry Ford's notion that he had to build cars that his employees could afford is key to a vibrant economy. Rich people manufacturing for rich people just will not produce a great economy.  While trains may work for Europe and Japan, the car has been essential to America. So I am glad that Biden is investing in repairing roads and bridges.

Piketty's work which is  referenced here has convinced me that we have to go back to progressive taxation to avoid having all the money in the hands of the rich; it is essential that as much as possible  be in hands of the middle class, and that we bring as many of the poor into the middle class as possible. 

The Biden team is making a point of wrapping its economic initiatives firmly in the flag. First came the American Rescue Plan; now we have the American Jobs Plan paid for by the Made in America Tax Plan.

Bidenomics consists, roughly speaking, of large-scale public investment paid for with highly progressive taxation. And both of these things are as American as apple pie.

one way to think about the Biden program is that it’s an attempt to bring back the Dwight stuff — that is, in fiscal terms it would represent a partial return to the Eisenhower era, when we had much higher government investment as a share of gross domestic product than we do now, and also much higher tax rates on both high-income individuals and corporations.

The era of big government investment and high taxes on the rich coincided, not incidentally, with the U.S. economy’s greatest generation — the postwar decades of rapidly rising living standards.

 After reading Piketty I had mainly associated Democrats and FDR with progressive taxation and public works projects. Krugman reminds us that Ike continued some of those policies. I associate Bernie  not Biden with FDR. But I could see Biden as another Ike. 

But the story of public investment and progressive taxation in America goes back much further than the ’50s. 

We’ve relied on government infrastructure investment to jump-start economic growth ever since the construction of the Erie Canal between 1818 and 1825

Land grants were used to promote railway construction and higher education. Teddy Roosevelt built the Panama Canal. F.D.R. brought electricity to rural areas. Eisenhower built the highway network.

The following is a very interesting analysis of how everything fits together 

Actually, given extremely low borrowing costs it’s not obvious that we would even need a tax hike if infrastructure spending were the end of the story. But we will need more revenue to pay for the whole Biden program, which everyone expects will eventually include another round of spending targeted on families. So it makes sense to tie tax hikes to the jobs plan; polling suggests that paying for public investment with taxes on corporations and the rich increases support for an infrastructure plan, and that something along the lines of the Biden proposals will command very high public approval.

Another important point is the following by Piketty that America basically invented progressive taxation and because of it built the middle class more than Europe. 

Republicans will no doubt denounce the idea of taxing the rich as un-American class warfare. In reality, however, such taxation is another long tradition in this country. As Thomas Piketty, the inequality scholar, likes to put it, America basically invented progressive taxation.

Piketty on the U.S.: The birthplace of freedom and progressive taxation

 Krugman also argues that Biden may have the policies about bringing jobs back home while Trump had only rhetoric

What about Trump’s assertion that raising corporate taxes is a form of sinister globalism? The claim here is that reversing some of the 2017 tax cut would drive investment and jobs overseas, a claim that might have some credibility if that cut had in fact induced multinational corporations to bring investment and jobs back home. But it didn’t.

In practice, the Trump corporate tax cut amounted to a giveaway to shareholders, with no visible benefits to the broader economy. And since we’re talking globalism, it’s worth pointing out that foreigners own about 40 percent of U.S. stocks.

The last point was very interesting.