This is my homily for yesterday, the 5th Sunday of Easter, Cycle C. The readings for yesterday are here.
“I give you a new commandment: love one another.”
Thinking about God’s commandments: if you’ve ever seen Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 blockbuster film, “The Ten Commandments”, you’ve got an idea of what God sounds like. Or at least, you’ve got Hollywood’s idea. In a wonderfully filmed scene, God speaks to Moses from the burning bush: “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob”. Moses famously was played by Charlton Heston, but who was the voice of God? It seems nobody was officially credited in the film with providing the voice of God. But it was later revealed that God’s voice in that scene was…Charlton Heston. So in that burning bush scene, Charlton Heston had a conversation with himself.
Hollywood has trained us to expect that God has a rich, basso male voice, but when I think of people giving me commandments, I hear my mom’s voice. My mom is a wonderful mother in many ways, but when we were growing up, she was in charge of a household of seven children. If you ever find yourself needing to run a household that large, you can’t be nice to everyone all the time. There are times when you have to be a bit of a master sergeant. And my mom, who by default is very nice, could be the sergeant when that is what the situation called for. She could bark out commands: take out the garbage. Mow the lawn. Make your bed. Put your dirty clothes in the hamper.
Now, I have something to confess: when I was a child, I wasn’t always the model of obedience. I could be recalcitrant. I didn’t like these commands from my mom to interrupt the book I was reading, or the television show I was watching, or the game I was playing, or whatever I was doing that was more fun than doing chores. So I’d bargain: “Can I do it when I finish this chapter?” “…when this TV show ends?” Many times, I’d agree to follow her command later, then go back to what I was doing before, and completely forget that I had agreed to help her out. And the chore would end up not getting done. And then she’d have to put on her sergeant’s stripes and yell at me.
I’m grown up now. My parents don’t try to command me anymore (for the most part!). But I can still be recalcitrant. I still don’t like to be told what to do. If my wife Therese was here, she’d be nodding vehemently in agreement: I’m still not great at following direct orders. I think most of us don’t like being told what to do.
Yet in today’s Gospel, Jesus tells us what to do. He gives us a direct order: Love one another. To be sure, that may not sound difficult. Our temptation may be to shrug and say, “Ok, yeah, sure, we’ll love one another. Sounds easy.” But is it easy? We might pause and ask ourselves: if loving one another comes so naturally and easily to us, why does Jesus have to command us to do it?
Here's why: because loving one another doesn’t always come easily to us. It’s not always natural for us to love one another. There are times when loving one another is hard, and we may resist it.
Do you know what comes naturally to us? Loving ourselves. That’s how we’re actually wired: to love ourselves. Self-interest, self-preservation – that’s how the human brain evolved. Every day, we need to warn ourselves not to be like Charlton Heston in the burning bush scene, obeying our own voice. We don’t want to mistake our own voice, the voice in our brain with whom we have that conversation throughout the day (at least I do; am I the only one who has a silent conversation with himself all day?) – we don’t want to mistake that voice for the voice of God. Here’s a spiritual tip: whatever God’s voice actually sounds like, it probably doesn’t sound like us. If it helps, imagine God’s voice as sounding like your mom, or your boss, or your teacher, or your master sergeant, or whomever in your life has had a duty to tell you what to do, and a right to expect you to obey it.
The human brain also is wired to be tribal. We’re programmed to love our own family, our own clan, our own people. There is nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes. Jesus has commanded us to love one another, and those are some of the others whom we must love – and it isn’t always easy to love everyone in our families, is it? I think every family has its black sheep, a sibling or aunt or uncle or cousin or niece or nephew who can be hard to love. So here is a spiritual challenge for us: try to figure out who in our extended families are particularly hard to love, and ask ourselves: how can I love even that person? Not actively dislike that person, not ignore that person, not complain to the rest of the family about that person, but actually love him or her?
Here's a bit more on the wiring of the brain. Not only are we pre-programmed to love our own families and clans and tribes: we’re also pre-programmed to distrust, and maybe even hate, people in other families and clans and tribes. People who don’t look like us. People who don’t talk like us. Immigrants. People who are rich. People who are poor. Criminals. Members of the other political party. There is no end to number of people we can distrust, fear and hate.
But Jesus has given us this commandment: love one another. Don’t distrust one another. Don’t hate one another. Don’t fear one another. Love one another.
The waters of our civic life are roiled right now over the leak of a Supreme Court document, a draft decision which suggests the Court is poised to overturn Roe v Wade, and Casey, and the whole edifice of federal case law on abortion. The topic of abortion divides us like no other topic in our civic life. Nobody is easier to hate and despise than the people on the other side of the abortion issue. But Jesus has given us this commandment: we’re not commanded to despise one another; we’re commanded to love one another. Do we think we can love someone whose views on abortion are diametrically opposed to our own? I think we can – at least, I hope we can; because Jesus has commanded us to do precisely that. Even if those others hate us – and it often feels as though they do – even then, we must follow Jesus’s commandment to love them.
How does that work? Does it mean we have to surrender our view of what is right and what is wrong? No. Jesus didn’t command us to be morally compromised. He commanded us to love one another. Maybe that means we say to persons on the other side of that issue, “My views are different than yours. We don’t even have to talk about this topic anymore now, at this moment. But whenever we do talk about it and disagree about it, I am going to love you, even if we don’t agree. That means I will listen to you – really listen to you, in good faith. I’ll do my best to understand your point of view. And I’ll continue to love you, whether we agree or not. And if we can’t agree on this issue, let’s try to find common ground on other important issues.”
Reaching out in love to the other side is something we need more of these days. There are all sorts of social and cultural and political currents in our public lives today that would discourage us from reaching out across the divide; there are many currents that would encourage us to continue hating and despising. But hating and despising isn’t what Jesus commanded us to do. We need to row against the social currents of hatred and division. We need to follow Jesus’s commandment to love one another.
Catholic homilies and the Anglican sermons I listen to on a daily basis mostly place current events in a biblical, eternal context: What does Jesus wants us to do and how will it fulfill his mission to us? I appreciate that more having read the recent Atlantic bit about evangelicals in dispute over political speech from the pulpit. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/06/evangelical-church-pastors-political-radicalization/629631/
ReplyDeleteThe article gets at a key point for me: As Christians we cannot subordinate scriptural teaching to political opinion.
I do not understand the love Jesus talks about as anything remotely lovey-dovey. But it does often yank me out of unfair resentments. It reminds me that whenever I encounter someone who seems to be judgmental, rigid, and selfish, I would do well to remember that we are all similarly blinkered.
I literally just got my weekly email from the Cathedral. There is an event coming up called Love Thy Neighbor with David Brooks, the Cathedral Dean, Dr. Caroline Meeks. It will be online. Registration is requested but no payment for “ tickets” is required. Donations are welcome however.
ReplyDeletehttp://links.nationalcathedral.mkt4852.com/servlet/MailView?ms=MjY3MjQyMDcS1&r=MzM0OTkzNDI0MjM5S0&j=MjIyMTE0ODA5MQS2&mt=1&rt=0
Feelings about abortion do create a big divide in our country but I think it’s far less than the divide that trump and trumpism has created. I don’t “ hate”:pro- life people. I don’t mind being with them. I don’t fear what they might do to the country (although I fear for the lives of women who might be forced into a back alley abortion and who may die).
The MAGA people scare me. I fear for my country. I fear for what might happen to my family under MAGA rule. I literally avoid spending any time at all with them, including members of my own family. There was a family baby shower last weekend that I skipped because I did not want to be there with a couple of my family members who would be there. I sent a gift and stayed home. I don’t hate them, but the only “love” I feel for them is the generic, somewhat impersonal love of “love thy neighbor “. I don’t wish them ill, but I do resent them because I feel that they are betraying my family, and that they are betraying our country. I fear what their political opinions are doing to our country. I don’t trust them to support the teachings in the gospel, because they support politicians whose political stances are directly opposed to the gospels. I don’t believe that I am morally obligated to be physically with these family members, to play nice at social occasions. I prefer to “love” myself and not subject myself to the stress involved, and to “love” them by absenting myself from these occasions to spare others the stress that would be evident if I were there.
A person has to do what they have to do to maintain some sort of peace of mind.
DeleteWe spent part of last weekend attending our granddaughter's 8th grade graduation. That meant we were spending time with our son's in- laws. Who are a bit "MAGA". But the only reason I know that is from FB. I have never actually discussed politics with them. And studiously avoided doing so this weekend. I know them to be sincere and good people, who raised a lovely daughter in law.
This weekend we are going out for a family get together at our hometown. I am looking forward/ dreading it. The dread part is because of four and a half hours of interstate traffic. Also because it is the first time I have been " back home" since Dad's funeral. It's going to be different. It won't be my childhood home anymore. One brother's politics is pretty awful. But I also understand some of where he is coming from as an agriculture producer. But I don't plan to discuss politics with him. If he brings it up after he has had a few beers I'll just say, "How about those Arthur Wolves?" Inside joke, and he will laugh. It's the first time since the funeral all the siblings will be together. I don't know how it will go, but they're all the "" family of origin " I have left now.
I am going to post several comments in order to fully copy a FB post my son wrote after the Buffalo mass murder. It will take 3 comment boxes.
DeletePart 1 of 3
I can’t wait till we get our children out of this blood soaked, intransigent country.
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I lay down with my son last night until he fell asleep. He’s a big kid now so I don’t get to do it that often. In truth. I didn’t do it for him. I did it for me. I watched the news of yet another racially motivated mass killing and all I wanted to do was hold him close and protect him from the horrors of this society. In my mind, I couldn’t stop thinking, “thank god he doesn’t know what happened today. Thank god he watched cartoons and played in the blow up pool with his sister.” He didn’t see the news. I don’t have to explain to him how someone could be so racist and evil that they could murder 10 people just because of the color of the skin. The color that he has in his skin and his mother’s and his sister’s. He wrapped my arm under his head like a pillow and fell asleep rather quickly. A sweet kid without a care in the world. These hard questions will come, but not tonight thank god.
I remember when he first learned about segregation. He told us that since one bathroom was for Whites and the other was for Blacks, that meant he could use both. His innocence showing through. We explained to him about segregation but here was the great part, we were able to tell him it was wrong and that America learned from it, ended segregation, passed the Civil Rights Act, and SCOTUS validated the rights of White people and Black people to marry (a right that a sitting Republican senator just said a couple months ago should not be a federal right).
If we had to explain yesterday, we wouldn’t be able to tell him that America will learn and change its ways. We wouldn’t be able to tell him that there will be rallies, filled with people of all colors, to stand up alongside our African American brothers and sisters and speak loudly that this is going to stop. We won’t be able to tell him that America will take these guns and this body armor off the streets, almost all of it legally purchased. We won’t be able to tell him that this is the last mass shooting because they keep getting worse and more frequent…and we’ve done absolutely zero about it. We won’t be able to tell him there’s a brighter day coming because we’d be lying.
When we lived in Barcelona last summer, the locals very seriously warned us about the dangers of pickpocketing. This is what they were worried about. They didn’t tell us, “ Don’t take your Black wife and mixed kids grocery shopping because some racist lunatic might shoot them because they’re Black.” In fact, they didn’t warn us about gun violence or murder at all. Do you know why? Because despite the fact that guns are legal in Spain, they’re rarely used on people. 12 people were killed by guns in 2019 in Spain, compared to near 12,000 in America. Guns are legal but heavily regulated. They haven’t rationalized gun violence as an acceptable byproduct of being free. They haven’t normalized shootings in every major city, every day of the year, with more on weekends and holidays like a BOGO deal at the store. (emphasis mine)
This is possible in this world. You can have legal guns, a safe society, strict gun laws, and democracy. It’s a proven, indisputable fact. It happens every day across this planet, just not here. And the saddest fact of all is that there's no actual real reason why. Whether it’s stupidity, arrogance, stubbornness, or a combo of all of them, I don’t know and I don’t really care. There’s stubbornness for sure. No amount of evidence or data or facts can sway any American these days it seems. We don’t learn from new evidence, we aren’t open minded to new ideas and new ways of doing things unless it’s shopping. We won’t change.
Part 2 of 3
DeleteWe won’t consider change. We won’t study ways to change because that would mean that we reject the current level of violence as unacceptable. We don’t look at free democratic nations like France, Spain, and Italy and say, “hey, if they can do it, why can’t we? We shouldn’t be on the violence level of Sudan and Colombia. We should lead the world in safety. We should be the best at keeping our children secure.” I speak to my friends with children overseas and none, absolutely none, have the fears and worries that we, as American parents with half Black children, must face. And somehow, Americans, and not just strangers but actual friends and family that claim to love me, my wife and kids, want to tell me this is okay. This is normal. It’s acceptable to worry about murder, mass shootings, police brutality because we get to live in ‘Murica, the greatest f****g country ever invented because Jesus and Lee Greenwood said so.(emphasis mine)
And so I have no faith that we will learn from this latest horrific shooting. I have no faith that this will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I’m already seeing the same excuses. “Right to bear arms.” “False flag.” “Fake news.” “They want to take all our guns and leave us defenseless.” “Thoughts and prayers.” “The murder rate used to be much worse.” To which I laugh. “Great we went from horrific to extremely terrible and we pat ourselves on the back for it.” It’s like a Ferris wheel. You start and end in the exact same spot. As parents, our number one job is to provide safety and opportunity for our children. In a country that tolerates war zone levels of gun violence and the empowerment of white supremacy, we’d be lying to ourselves if this was the place that provided the most safety and opportunities for our children. If you try to argue otherwise, you’d be lying too. To give you some perspective, more Americans will be murdered this year than have been killed so far in the Ukraine war. A literal war where the goal is explicitly to kill the enemy. And we’re supposedly, “at peace.”
I can argue about the virtues of gun control, better healthcare, and education. I can supply data and facts that make its feasibility and success completely indisputable. But here in America, none of this matters. It will make no difference. Opinions, for most Americans, are set in stone, often manipulated by lobbies, politicians seeking power and money, and TV stations playing puppet master. Trapped between the narratives of two extremes, the actual facts of violence, gun control, and democracy are completely lost. It’s the real world version of talking to a wall. And so, the moment we feasibly can, we will leave this country. A country my family helped build. A country where my family fought in every war to preserve its freedom. A country that my wife came to as an immigrant, as did pretty much all of our ancestors, it’s just a matter of when. A country that now is so self assured, so lost on its high horse, that it can’t even figure out it’s lost its way when dead bodies pile up and the blood of our children streams out of movie theaters, schools, and grocery stores.
Part 3 of 3
DeleteWe will still hold out hope for America that someday, enough will be enough. That someday, we will pull back from the abyss and start to realize that we can change. But we will be holding out this hope from someplace very far away. ... Someplace where we don’t have to worry about the police killing our son for being a tall, Black man driving a nice car that he “must’ve stolen.” Someplace where the police exercise restraint for all that they lock up, regardless of skin color. Someplace where their health and education decisions will be about what’s in their best interest and not what’s in the bank account. Sure, there's racism and ignorance in every nation. But the reality is, it won't kill you, and that's really all that matters. My kids won't go to my alma mater as I've always dreamed. We won't buy a cabin in my mom's hometown … We won't see my brothers and my parents as often. I probably won't fulfill many career dreams I have left. But you know what? It's okay. Because they'll be safe. I can’t wait to get to that someplace and I promise you, the first thing I will do is let out a huge sigh of relief and put down a huge weight from my shoulders. I love this country but it’s obvious that it doesn’t love my children, my wife, and my family. So now I sit and count down because I can’t wait till we leave this country permanently because as much as I love it, I love my wife, my kids and my family far, far, far more.
I'm quite sure that some of you will read this honest, raw emotional post of my son's and say "but, but, but". I'm posting it simply so that a few people will at least read how the racism encouraged by trumpism has impacted one family. My family. He ran on a platform to encourage fear and hate of "the other", especially those who do not have white skin. My son has a lot of first hand knowledge of how racism impacts his family, his wife's family, and dozens of their friends. Those who live in an all-white world don't get it. I don't blame you. I didn't either for most of my life. I thought the civil rights movement of the 60s, the laws that were created after that, had "solved" the problem. It was hidden, and trump knew that he could exploit it. He did. Now the GOP refuses to do anything about it. It's morphing now into promoting "replacement" conspiracy theories.
DeleteI saw it all in 2016 before the election. I sent out tons of information to my family and friends, 90% of my family is GOP. It fell on deaf ears. They had always been Republicans, and they were voting for trump. Later I learned more about their hidden racism. Charming, kind people who raised charming, kind successful children, sort of like your son's in-laws.
A few articles that express my feelings better than I can. I may not agree with every single word, but the words do express most of what I have felt since Nov 2016. Since then it's gotten worse, as siblings have expressed support for trump's treatment of the asylum seekers at the border (including a sister who employed a lovely young Mexican girl for several years as a live-in housekeeper nanny. She rejoiced at a narrow escape Maria had when a car she was in was stopped by the border patrol people north of San Diego. Everyone in the car except her was "legal". My sister knew she was "undocumented" and celebrate the narrow escape) I won't go into to details, but I've learned a whole lot about how my very devout Catholic sister and brother-in-law, pillars of their parish for 50 years, support the anti-gospel MAGA party. My brother and his wife also.
A couple of comments from an article about how fewer Dem voters are willing to spend time with trump supporters than vice versa.
It's not about political views, it's about support of Trump who liberals believe stand for racism, misogyny, xenophobia, and extreme narcissism. I don't care if someone has Republican ideology (for the most part), even I as a democrat, have a more centrist political stance and side with republicans on a few of their issues. But, in no way do I even want to associate with a Trump supporter. To me, it says too much about who they are.
I saw Trump voting as more of a revealing moment. It's kinda hard to have a meaningful or even casual conversion with a person who you know supported a man whose entire platform was on fear, division, misinformation, cheap shots, and generally being offensive to minority anything. Also, the birther movement.
The problem is that this isn't an ordinary ideological division. For many of us, Trump represents the rise of authoritarianism in America. We see his supporters as authoritarians. So it's a lot like Germany in the early thirties. Exactly how are you supposed to feel about your friend the Hitler supporter?
The findings of this study are not at all surprising. People who voted for Trump have a worldview and moral perspective on what makes a good and just society so fundamentally different from my own, as a progressive Democrat and religious Christian, that we simply have so little in common that there is no way to find common ground. It's sad indeed but a reality, nonetheless.
https://sojo.net/articles/reader-stories/i-love-you-i-m-not-feeling-love-today
https://www.scarymommy.com/how-to-cope-family-member-voting-for-trump
https://lahstalon.org/why-i-couldnt-be-friends-with-a-trump-supporter/
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/letters/fl-letter-donald-trump-supporter-anger-20161130-story.html
Because the MAGA movement is too personal for me, not an intellectual disagreement, my own feelings about close family members, siblings and their spouses, are too raw, too emotional, I stay away from family gatherings where they are going to be present. Sorry, Jim. I "love" them as best I can, hoping they will see what MAGA is doing to our country and to families like their own nephew's. But I have to 'love" them from a distance. Frankly, I doubt that I will ever see them again. They are in their 80s, and one is 91. And that's OK with me.
DeleteBTW - my son's son had his 8th birthday just a couple of weeks ago. He's a "big" kid, but he's still a kid. As sweet and innocent and loving as can be. He hasn't yet personally experienced race hatred, but it's only a matter of time.
DeleteOne of our neighbors has mixed race grandchildren. The guy is a pillar of the community, retired vet who kissed your cats when you brought them in, and had to hold back tears when he put down a dog. His daughter graduated from the local public schools and is a nurse. She and her husband moved their family back to the British Virgin Islands, husband's country of origin, after Trump's election. They could see it coming. Easier to take the hurricanes than American racism.
DeleteJean, my d-i- l is also from the Caribbean, Jamaica. I read an article a couple of years ago in the NYT by a woman from one of the island nations. She and her husband had gotten a divorce and she was planning to move back to the home country for her daughter’s sake. Her husband was staying in NYC but agreed it would be better for their daughter to move her away from the US. I have read several dozen blogs by African American expats living in Europe in order to get a feel for what kind of racism exists there. It’s there too, but as my son noted, it’s not murderous. The police are carefully selected and go through the extensive training - up to two years. Here it’s a few months at best. Traffic stops don’t result in police killing young, black male drivers. Police killings of anyone are rare. Only one blogger, a woman living in London, plans to return to the US. The blogs written by men were the most interesting to me. Although they miss family and friends in America they feel safe in Europe. More importantly to them, as with our son, they know that their sons ( in one case, his son and now a new grandson) are much safer in their adopted country than in the US. Our son and his wife are laying the groundwork to move to Spain. They hope to move in another year or so. Language skills must improve and they need to secure job opportunities in order to get residency visas. My son and his family experienced no racism in Spain last summer. They’ve made at least six trips to Spain, and decided to rent an apartment last summer for 7 weeks to experience a bit life as residents rather than tourists. They lived in a residential neighborhood, shopped at the local stores, took the kids to the local parks etc. They were treated kindly and respectfully everywhere which is not always true in the US. They were surprised that many of the older people were intrigued, and were especially interested in the children, and very friendly towards them. Mixed race families are even more rare there than here.
DeleteThe sad thing is that moving away does nothing to help the situation here. I get why people go, I don't expect people to be martyrs, and I would consider the same if I had the means and were in their shoes. But I also worry that people of color moving away from the US galvanizes the Great Replacement crowd. When well educated people of color with means are less visible to whites, it's easier to stereotype poorer ones as inferior and criminal. There is a class division that feeds the racist one. WEB DuBois wrote about it extensively early in the last century.
DeleteNice homily, Jim. The world needs more love, especially when it doesn't come easily.
ReplyDeleteThe number of homilies that I remember can be numbered on the fingers of one hand.
ReplyDeleteAmong them is the homily on this Gospel in which the local scripture scholar asked what is “new’ about this commandment.
Commandments to love our fellow human beings go back to the Old Testament. The Ten Commandments have to do mostly with our relationships to our fellow human beings.
The “newness” is denoted by the words “as I have loved you.” In John 15: 12 the same words are followed by verse 13: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.” So, the standard of love is not just that of justice as in the commandments, nor even that of charity as in Matthew 25:35 “I was hungry and you gave me food…..” Like Jesus the disciples are expected to lay down their lives for the Gospel and one another.
Developing this further I would say.
The Gospel of John presents a strong contrast between the light and the love of the community of the disciples, and the darkness and hatred of the “world.” Following Matthew, I would say that everyone is required to respond to the needs of others, their hunger, thirst, etc. even if we do not see much of God or Christ in them. They are all God’s children even if they support Trump, Putin, Hitler, etc. and cause much evil in the world.
On the other hand, we are not required to pretend they are members of the community of light and love of the disciples for whom we lay down our lives, even if they are family, neighbors, or members of our parish.
Indeed, some of the things we do personally and as a community to witness that light and love, e.g., take in the stranger, may be met with hatred by those who are not truly disciples. Somewhere (probably in the City of God), Augustine says that not all who appear to be members of that city in this world, e.g., the church, are truly members of the lasting City, while others who here do not appear to be citizens of that City, actually are.
Therefore, we should be acting on both personal and social levels. As persons we should love everyone with both justice and charity, no matter who they are. On a group level we should promote networks of those who witness the Gospel of light and love within our families, neighborhoods, parishes, civic and professional life.
Jack, I too can count mémorable homilies on one hand. Thanks for this commentary. It’s excellent food for thought.,
DeleteKatherine, this is one of the articles I linked to. It was written right after the 2016 election and expressed my feelings well. The last line is especially prophetic.
ReplyDelete"At the close of Colbert’s live show last night, he encouraged Democrats to go hug a Republican. Well, forgive me if I don’t immediately offer a hug if you voted for Trump. It’s going to take me a little time. I love you, but I’m not feeling the love today. This has nothing to do with being a sore loser over a political election. It is much deeper than that.
Trump based his entire campaign on bigotry, racism, and xenophobia. It started on Day One and was the major theme of his entire campaign. The undeniable proof of his racist appeal is the KKK and other white nationalists who support and endorse him.
And that was okay with you.
You saw him mock a man with disabilities.
And that was okay with you.
He bullied people over and over and over again during the campaign – in tweets, at rallies, even in debates.
And that was okay with you.
You heard him “suggest” that people pick up their guns and come after Hillary.
And that was okay with you.
You heard how he spoke to and about women during the campaign. You heard him vulgarly describe how he assaulted women. You know that women have accused him of assault.
And that was okay with you.
He denigrated a prisoner of war – a leader in the Republican Party.
And that was okay with you.
He said that he could commit murder and you wouldn’t care.
And that was okay with you.
How all of this (and this is my short list) is okay with you, someone I value, is incomprehensible to me.
You won’t miss my hugs because you are happy and celebrating and you got a good night’s sleep and you feel secure. There are a lot of people who really need hugs – people who are hurting, who are worried, who are afraid, people who don’t know what the future holds for them. So I’ll be hugging my friends who are despairing over this election. I’ll be hugging my Muslim friends, my immigrant friends, my gay friends, my black and brown and various shades of color friends. They come first right now.
Sure, I’ll give Trump a chance, as you have suggested. But beware of what has been unleashed."
Sorry, but I still can't hug any of the trump supporters in my family.
My brother and I have become totally estranged. Politics was the catalyst, but, honestly, our upbringing and vindictive and stubborn personalities are at the core of the fracture. My guess is that ours isn't an uncommon story. I have apologized and tried to make amends, but it takes two to get on board the Love Train, and so far, he has declined to buy a ticket. As my only sibling, I feel terrible about my part in this. Please do not be quick to write off family members. Yes, they are difficult and awful at times; yes, they come with idiot in-laws; yes, their kids are screwy; and yes, they inconveniently remember bad stuff you've blocked out. But it is surprising how much you grieve when they're out of the picture.
ReplyDeleteJean, When my father died I cried. But not because I lost someone I loved. I barely knew him, had seen him only a few times after I was ten, and during the first ten years of my life when he was home now and then he never interacted with me. No affection, also no abuse. Indifference I suppose. The grief I felt was for something I had never experienced - the love of a father. Every year I read emotional, heartfelt tributes to fathers. Not something I identify with. My husband is a wonderful father, as are my sons. I’m very proud of our sons because of that. Looking back, at some point, I realized that I truly fell in love with my husband after witnessing him interacting with his younger teen sister when we were dating, and with the young children of some of his friends. I realized that a shrink would say that I married him because I was looking for a father figure. Well, in a way, but not for myself, but for future children.
DeleteAny grief I may feel in the future if one of my trump loving sibs dies will probably be similar - I will grieve for relationships that I never actually had, grieve for the people I thought they were, but actually aren’t. Trump brought out sides of people that had been hidden before his election. It turned out that they had sides to them that I hadn’t known existed. They probably feel the same way about me. After all, I too had been a loyal Republican like them. I couldn’t stay when the GOP started morphing into the Tea Party and then the “Freedom Caucus”. Trump was the final blow. In their eyes I’m the traitor I suppose. I held my nose when I voted for Hillary, but a vote for trump to me was a vote for hate - and his hate and fear baiting campaign didn’t bother them. As the author of the article above said - they are okay with that.
I am still fairly close to one sister. She is able to do what Katherine does and be with them but not discuss politics. Of course, she doesn’t have minority grandchildren either. It doesn’t hit home for her the way it dies for me. My other brother died almost 30 years ago.
I'm don't advocate ginning up a lot of sentimental twaddle about family members. But our faith calls us to show forbearance instead of nursing grudges and scoring points, and we can suffer for not trying to do better. Not passing judgment on others. Just thought to illustrate Jim's theme.
DeleteI hope that someday your brother accepts the olive branch you’ve extended. He is your only sib and perhaps you were once close. It’s obviously important to you. You say that you’ve apologized to him. Perhaps he should also apologize to you?
DeleteI was never close to my eldest sister nor my eldest brother. There was too much of an age difference. I’m the youngest of five. My older brother who died was closest to me in age. He died when he was 47. It was a real kick in the stomach. His death was 6 months after my mother’s which also came out of the blue. A double whammy. I communicate with my older sibs by email ( family business mostly), except for the sister who is the middle child, whom I see now and then. Generally the people we seek for friendships are those who share our values. My two eldest sibs and I don’t have the same values. They aren’t people I would seek out to socialize with as friends. So I see no need to socialize with them just because they are relatives.
I understand Jim’s point. But I relate more to Jack’s observations.
Anne, I am sorry for the anguish that your son and his family are going through. If moving to Spain is what it takes for them to have peace and be safe, I hope they are able to do it.
DeleteDaniel Horan column. I’m wondering if Catholic parish pastors, priests and deacons will ever summon up the moral courage to speak honestly about racism and the gun culture in America. Doubt it - they fear riling up some members of the congregation. The only moral issue they ever discuss is abortion.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/buffalo-makes-it-clear-racism-and-gun-violence-are-christian-problem
Take this for what it's worth: I preached this in the wake of Charlottesville a few years ago.
Deletehttps://newgathering.blogspot.com/2018/08/charlottesville-anniversary.html
Anne, above, you write, "Trump brought out sides of people that had been hidden before his election. It turned out that they had sides to them that I hadn’t known existed." I couldn't agree more. In the wake of Trump's election, and the so-called 'white nationalism' that was activated on his behalf, I reflected on a few remarks I had heard from people, here and there, over the years - remarks I had dismissed as being outliers. For example, a co-worker whom I barely knew once muttered something to me in the coffee room at work - I don't remember what the topic or the context was, but she used the n-word. I think I was too shocked to say anything. But looking at those isolated incidents retrospectively, they were dots which I could have connected, had I been more alert, and had I understood more about the dark side of human nature.
Going back to my preaching shortly after the Charlottesville murder: it was one of the (very few!) times people openly applauded at the end of my preaching. At least in my suburban area, it's not much of an act of courage to speak out against racism. Suburban election results throughout the Trump era indicate that suburbanites have little or no receptivity for the politics of white nationalism. Regardless of whatever dark thoughts some of them may harbor in their hearts. The suburbs aren't monolithically white in any case, and are gradually becoming more diverse.
I honestly don't know how frequently racism is spoken out against from the pulpit. I worship at my own parish virtually every week, so all I know first-hand is what is preached there. I don't think many Catholic preachers need fear a backlash from their people for speaking out against racism. But undoubtedly it's important for the church to speak clearly and forcefully against racism, and I'm sure all of us can do a better job.
I think it was Obama's election that brought out the racism. I remember a sticker during Obama's second term run, "Dump the Bro' ". Trump merely piggybacked on what he saw he could use although he himself is a racist thug.
DeleteStanley, I agree that, in some ways, Trump is the symptom more than the disease. He was trollishly canny enough to spot it before anyone else in this contemporary time, and exploit it for political purposes.
DeleteAt the same time, he's sort of a catalyst who united, focused and magnified white nationalism. They would be less influential without him.
Gallup polls a thousand people a day. From a great data base of tens of thousands of people, early on in the Trump campaign to become the Republican candidate they determined that Trump was had high approval ratings from about a third of Americans, mainly less educated ones that actually had little experience of Blacks and Hispanics. Trump was able to use racism as a tool to exploit all their dislikes of what is going on in America.
DeleteI suspect Trumps true approval rating remains at about a third of Americans, however it has a strangle hold on the Republican party. Democrats have not done a very good job of giving Republicans good reasons to leave a Trump dominated Republican Party behind.
Jim, the racism among white Catholics may have a regional aspect. A majority of white Catholics voted for trump both times,
DeleteJack, I have also read that most trump voters are less educated, and have little experience with minorities. I suspect that is true for some of the rural, working class voters. I tend to give them a pass due to their environmental situation. I can’t give my family members a pass. The people I know personally who support trump and the GOP as it is now, with blind obeisance to trump, are educated, upper middle class professionals. Their incomes are in the six figures, some have two homes, and their primary residence (including my sister’s penthouse retirement condo) cost well over $1 million. These include my brother and his wife, my sister and her husband, and several friends. trump was not elected by a majority of Americans in 2016, a small comfort in the face of the distortions of our electoral system that made him the president. Although Biden won an even larger number of votes in 2020, more people voted for trump in 2020 than in 2016, including millions of white, upper middle class, educated professionals. Including tens of millions of “ christians”. He may have a low approval rating but it will make no difference. His approval rating was low in 2020 also. The polls have been consistently wrong for years now. I suspect some people don’t want to admit they support trump. They don’t want others, even a pollster on the phone, to know their dirty secrets.
Jim and Jack, I agree that trump and MAGA are symptoms of a cancer that was long hidden, but which is now destroying our country.
DeleteYes, I see Trump more as a symptom and lightning rod for ideas that were already out there. If he doesn't run in 2024, pundits speculate that Ron deSantis or Tucker Carlson are in the wings ready to protect "legacy Americans" from "third world immigrants" that we progressives want to "replace" them with. We are (and I think always have been) less a melting pot than a constant grease fire that sometimes flares up enough to threaten the union.
Delete"Jim, the racism among white Catholics may have a regional aspect. A majority of white Catholics voted for trump both times"
DeleteTrue. I think it's more likely to be regional than Catholic. Or at the very least, it's complicated. I've said in the past that I don't think there is such a thing as a "Catholic vote", and in very broad strokes, I think that's mostly right. But there is a sort of "rump Catholic vote" which does vote based on Catholic teaching and identity. It doesn't represent a majority of US Catholics, but I think the political pro's would tell us that these folks are concentrated in certain districts, perhaps certain states. Politically, they tend to skew conservative, and abortion is a big issue for them. And the church's social teachings tend to matter very little in their politics. These are Catholics who have marinated in the spirituality of personal holiness.
As a sort of complement: some Catholics vote Democratic *because of* the party's views on abortion. Some Catholics vote Democratic "despite" the party's views on abortion. And some Catholics vote Democratic with little or no regard for the church's views on abortion. Undoubtedly, the same sort of distinctions could be made with regard to Catholics who voted for Trump. People care about many things; parties stand for many things; the Catholic church teaches about many things.
One more. There is an interesting article in Atlantic today addressing your belief that abortion is the biggest cause of polarization in our country.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/roe-polarization-myth-abortion/629888/
Anne, that's an interesting article. Part of me is glad that maybe right-to-life isn't the primary driver for all the dysfunction. But another part is dismayed that the primary cause may be racism which was never quite dormant, that we thought we had gotten beyond.
ReplyDeleteJust a non sequitur, I had mentioned that we attended our granddaughter's 8th grade graduation last Saturday. There were 60 kids in her Catholic school class. 6 of them were Black, which is similar to Omaha's ratio of about 12%. However only abou 2-3% of Omaha's Blacks are Catholic. All of these kids had African last names, and the dark ebony look. I guessed them to be of Sudanese or South Sudanese ethnicity, since Omaha has a sizeable Sudanese community. A much larger percentage of Sudanese/South Sudanese are Catholic than the general population of American Blacks. It got me thinking that the only Blacks I know here are either first or second generation from Africa. The class as a whole was pretty diverse, with some Filipino, Spanish, and Asian names, in addition to the African ones
Overturning Roe and Pandora’s box?
ReplyDeleteSome interesting articles at Religion News
Will Catholics now begin to have a consistent ethic of life?
https://religionnews.com/2022/05/16/will-overturning-roe-finally-allow-catholics-to-pursue-a-consistent-ethic-of-life/
Some aren’t satisfied with the first step toward eliminating abortions and say to be consistent all abortions should not only be banned but that women who get them should be charged with murder.
https://religionnews.com/2022/05/19/as-roes-potential-fall-nears-abortion-abolitionists-turn-on-pro-life-elites-sbc-tom-ascol-women-murder-criminal/
Not all religions agree that a person exists from the moment of conception
https://religionnews.com/2022/05/17/with-roe-in-peril-advocates-may-argue-for-religious-right-to-an-abortion/