Hell, Purgatory, Heaven

Hell:
God says, "You made a mistake. Let me tell you how to correct it."
I say, "No, I didn't. You have no right to criticize me. Go away."

Purgatory:
God says, "You made a mistake. Let me show you how to make it right."
I say, "What? Where? Are you sure? Tell me how to correct it."

Heaven:
God says, "Well done, good and faithful servant!"
I say, "Who? Me?"

The Latest Challenge...

News of the latest misfortune to hit the Catholic Church here got me pondering What It All Means. There are a bunch of stock answers that one could use, but the one I received was a bit different, particularly for me.

Certainly it is disappointing to have aspersions cast upon bishops, priests, indeed, any member of the Church, especially when they are true. It can certainly be a test of one's faith. Indeed, there are reports of people ending their participation in Church because of these events. That, in itself, is an old story.

I realized something, and I don't think it was a rationalization. If the allegations are true (which I hope they aren't), then the bishop will have let his flock down in a monumental way. But, even if this is the case, it will in no way affect our ability to worship God at Mass. This is the fact that struck me clearly during this past week.

Over the years, I had an image of priests, nuns, bishops, and the Pope as somehow better, stronger, smarter, etc. than I. This was especially true during the reign of Pope John Paul II. Look at his life! Faith, courage, intelligence, and many other virtues personified. A few years ago, I came to a heartfelt realization that we are all weak, though. As my pastor once put it, "Sure, John Paul II is great; but compared to God, he's an ant." So it is with me, and I began to give everybody else a break.

Ralph Martin said that, culturally, Catholics tend to "pass the buck" to those who are (or should be) "holier", such as priests, nuns, etc. and do not do the work of holiness that they are called to do themselves. We tend to want holiness vicariously through people like our bishops and priests. Maybe that's why people stop going to Church when they feel (and, at times, are) let down by them.

This tendency toward vicarious holiness does have a legitimate aspect, however, when it is applied to the suffering and death of Jesus. He paid the price for our sins so that we pay the price for our sins vicariously through Him.

Jesus is One Who will never let us down. "Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ," St Paul tells us. Nobody, except ourselves.

This is the aspect of the Church that the world (and a lot of us, its members) don't get: that the Church is ALL about Jesus, and somewhat about us. Not that we don't count or are worthless; indeed, Jesus entrusted His mission to the Church. But in comparison to God, we aren't all that wonderful. He is the Giver of all good gifts; we are recipients. We can offer ourselves, along with Jesus, to the Father, in worshipping Him in Spirit and truth, but none of us can ever supplant the goodness of God. Instead, we can become instruments of that Goodness. And, we can offer thanksgiving for that Goodness that we ourselves cannot manufacture or originate.

We succeed to the extent that we submit ourselves to the love of God and take that Love and give it to others. If our actions are missing this element, then they are practically meaningless.

Perhaps misfortunes like the one we're seeing now are meant to remind us about Who we can truly trust, and Who will never let us down?

Traveling to the Third World

In the conclusion to The Tears of the White Man, Pascal Bruckner makes a case for travel that I find both odd and compelling. Odd, because he seems to support the view that "home" is necessarily boring and alienating, but the "other" i.e. the so-called Third World, is interesting, challenging, and necessary for the "first world" person to really find himself.

Compelling, because I have experienced what he describes as the experience of the expatriate, even though where I live, the differences with my home country are not as pronounced than they would be if I had moved, say, to Nepal. Another compelling notion is that of going to another country and feeling a sense of repulsion. I have experienced this, as well, but thought it to be an altogether negative experience. Bruckner says that this could be a point of departure for learning about a society different from mine, as well as an opportunity to bridge a gap between two cultures, albeit in a humble way.

Therefore,

The very failure of travel is its success. No discomfort can diminish my hunger for going abroad, or bring down the fever that rages in me. The more the other reveals himself to me, the more I push toward him without reaching him. Soon, the witless desire to be the other gives way to a desire for the other insofar as he is not me. Of course, this is still an illusion, but it is the best one to be under. In his passion to promote the unity of the human race, the traveler is right: He knows that loneliness in interaction is better than isolation in mutual hatred; that imperfect communication is better than a hostile silence; that a single fruitful conversation is better than many sterile monologues; that all speech that touches another person loses its bitterness and entails manifold affirmations; that to make people give up their arrogance and forge a thousand bonds of friendship it is more useful to magnify everything by hyperbole than to demolish it with rancor; that the wanderer who is always eager to escape himself is always more in the right than one who sits at home.

Bruckner speaks of a certain type of feeling or "heart" for travel. This is not the cosmopolitan that, as Alasdair MacIntyre says, "Is from nowhere and goes nowhere." Bruckner's traveler is going toward himself and the other, almost simultaneously.

Ted Kennedy, RIP

My reaction to the Senator's passing was one of sadness at losing another famous person from my parents' generation. Politically speaking, I was not a "Kennedy" man, however.

I grew up in the midst of the near-hagiographic attitude about his brothers, and I had that attitude myself. A turning point came during my US History class in high school, when I learned that historians gave John Kennedy a C grade as president. That surprised me. Later I learned more about why they decided as they did.

I also was of the opinion that "if only Robert Kennedy had become president..." but then I acquired a disdain for the messianic expectations we had about him, and became wary of such expectations directed at any politician.

Ted was a different story. Although he received the wake of the messianic attention previously directed at his brothers, he seemed to disdain it himself. Witness Chappaquiddick, his fumbling of Roger Mudd's "question", the Robert Kennedy Smith episode.

While he didn't actively deflect the messianic expectations, he seemed to do so passively.

The Kennedy mystique lives on, as we saw earlier this year with speculation about Caroline Kennedy's intentions toward the vacant New York Senate seat.

I suspect the mystique will be more confined to memory going forward.

Frogs

Last evening I heard the frogs for the first time this year!

Capitalism Afterthought III

Christopher Hitchens has some thoughts about Marx vis a vis the current crisis. He points out Marx' distinction between finance capital and industrial capital that I was struggling to articulate in my first post on the topic.

Capitalism Afterthought II

In light of reading After Virtue, I might refine my last post by saying that I hope a virtuous strain of capitalism becomes ascendant. Its application would be business conducted in a more virtuous manner.

I don't mean this in a "do-gooder" sense, but in MacIntyre's Aristotelian sense. This means honesty, courage, integrity, generosity. It means doing things with excellence, in accord with the best practices of business, as a basis for success, rather than greed.

Capitalism Afterthought

Since my last post, I've read The Ascent of Money, by Niall Ferguson. It gives a great description of the development of the financial system. It turns out that early in the history of stock markets, there was an event called the Mississippi Scheme. It was one of the first examples of the kind of bubbles we've seen recently with mortgages and 10 years ago with the "dot com" companies. It also can be considered a failure of centralized economic planning!

I would like to add that my previous remarks about what capitalism ought to be were reflective of a capitalism based on more of a Puritan/Calvinist ethic. Capitalism can have an ethical base or an unethical base. Hopefully the unethical type has negated itself!

With regard to the bailouts and stimulus package that have been passed since then, I have no idea if they will work. Hopefully investors will buy the "troubled" assets and be able to do something good with them. I'd rather government spend less than more, and it appears that people have lost a lot of trust in government, Barack Obama's election notwithstanding. Trust in government or lack thereof says nothing about its competence, necessarily, but we know what happens when government spends more money, especially if it prints it - inflation. Everybody loses then.