Compassion Fatigue [2054 words – talk about fatigue]
Why is the nation divided angrily, setting people who want
to protect unborn children from abortion against people who are determined to
defend refugees from barrel bombs? One puzzle piece, not a complete answer but
a piece: unquestionably, millions of Americans suffer from compassion fatigue.
We see more problems than we can solve, encounter more suffering than we can
endure. We are indeed overwhelmed. And so we prioritize, triage – we will serve
some, and then slam the doors of minds and hearts and imaginations to others.
Can we do more? Should we try to open our hearts, and learn to weep again? That
way, we fear, madness lies.
I think it’s worthwhile exploring the way out of compassion fatigue.
It’s not complicated: we cooperate. I can’t help every refugee, but UNHCR and
churches united can. I can’t help girls raped by Boko Haram, but the African
Union can. I can’t help Tibetans facing genocide, but the Dalai Lama knows who
can. I don’t need to solve every problem that the world faces as long as I have
a living and fluid connection with the problem-solvers of the world. That’s not
complicated, in theory. In practice, well …
If you have the patience for it, I’d like to race through
five approaches to a social problem. I’ve been writing about immigration for a
while, looking at patterns of welcoming strangers in the Old Testament, then
the New Testament, then the early Church, then an aberration (that I don’t understand
very well yet, but think of as the age of excommunication), and then the Social
Gospel starting with Pope Leo and affirmed most clearly in the Vatican II
document “Gaudium et Spes.” How do we – “we” here being Catholics – respond to strangers?
I’d like to spread out the five (four and an aberration?), because I think that’s
the best way to understand what we are doing now. And I am convinced that this
is the best way out of compassion fatigue (and brutality).
I’m focusing on welcoming strangers, because I’ve been
studying it. But I suspect that the Church’s approach to most (all?) social
problems develops step by step the same way her approach to hospitality has
developed.
First: Old Testament: national. The approach described by
Moses was national. It included the hands-on service of individuals, but it was
national. “Welcome strangers, because – remember! – you too once were a
stranger in a strange land.” This command applies to individuals, but what Moses
asks is that we stir up a national memory. I wasn’t a slave in Egypt, nor wert
thou. But “we” were. The nation of Israel was oppressed by the nation of Egypt,
and God punished the nation of Egypt to save the nation of Israel. And later,
when the nation of Israel abused strangers, God punished the nation of Israel
by sending Israel into exile in the nation of Babylon. One example: the Book of
Ruth. The story is about hospitality, especially the welcome (and love) that
Boaz offered Ruth. But remember her song: “Your people will be my people, and
your God will be my God.” National.
Second: New Testament: personal and individual. Jesus
affirmed the teaching of Moses unequivocally, but applied the command to
individuals, not the nation. The nation was under occupation, and asking the
nation to act properly was meaningless. So when Jesus talks about welcoming
strangers, he tells the story of the Good Samaritan, one individual who helped
one victim of one robbery. And when Jesus described the Last Judgment, he said,
“I was a stranger, and you (singular) welcomed me.” And look at today’s first reading
at Mass (on 11/10/16), from Paul’s Letter to Philemon, about freeing a slave.
Some people insist that the letter is not applicable to the social evil of
slavery, because Paul appealed to one slave-holder (Philemon) on behalf of one
slave (Onesimus); I think that’s pernicious nonsense, and that the principles
that Paul lays out (treat your brother as a brother) can be extended; but it is
certainly true that the New Testament deals with problems on an individual
basis.
Third: Patristic era: ecclesial. The early Church built
squarely and explicitly on Scripture, Old and New. However, the pattern of
response to strangers was not the same as that of Moses nor of Jesus. The
Church responded as a church. St. Jerome offers a clear example: he built a
hostel attached to the monastery in Bethlehem. The hostel served pilgrims,
obviously, but also served all visitors and guests and strangers. Jerome was
explicit and forceful about universal welcome, pointing to Virgil’s “Aeneid” to
explain.
St. Jerome wrote: “I am forced to cry out against the
inhumanity of this country. A hackneyed quotation best expresses my meaning: ‘What
savages are these who will not grant / A rest to strangers, even on their
sands! / They threaten war and drive us from their coasts.’ [Aeneid, Book I,
539-541] I take this from a Gentile poet so that anyone who disregards the
peace of Christ may at least learn its meaning from a heathen.” Thus declaimed St.
Jerome. (Excerpt from Jerome letter to the Presbyter Marcus, in Philip Schaff’s
“Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers”)
Jerome’s hostel set a pattern for the Church. It was an
institution built by the Church to serve those in need. St. Benedict adopted
Jerome’s idea, and Benedict’s Rule makes hospitality central in monastic life:
strangers are to be received as Christ. St. Ambrose affirms the requirement to
welcome strangers – in his work “The Duties of the Clergy.” St. Thomas Aquinas
later affirmed that the precepts of Jesus, including the command to welcome
strangers, are mandatory, and that a failure to obey these precepts is mortally
sinful; but Aquinas assumes that many duties, including this one, will be
delegated – in this case, to a church-run hostel attached to a monastery. So
the duty to welcome strangers can be fulfilled by supporting a monastery that
welcomes strangers in the name of the Lord and his church.
So: third: ecclesial.
It matters a great deal to see and understand this third
response to strangers. Many Christians today hold up the example of Jesus, and
insist that we today should follow that example. What Christian wants to say no
to that? But when you understand that Moses and Jesus and the Fathers all
demanded, unequivocally and forcefully, that we welcome strangers – and you
also see that they responded in a variety of ways – then you can move ahead
determined to get the job done but not tied to a single model.
Fourth: Holy Roman Empire: excommunication. I do not have a
clear way to explain this phenomenon, but there was an extended period in the
history of my beloved Church during which we focused on serving our own
members, and refused to serve others. We killed Muslims, killed Protestants,
burned heretics and witches, and cared deeply about the sharply defined boundaries
of our church. Some of what we did was clearly and simply wrong. Some of it was
complex, subject to explanation. Some of the service, though narrowly focused,
was admirable. I’m confused about what to say here, but can’t skip over it. We
developed a large body of clear thought, and that was wonderful. But we turned
in, and served our own while deliberately excluding others. During this period,
welcoming strangers contracted to sheltering the homeless. Sheltering the
homeless matters, of course; but it is a detail of the Lord’s much more
comprehensive command.
Fifth: Vatican II: global. In the past century, there has
been a revolution in the Church’s understanding of who we must serve. Pope Leo
started the revolution in 1891, with his encyclical “Rerum Novarum.” Leo was
committed to the principle of subsidiarity, the idea (roughly) that the smallest
social unit capable of handling a problem should do so, without interference
from others. (More to be said …) If a family can deal with a problem, the
village should stay out of it. If the village can handle a problem, the state
should stay out of it. If the nation can handle a problem, the world should
mind its own business. Fine. But Leo also saw clearly that there are some
problems that cannot be solved locally or even nationally. The one that pulled
him into action was the question of labor in an industrialized society. The
dehumanization of workers, treating the children of God as cogs in a machine, was
not something that could be solved by an employer and a worker over a beer. It
was an international problem, and protecting the children of God required a
global response. So the Church declared – addressing a global issue – that workers
have a right to organize and strike, if all else fails.
Leo’s teaching was explosive. There are other problems that
are global – problems that cannot be solved locally or nationally. And the
Church is not silent in the face of these problems, nor restricted solely to pious
prayers for divine intervention. The problems that creep across national
borders include: plagues that refuse to obey no trespassing signs, drought and
starvation, war, poverty, pollution – and migration. In response, the Church
serves individual people in need. But also, the Church teaches and leads, when
appropriate. Including: the Church asserts that there is a God-given right to
migrate in search of a better life.
The change from previous patterns of response is made clear
at the beginning of “Gaudium et Spes.” One of the key documents of the Second
Vatican Council was this “pastoral constitution of the Church in the modern
world.” It opens: “The joys and the
hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age, especially those
who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs
and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails
to raise an echo in their hearts.”
The problems that we make our own are the problems of all
humanity.
That’s impossible. Talk about compassion fatigue! Unless …
Unless we serve the people of God hand in hand with the
Lord, the Creator of the universe, who loves each of us with unbounded love, who
awakens in the hearts of all people of good will a deep desire to love and be
loved, who invites us all to majesty and splendor forever even if we are all a little
confused at this moment.
I can’t handle the griefs and anxieties of seven billion
people! But I know who can, and I work for him. And he is pretty determined to
coordinate the services offered by about seven billion other people.
The Church has deliberately and explicitly made her own the
griefs and anxieties of all the world. That’s silly nonsense, pure distilled
poopery, unless we are deliberately and explicitly cooperating with all people
of good will. Which we are doing – or trying to do. For a century, the Church
has supported international cooperative bodies, including the League of Nations
and then the United Nations. This is not a silly foray into matters outside the
Church’s expertise! Global cooperation to solve global problems is central to
the mission of the Church today! Like Jerome’s hostel! In obedience to the Lord’s
deamnds speaking about the Last Judgment! Central! Details of governance
shouldn’t be solved by the Chair of Peter. But whether there should be global
cooperation, organized and made concrete somehow: the Church has been speaking
clearly and forcefully about that for at least a century.
The alternative to global cooperation is compassion fatigue.
And in our day, compassion fatigue has become an epidemic of unimaginable
cruelty. Pro-lifers voted for a man who has sworn to care for the rich and let
widows and orphans face barrel bombs alone. Immigration activists (including
me) voted for a woman who has worked hard to protect the right to solve
personal problems by killing millions and millions of children. The idea that
we must choose between the two – not just on election day, but in national
policy going forward – is so bitter! Compassion fatigue is not a little itch;
it’s a global killer, aiming for billions of dead.
So I stand with Francis. Against compassion fatigue. For
unity. Serving the one true God, who came among us with love, and who is compassionate
and merciful forever.