Pat Buchanan and Vatican II

John Walton asked me about my response to a book by Pat Buchanan. I have not read that specific book, but I want to respond to the ideas that John sketched from the book.

1.       A picture of the Catholic Church.

I was delighted to take part in World Youth Day 2000, the last one that Pope John Paul II sponsored and attended. About 2.3 million young men and women from around the world gathered in Rome for a week of prayer and praise and teaching and meeting. It was glorious. In Rome, the age of the Church is visible and tangible; you can pick a century and go take a look at something from that time. I loved San Clemente, where there’s a church built on top of a church built on top of a temple – approx. dates reaching back 400 years, 15 centuries, and 21 centuries. The canon of the Mass begins with a Roman declaration praising God always and everywhere: “It is right and just.” When my father was at Harvard, the chaplain of the Harvard Catholic Student Association (Fr. Feeney, actually, THE Fr. Feeney, if the name means anything to you) taught that this declaration is from the cult of Mithras, the temple under San Clemente. Adherents to that cult of martial honor may have included men such as Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, Cicero. Anyway, in Rome, the unity of the Church through time – through the past 20 centuries, anyway – is visible, tangible.

The unity of the Church throughout the world was similarly visible and tangible, a living reality. During the week, celebrations of the Mass often included readings in English, French, German, Polish, Tagalog, Swahili, Chinese, etc. There were bits of Hebrew and ancient Greek, of course. And there was enough Latin to tie everything together. The music was similarly polyglot, with styles imported from everywhere on earth. This wasn’t just a clever show; the reason for all the languages was that there were people there from all over the world.

I loved it. I thought it was a foretaste of heaven. AND ALSO: I thought it was a foretaste of the new culture and new civilization that Pope John Paul II talked about so often. The Church is global, and is called to be unified globally, and is called to strive for global unity in the Church and outside the Church. This respectful mixture of cultures is a significant element of the future of the Church.

2.       Blessed Sacrament parish.

I grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland. In the 1950s, that was a white enclave. But the archbishop of Washington was Patrick O’Boyle, who was deeply committed to integration. When O’Boyle became the first archbishop of the newly independent archdiocese (no longer part of Baltimore), he set out to end segregation there – quietly, with steely determination. He thought that press attention was polarizing, and avoided it when he could. Quietly, without fanfare, he got blacks and whites eating breakfast in each other’s homes after Mass. After a couple of years of that, he re-drew parish boundaries, and declared that segregation was over in the Catholic Church in Washington. There were no confrontations; he made it work quietly.

In my parish, all the blacks who lived within the parish boundaries were welcome. All none of them. It was a white enclave, and we didn’t bus anyone in. So what did integration mean there? It was mostly an idea on the horizon, not a lived reality. Still, there were people for it, and people against it.

My father worked at Army Map Service in the 1950s. He hired the first blacks there – not janitors, but mathematicians. He gave a test (on quadratic equations, mostly), and hired the people who did best on the test. The people who did best were blacks, not because blacks had a superior math gene, but because they had been passed over by other agencies and companies for so long. A color-blind test located qualified applicants who had been passed over due to racist policies. My father thought it was important to be just (“Dignum et justum est”), and in the short run he thought that he should act as if he didn’t see color. He had not hired blacks; he had hired mathematicians. But he did see color, and he did see how the men he had hired were shunned and snubbed – and at home, he talked about their courage, and he wept.

One evening, probably in 1961 or 1962, there was a knock on the front door. A black man was collecting signatures on a fair housing petition. Father brought him, and chatted for a while. The man had come down Thornapple Street from Connecticut, knocking on doors. How many signatures? None. My father signed, but also asked if it would be okay if he went with, for the rest of the street. So they went together – and everyone they asked, signed. My father declined to go back to the houses where people had refused to sign; he thought it would be rude.

What I want to say is, in Chevy Chase, in Blessed Sacrament, in the Archdiocese of Washington, in the 1950s and 1960s, there was a change underway. The Church could lead, and people could follow. Change was possible.

The reason for explaining all this is to respond to Pat Buchanan. He grew up in O’Boyle’s Washington. He grew up in Chevy Chase (the DC side). His little brother Bucky was a classmate of mine; we were confirmed together; I took the name Isaac, and Bucky took the name Jogues. Pat’s a little older than me; he was born in 1938; Bucky and I were born in 1950. I know the house where Pat grew up, with the long curved driveway, behind St. John’s College High School, home of the Johnny-mops. I know some of the forces in his life.

3.       Vatican II and Blessed Sacrament

I was in grade school when Pope John XXIII called for an ecumenical council. Pat was in college, and was perhaps less touched by events within his childhood parish. Perhaps.

The nuns talked a lot at school about the Vatican Council. I didn’t understand much of what they said, but it was still interesting. One of my classmates, Julianna Work, was very proud of her father who was always going down to the airport to get a plane to Rome, where he was something incomprehensible – the only layman who was an active participant in the Council? He was a lay representative, and helped draft documents. I didn’t know what the laity was, and was unclear about what drafting was. Airports I understood. So I didn’t have a firm grasp on what the fuss was about. But the fuss in Rome was not something a million miles away. I met this tall and gentle man, Martin Work. And I liked him. And he was a part of the fuss in Rome.

My parish – Pat Buchanan’s family’s parish – was full of people who were wealthy and/or powerful and/or influential. And even the grade school kids were aware of Vatican II.

4.       Gaudium et Spes, JFK, and the Democrats

The Council was prolific. If you want to read the documents it issued, you have to settle down for a good long time. The best known document from the Council was “Gaudium et Spes,” with the English title “The Church in the Modern World.” It’s a thorough re-orientation of the Church, away from churchy issues toward human issues. And portions of it sound like the Democratic Party platform. It condemns abortion, but also takes a stand against nukes, the arms race, torture, inequality, injustice, sexism …

An excerpt: “whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.” (GS, 27)

John Kennedy and the Vatican Council pushed Catholicism and the Democratic Party closer and closer together. The Catholic Church did not adopt positions to please the Democrats in America, of course. But there was a confluence of ideas.

5.       Here’s my point. Buchanan resisted, at every step.

Buchanan worked for Nixon, and at some point, he went to work to explain to his boss how to maintain the strength of the Republican Party in the face of Kennedy, Johnson, and John XXIII. Last year, I tried to for a few days to find the memo (or string of memos) that Buchanan wrote, and I failed. So, if you like, you can discredit everything I say here – until a competent researcher finds the documentation. It’s not hidden. Buchanan explained, in brief, that the Catholic Church was drifting to the left, because of Vatican II. The way to fight back was to emphasize abortion, to seize the issue and make it a Republican issue. If Republicans failed to make abortion their own issue, then the Democrats would be the party of conscience, and Catholics would all drift out of the GOP.

Buchanan did not embrace Vatican II; he rejected it, and thought about how to push back against it. And he did not oppose abortion because he wanted to protect children; he opposed abortion to save the GOP from oblivion.

It baffles me when so many Catholics who oppose immigration in politics also oppose Pope Francis on religious issues. There’s no logical reason for these two phenomena to overlap. But it seems to me that there is extensive overlap. Views on immigration are not a perfect predictor of views on divorce/re-marriage/communion – not perfect, but pretty good. Views on divorce/re-marriage/communion are not a perfect predictor of views on immigration – not perfect, but pretty good. That’s not logical, not at all logical. And, to be sure, I may be wrong about it; the predictive overlap that I think I see could be a mirage. But I think it’s there.

And – to answer your question, John – I think that Pat Buchanan is a large piece of the link. When the Archdiocese of Washington embraced racial integration, Pat Buchanan did not. When Blessed Sacrament embraced integration, Pat Buchanan did not. When Vatican II embraced civil rights other leftist views, Pat Buchanan resisted. When the Church called for a global perspective, Pat Buchanan rebelled. And when the GOP was on the brink of becoming the anti-conscience party, Pat Buchanan devised a strategy to defeat the Church and save the party – not to protect children, but to save the party.

Juli Loesch and the Seamless Garment

The seamless garment idea has roots. In the mid-1980s, Juli Loesch build an organization she called Prolifers for Survival. “P.S.”: may I add a thought. She traveled across the country by bus, and built chapters in every part of the country. P.S. was small, but it was everywhere. Most of the people involved in the leadership of the organization were also involved in prolife nonviolent action (later called rescues). Juli was later the press liaison for Operation Rescue in Atlanta. I edited the P.S. newsletter, and I helped start prolife nonviolent action in 50 states plus Australia and Korea and Latin America and Europe. Harry Hand moved from New York to live with my family – and to help build two groups, P.S. and the Prolife Nonviolent Action Project. Carol Crossed gave generously to build P.S., organized conferences for it – and organized the sit-in at which Dan Berrigan was arrested at the door of an abortion clinic. Mary Rider, P.S. coordinator for years, was also active in the rescue movement.

Juli did that. Before Cardinal Bernardin spoke about the seamless garment.

While she was working on press relations during Operation Rescue in Atlanta, Juli Loesch met Don Wiley (Don the Baptist) and they got married. She’s been a creative and amazing and proud mom for decades.

Juli was scrupulous about keeping a balance, talking to pro-lifers about war half the time, and to peace activists about abortion half the time. He was a challenge and a delight and an itch in equal proportions on both sides.

The name “Prolifers for Survival” came from a peace initiative, the Mobilization for Survival. The Mobe opposed war, opposed nuclear weapons and nuclear power, and supported governmental responses to human needs. Juli spent months working to persuade the Mobe to make opposition to the violence of abortion part of their mission statement. Within the Mobe, she made many friends, and many enemies; she made allies, and stirred deep opposition; in general, she caused a ruckus. In the end, at one national meeting, the Mobe adopted a position of abortion neutrality and then at 2 AM when only the crazies were still debating and voting, adopted a pro-abortion stance.

At the other end, Eagle Forum went after Juli with great passion. They voted to give her the Benedict Arnold award, or some such. I don’t remember exactly what she got; I may have gotten the Benedict Arnold Award, and she got the Judas Award. Anyway, Phyllis Schlafly had a lot to say about Juli Loesch. Schlafly was definitely not interested in keeping the pro-life movement focused on abortion; she wanted the movement to protect women from abortion and from the Equal Rights Amendment and all that dangerous feminist stuff; and she also wanted the pro-life movement to be patriotic, by which she meant pro-bomb. Forgive my slight confusion about the Eagle Forum awards, but at least one of the awards presented (in absentia) to Juli or me or my wife (Betsy got a pleasant award) was presented by a pro-nuke general who was an officer of some kind within Eagle Forum, and also a director of the American Eugenics Society.

There’s a detail of Juli’s life that still lies across my heart as a scorching wire. P.S. had an annual budget of about 42 cents. That’s probably not quite right, but P.S. money was hard to find and easy to lose. So after a couple of years of full-time organization and poverty, Juli took a job working for the bishops in Washington, in their old office on Massachusetts Avenue. She is a brilliant thinker, a delightful speaker and writer, a capable and creative organizer. But her Boss was penniless and homeless on the road for some time, and Juli was too. She went to work for the bishops as a part-time typist, and she said thanks. She said thanks, and she meant it, and I still think of Fr. Edward Bryce with great gratitude because he did what he could for her.

And then, after all that – AFTER – one of the bishops picked up Juli’s idea and moved forward with it. He was not as careful as she had been about addressing two sides equally. But Cardinal Bernardin made the idea far more visible.

If you want to talk about the “seamless garment,” and you don’t know who Juli Loesch Wiley is, it’s probably best if you learn a little more. Please.

Opponents of the seamless garment shriek about the importance of staying focused. What a silly myth! You can built bridges to the left, or build bridges to the right, or both – but a movement can’t refrain from building bridges. Some pro-lifers build bridges to feminists, others to anti-feminists. Some build bridges to the Republican Party and the Tea Party, others (not quite so many of, but some) build bridges to Democrats. Some march with Fascists with roots in Brazil; others cooperate with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. But the idea of a movement without alliances and bridges and friends is silly. It’s juvenile science fiction.  Movements without bridges don’t move.

Annapolis rally

This is a retrospective piece, a flyer that I distributed at a rally in October 2016.

Pro-life friends, this rally is not about the Lord

Franklin Graham is visiting state capitals to argue that the Lord wants you to support an ignorant, racist, misogynist fraud for President, because the alternative is worse.

From my perspective, the most important detail in today’s very strange presentation is the claim that Trump will push back against abortion. About 1.2 million children die from surgical abortion annually in the USA, and their moms are deceived and exploited, and Hillary Clinton supports this violence.

But abortion is not on the ballot. Trump is. He wants your vote, and has made promises. But a bankruptcy is a list of broken promises! Sometimes you can’t help it; you can’t keep a promise; you have to ask creditors for patience and understanding. But six times? And now he’s rich but still doesn’t pay the people he stiffed? If he lies to people wholesale, not retail, why do you trust his promise to you?

But what does Trump offer? Let’s skip all the other issues, except to the extent that they affect abortion. Skip Russia, misogyny, racism, ignorance, the economy, the military, everything. With regard to abortion, what does he offer? Let’s just suppose he is elected, and keeps his word, and appoints three pro-life Supreme Court justices. Great! What happens?

Abortion goes back to the states, stops promptly some, is regulated in some, and stays in place in some. Net effect: any woman who wants an abortion in America can get it, but might have to drive several hours more. How many live will that save? We are not talking about saving 1.2 million annually; we’re talking about saving thousands. Maybe tens of thousands.

I’m all in favor of saving thousands. But if we get to that with Trump, what else do we get – sticking to abortion? Well, he encourages at least three significant causes of abortion.

1.       Trump gives license to abuse women. If there is a rise in abuse of women, how many more abortions will that cause? How many tens of thousands?

2.       Trump encourages eugenic attitudes. How many more abortions will that cause? How many thousands, or even tens of thousands?

3.       Trump will close borders. Immigration restrictions here support population control elsewhere. How many MILLIONS more abortions will that cause?

I do not agree that a Trump presidency will lower the number of abortions at all. I could be wrong, but it is my view that a Trump presidency would INCREASE ABORTION DRAMATICALLY. In the name of Jesus, I ask you to consider carefully! Don’t vote for a violent man who abuses women hoping that he will save lives. He won’t deliver on his promise.

John Cavanaugh-O’Keefe

www.SignoftheCrossing.org

Tradition and innovation

I am still working on a short book about hospitality and immigration in the life and teaching of the Fathers of the Church. But I have done enough that I can see where I will end up. I draw three key lessons about hospitality from the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.

First, all the major Fathers of the Church did indeed take the lessons from Abraham at Mamre and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount very seriously. They were crystal clear that there is a serious obligation to care for those in need, including strangers. They were eloquent about the blessings attached to serving the poor – both the obviously intrinsic blessings and the less obviously attached rewards for obedience. They were forceful about the punishments attached to a failure to serve those in need, including strangers.

On the other hand, the Fathers did not agree about the identity of a “stranger.” St. Jerome’s opinion was emphatic: there is no limitation to this category: person whom you meet whom you don’t know is a stranger, and strangers have a list of needs, some easily identified such as food and water and rest. Other needs are less easily specified: protection, an intent ear, welcome. At the other extreme is St. John Chrysostom, who was equally emphatic: the list of people in need – including the hungry, thirsty, naked, and strangers – is carefully and deliberately limited by Jesus to the least of the “brethren,” which means followers of Jesus.

Second, the sharp and deep disagreement amongst the Fathers was eventually left in the hands of the monks, who provided hospitality in the name of the Church; and their view was clear. St. Benedict and the monastic tradition were unequivocally universal, following the teaching of St. Jerome. At least in theory, monks offered hospitality to all who knocked on their doors. Quite certainly, in practice, there were some limitations on this hospitality, but these limitations were seen as grave failures to fulfill a solemn obligation.

Third, the Fathers carved out a new pattern of hospitality, built explicitly on the model of Abraham, intent explicitly on obedience to the demands in the Sermon on the Mount – and yet significantly different from Mosaic and Apostolic hospitality. The law of Moses addresses a social responsibility: the people of Israel must offer hospitality to other peoples, recalling how the nation of Egypt treated the nation of Israel. The teaching of Jesus emphasizes individual responsibility: when I (singular) was hungry/thirsty/naked/stranger, you (singular) provided food/water/clothing/welcome. But in the life of the Church for over a thousand years, the emphasis is on the duty of the Church, generally monks. Seeing and understanding this third pattern is fundamental to understanding the crisis in our time, for at least two reasons.

For one thing, if religious communities carry out the tasks of hospitality, and then convents and monasteries are suppressed, who assumes the duty? When monasteries are suppressed, the remnants are more likely to focus on the needs of fugitive priests than the neglected duties of the porter. Good people will step forward to act with charity – but what’s the pattern, the model, the prompt and automatic response to the needs of strangers?

But there’s another point to draw from this third pattern of service that the early Church developed. If there’s a third pattern, following the spirit of Moses and Jesus but different in approach, then there can be a fourth pattern, or fifth, or tenth. To insist that everyone must always and everywhere offer hospitality precisely the way Jesus did it – to demand a single pattern of service – is to overlook and set aside the experience of the Church for centuries. So systematic attacks on the new patterns of service set forth by the Second Vatican Council are not just criticisms of modern innovations; they are also attacks on Patristic and medieval teaching, dismissing the universal practice of the Church up to the time of the Reformation.

Even as the Vatican makes peace with Luther, a new force comes forth, insisting that we return to the purity of the Gospel without any taint of monkish aberrations. Perhaps the fight against the Social Gospel – from Leo XIII up to and through Vatican II – somehow misses the point of Tradition. Tradition carves out abundant space for innovation.

re-committed to prayer and writing

August 7, 2017

A few days ago, a national Catholic organization held its annual convention, and issued a revealing and challenging pair of resolutions. (There were a dozen resolutions, actually, but two that belong together.) The group is intelligently and honestly committed to service to the Lord and to the Church, and actually sworn (!) to serve the Pope and bishops. But in a resolution about abortion, the organization reiterated its stance: we will defend children. Faced with a resolution on another issue of grave importance in the eyes of the Church’s leadership – immigration – the organization urged prayer for our country in a time of division and tension.

Prayer. I’m in favor of prayer. But I am wary of a call for prayer when there’s a need for action as well.  Suppose you ask the Lord to do XYZ, and he responds, “Good idea! I give you the power to make it happen!” And then you ask him again to do XYZ. That may not be prayer; it may be simple laziness, or simple disobedience. It could be prayer: maybe we all have to talk to the Lord – and listen! and LISTEN! – for a little longer. So maybe it’s prayer, and maybe it’s not; who am I to judge? For sure, I had better be serious about prayer.

I have tried to pray and listen, regarding welcoming strangers. And once again, before God, I commit myself to explaining carefully what I think the Lord has said.

I went to the Lord with seven questions, in sequence.

First. Jesus said, quite firmly, welcome strangers or make your own arrangements for eternity. Okay, but when Jesus talked about welcoming strangers, what did he mean? Who was he talking about? Who’s supposed to do the work? And who’s a stranger? To get at that, I tried to understand what “stranger” meant in Israel 2,000 years ago. That is, could I figure out what the teaching was about welcoming strangers in the Old Testament?

That was fun! I wrote a couple of short books about it. See “Strangers: 21 Claims from the Old Testament.”

Second. If I understood the shockingly abundant Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible) teaching about welcoming strangers correctly, then it must also show up in the New Testament. Is it there?

That was fun too! See “The Persistent Other.”

Third. If it’s true that welcoming strangers is fundamental in the teaching of Moses the Prophets, and is central in the teaching of Jesus, then it must show up in the life and writing of the Church throughout the ages, beginning with the Fathers. Is it there?

And again: what a rich array of delights! The teaching is there, in abundance, and it has a fascinating twist that – I believe – makes it possible to explain the Social Gospel to resistant skeptics. In the Old Testament, the command to “remember that you too were once a stranger in a strange land” is addressed to the Hebrew people. The people, the nation, the society. In the New Testament, the command to welcome strangers (and feed the hungry and clothe the naked, etc) seems to be addressed to individuals. You – and individual, standing alone before the throne of God – must explain what you did. But in the life of the Church for centuries, the responsibility for welcoming strangers was delegated to the clergy – to monks when available, or to pastors. The responsibility was understood to be solemn and urgent, but what most people (the laity) did about it was to support the people who provided hospitality. (Book close to finished.)

Fourth.  If hospitality was key in the Old Testament, and the New Testament, and the life and teaching of the Church for centuries, what did it look like in American history? Another treasure trove! There’s Mary’s work at Guadalupe: she visits to be host, saying simply that she is here among us, praying with us. Her appearance shapes the Church in Latin America; will the norte-americano Catholics pay attention to the Mestiza Virgin? In the USA, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton and St. Frances Xavier Cabrini are remembered as servants of immigrants. Their male counterpart, Fr. Michael J. McGivney, also served immigrants, but his followers are a little unsure what to make of that aspect of his ministry. (Book sketched.)

Fifth. I have a lot to say about welcoming strangers, and about immigration. But, hey, who am I? What does the Church say today about welcoming strangers? The Church has taught about immigration for over a century, with clarity and eloquence, and I embrace every syllable of that teaching. But also, I think I can help “conservative” and “traditional” Catholics who are truly committed to the Lord and his Church, but are nonetheless quite suspicious of Socialists and Commies and leftists who seem to have invaded the Church. To understand the Social Gospel and Vatican II, it might help to back up to the whole body of Patristic thought on welcoming strangers. One simple point: Moses saw hospitality as a social responsibility. Jesus spoke of it as a personal responsibility. The Fathers didn’t reject Moses to embrace Jesus; they were serious about listening to both – and developed a THIRD approach, hospitality as the responsibility of the Church. If there can be a third way, after Moses and Jesus, then there can be a FOURTH. Pope Leo and all the Popes following in his footsteps up through “The Church in the Modern World” developed a new pattern – inspired by Moses, obedient to Jesus, imitating the Fathers – but focusing on GLOBAL responses of GLOBAL challenges. (Book sketched.)

Sixth. Global, schmobal: what about us right here in the USA? What are we supposed to do here in this divided and worried nation? How do we apply the teaching from the Second Vatican Council and from a list of Popes right here? Well, actually, the American bishops cooperated with the bishops of Mexico to answer that question. They say: the right to migrate is a God-given right, but the right to control a border is also a real right, even a duty. These two rights must be balanced – justly. I had an entertaining scrap of a conversation with an educated Catholic who got that far and then almost – almost! – said, “Justice! What is justice?” I was reaching for a bowl of water for him to wash his hands, but he recovered his senses and bit his tongue. Justice is real, objective, achievable – and commanding and indispensable. It may be elusive, and it is often hard to implement. But before God, that’s the task, and we can do it. (Book sketched.)

Seventh and finally: How do we start? This is a workbook, to help people get past the paralysis of analysis. The work that needs to be done is already underway; how do we build? This is a series of essays and exercises – some complete, some roughed out.

God willing, I’ll finish this thing.

I am certain of this: the opposite of xenophobia is not tolerance. Tolerance may be a step up, but it’s not enough. The opposite of xenophobia must be far more robust and pro-active than tolerance. It’s love – if we can find any meaning in that word. If “love” is too over-worked to convey a thought, then try “solidarity.” John Paul II said that the word for love in our time is “solidarity,” a deliberate decision to act for justice. He stated firmly that the route to freedom from a massive social evil is solidarity with the victims of that evil.

Should we pray? Sure! Here’s what I asked, in prayer. And I will explain what I think I heard, in prayer. Real prayer will spill over into action, in due time.

Pro-life nonviolence recalled from afar

The reading at Mass today is – or should be – sobering for pro-life activists. Who’s obnoxious?

The reading is from a book that Catholics consider part of the Bible, but Protestants don’t. It’s from Wisdom, chapter 2.

“The wicked said among themselves, thinking not aright: ‘Let us beset the just one, because he is obnoxious to us; he sets himself against our doings, reproaches us for transgressions of the law and charges us with violations of our training. He professes to have knowledge of God and styles himself a child of the LORD. To us he is the censure of our thoughts; merely to see him is a hardship for us, because his life is not like that of others, and different are his ways. He judges us debased; he holds aloof from our paths as from things impure. He calls blest the destiny of the just and boasts that God is his Father. Let us see whether his words be true; let us find out what will happen to him. For if the just one be the son of God, he will defend him and deliver him from the hand of his foes. With revilement and torture let us put him to the test that we may have proof of his gentleness and try his patience. Let us condemn him to a shameful death; for according to his own words, God will take care of him.’ These were their thoughts, but they erred; for their wickedness blinded them, and they knew not the hidden counsels of God; neither did they count on a recompense of holiness nor discern the innocent souls' reward.”

Oftentimes, the work of a local rescue squad is boring. Boring, boring. It can be like war: months of boredom, punctuated by periods of intense excitement.

It requires preparation. The job itself is pretty simple: park your butt in the way, and don’t move. Other people take over after a while, and they do the heavy lifting. And then you go to trial and jail and all that. But the actual physical task: park your butt. That’s pretty limited. So if you focus on that, you’re a jackass. Preparation: that’s where most of the time and energy goes.

A rescue – whether it’s the fire department or a team of pro-life nonviolent activists – has level after level of engagement. The physical action is exciting, briefly; and it is indispensable. But it is not the whole story.

The heart of the pro-life nonviolence is described in today’s reading. When you park your butt blocking access to an abortion clinic, many people find you obnoxious. This should not be a surprise; they have a point, and they may be right. Whatever you mean to say, they see you and hear you objecting to something they consider necessary and good, and in any case as their business, not yours. So after some thought, they come after you. And you get tested. This is predictable, necessary, and actually a very good thing – because what you want to communicate isn’t clear until you have been pounded for a while.

What we want to say is, this pregnancy thing is about a child. That child is my brother, or sister. I’m not condemning you, or even criticizing. I’m just staying with the child. I know full well that not everyone agrees that there’s a child there. But I think there is, and I have to stay with that child as well as I can. Maybe you will do what you planned to do, and at the end of the day the child will be dead, and the body will be trashed or burned or sent to a lab. But I’m staying here. So before you deport the child, you have to do something about me.

It’s legitimate to test that assertion. What happens if we arrest the fruitcake, and send him or her to jail? Will he shut up and go away? That’s a completely legitimate test. And in fact, it’s a good question, and we should answer it. But the answer, like the original act, should be physical, not verbal – or physical as well as verbal. Get arrested, and go to jail. Then it’s clear, at a minimum, that you might have meant what you said: this is my brother or sister. Or in any case, it’s clear that you meant something serious.

I am intensely grateful to the martyrs of the early Church. The idea that some obscure rabbi rose from the dead is not believable, unless we can test the proposition pretty carefully. But how to test it? No cameras, no forensic teams, no reporters and investigators. It was 2,000 years ago, 6,000 miles away, in a different culture that might use words in ways I don’t understand. What do we have? We have a number of accounts from various eye-witnesses; but I can’t cross-examine them. We also have the reactions of thousands of eye-witnesses, and their followers for several generations, who attested to the truth of their assertions even when their claims cost them their lives. To me, those deaths are convincing, offering more credibility than reporters and cameras would offer. (There’s more: the Gospels with the martyrs find an echo in my heart, or even a “voice,” that I would not interpret aright without the Gospels and martyrs, but which – with Gospels and martyrs – I find compelling.) The claim that Christians make was tested, should be tested, is tested.

And the same is true with our claim about children. It should be tested.

Nonviolence is a claim: we attest to a truth, and ask others to consider it.

+++++++

With great pain, I have to say: I think that pro-lifers were tested in the 1980s and 1990s, and failed the test. Will we go to jail to clarify an incredible claim (or an unpopular claim, anyway)? Yes, for a while. But then we move on.

Why did we move on? It’s fair for outsiders to look at what we did, and draw conclusions: they didn’t think that unborn children were worth the fuss, and they tested us to see if we really meant it; and having tested us, they conclude that we didn’t mean it either.

Their conclusion is fair. But I think it’s wrong. The rescue movement did not stop because we didn’t mean it. The problem was, we didn’t know what we were doing. We were confused about the differences between a violent struggle, or even a political debate – and a campaign of nonviolence. We reverted to the familiar, and left nonviolence behind.

What's wrong with a merit-based immigration policy?

Among the many (many!) horrors of the revised executive order on demigration is its emphasis on a merit-based system. In this context, “merit” means “money.” The opposite is “family.” Be clear: a merit-based system is a deliberate decision to treat immigrants as economic animals, sources of cash – instead of treating them as members of a family. This is indeed a horror show.

The horror has deep roots. When the USA was building a transcontinental railroad, we imported Chinese workers for the western half. They were not permitted to bring their wives; the racing railroad provided whores instead. And when the work was done, the workers who didn’t run for it were rounded up and sent home. In other words, anti-Chinese sentiment was among the earliest examples of ethnic-specific campaigns of racist exclusion in our history. And note well: this racist policy was explicitly anti-family.

The stance of the Catholic Church is radically opposed to this de-humanization of immigrants. Since Pius XII’s letter on immigration in 1951, the Church has seen the Holy Family in its flight to Egypt as the prototype and patron and protector of all refugees and migrants. The Holy FAMILY. Joseph the Worker was really, truly, emphatically not supposed to move to Egypt without his FAMILY. And so it’s not surprising that when St. John Paul II wrote about the “right to migrate” (in Familiaris Consortio), he listed it among the rights of the FAMILY.

The reason for the current renewal and strengthening of an anti-family policy is explicit: Trump and comp want money, and so they prefer wealth-makers. The choice is deliberate and idolatrous. Further, it is yet another example of the blindly unjust pattern in much American thinking about immigrants. The Church teaches that clear thought about immigration begins with recognizing the right to migrate together with the right to control borders, then balancing them. But treating people as cogs in an economic machine reveals a total lack of interest in any effort to balance competing rights with justice and mercy.

The deep horror of the proposed policy is made even more-heart-breaking by the near-solid support of America’s pro-life / pro-FAMILY organizations. Friends, in the name of God, pay attention! A merit-based policy is a swap: you’re trading in your love of family – for money. It’s despicable, and hypocritical, and idolatrous.