Thursday, November 10, 2016

Compassion Fatigue

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.