Books by John Cavanaugh-O’Keefe
about strategy
I started this book claiming that I have a strategy, and asking whether the
current national leaders of the pro-life movement can make the same claim.
My ideas about how to build a culture of life in this century are laid
out in two books. One is about pro-life strategy: in my view, the heart of the
work must be a campaign of nonviolence. The other is about the forces that
drive abortion – found in eugenics.
about immigration
The great collision in our time, separating Democrats and Republicans
with some bitterness and anger, involves different visions of the future, different
ideas about the next generation. There are two ways to get new citizens: birth
and immigration. And the nation is divided about how to them.
I have written several books addressed primarily to pro-lifers, about
immigration.
One of the underlying disagreements between Democrats and Republicans is
about morality and society. Republicans often tie morality tightly to questions
of personal life, not social life. Democrats often speak of social evils in
ways that Republicans don’t understand.
To bridge this gap, I think that it’s worthwhile looking carefully at
the words of Jesus Christ regarding the “works of mercy.”
Pro-Life Strategy, Pro-Choice Strategy (#48)
In 1999, I was fired by a pro-life organization, for a collection of
horrors including that I’m a liberal. I was hired by another group, but then
fired again after a few months, suspected again of liberalism. Worse: during
that year, I spent some time arguing with pro-lifers about how to respond to
the murder of Barnett Slepian, an OB/GYN in upstate New York who did abortions.
The man suspected (later convicted) of the murder was Jim Kopp. I’d been to
jail with Kopp, and he had been a part of a campaign to start pro-life
nonviolence in Europe, a campaign that I helped build. Jim fled after the
murder, and was on the run for two years. While he was a fugitive, on the FBI’s
list of most wanted fugitives, I urged pro-lifers across America and in several
other countries where he knew pro-lifers to turn him if they saw him. So I was
an accused liberal, and also a flagrant rat-fink; I lost a long list of friends
that year. My position within the pro-life movement was weaker than ever. So in
2000, I went off to teach high school English for a while.
But before I went off to teach, I wrote two books, one explaining my
view of a real pro-life strategy, the other calling for a re-evaluation of our
opponents. The first was about nonviolence; the second was about eugenics. I
re-published both of them in 2012, and they are available on Amazon or Kindle.
Emmanuel,
Solidarity: God’s Act, Our Response
Scripture commands us, “Rescue those doomed to die.” But how? The book
explains why I worked with other pro-lifers to launch a campaign of pro-life
nonviolence. The book has three parts. It begins with a common sense approach:
unborn children and women who are facing an unexpected and unwelcome pregnancy
need help, and decent people will offer that help, promptly and directly.
Second, it explains the reasons from history for a specifically nonviolent
approach, imitating Gandhi and King and Lech Walesa and Corazon Aquino. And
third, it explains how the teaching of the Catholic Church supports nonviolent
action to protect women and children.
Amazon: $11. Kindle: $3.
The Roots of
Racism and Abortion: An Exploitation of Eugenics
Eugenics – what's that and why should I care? It's the Master Race
program, the ideology of arrogance. Most people have never heard of it, and
most of the people who do know the word think it died with Hitler. But all four
parts of the movement are functioning fine, stronger than ever. It is
astounding that so few people push back against it! Eugenics brought us racism
(the academic racism version especially), coercive abortion, abusive genetic
engineering, anti-immigration laws – to mention a few. The book argues that
it’s silly to confront pieces of the eugenics movement one by one without
addressing the whole problem. Stop trying to fix details! Push back against the
whole package! But start by getting a handle on the history and theory of this
pseudo-science, the practice of this destructive ideology.
Amazon: $9. Kindle: $3.
Immigration in Scripture and Tradition (#49)
In 2012, in Maryland, pro-life activists led the fight against welcoming
immigrants. I was appalled, and started working to explain to my colleagues of
many years why that was completely crazy. I looked at the teaching about
immigration in the Old Testament, the New Testament, and Tradition as
understood by the Catholic Church.
Old Testament, especially
Exodus
When Jesus said, “Welcome strangers,” what did he mean? The command was
non-trivial; it’s one of six about which he said, do this and meet my Father or
don’t and go to hell. But what does “welcome” mean, and what’s a “stranger”?
Okay, find the meaning of two words. To be confident, you want to know
where and when the word is used, and what the cultural context is. What Jesus
meant should be clear when it’s seen within the context of the culture in which
he taught – that is, in the Old Testament. So I set out to understand what the
Old Testament says about welcoming strangers. I was shocked by what I found:
the teaching in the Old Testament is clear, forceful, and abundant. I don’t
know how I missed it, for decades!
The key texts focus on the principal moral lesson from the Exodus:
“Welcome strangers because – remember! – you too once were a stranger in a
strange land.” The Hebrew word for stranger is “ger,” and it means whatever the
Hebrews were when they were in Egypt. “Homeless” is a weak translation; it’s
more like “immigrant.”
I wrote up what I found in Strangers: 21 Claims in the Old Testament.
Amazon: $6. Kindle: $3.
New Testament, especially
Matthew 25
If I was right that there was teaching about immigration in hundreds of
texts in the Old Testament, then it had to be in the New Testament as well. Is
it?
Yes, it’s far more abundant in the New Testament. But there’s a shift
that you have to notice and understand. Moses and Jesus both talked about how
to respond to people outside our comfort zones, people who are other,
people who are them not us. Moses talked about native-born Hebrews
versus strangers; Jesus talked about neighbors versus non-neighbors. So the
ways they phrased the questions were not quite identical, but very close. Moses
said, when you encounter a stranger, recall our experience in Egypt and use
that memory to get inside the experience of the stranger, and then you will
know how to respond. Abraham’s experience adds that you should welcome
strangers because you might thereby meet God. Jesus said, when you encounter
someone in need, put yourself in that person’s situation and your imagination
will guide you to respond appropriately. And he added, when you encounter a
stranger, you encounter me.
The Lord’s identification with strangers, and his concern for strangers,
is everywhere in the New Testament, from the birth narratives right through to
the mission to the Gentiles.
I wrote up what I found in The Persistent Other. Amazon: $5.50.
Kindle: $3.
Patristic Literature and
Aquinas
If Scripture, both Old and New, contain extraordinarily rich teaching
about welcoming immigrants, is it in the teaching of the Church?
I focused on the teaching of eight people, identified as “The Great
Fathers” – four Western (Latin) and four Eastern (Greek) – plus St. Benedict
and St. Thomas Aquinas. The teaching that I thought I found in Scripture is
indeed all throughout the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church.
The Fathers can be intimidating. But if you aren’t afraid of Moses and
Jesus, why should Jerome and Basil scare you off? Knock them off their
pedestals, and listen to what these smart brothers have to say.
Jerome clawed the sky, frustrated about how to persuade Christians to
welcome refugees.
Augustine asked his listeners if they were a little jealous of
Zacchaeus, who had Jesus as his guest for dinner. Don’t be jealous, he says: go
grab a refugee, and bring the Lord to dinner!
I loved the fact that Patristic literature starts with a lot of men –
males, that is – but all the great heroes of Christian hospitality were men working
with women: Sts. Jerome and Fabiola, Sts. Basil and Macrina,
Sts. Benedict and Scholastica, etc.
I wrote up what I found in The Two Stout Monks Myth. Amazon:
$5.50. Kindle: $3.
The Great Eclipse
If there’s abundant teaching about immigration in Scripture and
Tradition, why isn’t it familiar?
I offer two ideas about this odd disappearance, this fantastic obscurancy,
this great eclipse. First, the teaching got smudged and fudged when the great
teaching tool – the “corporal works of mercy” – drifted away from its roots in
Matthew 25. Aquinas noticed the rupture and the drift, and suggested that the
teaching tool should be re-attached to the Gospel. But the drift continued, and
the idea that hospitality fundamental in Christian life – like, say, truth and
justice – got lost.
The idea was obscured, and the practice was also
undermined. During most of the history of the Church, hospitality was
understood as the responsibility (and joy) of monks and nuns and clergy, who
acted in the name of the Church (and in response to the Lord). That was fine
for centuries. But when monastic life was disrupted during the Reformation –
most obviously in England, where monasteries were suppressed – the old pattern
disappeared, and there was no alternative plan in hand.
I wrote about this in Knocking at Haven’s Door. Amazon: $6.
Kindle: $3.
The works of mercy in the Gospel (#50)
One of the strangest details in the strange history of Christianity is
what happened to the Lord’s teaching about the works of mercy. The Lord’s style
of teaching seems simple, with folksy parables, but is in fact remarkably
(divinely) rich, subject to interpretation on many different levels. What he
said taught should be understood on a literal level, and historical and
metaphorical and moral and anagogical and spiritual and … Everything he said is
interpreted on many levels, with a single exception: his words about the Last
Judgment (Mathew 25: 31-46) are often read on a literal level only. That’s the
passage about providing food and water and clothing to the least of his people.
For centuries, Catholics have learned and perhaps memorized the list of “corporal
works of mercy,” seven specific services that we might provide when we are
trying to deepen a Christian life with more prayer and fasting and almsgiving.
Six of the seven are taken from Matthew’s Gospel; the seventh is from the Book
of Tobit. We read the passage literally, and St. James pounds on the importance
of concrete (literal) services: good so far. We usually read the passage
literally only. This is bizarre, and crippling.
When you read the passage on many levels, the same way we read the rest
of Scripture, it turns out to be as complex and as fascinating as the rest of
the words of Jesus. The passage is not a handful of random examples of service;
it’s a structured list, with three pairs, each pair alternating between a call
to imitate the Lord and a call to give to the Lord. All six precepts should be
understood on many levels; but the first pair is primarily about the needs of
the body, and the second pair is primarily about the needs of the soul, and the
third is primarily about the needs of the spirit. The traditional list of
“corporal works” scrambles the order, so you can’t see the orderly progression.
Studying the works of mercy as presented in the Gospel makes the social
nature of all these acts clear. It is possible to give alms privately, but it
is not possible to welcome someone into a community without a community. The
Lord’s command to “welcome strangers” is actually more like “sweep outsiders
into your gathering.”
When you read the list of merciful acts as Matthew presents it, it seems
to me that the sixth work of mercy provides a foundation for the Social Gospel.
Instead of seeing people who do wrong as sinners – as spiritual criminals – the
Lord seems to see us as people who are trapped. So he’s not focusing on how to
punish us justly; he’s focused on how to set us free. He’s not the judge or
jailer; he’s the savior. This approach makes it much easier to understand the
importance of sins of omission – the things we fail to do that would have been
good. This approach does not focus on who wronged whom, but rather on how we
will help each other out of the mess. It’s not focused on past evils, but on
future goods.
Restoring the Works of Mercy is available from Amazon
($8.50) or Kindle ($3).
