A Tertullian for our Time: Merton for Better and for Worse

  "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church"

    You’re probably familiar with the quote above, a favorite of Pope St. John Paul II.  It’s author is Tertullian (c. A.D. 160 – c. A.D. 220), one of the foremost Christian writers and apologists of his age, who also gave us such essential terms as “Trinity” (Trinitas) and “Three Persons, One Substance” (Tres Personae, Una Substantia).  Despite his enormous achievements, however, and his lasting influence, Tertullian is not considered a Father of the Church; we don’t even call him “Saint” Tertullian:  he chose, sadly, to follow his own judgment rather than that of the Apostolic Church, and fell into heresy in the latter part of his life.

 

     I first wrote this post six years ago, as a follow-up to my essay "Merton's Parable of the Trappists and Icarians".  I had been reminded of Tertullian by several things I read at that time about the Trappist monk Thomas Merton who, if he had still been with us, would have been celebrating his 100^th birthday at the time (January 31^st 2015).  I don’t mean to suggest that Merton was a figure on a par with Tertullian: the late Trappist made no lasting contribution to the development of Catholic Doctrine, and added no new words to our vocabulary, although he was quite influential in his time (and still is, to a degree).  Like Tertullian, however, he didn’t stay the course: while he never considered himself to have left the Church, his growing involvement with Zen Buddhism in his last years appeared to be carrying him outside the bounds of Christian belief and practice . . .

[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]

Merton's Parable of the Trappists and the Icarians (Spes in Domino)

Thomas Merton

 Thomas Merton is a name that can provoke a reaction from all manner of Catholics . . . all manner of reactions as well, depending on whether you invoke the Merton of the 1940's, a doctrinally orthodox convert to Catholicism who was enamored of his new life in a Trappist monastery, or the Merton of the 1960's who, although still a monk, seemed more interested in anti-Vietnam politics and Buddhist mysticism.  This article, an update of a post I first published six years ago at the time of Merton's hundredth birthday, is about an illuminating story in one of his early (i.e., orthodox) books.  I'll publish a follow-up post about Merton himself next week.

       Although vowed to silence in his everyday life in the Trappist abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, Thomas Merton was a gifted writer whose literary work was first permitted, and then encouraged by his superiors.  His first and best book is The Seven Storey Mountain, the autobiography he published in 1948.  It's a  beautifully written, compelling story of his conversion to Christ and to Catholicism.  He was not without his failings, however, some of them rather serious. Not only that, but toward the end of his life in the mid to late 1960’s he became increasingly drawn to Zen Buddhism.  It was not clear that he could still be truly considered a Catholic at the time of his unexpected death in Thailand in 1968 . . . 

[click HERE to continue reading this post on Spes in Domino]

What's Up With Chocolate and Lent?

 The last thing we need is conflicting messages, don't you think? Especially when it concerns the State of our Souls.  Imagine my dismay, then, when I came across two different signs at two different churches telling me to do opposite things to observe Lent. What's up with that?

    I first published this Throwback Thursday Blast From The Past on March 6th 2016.

To Give It Up Or Not . . .  

 

   What’s up with the chocolate?  As I was driving home from work last week I passed a church with a signboard out front that said, “Lent: Give Up Chocolate, Not Hope.”  I kept thinking about it all the way home, both because I think the folks who put up the sign were trying to make an important point, but also because they were (inadvertently, no doubt) undercutting their message at the same time (I'll explain how below).  I had decided to write about it, and took a picture of the sign on my way to an event at another church (neither was my parish church).  When I got to the second church, as I was running through my thoughts on the first sign, I saw another sign, or really a notice on a bulletin board in the hallway: “Don’t Give Up Chocolate For Lent.”  Hmmm . . . one tells me to give up chocolate, the other says the opposite. Well now, should I or shouldn't I? What's a Good Christian to do . . . ? [Click HERE to read the whole post on Spes in Domino]

Brokenness, Evil and Hope

Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved. Some . . .  in their almost too fastidious spirituality, admit divine sinlessness, which they cannot see even in their dreams. But they essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street.    G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

    The reality of Evil is one of the great universals, one of the greatest facts of human existence.  The recent mass murder at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida is just the most recent reminder that there are always people who feel the need to visit inexplicable pain and suffering on their fellow men and woman.

The Temptation of Christ, Ary Scheffer

     Naturally, we want to find a solution, a way of stopping these things, and it’s certainly possible to offer better protection, at least, to some innocent people. There will be, as there should be, discussions of what public policy measures should be taken to protect innocent lives, and it is to be hoped that such discussions can help prevent or limit similar attacks in the future (a possibility that is more likely if such discussions are conducted in a reasonable and objective way, and don’t become a vehicle for exploiting the latest tragedy to push a political agenda).

     Even if we do find a way to offer more protection to school children, however, or come up ways to shield other vulnerable people, there will always be another Nikolas Cruz, and another after that, looking to inflict unprovoked, senseless wickedness on humanity at large.  The problem goes back to original sin, as Chesterton points out in the quote at the top of this post. No public policy or law can ever fully protect us from the murderous rages of our fellow men and other manifestations of moral darkness; the Evil will be with us until the last of us returns to our Maker, as it has been with us since our first parents first heeded the sinuous whispers of the serpent in the Garden of Eden.   

     Not that this is news: our fathers in faith knew it 3,000 years ago.  In Psalm 10, for instance, we see:    

            In arrogance the wicked hotly pursue the poor;

let them be caught in the schemes which they have devised.

 For the wicked boasts of the desires of his heart,

and the man greedy for gain curses and renounces the LORD.  (Psalm 10:2-3)

Not only that, it is clear that the wicked often seem to get away with their misbehavior, and sometimes even appear to flourish:

His ways prosper at all times; thy judgments are on high, out of his sight; as for all his foes, he puffs at them.

He thinks in his heart, "I shall not be moved; throughout all generations I shall not meet adversity."  (Psalm 10:5-6)

To us fallen people in a broken world it does often appear that crime pays, and that vice is rewarded. It can leave us wondering what role a supposedly just God plays amid the carnage. This, in fact, is an argument often put forward by unbelievers (generally known as The Problem of Evil): if God is good and loving, why does he allow such horrible things to happen to good people?

     This argument makes a certain amount of sense, but only if we believe that this world is all there is. If the problem is something beyond us (such as original sin and the resulting loss of grace), it is only reasonable that the true solution lies beyond us as well, just as a God capable of creating this universe must necessarily operate outside and beyond it.  Psalm 10 looks to this God, not the strawman policeman god of the atheists’ objection:

Thou dost see [Lord]; yea, thou dost note trouble and vexation, that thou mayest take it into thy hands;

the hapless commits himself to thee; thou hast been the helper of the fatherless.

Break thou the arm of the wicked and evildoer;

seek out his wickedness till thou find none.(Psalm 10: 14-15)

     Of course, saying “it’s all in God’s hands” can sound like an evasion, an airy dismissal of brutally concrete suffering and injustice.  One of the reasons why pictures such as the photos of anguished parents and other loved ones that came out of Florida last week are so effective is that they put actual human faces on the tragedy; there are no corresponding photographs of Godly Wrath in the hereafter.  It is therefore all too easy for doubters to mock our prayers and dismiss altogether the reality of divine retribution.

Joel Auerbach/AP photo

     Sometimes, however, we can catch a glimpse of the bigger picture through the material clutter of this world.  For instance, I was especially struck by one in particular of the news pictures from the Florida high school shooting, a heart-wrenching photo which showed two anguished women embracing at the scene of the crime.  One of the women was distinguished by a large cross of ashes on her forehead.  The killing took place on Ash Wednesday, and the woman in the picture had quite clearly been to church that morning to “get her ashes” and to be reminded that she, along with the rest of creation, would someday return to dust.  The fact of our own finitude in this world and the ultimate destruction all our works is also part of the message of Psalm 10:

            The LORD is king for ever and ever;

the nations shall perish from his land.

O LORD, thou wilt hear the desire of the meek;

thou wilt strengthen their heart, thou wilt incline thy ear

to do justice to the fatherless and the oppressed,

so that man who is of the earth may strike terror no more. (Psalm 10: 16-18)

“The Nations”, that is, all that seems most solid and powerful in this world, “shall perish”, and “man who is of the earth” can strike his terror for a mere instant before he’s gone.  What’s really solid and powerful is The Lord, the Champion of the meek, the fatherless, and the oppressed, and he is “King for ever and ever”.  For that reason the ashes we wear on Ash Wednesday are a sign of Hope.  Along with the powers and princes and bullies of this world, the pain and suffering of this world will also turn to dust and be gone. 

     Even more, these Lenten ashes, palm ashes imposed in the Sign of The Cross, give us a reason for hope greater than the human author of Psalm 10 could know. These ashes remind us that the God who is above and beyond did more than just incline his ear,

but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. (Phil 2:7-8)

     The Cross points to the Infinite God who took on our limited humanity, and took all our pain and suffering on his own shoulders.  Not only does He truly accompany us in our misfortunes, He makes even the most horrendous of the injustices we suffer in this world a pathway of Grace, a path to Him. This is why we call those who suffer and die in his service martyrs, from the Greek word for "witness". They witness with their lives that God truly blesses us in our suffering.

     Again, the point is not that we shouldn’t work against particular manifestations of evil in this world.  It would have been a much better thing if the Florida shooter had been stopped, better still if he had never conceived the desire to destroy innocent life.  It’s just and appropriate for us to work to prevent such things from happening again.  The point is that we can never realistically hope to make this world a place completely free from evil: The Fall has given us a propensity to sin, and the father of sin will be with us until the end. Our true Hope lies in Heaven.

Suffering, Atheism, and The Presentation of The Lord

(An earlier version of this post was published on The Feast of the Presentation, February 2nd, 2015, on the blog Principium et Finis.)


And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, "Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed." (Luke 2:33-35)

Girolamo Romanino: The Presentation of Jesus at the Temple

     The Presentation of the Lord presents us with a paradox, or maybe a series of paradoxes, which can lead us deeper into the mystery of Christ.  On the one hand, it is our last fleeting look back at the recently concluded Christmas Season, and we experience some of the joy and wonder of that season, particularly in the prophetic utterances of Simeon. Simeon proclaims the infant Jesus “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to thy people Israel” (Luke 2:32). His final words, however, foretelling that Christ will be “a sign that is spoken against” and warning the Blessed Mother that “a sword will pierce through your own soul also” redirect us toward the quickly approaching Season of Lent and beyond to the sorrow and suffering of the Triduum.  The last thing we see in Luke’s account of the Presentation is the prophetess Anna, who pulls together the apparent contraries in Simeon’s prophecy: she “spoke of him to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38).  In the end, the glory of Christmas and the sword of Good Friday come together on Easter Sunday: Redemption comes only from the light shining through the darkness of suffering, and we catch a glimpse of the entire story in the Feast of Presentation.

     Given the above, I found it interesting that this story [here] appeared just this morning [2 Feb 2015]: Englishman Stephen Fry, an “outspoken atheist”, was asked what he would say if he found himself, contrary to his expectation, face to face with his Creator in the afterlife:

 “I’d say, ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about?’” he began.

“’How dare you? How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault,” Fry continued. “It’s not right, it’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?’ That’s what I would say.”

"Outspoken Atheist" Stephen Fry

In other words, the perennial Problem of Suffering, which invariably comes up in discussions with atheists and agnostics.  For us Christians this problem is resolved in the Mystery of the Cross, as we saw above: it’s a paradox that leads us to a higher understanding, and to a reward inestimably greater than anything we experience in this lifetime.  For the unbeliever, however, it is a contradiction which, if followed to its logical conclusion, leads to annihilation.  Most atheists believe that all reality is reducible to matter, and that this present world is all there is.  Suffering, therefore, is the worst thing that can possibly happen; hence the righteous indignation of the Steven Frys of the world:

Fry went on to question why the God of the universe would allow pain and suffering and argued that doing away with belief in God makes life “simpler, purer, cleaner, more wroth [sic] living, in my opinion.”

Doing away with belief in God, however, really only makes Fry’s problem worse: instead of leading to redemption, suffering is now simply random and pointless pain.  Not only that, but it is something we all must experience, it’s inescapable.  The only way to eliminate suffering for an unbelieving materialist like Steven Fry is to eliminate not God, but humanity.  Fry’s fellow atheist, the philosopher David Benatar [here] proposes just this solution is his book Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence. No people, no suffering: that's the best the atheist can hope for.

    Small wonder that The Presentation is included in the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, despite Simeon’s ominous (and alarming, no doubt, to Mary and Joseph) utterance.  We are reminded that, through his Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection, Christ has sanctified suffering: it is no longer a random, meaningless evil, but instead a path to Heaven.  That is, indeed, Good News.

    

Cardinal George and Christian Hope

Cardinal George  passed away on April 17th, 2015. An earlier version of the Throwback post below was published three days after death on the 20th of April 2015.

     Cardinal Francis George, one of the outstanding American churchmen of recent years, passed away last week (April 17th, 2015).  Many commentaries I have seen in the Catholic press and blogosphere have, for understandable reasons, highlighted the following quote:

I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.  His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history.

Cardinal Francis George, 1937-2015

    The first part of the quote has generated the most attention.  Some people have dismissed it as overblown or sensationalistic, but I’m not so sure.  George Washington and John Adams warned that a people not grounded in the practice of religion and morality would be unable to maintain a republic as free citizens; our current age seems determined to put that assertion to the test and, quite frankly, the preliminary results are not promising.  And while we here in the U.S. are not facing the sort of violent persecution that our Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world must endure, things have nonetheless reached a point that would have seemed unthinkable just a couple of decades ago, when anyone who suggested that American Christians might be forced to lose their jobs and businesses simply for living according to their faith would have been dismissed as a hopeless crank.

The second part, about a successor who will “pick up the shards” and “help rebuild civilization”, has received a lot less attention, but is, I think, the more important part, the point of the quote.  After all, it is always difficult to be a committed and consistent Christian, even in an age when “everyone else” supposedly is a believer as well.  There is no shortage of saints who gave their lives because their insistence on taking the faith seriously led to conflict with their Christian monarchs (think of Thomas Becket and Thomas More), or even Christian neighbors.  One doesn’t need the gift of prophecy to see our society becoming increasingly hostile, nor is there any reason to believe that the trend is changing in the near future.  It seems to me that Cardinal George is pointing beyond our current troubles, or even worse ones that may come, to Christ’s promise that the Gates of Death will not prevail against his Church (Matthew 16:18), just as she survived the fall of Rome in the first millennium and and the heavy boot of communism in the second. In each case she preserved essential elements of the society that existed before the cataclysm.  And of course the assured survival of his Church in this world is itself a sign pointing to the greatest victory of all, Christ coming again in glory at the end of time.  The assurance of that Triumph is the ground of our Hope as Christians.

     By placing today's sufferings in the context of our final destination, Cardinal George calls to mind what St. Peter said to the first generation of Christians:

Be sober, be watchful.  Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.  Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world.  And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, and strengthen you. (1 Peter 5:8-11)

I have seen a few people proposing Cardinal George as an intercessor for persecuted Christians, and (not that I'm opening a cause for his canonization) we all could use such an intercessor, both those of us in the West suffering what is now a relatively mild but still real threat of persecution, and those believers in other parts of the world suffering a persecution as brutal and diabolical as any unleashed on the Church since the time of Christ.

The Grandeur that was Rome: Palatine Hill, with Circus Maximus in foreground

I would add something else.  Cardinal George was asked at one time what he was thinking as he stood on the balcony of St. Peter’s in Rome after the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI.  According to Bishop Robert Barron, George replied:

I was gazing over toward the Circus Maximus, toward the Palatine Hill where the Roman Emperors once resided and reigned and looked down upon the persecution of Christians, and I thought, “Where are their successors? . . . But if you want to see the successor of Peter, he is right next to me, smiling and waving at the crowds.” (hat tip to Elizabeth Scalia)

   As in the quote at the top of this post,  Cardinal George made a point of situating persecution of Christians  in the context of the ultimate victory of Christ, of which the endurance of the Church in this world is really just a reminder.  Given that, should the former shepherd of Chicago ever join the ranks of canonized saints, perhaps he will also be remembered as a Patron of Christian Hope.

What's Up With Chocolate And Lent?

To Give It Up Or Not . . .  

What’s up with the chocolate?  As I was driving home from work last week I passed a church with a signboard out front that said, “Lent: Give Up Chocolate, Not Hope.”  I kept thinking about it all the way home, both because I think the folks who put up the sign were trying to make an important point, but also because they were (inadvertently, no doubt) undercutting their message at the same time.  I had decided to to write about it, and took a picture of the sign Sunday on my way to an event at a Catholic church I don’t usually attend.  When I got to the church, as I was running through my thoughts on the first sign, I saw a second sign, or really a notice on a bulletin board in the hallway: “Don’t Give Up Chocolate For Lent.”  Well now, should I or shouldn't I? What's a person to do?

Lent Is A Season Of Hope

I should mention that the first sign appeared outside a non-Catholic Christian church, but I think that the good point it was making is perfectly catholic, that is, that Lent is a Season of Hope.  I don’t mean hope in the secular sense of the word, which often refers to little more than desperate wishful thinking.  Christian Hope is the confidence that, however bad things might be in the here and now, Christ will triumph in the end.  The sacrifices and penances of Lent actually serve to reinforce that Hope, by helping us to detach from our hopeless reliance on the things of this world (pleasure, power, politics, money, and even family and friends). In fact, the best sacrifice is when we give up something good, because even the best things in this world are insufficient. Our own best efforts are insufficient without God’s help. It’s no accident that God Made Man Himself was put to death through the cooperation of officials of the greatest religion and officers the most advanced government the world had yet seen; “Unless the Lord has built the house, they labored in vain who built it” (Psalm 127:1). The small austerities of the penitential season serve, at least in part, as a reminder that we don’t really need things, but we do need Christ.

Body And Soul

That’s where I think sign number one is in danger of sending a mixed message.  To my ears, at least, it sounds almost dismissive of the idea of sacrificing something concrete for Lent, as if it’s saying, “If you insist on giving up something go ahead, but it’s not really important; all that really matters is your interior disposition”.  Again, I don’t know if that’s what’s intended or not (one can only say so much on a roadside signboard); I certainly hope not, because while the interior disposition is the more important, the external action helps to form and direct it.  We are both body and soul, and as Christians we worship God made Man, so our faith is incarnational and sacramental. Unlike angels, who are pure spirit, we need to apprehend abstract realities through physical signs (I discuss this idea at greater length in a number of other posts, most fully here). Therefore, giving up something without the proper interior disposition is pointless, but maintaining the proper disposition without reinforcement from the world of created things is, in the end, contrary to our nature (which is why Jesus gave us a visible Church and Sacraments).

Maybe I Shouldn't Give Up Chocolate . . .

Here’s where the second chocolate sign comes in.  “Don’t Give Up Chocolate This Lent” is the slogan of Catholic writer Matthew Kelly’s “Best Lent Ever” program this year. His website explains:

Lent is the perfect time to form new life-giving habits and abandon old self-destructive habits. But most of us just give up chocolate. Then, when Easter arrives, we realize we really haven't grown spiritually since the beginning of Lent.

Lent is not just about giving things up, like chocolate. Lent is about doing something—something bold to become a better husband or wife, father or mother, son or daughter, friend, neighbor, etc.

I don’t think that Kelly is actually opposed to giving up chocolate per se: in his book Becoming the Best Version of Yourself, he relates (very powerfully) how he broke his own chocolate addiction, and uses that as an example of how we can let things other than God become our master. This is, in fact, the purpose of the tradition of Lenten sacrifice. In promoting The Best Lent Ever, however, Kelly is using the giving up of chocolate to represent something else: here it represents the very different problem of going through the motions of a nominal sacrifice without really experiencing anything deeper.

What's A Person To Do?

    It’s interesting that both slogans are using apparently contradictory messages to make the same (good and true) point: that giving up chocolate (or coffee, or watching sports, or whatever) is not enough, that truly experiencing what the Season of Lent is meant to teach us requires much more.  They both also have the effect of seeming to trivialize the value of such sacrifices. To be fair, Kelly’s program offers plenty of other concrete ways of living out Lent, such as daily meditations, inspirational videos, etc.  I suspect that the slogan was chosen because it catches the eye precisely because it is so contrary to expectations.  The problem is that many more people, unfortunately, will probably see the slogan than will look into the program. Let's hope it doesn't encourage people to forego Lenten sacrifices altogether.

    As I said before, what's a person to do? Perhaps there’s no way to fit the both/and nature of a good Christian observance of Lent into a catchy slogan. Is there some pithy way we can say “Lent: Give Up Chocolate to Remind Us That Our Hope Is In Christ Alone”?  Or, “Don’t Give Up Chocolate For Lent If It Doesn’t Help You To Grow In Christ”?  However that may may, chocolate is not the issue: we can, in good conscience, either give it up or not. Whether we participate in Matthew Kelly's well-received program or follow some more traditional Lenten devotion, however, we should not neglect allowing the Word to become flesh in our own lives.

Should We Give Up At 75 Years Old? (Worth Revisiting)

Last weekend we marked the 43rd anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's notorious Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions, "an exercise of raw judicial power" (in the words of dissenting Justice Byron White) which eradicated the abortion laws of all fifty states, imposing an unlimited abortion license on the United States. The war on the sanctity of human life, however, is being conducted on more than one front. While abortion attacks life at its beginnings, there are numerous if less obvious assaults on the later stages of life as well, one of which I examine in this Worth Revisiting Post originally published in September, 2014 on the blog Principium et Finis. 

To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

The Culture of Death

There are those who say that St. John Paul II was exaggerating, or at least being unduly harsh, when he coined the term “Culture of Death” in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae.  If only that were true. The secular world simply insists on offering death as the “compassionate” response to all sorts of things: suffering at the end of life, difficulties at life’s beginning and, increasingly, trouble in between.  Today I’d like to explore one recent example of the Culture of Death at work, and a second next week.

The Architect of Obamacare

     Let us consider  Ezekiel Emmanuel, brother of President Obama’s former Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel.  Ezekiel, one of the prime architects of the ironically named Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare), published a piece in The Atlantic last fall [October 2014] called “Why I Hope To Die At 75” [here].  The wide-ranging essay explores at great length the disadvantages of old age: reduced productivity, lessened vitality, the host of physical ailments that proliferate as we age, but, interestingly, doesn’t focus on the effect of these things upon the sufferer:

Doubtless, death is a loss . . . But here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.[my italics]

It is selfish of us, you see, to force others to experience our decline: the compassionate thing is to quit while we are ahead.  Emmanuel is most emphatic that he is not advocating euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide, quite correctly pointing out that “the answer” to the desire to actively bring about one’s own death “is not ending a life but getting help. I have long argued that we should focus on giving all terminally ill people a good, compassionate death—not euthanasia or assisted suicide for a tiny minority.”

Just One Man's Opinion?

     So what is he advocating? He claims that he will refuse any “life-prolonging” treatment of any sort: “I will stop getting any regular preventive tests, screenings or interventions.  I will accept only palliative – not curative – treatments if I am suffering pain or other disability.”   After a lengthy recitation of the routine treatment he intends to forgo, Emmanuel says “I will die when whatever comes first takes me.”

     We could just dismiss this as no more than one opinionated man’s personal view, and Emmanuel encourages us to do just that:

I am not saying that those who want to live as long as possible are unethical or wrong. I am certainly not scorning or dismissing people who want to live on despite their physical and mental limitations. I’m not even trying to convince anyone I’m right. . . And I am not advocating 75 as the official statistic of a complete, good life in order to save resources, ration health care, or address public-policy issues arising from the increases in life expectancy.

But he gives the game away when he adds:

What I am trying to do is delineate my views for a good life and make my friends and others think about how they want to live as they grow older. I want them to think of an alternative to succumbing to that slow constriction of activities and aspirations imperceptibly imposed by aging. Are we to embrace the “American immortal” or my “75 and no more” view? [my italics]

There Are Opinions, And Then There Are Opinions

And what is the point of getting others to think of alternative ways to live (and die) if not to persuade them to change their behavior?  In truth, underneath the welter of medical facts and figures and the personal focus, we see two very familiar arguments: the “quality of life” argument (i.e., a “diminished” life isn’t worth living) and the “appeal to compassion” (we should spare our family and society the “burden” - including the financial burden - of our  infirmity).

Ezekiel Emmanuel

     Nonetheless, isn’t that just his opinion?  No, because when a prominent man, one with a “Dr.” in front of his name, expresses his opinion, buttressed with all sorts of impressive medical sounding data, and in very engaging and (truth be told) well-crafted prose, it has an impact.  The more often such opinions come from such sources the less unthinkable such opinions become in the wider world, until they eventually become commonplace.  We have seen this strategy employed to perfection in recent years in the campaign to redefine marriage (more on that next week). 

     There is also the fact that, despite his disclaimers, Ezekiel Emmanuel is still has a great deal of influence on public policy: in addition to his well-known public connection with Obamacare he is the director of the Clinical Bioethics Department at the National Institutes for Health.  Add it all together and, as Ben Shapiro points out in a piece on the Breitbart site [here],

                 . . . his opinion carries weight.

Enough weight that the same day Emanuel’s piece published, a 21-member Institute of Medicine panel announced that we need to revamp our end-of-life care. “The current system is geared towards doing more, more, more, and that system by definition is not necessarily consistent with what patients want, and is also more costly,” said David M. Walker, former US comptroller general and chairman of the panel. The panel also encouraged end-of-life conversations with as many elderly folks as possible, and that costs could be slashed by thinking about aging differently.

           

That's a rather curious coincidence, don't you think?  And perhaps its no coincidence, as Shapiro points out, that "Ezekiel Emmanuel was elected in 2004 to the Institute of Medicine". 

     Finally, while Emmanuel explicitly opposes euthanasia and suicide (and I don’t doubt his sincerity), the attitude towards aging that he is validating and encouraging will inevitably make those “options” more and more acceptable; and if the public thinks there’s nothing wrong with it, why shouldn’t the government facilitate it . . . or require it? I am reminded of Blessed Paul VI’s warning about birth control measures (if we change Paul's reference to "married" people to "ordinary" poeple) :

Finally, careful consideration should be given to the danger of this power passing into the hands of those public authorities who care little for the precepts of the moral law. Who will blame a government which in its attempt to resolve the problems affecting an entire country resorts to the same measures as are regarded as lawful by [ordinary] people. . . ? (Humanae Vitae, 17)

The slope is getting more slippery all the time.

11th Day of Christmas - I Heard the Bells On Christmas Day (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow & Johnny Cash)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1868

Merry Christmas!  Today is the Eleventh Day of Christmas.  Today I’d like to take a look at a particularly moving Christmas song. There's a story behind the creation of every song, and sometimes knowing the story can make the song all the more meaningful.  This is one of my favorites:

On Christmas Day, 1863, the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem called “Christmas Bells” which begins with church bells ringing out the joy of Christmas:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

and wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,

The belfries of all Christendom

Had rolled along

The unbroken song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,

The world revolved from night to day,

A voice, a chime,

A chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Henry, Charles, Ernest, and Frances Longfellow

The poet, however, was not filled with unmixed good cheer.  His wife had recently died a tragic death in a house fire, and he had just received news that his son Charles, who had left without his knowledge or consent to fight in the bitter Civil War that was embroiling the United States, had been wounded in battle.  Longfellow, himself struggling with sorrow in the midst of our most festive season,  juxtaposes the joyful ringing of bells in “The belfries of all Christendom” with the manifest lack of peace among men:

Then from each black, accursed mouth

The cannon thundered in the South,

And with the sound

The carols drowned

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent

The hearth-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn

The households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

These images of war and shattered homes seem to give the lie to the joyful promise of the Christmas Bells:

And in despair I bowed my head;

"There is no peace on earth," I said;

"For hate is strong,

And mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Christ did not come, of course, simply to bring joy: he came to free us from the power of sin.  Our Faith is grounded in Christian Hope, which is the confidence that the Power of God is greater the the power of hate, and stronger than hate's master.  Longfellow's closing stanza resolves the conflict between Christmas joy and the sin and violence of this world with a ringing assertion of Christian Hope:

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The Wrong shall fail,

The Right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."

"My Friend, The Enemy" by Mort Kunstler

Longfellow, who had very powerful incentives to turn to despair, instead created a poem that shows us that the joy of Christmas is not a denial of the brokenness of this world, but God's answer to it.

Longfellow’s poem has been put to music numerous times over the past century and a half (usually under the title, “I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day”); my favorite is Johnny Cash’s rendition.  Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a good video of Cash performing the song, so the clip below will have to do (good recording, no video).

One curious note: all the musical adaptations that I have found have left out Longfellow’s 4th and 5th stanzas, with their references to thundering cannon and forlorn households.  The version below also moves stanza 3 (“Till ringing, singing . . .”) behind Longfellow’s concluding stanza (“God is not dead . . .”), and then repeats the “God is not dead” stanza.  The effect is to de-emphasize the reasons for the speaker’s cry of despair, and give greater emphasis to the redemptive conclusion.  It seems to me that the change robs the song of some of it’s narrative coherence (why should the speaker “bow his head in despair” after hearing "peace on earth, good will to men"?), and, by replacing those concrete examples of suffering with the abstraction "hate", deprive it of much of its dramatic power.  I suppose the song-makers thought those images too heavy for a Christmas song, but in fact they are a stark reminder of why the coming of the Messiah is "Good tidings of great joy" (Luke 2:10).

For all that, the sense of Longfellow’s poem still comes through in the song: the joyful celebration of Christmas seems to be mocked by the all-too-evident evil in the world (and is there any one of us who is not, right now, directly aware of some reason for anger or sorrow?).  The conclusion reminds us that the Child lying in the wooden manger will one day hang upon a wooden cross, precisely so that he might carry us through those evils to the feet of His Father. When we learn about the real suffering that the author of those words was experiencing as he wrote them, we can experience the song, not as sentimentality or empty platitude, but as a true triumph of Christian Hope. Let the bells peal loud and deep!