Health care and religious liberty

A letter to the Reverend John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., President, University of Notre Dame

Dear Father Jenkins:

I have read your response to Notre Dame alumni who have written a well-reasoned critique of the University’s decision to join a lawsuit of Catholic bishops challenging the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). You are convinced that the bishops are rightly concerned about religious liberty. In addition, you believe that if the PPACA goes unchallenged there is no limit to what government can require of religious institutions.

I find your defense unpersuasive.

Forget the Church, Follow Jesus

Dear Andrew Sullivan:

I have been traveling, and for that reason, I missed your Newsweek cover story. I’d like to comment on it, even though I realize that in the one-day news cycle, the story is now dead and what I have to say will be of little interest to your subscribers.

As I understand it, your effort is to separate the Church and Jesus, and your tool is that razor blade used by Thomas Jefferson. Cut from the Gospels whatever strikes us as the fanciful illusions of the Church, and we will find Jesus, pure and simple. Follow him, not the Church.

The problem with this strategy, of course, is that the Church that has given us the healer, the man of miracles, the human with special access to God (“Abba, Father”), and  the Risen One is the same Church that has handed down The Teacher, that most compelling ethical guide (as you identify him).

So, back we go on our search for the real Jesus. We have to throw out the high Christology that appears in John’s Gospel around the year 90 (the pre-existent Jesus who enters the world as the Word and appropriates to himself the sacred Name, I AM). Back another decade earlier, to Luke, from whose Acts we must pare away the Emmaus story. Back still another decade earlier to Matthew, from whose Gospel we must strip away the tales of visions of the Risen One. Finally we come to the mid first century and the Gospel of Mark, a spare collection of the sayings of The Teacher and a gospel without the resurrection finale.

Even in Mark, however, we run into problems. The Church has preserved its recollection of Jesus as the wonderworker and the eschatological prophet who is announcing the end of the world. That won’t do for us, so what is our option now? Try as we might, we can’t seem to slough off the Church that has given us the Scriptures and their composite view of Jesus. All that is left to us is that razor blade of Jefferson and the strategy of surgically removing whatever in the Gospels doesn’t suit the fancy of our own age.

I suggest an alternative: recognize in the Church’s handing down of Jesus a process of development in its understanding of who he is. Just as the self-understanding of Jesus himself progressed from preacher of the end-times to the suffering servant of God, so the Church, by asking through the centuries who this man is, has come to believe in his resurrection, his pre-existence with the Father, his one-ness with that Father, his Lordship over creation. In our own times, the Church has continued to enrich the picture of Jesus, concentrating less on his divinity and grappling, instead, with the implication of his humanity.

You might say the successive images of Jesus through history (for immediate examples, the late Empire Pantocrator, the medieval Judge of the living and dead, the pale Galilean of the nineteenth century, the revolutionary of the twentieth century, who, as you put it so eloquently, pursued the path of non-violent love, love even of enemies) prove that Jefferson was right: we can and do make anything we want of Jesus. I answer, however, that none of these images involves cutting away and forgetting any part of the whole picture that the Church has handed down. None of them atomize Jesus until he becomes someone for us alone, a personal Lord or Teacher or whatever.

Rather than separate Church and Jesus, it would probably be better to simply acknowledge the weakness and foibles and evil that mark the Church that has been charged with conveying the reality of Jesus. Yes, the Catholic church has been corrupted beyond recognition as a bearer of its Lord. But this will pass. In fact, we might say that the dreams of the Vatican II reformers of fifty years ago were premature. The Church that can hand on Jesus still had yet to die. Maybe that is what we have been witnessing in excruciating slow-motion during these last decades—the death of the papal Church. We can live in hope for an emerging Church of disciples who hold on to and try in mind and life to plumb the mystery of Jesus.

Thank you, Andrew, for your article. Despite my reservations about your approach, I believe you have a done a great srvice in raising this issue for the general public. I am especially grateful for the way in which you have identified not just the Catholic Church, but also rightwing religionists who are only too anxious to use their power to obscure who Jesus could be for all of us.

Why I'm an Optimist

Is the glass half-full or half-empty? We’ve all heard that it depends on whether you are an optimist or a pessimist.

But what if the glass is filled just short or just above the half-way mark? In a series of water glass tests, it was found that optimists more frequently over-estimate than pessimists under-estimate the contents. Published research shows that pessimists are more frequently right; they are in better contact with reality.

Critical Thinking

     There is no exception: every independent and peer-reviewed study on changing climate conditions concludes that global warming is for real and humans are responsible for it. Still, Republicans routinely declare that the issue remains debatable and in need of more research.

Statistical evidence indicates that the distribution of condoms is the most successful strategy for preventing the transmission of AIDS in Africa. The recent Bush administration, however, persisted in touting and funding programs encouraging abstinence.

An environmental win all around

Bioswales are big in Portland. (bioswales) Some are built by the city into sidewalks and parking strips, others by businesses in their surface parking lots as part of the permitting process. All of them together beautify the city, save on sewer treatment plants, and purify rainwater before it runs into the rivers.

Will science understand all things?

The relationship of philosophy/religion and modern science continues to be a vexed one.

After recently running into a scientist friend and visiting briefly about that topic, we exchanged letters.

Reagan, the Great Communicator

     Most of our problems go back to Ronald Reagan. I hate to disagree with President Obama, but, then, I believe, he praises the Great Communicator to set the tone of civility and the bipartisanship so lacking in his political opposition.

     Once the Great Communicator had persuaded us that we need only take care of ourselves, then it became clear that we don’t need to support schools. Now we spend more money on locking up prisoners than educating children.

     Once the Great Communicator had convinced us that government is the problem, not the solution, we began to see that we don’t need to regulate banks and corporations. The result: the worst economy since the Great Depression.

     Once the Great Communicator had convinced us that the key to paradise is to get the government off our backs, we decided that there couldn’t be anything to fear about corporations not paying taxes or shipping jobs overseas. Now we have the highest unemployment since the Great Depression.

     Once the Great Communicator had opened our eyes to the “welfare queens” cruising our streets in their Cadillacs, we were sure at last that we don’t need a social safety net. And now the mentally ill roam those same streets and seek refuge from the cold on our buses and in our libraries.

     So, I’ll say it again: most of our problems go back to Ronald Reagan.