The James Challenge

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you realize that we will be judged more strictly, for we all fall short in many respects. If anyone does not fall short in speech, he is a perfect man, able to bridle his whole body also.

James 3:1-2 

We're used to reading scripture in dribs and drabs, a verse here and a verse there, but I challenge you this weekend to read the entire book of James. Five chapters. It can be done in less than twenty minutes. And because James speaks sternly of people setting themselves up as teachers, I won't highlight any verses, because what is edifies you will certainly be different from what edifies me. (And I'd end up including the whole book, hence this challenge.)

I'm using James as my examination of conscience for confession today. 

Read James.

Rocky Mountain High

I remember back in the summer before I went to college, my family took one last vacation all together to Mackinaw Island. I was 18, and my youngest brother was 3. Now, as my 18yo daughter prepares to go to school in August, and my youngest turns 3 in a week and a half, our family is doing the same. We're taking our longest road trip ever, to Yellowstone National Park. Nine people, twelve seats, eleven days.

We are determined -- DETERMINED -- to leave the house by 6am on Sunday, which is why this week has been a crescendo of preparation. At the moment, the sounds of the van being vacuumed out are drifting in through the window (as well as the kids shouting at each other while they vacuum the van). Someone has to be on baby duty to make sure that the young man doesn't slip out the door at every opportunity and stand by the tree out front -- the same place that his brother, at the same age and level of impulse control, was when someone called CPS on us. Remember that? Our washing machine was just replaced yesterday, so I'm working through the laundry mountain before we go to the Rocky Mountains. Sneakers have been ordered. Goodwill has been visited. Presents have been salted away for the children turning 10 and 3 over the course of the trip.

Our first big stop will be DeSmet, SD, to visit the home of Laura Ingalls Wilder. On our drive, we'll be listening to On The Shores of Silver Lake, and Little Town on the Prairie. Fortunately, we're not likely to be struck by a freak blizzard in the last days of June, so we'll just have to imagine being lost on the snow-covered plains.

We'll also be driving through Badlands National Park, and passing near where the Battle of Little Bighorn was fought. This is especially timely, because Joseph Medicine Crow, the last Plains Indian War Chief, and the last living person to have heard an oral history of the battle recounted by a participant (his uncle was a scout for Custer), just died at age 102. We may also stop at Pompey's Pillar, a sandstone formation covered with Native American petroglyphs, as well as the carved signature of William Clark, dated July 25, 1806 -- the only physical evidence along the route of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Clark named the feature after Pompy, the son of Sacagawea.

Yellowstone is important, of course, but one of the absolute highlights of our trip is the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, MT, where resides the skeleton of Big Al, the allosaurus, subject of a Walking With Dinosaurs special narrated by Kenneth Branagh. (My 6yo can recite it in Sir Ken's accent.) We've been fans of Big Al for years, so this is in the nature of a pilgrimage. I expect a tear or two to be shed in his presence. 

From there we head to our house by the north entrance of the park. I dunno, maybe you like roughing it on vacation, but we are not roughing it. We are renting a charming old house that has been tastefully restored, and it has ambience and nice bathrooms and a balcony over the kitchen from which you can lower a basket so that someone can send you up sandwiches. We had debated whether, if the north entrance of the park were still closed in July due to COVID-19, we should just drive the whole way and stay in our lovely house anyway. But now the north entrance is opened and we get the best of both worlds.

Then, Thursday and Friday in Yellowstone! It's not enough time, of course, but it's more than we've ever had there. I'm not set on seeing Old Faithful erupt. I want to walk some trails and see some gorgeous scenery, and see a bison from far away, and a bear not at all. It's going to be chilly at nights, so we're digging through the coat closets now.

Saturday we drive 2/3 of the way up Idaho to visit a college friend on her farm. Sunday is a birthday, so it will be farm fun and celebration, and then Monday we're trekking back across America. We'll wave at you all as we go past.

Thoughts on the Zeitgeist, and Linkage

First of all, Anonymous Goose would be a great name for a band. This is related to nothing except that it's always a good time to propose band names, a lá Dave Barry.

**

As a teenager, I lived in East Westwood, in Cincinnati. We lived for for a few years on Baltimore Ave., between the Montana exit and McHenry Ave., near the Fay Apartments project. The white people in the neighborhood were generally older folk who'd lived there for 50, 60 years, and there were diminishingly few of them, mostly on the side streets with back yards that fell precipitously down ravines. Cincinnati is a city of Appalachian hills.

And then there was us, crazy religious whiteys in a community house. I walked places and distances, in safety, that I would not let my own children go. Is that prejudice or prudence? I don't know. None of the people I knew from that time, black or white, still live over there. The house on Baltimore was demolished years ago for being unsalable. No one in higher places, black, white, whoever, cared much about that neighborhood.

Then we lived on McHenry, again religious whiteys, again in safety. Again, side streets of hill and ravine. I drove a monstrous blue van, in which I should have been pulled over numerous times and wasn't, but then, most people in the neighborhood drove piece-of-shit cars. I used to take friends, black and white, places because I was the one who could drive and had access to a vehicle large enough to transport groups. I drove fearlessly and with impunity in situations which I would be, again, hesitant to send my own children into. Prejudice? Or prudence? I have no doubt that both the color of my skin and a general "girl next door" quality gave me a social immunity that other people did not enjoy. I also have no doubt that the same qualities, combined with a religious element, gained me a reputation as an oblivious sucker, easily prevailed upon to help people out. Useful White Friend.

It was not until I was a sophomore in college that my dad bought a house in Westwood proper, not the toniest address in Cincinnati, but not necessarily a place that people got out of if they could. 

Everyone has their own stories, and mine are out of the norm in many ways (as I discovered when I confessed that I'd never had a #metoo moment), but the only time I've ever heard an explicitly racist remark was not from anyone in my declassé religious bubble in Cincinnati, but from a senior member of my comfortable, upper-middle-class family in the Deep South. 

I do not make any generalizations about the experiences of my friends, relations, fellow Cincinnatians, or members of entire ethnic groups. I can only speak of my own experience.

***

Amy Welborn has a fine post on American Catholics and Race: An Off-Center Framework.

None of us can avoid centering ourselves in a public conversation, but nonetheless it’s a little bemusing to watch white Catholics, in the name of anti-racism, presenting a project as an attempt to “welcome other voices to the table.” The lack of self-awareness of the paternalism – or, shall we say, maternalism, since most saying things like that are female – is startling.

It’s rather like those times – many – when Catholics pray words like, “May we reach out to the poor” – a “prayer” which expresses quite clearly our sense of the “poor” as Other and not included in the “we.” Not really the Body of Christ.

In some ways that reflects our natural tendency to be self-referential and tribal, but the point of this post is to point out a few ways in which the embodied structures of Catholicism reinforce these tendencies, as well as racial division, especially in the United States. 

I think it’s important to understand, first – and this is something I’ll come back to in the second blog post – that the American Catholic experience on race is unique, and that’s because the United States is unique. Yes, there are other multi-cultural societies, but none quite as multi-cultural as we are here, along with our unique – especially in the 18th century – approach to religion and civic life.

Moreover, do know that throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, the American Catholic hierarchy’s actions – and inaction –  on racial issues were judged mostly negatively by others around the world, particularly Rome. In other words, most American bishops and religious order leadership during this period reinforced, rather than resisted racism. And that was noted.

This is startling to some because of a particular narrative, quite prevalent in the American Church since the 1980’s. It’s a triumphalist, self-satisfied narrative, the outgrowth of apologetics enthusiasm,  that has glossed over institutional sins  and presented a story of American Catholicism in which the main point about race has been something like: “Well, Catholicism didn’t split during the Civil War like the Protestants. And, er, Pierre Toussaint, Katharine Drexel and Augustine Tolton, you know. And that one cool Black parish in my city.”

As I said, I’ll dig into that a bit more later. But for now, let me suggest a few points to consider that might help understand American Catholicism and race and perhaps help expand the conversation beyond Maternalistic White Saviorhood.

And some history of Black Catholicism in the United States:

The casual reader of American Catholic history might well have come to believe that all was mostly well in the history of Black Catholics in the United States. For the narrative that many are familiar with is one that places institutional Catholicism in favorable contrast to mainline Protestantism, with the latter’s role in upholding discriminatory civic policies and traditions. Somehow, in our mind, the work of St. Katharine Drexel and the Josephites and the image of Catholic religious marching in Selma tilts the balance in our favor against segregated and separated Protestant bodies.

Historical reality is, of course, much more complicated. We can celebrate the existence of all-Black religious orders of sisters, but why did they have to exist? Because white religious orders wouldn’t accept Black women as members and white religious orders didn’t want to serve Black populations. We can celebrate, for example, predominantly Black parishes and schools in New Orleans, but why did they come to exist?  Because the institutional Church acceded to Jim Crow laws, both in letter and spirit.

In short: when we look at the history of the Catholic Church and African-Americans in the United States, there is no room for institutional or majoritarian self-congratulation. It’s a history marked by fearful submission to civic, cultural and social prejudice, which teaches us, among other things, that there is nothing new under the sun.

And, like all history, it’s quite interesting, and for those with the time and motivation, provides endless fascinating rabbit trails. 

***

 

Brandon is being level-headed, as usual.

Public Monuments

People tear down public monuments for the same reasons they build them, and while moral principle sometimes makes a showing somewhere, it is never the heart of the act. People build or tear down public monuments

(1) because doing so curries favor with those who are seen as powerful; or

(2) in order to express, in visible form, authority, superiority, or dominance over prior generations or a current population.

That's it. We don't randomly go about monument-building or monument-breaking; we have a point, and the point is never a purely moral one but is instead primarily a point about who controls destiny. 

Protests and Specific Reforms

Protests are not magic; they do not accomplish anything except as part of the proposal of a practical plan for solving what is being protested. This is why most effective protests are protests for or against very specific laws or policies; it just goes with the nature of such a protest that everybody knows what could be done to solve the problem being protested, and the protest raises the incentive for actually using that solution. But it's clear, if you look around, that there is no general association of the protests with specific solutions. And protests not generally associated with specific solutions don't get much done in the long run, because they aren't in fact incentivizing anything but looking like you are responding to the problem -- which is a dangerous thing to incentivize in politics.

Truth, Lies, and City Budgets

The flavor of the week is "defund the police" -- the idea that the role of police (and their funding) could be reduced or eliminated and that money could be used on social services that would prevent crime instead. As a result, a lot of people who've probably never looked at a city budget before are suddenly trying to share information about how much money police departments have, and from some of the things that I'm seeing shared many people do not yet have good instincts for what is likely to be true. One graphic that I've seen shared repeatedly in different places purports to show the percentage of city funding in Columbus, OH (my nearest big city, though I'm not in Columbus itself) which goes to police. And as the OSU PhD candidate in Political Science who appears to be the source of the graphic quipped, it appears to show that "Cities are just police departments with some underfunded social services on the side"

The problem is, this graphic is deceptive to the point of being false.

Now, I myself am no expert on city budgeting. But this just looked very wrong to me, and like everyone else I've got access to Google, so I went and looked up the Columbus City Budget website. The graphic mentions the General Fund, and if you click on the link for the General Fund at the link above, you can get a detailed PDF breaking down that part of the budget. Here's what I found. The General Fund is a total of $965M in planned 2020 spending. Some of the other line items on the graph are correct, but it leaves out a large one in order to make its overall point. Police are budgeted for $360M but the Fire Department is the next biggest line item at $271M. The other line items are numerous and small, so it might be easiest to provide this graphic for the General Fund:

As you can see, the Police Department accounts for roughly a third of the total General Fund spending. But here's the thing, a city turns out to have multiple budget areas. The General Fund is not all of city spending. Click on the All Funds summary which is right below the General Fund, and you discover that total city spending across all funds is actually $1,816M. The General Fund is only half of spending. Looking all the All Funds summary, we see that major spending areas include Water, Sewage, and Storm Systems, Electricity, Street Construction, etc. Let's look at the big pieces of that total $1,816M in spending.

But wait a minute. When you think about your city, you probably think about city schools. Well, they turn out to have their own separate budget, which is provided here. It also breaks down into a General Fund and other funds, and the total of all those for the 2019-2020 school year was $1,523M.

So now we find that police spending is only 11% once we account for other funds and for Columbus Schools. But you know what we haven't seen yet? We haven't seen those social services that people are talking about funding instead of the police. Do we spend 11% of the city spending on police but nothing on helping people?

No. But different types of government funding come from different government entities. Social services come from a combination of state, federal, and other funds, and you can read about Ohio's total social services here. However, these are total Ohio numbers. It seemed like a fair solution for seeing how those social services weighed against the spending in Columbus on police would be to take the total Ohio population of 11.69M and the Columbus, OH population which is 892k and simply do a percentage allocation saying that Columbus got 7.6% of Ohio social spending. Now let's put that all together:

So, is a city just a police force with a few under funded services tacked on? No. That is a totally false statement designed to get clicks, and the only way that it was made to look like that was true was by deceptively selecting just some items out of the general fund of the city budget. And is police funding in general totally out of proportion with the funding of social services? That depends on what you think the right level is. Police spending is 6% of the total city, school, and allocated social service spending that I show on the above graph. Police spending is roughly equal to spending on Mental Health, Addiction, and Developmental Disabilities combined. Is that right? Informed citizens can made decisions about those topics, but no one can be informed when looked at flagrantly deceptive information.

Novena for Order 2020: Day 9

I don't know what it says about the order in my life that I almost forgot to post the last day of a novena I'm sponsoring. But in these nine days the order of my days has been almost office-like, sitting down to write in the mornings and afternoon, picking up again after dinner. I won't say I haven't gotten distracted because there are too many people who can testify against me, but there has been a sense of routine.

I've also been following the news, yes, and I've volunteered to help again with religious education at my parish next year (whatever it looks like) because that's where I'm most likely to be able to know, love, and serve families who look and live differently than mine.

***

For Ordering a Life Wisely
St. Thomas Aquinas

O merciful God, grant that I may
desire ardently,
search prudently,
recognize truly,
and bring to perfect completion
whatever is pleasing to You
for the praise and glory of Your name.

Put my life in good order, O my God

Grant that I may know
what You require me to do.

Bestow upon me
the power to accomplish your will,
as is necessary and fitting
for the salvation of my soul.

Grant to me, O Lord my God,
that I may not falter in times
of prosperity or adversity,
so that I may not be exalted in the former,
nor dejected in the latter.

May I not rejoice in anything
unless it leads me to You;
may I not be saddened by anything
unless it turns me from You.

May I desire to please no one,
nor fear to displease anyone,
but You.

May all transitory things, O Lord,
be worthless to me
and may all things eternal
be ever cherished by me.

May any joy without You
be burdensome for me
and may I not desire anything else
besides You.

May all work, O Lord
delight me when done for Your sake.
and may all repose not centered in You
be ever wearisome for me.

Grant unto me, my God,
that I may direct my heart to You
and that in my failures
I may ever feel remorse for my sins
and never lose the resolve to change.

O Lord my God, make me
submissive without protest,
poor without discouragement,
chaste without regret,
patient without complaint,
humble without posturing,
cheerful without frivolity,
mature without gloom,
and quick-witted without flippancy.

O Lord my God, let me
fear You without losing hope,
be truthful without guile,
do good works without presumption,
rebuke my neighbor without haughtiness,
and -- without hypocrisy --
strengthen him by word and example.

Give to me, O Lord God,
a watchful heart,
which no capricious thought
can lure away from You.

Give to me,
a noble heart,
which no unworthy desire can debase.

Give to me
a resolute heart,
which no evil intention can divert.

Give to me
a stalwart heart,
which no tribulation can overcome.

Give to me
a temperate heart,
which no violent passion can enslave.

Give to me, O Lord my God,
understanding of You,
diligence in seeking You,
wisdom in finding You,
discourse ever pleasing to You,
perseverance in waiting for You,
and confidence in finally embracing You.

Grant
that with Your hardships
I may be burdened in reparation here,
that Your benefits
I may use in gratitude upon the way,
that in Your joys
I may delight by glorifying You
in the Kingdom of Heaven.

You Who live and reign,
God, world without end.

Amen.

translation by Robert Anderson and Johann Moser
from The Aquinas Prayer Book

Novena for Order 2020: Day 8

Evelyn Waugh  to Thomas Merton, from a letter dated 13 August 1948:

Never send off any piece of writing the moment it is finished. Put it aside. Take on something else. Go back to it a month later and re-read it. Examine each sentence and ask "Doest this say precisely what I mean? Is it capable of misunderstanding? Have I used a cliche where I could have invented a new and therefore arresting and memorable form? Have I repeated myself and wobbled round the point when I could have fixed the whole thing in six rightly chosen words? Am I using words in their basic meaning or in a loose plebian way? . . .

The English language is incomparably rich and can convey *every* thought accurately and elegantly. The better the writing the less abstruse it is. Say "No" cheerfully and definitely to people who want you to do more than you can do well.

--quoted in Merton & Waugh: A Monk, A Crusty Old Man, & The Seven Story Mountain by Mary Frances Coady

***

For Ordering a Life Wisely
St. Thomas Aquinas

O merciful God, grant that I may
desire ardently,
search prudently,
recognize truly,
and bring to perfect completion
whatever is pleasing to You
for the praise and glory of Your name.

Put my life in good order, O my God

Grant that I may know
what You require me to do.

Bestow upon me
the power to accomplish your will,
as is necessary and fitting
for the salvation of my soul.

Grant to me, O Lord my God,
that I may not falter in times
of prosperity or adversity,
so that I may not be exalted in the former,
nor dejected in the latter.

May I not rejoice in anything
unless it leads me to You;
may I not be saddened by anything
unless it turns me from You.

May I desire to please no one,
nor fear to displease anyone,
but You.

May all transitory things, O Lord,
be worthless to me
and may all things eternal
be ever cherished by me.

May any joy without You
be burdensome for me
and may I not desire anything else
besides You.

May all work, O Lord
delight me when done for Your sake.
and may all repose not centered in You
be ever wearisome for me.

Grant unto me, my God,
that I may direct my heart to You
and that in my failures
I may ever feel remorse for my sins
and never lose the resolve to change.

O Lord my God, make me
submissive without protest,
poor without discouragement,
chaste without regret,
patient without complaint,
humble without posturing,
cheerful without frivolity,
mature without gloom,
and quick-witted without flippancy.

O Lord my God, let me
fear You without losing hope,
be truthful without guile,
do good works without presumption,
rebuke my neighbor without haughtiness,
and -- without hypocrisy --
strengthen him by word and example.

Give to me, O Lord God,
a watchful heart,
which no capricious thought
can lure away from You.

Give to me,
a noble heart,
which no unworthy desire can debase.

Give to me
a resolute heart,
which no evil intention can divert.

Give to me
a stalwart heart,
which no tribulation can overcome.

Give to me
a temperate heart,
which no violent passion can enslave.

Give to me, O Lord my God,
understanding of You,
diligence in seeking You,
wisdom in finding You,
discourse ever pleasing to You,
perseverance in waiting for You,
and confidence in finally embracing You.

Grant
that with Your hardships
I may be burdened in reparation here,
that Your benefits
I may use in gratitude upon the way,
that in Your joys
I may delight by glorifying You
in the Kingdom of Heaven.

You Who live and reign,
God, world without end.

Amen.

translation by Robert Anderson and Johann Moser
from The Aquinas Prayer Book

You Say You Want A Revolution?

One of the problems with the American mythos is that it encourages people to think that violent revolution brings positive change. This is almost never the case.

The French revolution brought in a national civil war and blood bath which ended only when France turned into a dictatorship which directed its violence outward in a series of wars under Napoleon which helped to tear down the old balances of power in Europe and light the slow fuse that burned through to the Franco-Austrian, Franco-Prussian and Austro-Prussian wars that gave Europe a German empire and fundamentally weakened the Austro-Hungarians, and then finally WW1 and WW2 and the colonial wars of liberation that followed.

The Russian Revolution and Chinese Revolution were both utter disasters for their countries and for the world.

And while non-global powers may not upend the world with their cycles of revolution, we see the endless seesawing as each new force of liberation becomes its own dictatorship of violence which is in turn thrown off by another revolution.

The amazing thing about the American revolution is that it DIDN'T create a violent failed state. And it came closer than we are often led to believe. The first US government failed and had to be replaced at the Constitutional Convention. As president Washington had to suppress armed rebellion. Washington's own Cicinnatus-like virtue in stepping down after two terms did tremendous things for our country, and even so Adams and Jefferson and their parties used levels of state suppression against each other we would still find horrifying. And that's all before we went through a Civil War which was planted in our country early by its acceptance of the massive injustice of slavery.

But because of the myth of the American founding and justice coming out of rebellion against tyrannical authority (I'm glad we're not part of the commonwealth, because we happened to develop written constitution during the flowering of the British Enlightenment and thus enshrine liberal values in our state much for firmly than Britain -- but honestly the idea that Britain was particularly tyrannical is silly) we are far, far too tempted to fall for the idea that there's quick salvation to be found in a violent revolutionary cleansing injustice from society.