The Fever Chart

Today is World Water Day, a UN-sponsored annual event intended to focus attention on the importance of fresh water and the sustainable management of fresh water resources. Up to 80 nations experience chronic fresh water shortages. Some are systemic, others intensely localized, but together they affect over 2 billion people, including an estimated 400 million children. In this age of peak everything, from lithium and phosphorous to oil, access to water for drinking, agriculture and sanitation may be the most important resource challenge of all, and a  major source of political instability and armed conflict both within and between nations. Indeed, an article that appeared in Fortune magazine in 2000 predicted that  ”Water promises to be to the 21st century what oil was to the 20th century: the precious commodity that determines the wealth of nations.”

The Catholic Church has not been silent on the issue. In 2003, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace released a document, titled Water, An Essential Element For Life, that has been updated three times: in 2006, again in 2009, and then just this month. In the original document, the Council “expressed its hope of a formal recognition of the right to drinking water; and this as a fundamental, inalienable human right based on human dignity.” This call was echoed in 2006, when the Council wrote that

Water is much more than just a basic human need. It is an essential, irreplaceable element to ensuring the continuance of life. Water is intrinsically linked to fundamental human rights such as the right to life, to food and to health. Access to safe water is a basic human right. In a Message to the Bishops of Brazil in 2004, Pope John Paul II wrote, “as a gift from God, water is a vital element essential to survival, thus everyone has a right to it”.

A human right is generally protected by internationally guaranteed standards that ensure fundamental freedoms for individuals and communities. It principally concerns the relationship between the individual and the State. In this regard, governmental obligations vis-à-vis the right can be broadly categorized as: to respect it, protect it and fulfill it.

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Jesus said to Nicodemus:
“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him.
Whoever believes in him will not be condemned,
but whoever does not believe has already been condemned,
because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
And this is the verdict,
that the light came into the world,
but people preferred darkness to light,
because their works were evil.
For everyone who does wicked things hates the light
and does not come toward the light,
so that his works might not be exposed.
But whoever lives the truth comes to the light,
so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

John 3:14-21

According to Rene Girard, human desire is mimetic. We “catch” or borrow our desires from other people. Desire is also triangular, because it involves not just the formal object of desire – a new car, a job, prestige – but the person who models the desire for us. Within this triangular relationship, the object is merely an instrument that mediates our true desire. And what is that true desire? Girard says that all desire is a desire to be. We don’t really desire to have something, but to be someone, and that someone is the model, the one who has shown us what to desire.

As this mimetic relationship between subject and model is reciprocated, replicated, and intensified, it degenerates into a miasma of rivalry and destructive forms of idolatry. According to Girard, this psychological dynamic is at the heart of all human violence, and the sinful human solution to this drama, the generative mimetic scapegoating mechanism, is at the heart of all archaic religion and culture. It is generative because it creates renewed social solidarity and a sense of personal and collective righteousness. It is scapegoating because its random and structurally innocent victims become the repositories of the community’s sinful rivalries and violence. 

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The following excerpt from Dorothy Day’s House of Hospitality was written in 1937/38. This particular scene takes place during a speaking trip Dorothy took to California. Seventy-five years later, things really haven’t changed that much, have they?

Yesterday on the bus to San Diego two older men were talking about the President, and loud enough for everyone in the bus to hear. They called him a yellow coward, with the heart of a louse, a maniac on the verge of total insanity. They talked of their investments and losses. They talked of public utilities. And every other minute they cursed him. Each mention of wages, public works, unions, led to increased bitterness.

“There’ll be bloodshed yet,” they concluded, and grimly added that they’d like to take part in it. Hate was etched into the bitter lines of their faces and into their voices.

I could not help comparing their attitude with that of the two hundred or so unemployed I had talked to the day before in Los Angeles at an open Forum of the Workers’ Alliance. I talked of Christ the Worker, of a philosophy of labor, of the farming commune as a solution of unemployment. I told them of Peter [Maurin], and his social program for the lay apostolate.

The men I talked to wanted work, not a dole. They wanted private property (the idea of homesteads and community farm combined appealed to them). They wanted peace and brotherhood. They were interested in government help but would rather have work, provided it meant something to them–was building for their security and future. They were interested in a constructive program, not in fighting a class war. And when I thought how betrayed they are by their intellectual leadership, my heart wept.

It was enough to make one weep just to hear those two men talking on the bus. I thought of Peter Maurin and how he loves to indoctrinate wherever he goes, talking on street corners and buses and restaurants, wherever he happens to be. But his is a conservative indoctrination, and not a message of hate.

George Weigel has a column today at National Review titled “The Catholic Betrayal of Religious Liberty.” It begins as an indictment of Democratic Catholic officeholders Nancy Pelosi, Patty Murray, Rosa DeLauro and Kathleen Sebelius, women he describes as “Catholic Lite,” and goes on to add Sr. Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, to the list.

But in an interesting twist, the column winds up as a long encomium to John Courtney Murray, the liberal Jesuit priest and political theorist whose accomplishment was to, in Weigel’s words, “midwife a new Catholic understanding of the modern state and of the democratic project, which eventually reshaped the thinking and practices of the entire Church. ” As Weigel notes, it is John Courtney Murray who is often credited with providing the intellectual inspiration for the Second Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae).

What is strange is that John Courtney Murray is also credited as having provided the intellectual firepower for a far less well-known “council” known as the Hyannisport Conclave. In a January 2009 Wall Street Journal article (How Support For Abortion Became Kennedy Dogma), Weigel’s National Review colleage, Anne Hendershott, sketched the origin and outcome of the Hyannisport Conclave:

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Over at Vox Nova, Matt Talbot recently posted a beautiful meditation titled “A Blessed Reminder.” In it he wrote, “The austere and naked land reminds me … of my own impermanence and ultimate vulnerability. Abundance too often leads to confused priorities and muddles my perceptions of what my life is, and what my life means.” The movement into Lent has always been seen as the journey into a kind of desert, but as people accustomed to easy abundance we tend to focus on the apparent barrenness of it, the self-denial, not the richness that can be found there. As Matt knows better than most, far from being barren the desert is positively bursting with life. Reptiles, insects of every kind, mammals, birds, all sorts of shrubbery and trees, even flowers. But none of that is apparent to the occasional or disinterested eye. One has to enter the desert, engage it over time and at the level of existence, in order to know the intimate contours of its hidden and lively beauty.

The same is true with Lent, which is why simply passing through, with little substantial engagement, will never suffice for revelation or spiritual reward. A man may cross Death Valley in an air-conditioned SUV, but one can hardly say that he has really been there. In a similar way, a man may cross the Lenten landscape having hedged his pain and prayer – his engagement – only to emerge on the far side with the same confused priorities and muddled perceptions with which he entered. The Lord wants more for us than that.

The desert is mentioned explicitly only once in this Sunday’s readings, in the selection from Isaiah 43:

Thus says the LORD:
Remember not the events of the past,
the things of long ago consider not;
see, I am doing something new!
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
In the desert I make a way,
in the wasteland, rivers.

Jesus, our brother, waits for us in the desert. He has made a way into and through it for us. We will experience the burning sand of self-denial and the hot sun of self-donation. And we will fill up the vast, empty spaces with prayers of contrition, praise and supplication. But the Lord promises to do something new, for his people and for each of us individually. Expecting barrenness, we will find rivers of grace and new life in the Spirit.

I’ll conclude  this brief reflection with one of my favorite poems, titled “To The Desert,” by the Mexican-American poet and novelist Benjamin Alire Sáenz. With the poet, let our prayer this Lent be Sálvame, mi dios, trágame, mi tierra: Save me, my God! Consume me, my land.

I came to you one rainless August night.
You taught me how to live without the rain.
You are thirst and thirst is all I know.
You are sand, wind, sun, and burning sky,
The hottest blue. You blow a breeze and brand
Your breath into my mouth. You reach—then bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
You wrap your name tight around my ribs
And keep me warm. I was born for you.
Above, below, by you, by you surrounded.
I wake to you at dawn. Never break your
Knot. Reach, rise, blow, Sálvame, mi dios,
Trágame, mi tierra. Salva, traga, Break me,
I am bread. I will be the water for your thirst.

Religious liberty is on all of our minds these days, specifically the notion that people of faith should not be forced to pay for things that violate their consciences. In the case of the HHS mandate requiring employers to provide healthcare plans that include no-cost contraception, Catholics across the board have objected, noting the Church’s longstanding prohibition on artificial birth control. The Obama Administration’s attempt at resolving the issue seems to have fallen flat, as the bishops of the United States have declared the Administration’s second try to be “unacceptable.’ I’ll admit that I don’t yet have a handle on exactly what the attempted “compromise” really entails, but the central issue apparently remains that religious people should not be required to directly or indirectly pay for things that violate their consciences.

I accept and hold that principle, but I wonder if we’re really prepared to apply it across the board. The chart above, which was recently released by the Archdiocese of Chicago, shows the discretionary (non-entitlement and debt service) portion of the federal budget for Fiscal Year 2012. You will note that three-fifths of all federal discretionary spending is directed to the military. This money is used to pay for the salaries and benefits of uniformed personnel, civilian employees, and military retirees, as well as the purchase of new weapons systems, ongoing military operations, and so on.

But the fact is that there are a great many religious people in this country who are pacifist as a matter of religious conscience and practice. Many of them are members of the historic “peace churches” like the Mennonites, the Society of Friends (Quakers), Amish, or Church of the Brethren. Many others are members of mainline and Evangelical Protestant and Orthodox denominations. And there are many Catholics who have adopted pacifism, a choice the Church doesn’t command but certainly authenticates within her broader teaching on just war (CCC #2306 & #2311). And, of course, there are many non-Christians – Buddhists, Sikhs, and others – who have renounced war in all its forms for religious reasons.

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What my friends on the Catholic right don’t seem to get is that abortion and gay marriage are social and moral expressions of the same liberalism they champion in economics. The fundamental incoherence of contemporary “conservatism” – and, in fact, the reason that it is not conservative at all, but merely liberal – is its focus on liberty, not virtue; individualism, not the common good; rights, not responsibilities. But the pro-choice argument on abortion is nothing more than a variation on the libertarian argument for inviolable property rights (See Rothbard, “The Ethics of Liberty“). The push for gay marriage is a social expression of the same emphasis on individual choice and personal fulfillment that undergirds capitalist consumer culture (See Mill, “On Liberty“). To exalt a Promethean economic liberalism while decrying its inevitable personal and social expressions is schizophrenic, like the man who feeds a fire with a gas can in his left hand while simultaneously attempting to dampen the flames with a hose in is right.

It is commonly thought that criticism of capitalism has its exclusive provenance on the Left, but in fact there is a long tradition of conservative unease with capitalism. Now, by “conservative,” I obviously do not mean that weird and contradictory stew comprised of obscure Austrian economic theories, the “objectivist” ethics of Ayn Rand, Wilsonian idealism, American messianism, and Dominionist/Dispensationalist theology. That’s the “conservatism” of radio disk jockeys like Rush and Glenn, of the Tea Party, and The Sage of Austin, Rick Perry. By “conservative,” I mean what Russell Kirk meant when he wrote that “a conservative is a person who endeavors to conserve the best in our traditions and our institutions, reconciling that best with necessary reform from time to time.”

Contrast Kirk’s definition of “conservative” with the claim of contemporary “conservative” Michael Ledeen, who trumpets the revolutionary “menace” of democratic capitalism, American-style: “Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. Of all the myths that cloud our understanding, and therefore paralyze our will and action, the most pernicious is that only the Left has a legitimate claim to the revolutionary tradition.” (From War Against the Terror Masters)

What Catholic “conservatives” (I mean political conservatism, not theological orthodoxy) seem not to understand is that the revolutionary spirit Ledeen describes doesn’t spare religion or traditional morality.  It is capitalism – or at least the Anglo-American variant of the thing – that has bequeathed to us a mass consumer society in which everything from toothpaste and automobiles to marriage and the unborn are rendered mere objects of “choice.” The dictatorship of relativism that Benedict XVI has warned us about is fueled by the revolutionary logic of the creative destruction at the heart of capitalism. If not checked, this logic would scour history of any slower, deeper, more meaningful, less materially efficient force, including the Church. It is this logic that the developing world – including the deeply religious societies of the Middle East – is desperately trying to resist, with varying degrees of success. And it is this logic that Catholics are called to resist, as well. Not by becoming socialists, but by embracing the whole teaching of the Church.

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Vaclav Havel died yesterday. Poet, playwright, political dissident and prisoner, non-violent revolutionay, president of his beloved Czechoslovakia and later, the Czech Republic. His motto was ”truth and love must prevail over lies and hate.” His constant concern, both as a playwright and as a politician, was the connection betwen morality and responsibility. As he said in a speech to the US Congress: “The only genuine backbone of all our actions—if they are to be moral—is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my company, my success. Responsibility to the order of Being, where all our actions are indelibly recorded and where, and only where, they will be properly judged.”

Havel did not profess any specific religious creed, but his life and work were nevertheless infused with a deeply religious sensibility, and he feared the loss of transcendence, a detachment from “responsibility to the order of Being,” as the greatest danger facing mankind today:

We are living in the first truly global civilisation. That means that whatever comes into existence on its soil can very quickly and easily span the whole world.

But we are also living in the first atheistic civilization, in other words, a civilization that has lost its connection with the infinite and eternity. For that reason it prefers short-term profit to long-term profit. What is important is whether an investment will provide a return in ten or fifteen years; how it will affect the lives of our descendants in a hundred years is less important.

However, the most dangerous aspect of this global atheistic civilization is its pride. The pride of someone who is driven by the very logic of his wealth to stop respecting the contribution of nature and our forebears, to stop respecting it on principle and respect it only as a further potential source of profit …

… Wonder and an awareness that things are not self-evident are, I believe, the only way out of the dangerous world of a civilisation of pride.

Can anything be absolutely self-evident?

Wonder at the non-self-evidence of everything that creates our world is, after all, the first impulse to the question: what purpose does it all have? Why does it all exist? Why does anything exist at all? We don’t know and we will never find it out. It is quite possible that everything is here in order for us to have something to wonder at. And that we are here simply so that there is someone to wonder. But what is the point of having someone wonder at something? And what alternative is there to being? After all if there were nothing, there would also be no one to observe it. And if there were no one to observe it, then the big question is whether non-being would be at all possible …

… In all events, I am certain that our civilisation is heading for catastrophe unless present-day humankind comes to its senses. And it can only come to its senses if it grapples with its short-sightedness, its stupid conviction of its omniscience and its swollen pride, which have been so deeply anchored in its thinking and actions.

This morning brings news of the death of the public intellectual Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens had been battling with esophogeal cancer for the past year or so, a struggle he chronicled in the pages of Vanity Fair, where he was a longtime columnist. Fr. James Martin, SJ, has a wonderful blog post on Hitchens today. It really is must reading. Fr. Martin writes, “Someone asked me this morning what I hoped for Christopher Hitchens … and my first response was to say that I hope he’s pleasantly surprised.  And I do.”

As do I. Obviously, I didn’t agree with Hitchens on much, especially his atheism and his perplexing defense of the war in Iraq. But in a country where the public discourse grows more stupid by the day – where stupidity is even counted as a qualification for high office in some quarters - Hitchens was a reminder that there is great value in intelligence, clear articulation and the honest search for truth. Hitchens found the claims of the Christian faith wanting, even perverse. But he took them seriously in a way even many Christians do not. He challenged Christians to defend the often contradictory practice of our faith, and to reconcile the seeming absurdity of its assumptions with the hard truths of the world around us. I never viewed Hitchens as an enemy of Christianity, but he was one of its most severe critics. And thank God for that. The honest critic is always a friend of those who seek the truth.

I’ll close with words that Hitchens would have found hopelessly irrational and even a bit demeaning when applied to him. I don’t care, and whether he or we were right about what happens at death, I’m confident he doesn’t care any longer either: “Eternal rest grant to him,  Lord. In your mercy, welcome Christopher and all those for whom you died into your peace.”