I gave this talk at the Annual Claremont Independence Day Oratory Program in 2003.
Today our nation celebrates its 227th birthday, the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. The “stars and stripes” was adopted as our national flag the following year, June 14, 1777. The United States’ Constitution was ratified in 1788, 215 years ago.
And the Pledge of Allegiance, then more commonly known as the “Salute to the Flag,” was composed in 1892, and was first publicly used on Columbus Day, 1893, just one hundred years ago. During the ensuing forty years, it underwent several modifications, and came to be recited by schoolchildren in classrooms throughout the country; but during that time, the first half of the twentieth century, it received little attention outside the schools.
It was only in 1942, just over sixty years ago, that the Salute to the Flag, already commonplace in the schools, gained enough popularity as a result of World War II patriotic fervor that it was given official recognition by an act of the U.S. Congress, incorporating it in the United States Flag Code.
The following year, in 1943, the United States Supreme Court ruled that school children could not be forced to recite the Pledge of Allegiance as a required part of their school curriculum. This ruling, entitled “West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette,” did not address the recitation of the pledge as such, but struck down a West Virginia Law imposing punishments on students who refused to salute the flag. That law required every student in every school – public, parochial or private – in the state of West Virginia, to recite the pledge, with arm upraised in a gesture of salute (which the PTA, scouting organizations, the Red Cross and the Federation of Women’s Clubs had criticized as being too much like Hitler’s Nazi salute!), or else they would be expelled, and could not return to school until compliant. Furthermore, absent from school, they were regarded as delinquents, and their parents were subject to a $50 fine and/or thirty days in jail.
Thus in West Virginia, to be a faithful Jehovah’s Witness was also to be an outlaw.
War does funny things to people, doesn’t it?
The Supreme Court’s judgment makes an interesting and important observation. They affirmed the right and duty of our schools and of our citizens to teach and to learn the meaning of patriotism, and even to be informed about the flag salute and what it means. Patriotism was not the issue. But, and I quote the text of the Court’s opinion written by Justice Robert Jackson: “The issue here is whether this slow and easily neglected route to aroused loyalties constitutionally may be short-cut by substituting a compulsory salute and slogan.”
The same opinion, goes on to make the prophetic statement that needs more than even to be heeded today: “Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard. It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.”
Two years later, at the end of the War in 1945, the Salute to the Flag officially got the title “Pledge of Allegiance.”
In 1954, both Houses of Congress adopted the resolution to add the words “under God” to the pledge, which President Eisenhower signed into law on Flag Day of that year. This was as a result of two years of lobbying by the Knights of Columbus, a Catholic fraternal organization of which I too am a member. (I can’t resist a little plug here – over in the food area they are selling the world’s best Italian sausage sandwiches.)
Beyond the work of the Knights, however, I think this addition to the Pledge was very much a product of the times—that was the height of the Cold War, and fear of the spread of “atheistic Communism” was certainly a dominant force in our country.
In a subsequent message to the Knights of Columbus, President Eisenhower put a very different emphasis on the phrase “under God”: “These words will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength we must remain humble. They will help us to keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and moral principles which alone give dignity to man, and upon which our way of life is founded.”
I think now, fifty years later, it is appropriate to do a “reality check”: do these words succeed in keeping us humble. Do they effectively focus our minds and hearts on the spiritual and moral principles of human dignity?
Having reviewed the history of the Pledge of Allegiance, which is neither deeply rooted in our national origins nor one of unchanging constancy, but which has been frequently modified in changing times, I would now like to examine very briefly each of those two words, “under God.”
For one thing, even Christians cannot really agree on our concept of God, and we have very different images and attributes in mind when we say God. Among Christians, in the past and even today, disagreement over the concept of God, as well as the moral behavior expected by God, too often has become the occasion for us to throw stones at one another, both verbal and sometimes physical. If Christians can’t agree about God, what happens when we add non-Christians and atheists, to the mix in a society whose pluralism we value. Expecting a unified agreement on this term is patently ridiculous, as well as offensive to many of our fellow citizens.
Perhaps we as Christians would do better by taking more seriously the advice of Jesus, “render to Caesar the things that belong to Caesar, and to God the things that belong to God.” Jesus anticipated the First Amendment by over seventeen centuries!
I personally believe that both Church and State will be better off, the more strictly we can keep each of them in its own domain, without meddling in each other’s domain. If Christians live genuinely true to their convictions, our witness will have its own power. We don’t have to impose our beliefs or our moral principles through civil legislation.
Even more problematic than the word “God” is the word “under.” “Under” means submission. Do we really live as a nation “under” God? Is the humility that President Eisenhower spoke of in any way valued among our national virtues? Do we, even the Christians of our nation, truly seek to discover and follow God’s will in relation to affairs of national interest?
I’m not going to try to answer that question. But I will unfold that question just a little bit more by asking what do we mean when we pray, “God bless America”? Is our prayer as believers, to seek the humility and gift of discernment of higher purpose and higher power? Or does our prayer really seek to make God the servant of our national interest? And I will conclude simply leaving you with that question.
Friday, July 2, 2010
A humbled church and a humbled nation – what can we learn?
This is the presentation I gave at the Annual Claremont Oratory Program in 2002.
September 11 and Catholic Church scandals of last five months. Humiliation. Nothing will ever be quite the same for either nation or Church.
Humility. It's a hard word. Can a 227-year-old nation learn from a 2000-year-old tradition, even if the Church that had kept that tradition alive has some obvious problems in practicing it?
Humility is strong in scripture as the key virtue, without which all else is valueless. “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” . . . Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. (James 4:6,10)
We can’t get humility just by trying. Humility isn’t merely another accomplishment to be proud of! Experience shows: no humility without humiliation. We can rise from humiliation, not with the pride that reinflates us, and only serves to increase our vulnerability no matter what we do to try to protect us. We can rise from humiliation more sure where our ground is., more careful where we place our feet and the direction of our steps. Word “humility” comes from Latin “humus,” meaning earth, soil, ground. It means to recognize where we come from and are going, and in between where we stand, where we find our foundation. We are “humus” into which God has breathed spirit. (Also root of “human”!)
For our nation, humility may mean an examination of our national conscience, our goals and priorities in the light of the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [must be taken inclusively] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
And, as the next line says, that the government exists primarily to secure these rights – for all without exception.
The Statue of Liberty preserved was preserved on September 11. But can we take pride in that symbol when we ignore its inscription?
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Those words greeted my grandparents. And, I suspect many of yours as well. Yet our public policy, and our attitudes, find those words embarrassing, and for many, those words do not ring true. Should we perhaps shroud her in black until we examine our national conscience: How well do we welcome the poor, etc. ?
And the Church? We have to sit quietly – perhaps kneel quietly, and bow profoundly – and take to heart again the words of our Savior, “the greatest will be the one who serves the rest.” Yes the ways of worldly power and manipulation have too often found their way into ministry. We have to rediscover the meaning of the ministry: to stand small (not as put-down or weakness, but to build the other person up). The Church will recover its moral voice only in a posture of humility.
How can the Church live in our 21st century American society? I think we will have no trouble discovering how to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” if we can be sure that we have fully and without compromise “rendered unto God the things that are God’s.”
September 11 and Catholic Church scandals of last five months. Humiliation. Nothing will ever be quite the same for either nation or Church.
Humility. It's a hard word. Can a 227-year-old nation learn from a 2000-year-old tradition, even if the Church that had kept that tradition alive has some obvious problems in practicing it?
Humility is strong in scripture as the key virtue, without which all else is valueless. “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” . . . Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. (James 4:6,10)
We can’t get humility just by trying. Humility isn’t merely another accomplishment to be proud of! Experience shows: no humility without humiliation. We can rise from humiliation, not with the pride that reinflates us, and only serves to increase our vulnerability no matter what we do to try to protect us. We can rise from humiliation more sure where our ground is., more careful where we place our feet and the direction of our steps. Word “humility” comes from Latin “humus,” meaning earth, soil, ground. It means to recognize where we come from and are going, and in between where we stand, where we find our foundation. We are “humus” into which God has breathed spirit. (Also root of “human”!)
For our nation, humility may mean an examination of our national conscience, our goals and priorities in the light of the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [must be taken inclusively] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
And, as the next line says, that the government exists primarily to secure these rights – for all without exception.
The Statue of Liberty preserved was preserved on September 11. But can we take pride in that symbol when we ignore its inscription?
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
Those words greeted my grandparents. And, I suspect many of yours as well. Yet our public policy, and our attitudes, find those words embarrassing, and for many, those words do not ring true. Should we perhaps shroud her in black until we examine our national conscience: How well do we welcome the poor, etc. ?
And the Church? We have to sit quietly – perhaps kneel quietly, and bow profoundly – and take to heart again the words of our Savior, “the greatest will be the one who serves the rest.” Yes the ways of worldly power and manipulation have too often found their way into ministry. We have to rediscover the meaning of the ministry: to stand small (not as put-down or weakness, but to build the other person up). The Church will recover its moral voice only in a posture of humility.
How can the Church live in our 21st century American society? I think we will have no trouble discovering how to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” if we can be sure that we have fully and without compromise “rendered unto God the things that are God’s.”
The Cost of Religious Freedom
This is the talk I gave at Claremont's Annual Independence Day Oratory Program in 2001.
One of our deepest values as Americans is religious freedom. The American experiment in democratic self government has also caused religious freedom of citizens to be constitutionally enshrined and guaranteed in the majority of nations throughout the world. The US Department of State publishes an annual report on International Religious Freedom, which is readily available on their web site, which also details the many violations of religious freedom in too many countries throughout the world. While religious freedom is a matter of international concern, it is more fundamentally a question of individual attitude and behavior. How we look at one another as individuals is the basis of how we look at one another as communities, societies, and nations.
What is the cost of consistently upholding religious freedom in our relationships with one another? We may value our own freedom to worship as we choose, but the way that we value the freedom of another who disagrees with us may become more complex in practice than we’d like to think.
Any person of deep and sincere convictions is going to suffer pain when those convictions are not shared. It might be helpful to recognize that conflict over deeply held convictions is more often born of pain than power. If I am deeply convinced that my way is true, I cannot help but feel pain if those people I care about are on what I am convinced is the wrong path. I would be unfaithful to those convictions if I did not try to bring you to share my convictions.
Religious freedom means that what I say about my convictions, including the legitimacy of my desire to share the truth of my convictions with you, is equally said about your convictions and your desire to share the truth of your convictions with me. The sticky thing is that religious convictions are never solely a private, individual matter. They are always a shared belief system. Individual conviction determines how we relate to one another in society.
One of the foundations of a truly democratic society is that there are no limits or restrictions on whom we care about. If we believe that all are created equal, we have to put that belief into practice by upholding that equality. Of course, we as a nation and society continue to struggle with equality in practice. That struggle to discover the full meaning of equality, and how respect for this equality ought to be translated into action, points the direction to uncovering the cost of religious freedom. How can I be faithful to my convictions without compromise, including the public nature of those convictions, and at the same time respect your convictions as differing, perhaps radically from mine? That, I think is the challenge that faces all of us in a free society.
This affirmation of equality and dignity as a basic human right of all people without exception, is common to nearly all religious traditions. Yet how often exceptions are made in practice. We are usually conscious of those exceptions when others make them, especially in our own regard. The ways that we ourselves in practice make some “more equal” than others, is all too often hidden from our own eyes.
I believe that the basic cost of religious freedom is to bring to light our own attitudes that tend to separate us from others, to examine our own criteria for judging the worth of others in the light of the equality and dignity of the human person deeply rooted in our shared human nature, not subject to differences of behavior or culture.
Another way of looking at this is to say that the basic cost of religious freedom is to take to heart the “Golden Rule,” which in one form or other is part of nearly every religious tradition, including agnosticism and atheism: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
The essence of the Golden Rule is that it is without condition or exception. It is not “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, if they reciprocate.” It is not “Do unto others as they do unto you,” much less the humorous, but very real, twist we often put on it: “Do unto others before they do unto you”!
I think a problem arises when we confuse respect for one another’s religious freedom with tolerance. Mere tolerance is not yet respect. Tolerating another person is a far cry from respecting and accepting him or her, even with differing or opposing convictions.
What does religious freedom cost me, a Catholic priest, for example? Let me get personal about this. I believe it is twofold. First, I have to be faithful my convictions, which includes giving public witness to them – not to water them down or be silent about them, even in face of disagreement and diversity. But, secondly, my public witness has to respect the integrity and convictions of others, including those very diverse from my own – including even those whom I perceive as not respecting my convictions. Failure of mutual respect does not lesson my obligation of respect.
As a Catholic, I would go so far as to say that that kind of respect of persons and their human rights and dignity, even in the face of diversity and disagreement, is at the heart of what Jesus proclaimed as the “Kingdom on God.”
One of our deepest values as Americans is religious freedom. The American experiment in democratic self government has also caused religious freedom of citizens to be constitutionally enshrined and guaranteed in the majority of nations throughout the world. The US Department of State publishes an annual report on International Religious Freedom, which is readily available on their web site, which also details the many violations of religious freedom in too many countries throughout the world. While religious freedom is a matter of international concern, it is more fundamentally a question of individual attitude and behavior. How we look at one another as individuals is the basis of how we look at one another as communities, societies, and nations.
What is the cost of consistently upholding religious freedom in our relationships with one another? We may value our own freedom to worship as we choose, but the way that we value the freedom of another who disagrees with us may become more complex in practice than we’d like to think.
Any person of deep and sincere convictions is going to suffer pain when those convictions are not shared. It might be helpful to recognize that conflict over deeply held convictions is more often born of pain than power. If I am deeply convinced that my way is true, I cannot help but feel pain if those people I care about are on what I am convinced is the wrong path. I would be unfaithful to those convictions if I did not try to bring you to share my convictions.
Religious freedom means that what I say about my convictions, including the legitimacy of my desire to share the truth of my convictions with you, is equally said about your convictions and your desire to share the truth of your convictions with me. The sticky thing is that religious convictions are never solely a private, individual matter. They are always a shared belief system. Individual conviction determines how we relate to one another in society.
One of the foundations of a truly democratic society is that there are no limits or restrictions on whom we care about. If we believe that all are created equal, we have to put that belief into practice by upholding that equality. Of course, we as a nation and society continue to struggle with equality in practice. That struggle to discover the full meaning of equality, and how respect for this equality ought to be translated into action, points the direction to uncovering the cost of religious freedom. How can I be faithful to my convictions without compromise, including the public nature of those convictions, and at the same time respect your convictions as differing, perhaps radically from mine? That, I think is the challenge that faces all of us in a free society.
This affirmation of equality and dignity as a basic human right of all people without exception, is common to nearly all religious traditions. Yet how often exceptions are made in practice. We are usually conscious of those exceptions when others make them, especially in our own regard. The ways that we ourselves in practice make some “more equal” than others, is all too often hidden from our own eyes.
I believe that the basic cost of religious freedom is to bring to light our own attitudes that tend to separate us from others, to examine our own criteria for judging the worth of others in the light of the equality and dignity of the human person deeply rooted in our shared human nature, not subject to differences of behavior or culture.
Another way of looking at this is to say that the basic cost of religious freedom is to take to heart the “Golden Rule,” which in one form or other is part of nearly every religious tradition, including agnosticism and atheism: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
The essence of the Golden Rule is that it is without condition or exception. It is not “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, if they reciprocate.” It is not “Do unto others as they do unto you,” much less the humorous, but very real, twist we often put on it: “Do unto others before they do unto you”!
I think a problem arises when we confuse respect for one another’s religious freedom with tolerance. Mere tolerance is not yet respect. Tolerating another person is a far cry from respecting and accepting him or her, even with differing or opposing convictions.
What does religious freedom cost me, a Catholic priest, for example? Let me get personal about this. I believe it is twofold. First, I have to be faithful my convictions, which includes giving public witness to them – not to water them down or be silent about them, even in face of disagreement and diversity. But, secondly, my public witness has to respect the integrity and convictions of others, including those very diverse from my own – including even those whom I perceive as not respecting my convictions. Failure of mutual respect does not lesson my obligation of respect.
As a Catholic, I would go so far as to say that that kind of respect of persons and their human rights and dignity, even in the face of diversity and disagreement, is at the heart of what Jesus proclaimed as the “Kingdom on God.”
Do We Hold These Truths . . . ?
This is the presentation I gave at the annual Independence Day Oratory Program in Claremont in 2000.
The Declaration of Independence affirms the dignity of the human person as “self evident.” I quote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Self-evident means not needing proof. Experience shows us, sadly, that different people put different limitations on what they consider “self evident.”
For example, some of the very signers of this Declaration owned slaves, and did not see the contradiction inherent in their very words.
Four score and seven years later, the most brutal war the world had known to that point, the American Civil War, was fought over the question of slavery, as well as its economic, social, and moral implications.
Divisive conflicts throughout our society into our own day, including, as we are so well aware, in our own city of Claremont*, amply demonstrate that the equality proclaimed by the Declaration and the rights won in the civil war victory of the Union, have not yet become fully a part of the fabric of our society.
Another example. It was a full century and a half before the laws determining participation in our society began to recognize that the equality of “all men” included women. And while that struggle for equal participation has made great strides, it is not yet complete.
And . . . the “unalienable” right to life, continues to be alienated all over the place! Perhaps more so in our day than in the past.
It is ironic that it was only in the 1970’s that science was able to prove genetically that the unborn baby is truly a distinct human being from the moment of conception—that’s not a so-called religious doctrine, that’s a scientific fact—and simultaneously in the 1970’s a woman’s choice to kill that unborn baby for any reason whatever was defined as a constitutional right by the nation’s highest court. The “unalienable” right to life of a human being was made dependent upon the criterion of whether or not it was “wanted.”
I do not want to make light of the agonizing choices and pain that lead individuals to choose to kill their unborn baby. But neither truth nor mercy is served by redefining the unborn baby as something less that human, or subjecting her or his right to life to another’s right to privacy. Alternate solutions are difficult as well as unpopular, but if we are a just society we must dedicate ourselves to finding and implementing them.
At the other end of the spectrum is the subordination of the unalienable right to life to certain qualities of behavior, specifically the death penalty as a punishment for certain types of serious and/or violent crimes. It is true that society cannot function if we are not adequately protected from the threat of violent crimes against persons and property. Both protection and deterrence are legitimate values in the penal system of a just society. But, punishment that exceeds what is necessary to protect society from further violence, particularly when that punishment is itself an act of violence—even the sanitized violence of pumping toxic chemicals into a human being’s veins—that punishment goes beyond justice, and enters into the realm of revenge.
Of course, the question of human rights and dignity, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence, extends far beyond these two particular issues, even beyond the issue of life and death per se. How, for example, do our immigration and labor policies measure up to the basic human rights affirmed in the Declaration? How about our health care system? Are human rights violated when the environment in which others live is degraded by actions and policies motivated by profit? The list of similar questions can go on and on.
That having been said, our nation still serves as a beacon for much of the rest of the world in upholding human rights and dignity. In the global picture, our nation still does lead the world in successfully living as a democratic and just society.
All the more reason why we should be sure that the light truly shines bright and clear. All the more reason why we need never to take for granted that our actions are consistent with our ideals.
Then why is it that those who point out that there remain serious flaws and inconsistencies in the way we as a society uphold these values are so often branded as “un-American”?
(I’m reminded that the late, great South American Archbishop Helder Camara once lamented: “If I feed the poor, I’m called a saint. If I ask why people are poor, I’m called a Communist!”)
We all recognize that patriotism is more than just flag-waving. Perhaps the real patriots are those who do not let us settle for quick, easy, or obvious answers to the question: What are we waving the flag for?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .” Those simple words of the Declaration of Independence, whose values we claim as the guiding principle of our nation, still serve as a disquieting reminder—two hundred and twenty four years later—of how far short of those values we fall.
*Note: the "conflicts...in Claremont" refers to the controversy over the police shooting of Irvin Landrum in 1999.
The Declaration of Independence affirms the dignity of the human person as “self evident.” I quote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Self-evident means not needing proof. Experience shows us, sadly, that different people put different limitations on what they consider “self evident.”
For example, some of the very signers of this Declaration owned slaves, and did not see the contradiction inherent in their very words.
Four score and seven years later, the most brutal war the world had known to that point, the American Civil War, was fought over the question of slavery, as well as its economic, social, and moral implications.
Divisive conflicts throughout our society into our own day, including, as we are so well aware, in our own city of Claremont*, amply demonstrate that the equality proclaimed by the Declaration and the rights won in the civil war victory of the Union, have not yet become fully a part of the fabric of our society.
Another example. It was a full century and a half before the laws determining participation in our society began to recognize that the equality of “all men” included women. And while that struggle for equal participation has made great strides, it is not yet complete.
And . . . the “unalienable” right to life, continues to be alienated all over the place! Perhaps more so in our day than in the past.
It is ironic that it was only in the 1970’s that science was able to prove genetically that the unborn baby is truly a distinct human being from the moment of conception—that’s not a so-called religious doctrine, that’s a scientific fact—and simultaneously in the 1970’s a woman’s choice to kill that unborn baby for any reason whatever was defined as a constitutional right by the nation’s highest court. The “unalienable” right to life of a human being was made dependent upon the criterion of whether or not it was “wanted.”
I do not want to make light of the agonizing choices and pain that lead individuals to choose to kill their unborn baby. But neither truth nor mercy is served by redefining the unborn baby as something less that human, or subjecting her or his right to life to another’s right to privacy. Alternate solutions are difficult as well as unpopular, but if we are a just society we must dedicate ourselves to finding and implementing them.
At the other end of the spectrum is the subordination of the unalienable right to life to certain qualities of behavior, specifically the death penalty as a punishment for certain types of serious and/or violent crimes. It is true that society cannot function if we are not adequately protected from the threat of violent crimes against persons and property. Both protection and deterrence are legitimate values in the penal system of a just society. But, punishment that exceeds what is necessary to protect society from further violence, particularly when that punishment is itself an act of violence—even the sanitized violence of pumping toxic chemicals into a human being’s veins—that punishment goes beyond justice, and enters into the realm of revenge.
Of course, the question of human rights and dignity, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence, extends far beyond these two particular issues, even beyond the issue of life and death per se. How, for example, do our immigration and labor policies measure up to the basic human rights affirmed in the Declaration? How about our health care system? Are human rights violated when the environment in which others live is degraded by actions and policies motivated by profit? The list of similar questions can go on and on.
That having been said, our nation still serves as a beacon for much of the rest of the world in upholding human rights and dignity. In the global picture, our nation still does lead the world in successfully living as a democratic and just society.
All the more reason why we should be sure that the light truly shines bright and clear. All the more reason why we need never to take for granted that our actions are consistent with our ideals.
Then why is it that those who point out that there remain serious flaws and inconsistencies in the way we as a society uphold these values are so often branded as “un-American”?
(I’m reminded that the late, great South American Archbishop Helder Camara once lamented: “If I feed the poor, I’m called a saint. If I ask why people are poor, I’m called a Communist!”)
We all recognize that patriotism is more than just flag-waving. Perhaps the real patriots are those who do not let us settle for quick, easy, or obvious answers to the question: What are we waving the flag for?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident . . .” Those simple words of the Declaration of Independence, whose values we claim as the guiding principle of our nation, still serve as a disquieting reminder—two hundred and twenty four years later—of how far short of those values we fall.
*Note: the "conflicts...in Claremont" refers to the controversy over the police shooting of Irvin Landrum in 1999.
Cain and Abel, and the Value of Human Life
I gave this talk at the Independence Day Oratory Program in Claremont in 1998.
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” This is the age-old question that Cain asks God when God confronts him with the murder of his brother (Genesis 4:9). Is this question still relevant today? For us it goes hand in hand with another question, the one that the scribe cynically asked Jesus, and brought forth His parable of the Good Samaritan: “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29) Or in this case, “Who is my brother—or sister?”
The point of my talk this morning is this: all human life is sacred—or none is. I would like to reflect for a few minutes on the archetypal story of the value of human life—the drama of Cain and Abel at the beginning of the Bible in chapter 4 of Genesis.
The two brothers represent a conflict of values, age-old land-use disputes. The farmer versus the shepherd or the herder; the settled versus the nomad. They are incompatible, and each side poses a serious threat to the livelihood of the other. The grazing animals destroy the crops. Farming restricts the movements of the herds. This same dispute caused much conflict in the westward development of our own country as well—and provided the theme for lots of cowboy movies.
As so often the case in subsequent history, the conflict leads to violence and bloodshed. God had warned Cain about this, and His words are very interesting: “Sin is a demon lurking . . his urge is toward you, yet you can be his master” (verses 6-7) In other words, sin keeps after us, and once yielded to, it’s always easier the next time. The slope towards habit or compromise, once the priorities or values are relativised, is a slippery one.
This is why it is so important to uphold a consistent life ethic, the “seamless garment” of life issues, that the US Catholic bishops articulated, under the leadership of the late (and great) Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, and Pope John Paul II has unfolded at length in his 1996 encyclical letter entitled “The Gospel of Life.”
Human life is an absolute value, and cannot be subordinated to any other value. Whenever a choice among values must be made, and one of them is human life, the choice must be made in favor of human life.
Life-issues are related to each other as the strands that together form a woven fabric. When human life is relativised in any one area, it becomes easier to do it in another. A climate favoring abortion as simply a matter of choice, in which a new human individual not yet capable of survival outside the womb is arbitrarily declared not to be human, is not far distant from a climate favoring capital punishment in which it is supposed that the intrinsic dignity of human life is subject to the judgment of personal guilt or innocence. And both are related to the climate that increasingly favors euthanasia. In both cases, human life is no longer held as an absolute value, but is subjected to other values, ultimately subjected to the unwillingness of our society to handle the problems of inconvenient (or dangerous or painful) life in a way other than by doing away with it.
I do not mean to make light of the serious problems that occasion an attitude favoring abortion or capital punishment, or even euthanasia, as a solution. All I am saying is that the dignity of our God-given shared humanity, demands that we use our intelligence to collaborate in finding and employing solutions that respect the value of all life. This is not merely my opinion; this is the consistent teaching of the Church’s magisterium.
One final note on capital punishment. The story of Cain and Abel ends with Cain being severely and rightly punished by God for his deed—but protected from being killed for it. In this story, God is clearly denying the legitimacy of “taking a life for a life.” In some ways the real punishment is harsher. It’s the deprivation of the goals that the murderer was seeking to accomplish by his deed. The very earth on which his livelihood depended turned against him, and he had to give up the life of a settled farmer to become a wandering nomad. But, anyone who killed him because of his guilt would be avenged by God sevenfold. If that’s not a clear indication of how God feels about capital punishment, I don’t know what is!
Can we as a society recover a respect for the absolute value of human life, and put it into practice consistently? Or are we doomed to continue to make compromises—compromises of both the so-called “right” and the so-called “left”—until the value of human life is completely subjected to the relativity of greed and expediency? Or perhaps, are we already there?
The point of my talk this morning is this: all human life is sacred—or none is. I would like to reflect for a few minutes on the archetypal story of the value of human life—the drama of Cain and Abel at the beginning of the Bible in chapter 4 of Genesis.
The two brothers represent a conflict of values, age-old land-use disputes. The farmer versus the shepherd or the herder; the settled versus the nomad. They are incompatible, and each side poses a serious threat to the livelihood of the other. The grazing animals destroy the crops. Farming restricts the movements of the herds. This same dispute caused much conflict in the westward development of our own country as well—and provided the theme for lots of cowboy movies.
As so often the case in subsequent history, the conflict leads to violence and bloodshed. God had warned Cain about this, and His words are very interesting: “Sin is a demon lurking . . his urge is toward you, yet you can be his master” (verses 6-7) In other words, sin keeps after us, and once yielded to, it’s always easier the next time. The slope towards habit or compromise, once the priorities or values are relativised, is a slippery one.
This is why it is so important to uphold a consistent life ethic, the “seamless garment” of life issues, that the US Catholic bishops articulated, under the leadership of the late (and great) Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, and Pope John Paul II has unfolded at length in his 1996 encyclical letter entitled “The Gospel of Life.”
Human life is an absolute value, and cannot be subordinated to any other value. Whenever a choice among values must be made, and one of them is human life, the choice must be made in favor of human life.
Life-issues are related to each other as the strands that together form a woven fabric. When human life is relativised in any one area, it becomes easier to do it in another. A climate favoring abortion as simply a matter of choice, in which a new human individual not yet capable of survival outside the womb is arbitrarily declared not to be human, is not far distant from a climate favoring capital punishment in which it is supposed that the intrinsic dignity of human life is subject to the judgment of personal guilt or innocence. And both are related to the climate that increasingly favors euthanasia. In both cases, human life is no longer held as an absolute value, but is subjected to other values, ultimately subjected to the unwillingness of our society to handle the problems of inconvenient (or dangerous or painful) life in a way other than by doing away with it.
I do not mean to make light of the serious problems that occasion an attitude favoring abortion or capital punishment, or even euthanasia, as a solution. All I am saying is that the dignity of our God-given shared humanity, demands that we use our intelligence to collaborate in finding and employing solutions that respect the value of all life. This is not merely my opinion; this is the consistent teaching of the Church’s magisterium.
One final note on capital punishment. The story of Cain and Abel ends with Cain being severely and rightly punished by God for his deed—but protected from being killed for it. In this story, God is clearly denying the legitimacy of “taking a life for a life.” In some ways the real punishment is harsher. It’s the deprivation of the goals that the murderer was seeking to accomplish by his deed. The very earth on which his livelihood depended turned against him, and he had to give up the life of a settled farmer to become a wandering nomad. But, anyone who killed him because of his guilt would be avenged by God sevenfold. If that’s not a clear indication of how God feels about capital punishment, I don’t know what is!
Can we as a society recover a respect for the absolute value of human life, and put it into practice consistently? Or are we doomed to continue to make compromises—compromises of both the so-called “right” and the so-called “left”—until the value of human life is completely subjected to the relativity of greed and expediency? Or perhaps, are we already there?
Father Serra Today, 7/4/1996
This is the first of the talks I gave at the annual Independence Day Oratory Program at Memorial Park in Claremont after I became Pastor of Our Lady of the Assumption.
T. Willard Hunter, Oratory Program
July 4, 1996, Memorial Park, Claremont
Rev. Thomas Welbers
July 4, 1996, Memorial Park, Claremont
Rev. Thomas Welbers
FATHER SERRA TODAY
In 1864, Congress invited each state to contribute two statues of prominent citizens for permanent display in the National Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol building. With the nation divided by civil war and recovery, the states were slow to respond—some haven’t to this day.
In 1927, the State of California established a commission to select the subjects and arrange for the placement of its two monuments. California’s two statues were completed, erected, and dedicated in the National Statuary Hall in 1931. It is noteworthy that both subjects from California are towering religious figures who, it could be argued, precisely because they were religious figures, made the most significant and lasting contributions in shaping the California of today. In addition, both left their mark in an amazingly brief period of time.
The two statues are of the Reverend Thomas Starr King and Padre Junipero Serra.
This is an immensely significant piece of history. Lincoln received only 28 percent of the vote in California in 1860, and the Confederate flag—not the American flag—was flown over the Plaza in Los Angeles on the Fourth of July, 1861! Had California seceded, its immense gold resources would have gone exclusively to the Confederacy, and the outcome of the civil war could well have been very different.
Thomas Starr King died tragically young in 1864, just four years after he arrived in California.
Father Junipero Serra, California’s other representative in the National Statuary Hall, lived a hundred years earlier, and was a contemporary of our nation’s founding Fathers. Two of his California missions, San Francisco and San Juan Capistrano, were founded in 1776. He was also declared “Blessed” by Pope John Paul II in 1988. This is the final step to canonization as a saint in the Catholic Church.
Most of us are familiar with Serra’s contribution to the shape of our state on the map, as well as the arrangement of social living patterns. The settlements that became cities that became major population centers all had their origin in the missions founded by Father Serra and his associates. As a result, the majority of people in California today, whatever their faith, live in places that bear the names of Catholic saints.
Serra arrived in what was to become San Diego in 1769, at age 56—an age when some people I know are thinking about retirement. In the fifteen years until his death in 1784 at age 71, he personally established 9 missions from San Diego to San Francisco. He traveled over 10,000 miles, half by sea and half by land—usually on horseback rather than on foot, popular legend notwithstanding. He suffered a chronic and painful infection of his foot and leg, as well as asthma, and of course, advancing age. He left a mark upon the land, and upon the spirit of the people who were to come after him, that subsequent years were unable to completely erase. Fifteen years—that’s less time than it takes to even start building a freeway through Claremont today!
Of course, controversy is generated by the simple fact that he—just like all of us—was a man of his time and his culture. The fact is that the Spanish crown was bent on conquering and colonizing the Californias, as they had done in Mexico and much of South America. (Of course, at that time the English crown was not exactly Mr. Nice Guy in other parts of the world!) And the fact is that native peoples did not always fare well under Spanish domination. (Of course the American native peoples did not fare very well under English colonization!)
It is to Father Serra’s credit that many of the best elements of European civilization, and of course, Christianity, first came to California. The environment of conquest and colonization is not exactly the most conducive to the spread of either culture or Christianity, and Serra consistently challenged the interference of military and civil functionaries in religious affairs as well as their frequent brutality towards the native peoples.
The greatness of Serra in these last fifteen years of his life when he so indelibly marked the beginnings of a California that we continue to experience, lay in his unconquerable will—he would never turn his back on anything he undertook. Nicknamed “el Viejo”—the aged one—his small, burdened frame marched along, climbing over every obstacle—for the glory of God and the earthly and eternal well-being of peoples the rest of the world either ignored or exploited.
Serra’s story is a pioneer’s story—and it is our story. In these days when the First Amendment separation of church and state is marked more by ambiguity than by clarity, and when there are still many among us whom people of power would rather ignore or exploit, it is good to have a hero who is also a saint in our nation’s Capitol. May his spirit guide those whose decisions in that very building continue to shape our national destiny.
Our Lady of the Assumption Church
Claremont, California
July 4, 1997
Postscript: How soon we forget! In 2006, Thomas Starr King's statue was unceremoniously removed from the Capitol's National Statuary Hall and replaced by Ronald Reagan. In 2009 it was installed and rededicated in the Capitol Park in Sacramento.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
St. Irenaeus at Pentecost
This morning, praying today's "Office of Readings" (for Pentecost Sunday), I was deeply impressed by the following passage from St. Irenaeus' "Against Heresies":
I guess I was most intrigued by the free use of mixed metaphors and parables. No strictly literal interpretation of the the Bible here! And this by a second century great Christian leader, the bishop of Lugdunum (love that name!) in Gaul, which is present-day Lyons in France, who was a disciple of St. Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, present-day Izmir in Turkey on the other side of the Mediterranean, who was in turn a disciple of St. John the Evangelist. To me it's fascinating to see how freely a writer, just a couple of generations removed from the apostles, makes use of the traditions of the Gospels.If we are not be scorched and made unfruitful, we need the dew of God. Since we have our accuser, we need an Advocate as well. And so the Lord in his pity for man, who had fallen into the hands of brigands, having himself bound up his woulds and left for his care two coins bearing the royal image, entrusted him to the Holy Spirit. Now, through the Spirit, the image and inscription of the Father and the Son have been given to us, and it is our duty to use the coin committed to our charge and make it yield a rich profit for the Lord.
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