Of Many Things Published by Jesuits of the United States

ne of the greatest Christian “For you, I your God became 106 West 56th Street writers who ever lived is the your son; for you, I the Master took New York, NY 10019-3803 Ounknown author of this ancient on your form; that of slave; for you, I Ph: 212-581-4640; Fax: 212-399-3596 homily from the second century, a med- who am above the heavens came on Subscriptions: 1-800-627-9533 itation on Holy Saturday. Happy Easter earth and under the earth; for you, www.americamagazine.org from the editors and staff ofAmerica . facebook.com/americamag man, I became as a man without twitter.com/americamag Matt Malone, S.J. help, free among the dead; for you,

who left a garden, I was handed over President and Editor in Chief What is happening? Today there is to Jews from a garden and crucified Matt Malone, S.J. a great silence over the earth, a great in a garden. Executive Editors silence, and stillness, a great silence “Look at the spittle on my face, Robert C. Collins, S.J., Maurice Timothy Reidy because the King sleeps; the earth which I received because of you, Managing Editor Kerry Weber was in terror and was still, because in order to restore you to that first Literary Editor Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. God slept in the flesh and raised up divine inbreathing at creation. See Senior Editor & Chief Correspondent those who were sleeping from the the blows on my cheeks, which I Kevin Clarke ages. God has died in the flesh, and accepted in order to refashion your Editor at Large James Martin, S.J. the underworld has trembled. distorted form to my own image. Truly he goes to seek out our “See the scourging of my Poetry Editor Joseph Hoover, S.J. first parent like a lost sheep; he back, which I accepted in order to Associate Editors Luke Hansen, S.J. wishes to visit those who sit in disperse the load of your sins which Assistant Editors Francis W. Turnbull, S.J., Olga darkness and in the shadow of was laid upon your back. See my Segura, Joseph McAuley, Ashley McKinless death. He goes to free the prisoner hands nailed to the tree for a good Art Director Stephanie Ratcliffe Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve purpose, for you, who stretched out from their pains, he who is God, and your hand to the tree for an evil one. Columnists John J. Conley, S.J., Daniel P. Horan, O.F.M., James T. Keane, John W. Martens, Bill Adam’s son. “I slept on the cross and a sword McGarvey, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Margot The Lord goes in to them pierced my side, for you, who slept Patterson, Michael Rossmann, S.J. holding his victorious weapon, his in paradise and brought forth Eve Correspondents cross. When Adam, the first created from your side. My side healed John Carr – Washington, D.C. man, sees him, he strikes his breast the pain of your side; my sleep Moderator, Catholic Book Club in terror and calls out to all: “My will release you from your sleep in Kevin Spinale, S.J. Lord be with you all.” And Christ Hades; my sword has checked the Editorial e-mail [email protected] in reply says to Adam: “And with sword which was turned against your spirit.” And grasping his hand you. he raises him up, saying: “Awake, O “But arise, let us go hence. The Vice President/Chief Financial Officer Edward Spallone sleeper, and arise from the dead, and enemy brought you out of the land Vice President/Advancement Christ shall give you light. of paradise; I will reinstate you, Daniel Pawlus “I am your God, who for your no longer in paradise, but on the Operations Staff sake became your son, who for you throne of heaven. I denied you the Rosa Del Saz, Chris Keller, Kerry Goleski, Steven and your descendants now speak tree of life, which was a figure, but Keller, Glenda Castro, Judith Felix

and command with authority those now I myself am united to you, I Advertising contact in prison: Come forth, and those in who am life. I posted the cherubim [email protected]; 212-515-0102

darkness: Have light, and those who to guard you as they would slaves; Subscription contact/Additional copies sleep: Rise. now I make the cherubim worship [email protected]; “I command you: Awake, you as they would God. 1-800-627-9533 sleeper, I have not made you to be “The cherubim throne has been © 2014 America Press, Inc. held a prisoner in the underworld. prepared, the bearers are ready Arise from the dead; I am the life and waiting, the bridal chamber of the dead. Arise, O man, work is in order, the food is provided, of my hands, arise, you who were the everlasting houses and rooms fashioned in my image. Rise, let us are in readiness; the treasures of go hence; for you in me and I in good things have been opened; Cover: The sun rises as people gather for an ecu- you, together we are one undivided the kingdom of heaven has been menical Easter service in Scituate, Mass., March person. prepared before the ages.” 31, 2013. CNS photo/Jessica Rinaldi, Reuters Contents www.americamagazine.org Vol. 210 No. 14, Whole No. 5048 april 21, 2014

articles 16 The Ecological Examen Entering a new world of Ignatian contemplation Joseph P. Carver

21 getting Out of Oil Catholic universities can make a difference through divestment. Doug Demeo

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

4 Current Comment 16 5 editorial As the Deer Longs 6 Reply All with an essay by Michael Baxter and William T. Cavanaugh 10 Signs of the Times

14 Column To an Athlete Dying Young James T. Keane

27 easter 2014 All Things Dead, Alive Lea Povozhaev After the Resurrection Lucretia B. Yaghjian

36 Poem Martyrdom Is for the Young Peter Kozik 47 the Word Radical Witness John W. Martens 31 BOOKS & CULTURE

34 SPRING BOOKS Norman Mailer; Reign of Error; Death of the Black- Haired Girl; Newman and his Family of other things Tales of a T-Shirt ART Swedish painter Anders Zorn

ON THE WEB Scripture reflections forHoly Week and Easter from the editors. Plus, Karen Sue Smith talks about the art of Anders Zorn on our podcast, and Jim McDermott, S.J., reviews the filmCesar Chavez, with Michael Peña, right. All at americamagazine.org. 34 CURRENT COMMENT

protests included shutting down access to Twitter and Papal Penitent YouTube, is disquieting in a country that was once seen as Since his election just over a year ago, Pope Francis has a stabilizing force in a conflict-ridden region. swiftly become a “pope of surprises.” By his demeanor and Turkey’s troubles are especially worrisome for those disarming way of doing things, Francis has projected the looking for models of authority in the Middle East. Petrine office in a new light. The images are embedded Modern Turkey was founded as a resolutely secular in our memory: his requests for prayers; his simple way state. Working together, the Gulenists and the Sunni- of living and dressing; the genuine embrace of people he dominated A.K.P. pushed for a greater role for religion meets in the course of the day; the unpretentious way in the public square. The government followed through he acknowledges those who are ill and infirm—like the on some laudable initiatives, like restoring confiscated unprecedented audience with deaf and blind people— Christian properties to their original owners, but it all the while evoking stories from the Gospels. And, of also excluded the Alevis, a more liberal Shiite sect, course, he radiates cheerfulness and kindness as a joyful from the halls of power. The recent turmoil is another reflection of his love for God and his fellow human disheartening sign that the road to representative beings. However, there was one thing he recently did that democracy in the Middle East is long indeed. made the world stop momentarily in its tracks. Pope Francis went to confession. There is nothing surprising in that—popes do go to Welcoming the Stranger confession. What made it noteworthy was that he chose to Imam Oumar Kobine Layama arrived at the house of do so in a public manner before he heard the confessions the archbishop with only one bag in hand. Displaced of others on March 28 at St. Peter’s Basilica. Seemingly by the ongoing conflict in the Central African Republic, oblivious to the media glare, the pope walked to the the Muslim leader sought refuge at the home of confessional, knelt and made his confession. By doing so, Archbishop Dieudonné Nzapalainga of Bangui. The Francis has impressed upon the world a basic truth: no archbishop welcomed him. “Our house, in reality, is God’s matter what a person’s station in life, whether “important” house,” Archbishop Nzapalainga told Catholic News or not, we are all in need of divine mercy, even a pope. Service during a trip to Washington. “When I open my doors to receive a brother, I am doing what God asks me Turkey’s Troubles to do.” The archbishop is not alone. Several Catholic and Last month’s elections in Turkey shed light on troubling Protestant churches have welcomed strangers of all faiths developments in a crucial country in the Middle East. during this time of need in the country. While international attention has been focused on the While the violence in the region is often portrayed test of wills over Ukraine, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip as pitting Christians against Muslims, the conflict is Erdogan of Turkey has been engaged in a destructive motivated more by political unrest than by religious battle for influence in that country with the leader of a beliefs. Imam Layama, Archbishop Nzapalainga and the powerful Islamist constituency. Fethullah Gulen may Rev. Nicolas Guerekoyame-Gbangou, a Protestant leader, live in self-imposed exile in a compound in Pennsylvania, recently visited the United States to discuss the need for but his network of so-called Gulenists operates many greater harmony among people of faith and the lessons influential organizations within Turkey, and its members they have learned from interfaith interactions. The religious hold prominent positions within the Turkish government. leaders have welcomed not only the presence of these The Gulenists were once important partners with the displaced persons but also their diverse faith traditions. ruling Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., but now “The temptation is always to consider them as people—as Mr. Gulen and Mr. Erdogan are at loggerheads, a state of new sheep—to be converted,” the Rev. Guerekoyame- affairs that could undo much of the recent economic and Gbangou said. “At no moment did I ever obligate people or political growth in Turkey. require people to come and pray with me.” Prime Minister Erdogan was not up for election in This openness to the “other” is a hopeful sign amid March, but his party performed strongly at the polls. Mr. so much pain and suffering in the region. We hope the Erdogan may now seek to change the country’s rules so example of these men inspires love and respect among that he can run for prime minister for a fourth time. His people of all faith traditions in their country and around expansive push for power, which in reaction to popular the world.

4 America April 21, 2014 EDITORIAL As the Deer Longs

he editors of America strive to ensure that our for something new. editorials, articles, blog posts and videos are not overly It was not Tfocused on the locale in which we live and work. Our unreasonable for Jesus’ magazine is called “America,” but our readership is worldwide, followers to conclude both in print and online. But as we look toward Easter and that everything was now enjoy the first blooms of spring, we would be remiss not to over. Indeed, most of the note that many parts of the United States have just suffered disciples seem to have through an unusually brutal winter. The “polar vortex,” which reached that conclusion is said to occur only once every few centuries, seemed to even before Jesus’ death. visit many regions of our country every few weeks. Immense When pressed, St. Peter snowfalls, frigid temperatures and rivers of slush made this denied ever having known Jesus. By the time of the crucifixion, winter one that tens of millions of people desperately longed all but a few women and the apostle John had slunk away. By to see end. all human measures, everything had ended. At the same time, it awakened an almost primal desire Yet seeing with merely human eyes can mislead us, as it for spring—its warmth, its colors, its life. “As the deer longs misled the disciples. During this worst of winters, it may have for streams of water,” the psalmist wrote, “so my soul longs seemed impossible that the frozen ground could ever again for you, O God” (42:2). That sentiment expresses what many yield anything as beautiful as a violet crocus or a yellow tulip Americans felt about springtime this year. or a blade of green grass. But God has other plans. That kind of deep longing mirrors the longing we feel Renewal is the theme that one finds not only in nature, for the coming of Christ. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the 12th- but also in the church today. In the year following the election century Cistercian writer, spoke of three comings of our Lord. of Pope Francis, many Catholics have experienced a decided aul H ari n g The first is the coming of Jesus in history, the Messiah for sense of renewal and refreshment. Catholics who had at times whom the Hebrew people longed for centuries. God became felt unwelcome in the church—among them some women, human and entered into the world of first-century Palestine. divorced and remarried Catholics, and gays and lesbians— Theologians sometimes call this the “scandal of particularity.” have reported experiencing a sense of newness. Other In him God entered the world at a particular time, in a Catholics, who have long felt welcomed, nonetheless feel new particular place and with the cooperation of a particular warmth in the church. This is not to set aside the papacies of woman. either soon-to-be St. John Paul II or Pope Emeritus Benedict The second of Bernard’s comings is the coming of Christ XVI. Each pope brings his unique gifts to the office. But it into our lives on a daily basis. All of us—like the psalmist’s would be foolish to deny that with Pope Francis God is doing deer, panting for water—long for a fuller relationship with something new. God. The message of Easter is that Christ is risen. But the Finally, in the coming of Christ at the end of time and message is also that God can always bring new life from what history, all our longings will be satisfied in an eternal spring. appears to be dead. That God can bring hope out of despair. To Bernard’s three comings one might add a fourth: That God can bring love from a situation in which hatred the coming of Jesus out of the tomb. Imagine the inchoate seems to reign. That God can bring change when things longing of the disciples after the terrible events of Good seemed unchangeable. That God can, after the hardest winter Friday. One often tends to focus on the disciples’ sadness, in memory, still renew the face of the earth (Ps 104:30). Easter or their fear, after the execution of their leader. But mingled means spring in every area of life. with that sadness and fear must have been an intense longing The message of Easter, in short, is that nothing is for clarity and for consolation. “How could God,” they must impossible with God. This is what the angel Gabriel told have wondered, “bring something new out of this?” How the Mary at the Annunciation. In John’s Gospel the angels tell the followers of Jesus must have ached for a warm answer to the women who have come to the tomb on Easter Sunday that cold reality of Good Friday. How they must have sought light same message, but in a new, different and entirely surprising

n gto , D . C N S photo/ P C o n ceptio i Washi n al S hri e of the I mmaculate from the Basilica of Natio detail after the darkness of his death. How they must have longed way. They say: “He is risen!”

April 21, 2014 America 5 REPLY ALL require more sackcloth and ashes this cial treatment was granted (and none Lent. asked for!). No stigma of any sort was Charles Butera ever tolerated. Every employee was Love and Fidelity East Northport, N.Y. treated equally and with respect. We In the spirit of dialogue suggested in noted that respecting the ex-inmates “See the Person,” by John P. Langan, What Is Possible engendered their own self-respect and S.J. (3/10), my experience of friend- The Christian community can accept respect for others. The absence of dis- ship with same-sex couples offers a same-sex unions in response to the crimination made for a very productive positive view of their fidelity and sen- biblical imperative that it is not good and cohesive workforce. sitivity to each other. for man to be alone (Gen 2:18). Robert A. Mallet The fidelity, loyalty and caring for An obstacle to same-sex marriage Rockville, Md. each other of these gay couples call me has been a univocal concept of human to exert more effort in the relationship nature. If we believe God is the creator Achievement and Hope I have with my husband. In my sacra- of all human beings, we must accept After 28 years in prison ministry, I mental marriage, I see no threat to the the fact that God creates, loves and heartily agree with and admire the institution of marriage by granting civ- wills homosexuals no less than hetero- work of Manhattan College in meet- il marriage rights to gay couples. sexuals. ing the educational needs of inmates. Doris Hand Secondly, all authentic laws have to I remember the years when the Pell Fullerton, Calif. be humanly—as opposed to heroical- Grant was available to inmates, and ly—possible. No just law, religious or the pursuit of higher education gave Tables Have Turned secular, violates the basic exigencies of them something to work for, a sense of In principle, there is nothing in “See our God-given nature. That persons achievement and a hope that life could the Person” with which to disagree. created homosexual should be restrict- be better. I believe that for the majority of ed to a life devoid of sexual intimacy Professor Skotnicki and his stu- America’s readership—sophisticated may be heroically possible, but not hu- dents are addressing a great need in the and compassionate people—Father manly possible. lives of many inmates. God’s blessings Langan may be preaching to the choir. Leo Lorenz on their efforts. However, others may feel like the Spokane, Wash. Michael O’Hara, O.M.I. prodigal son’s older brother. These Lowell, Mass. are the pre-Vatican II Catholics. They Ex-Inmate Employment are straight, have towed the line and Re “The Prison Class,” by Andrew My Father Daniel have had their sexuality calibrated by Skotnicki (3/10): I am a graduate of Thank you so much for the tributes a somewhat Jansenist Irish-American Manhattan College, so it was gratify- to Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., in the clergy. They may find the new stance ing to learn about the college’s work March 10 issue. He was indeed one of disconcerting and even somewhat hyp- with the prison population. Based on the finest men I ever knew. He had a ocritical. several years of real-world results, I can keen wit, a superb biblical intellect, a Certainly they wish to reject all attest to the value of this program. great sense of humor, and a kind and forms of homophobia, but they have In the 1970s my company had a generous heart. He made a tremen- seen traditional values compromised. series of contracts for data entry and dous impact on my life, and I will miss They have had to endure encroach- computer processing for a government him a great deal. ments from Broadway’s “La Cage aux payroll system. On our own initiative, Father Dan was my mentor, occa- Folles” to Hollywood’s “Brokeback we hired and trained people recently sional pen pal and faculty advisor in Mountain.” They have had to swallow released from prison. We conducted the mid-1980s, when I was a student at the same-sex marriage triumphs on the no prescreening for entry to the pro- the Weston Jesuit School of Theology. steps of the U.S. Supreme Court. And gram. Once trained and tested, they Every Father’s Day since then, I now that the tables are turned they were put on the payroll as employees. would either send him a greeting card find themselves the outsiders. They are Their work met all our standards of or an email wishing him a “Happy being asked to make concessions, as if productivity, dependability and er- Father’s Day.” I know he really enjoyed America has teamed up with the po- ror-free output. Our personnel reten- getting it; it gave him a good laugh litically correct. tion rate was 84 percent. each year. I always told him that be- Apparently there is plenty of insen- We did not treat the ex-prison- cause I considered him as my spiritual sitivity to go around. For some, Father er differently than anyone else in the father, he was as much a father to me Langan’s take on the new stance will organization, top-to-bottom. No spe- as my own biological father, who was a

6 America April 21, 2014 wonderful dad. I told Father Dan that Martens writes that our inevitable I plan on giving copies of this article some priests get to be called “father” as transgressions can inspire fear about to our six grown children as part of their simply a title of respect, but in his case “whether we are worthy to stand be- Easter greeting. Thanks toAmerica and he really deserved to be called “father.” fore God.” Another framework is that Father Martin for this gift. Indeed he was. of the pilgrim’s progress: when we fall Joe Barmess Michael Hickey off the path we need a guide to find our Pickerington, Ohio Naples, Fla. way again. Not all of us are destined to become saints, but the church may Buddhism and Suffering Land of ‘Israel’? seem to demand no less than perfec- In his thoughtful essay “Take Up In “A Scholar’s Life” (3/10), Frank J. tion and remind us that anything less Your Cross,” James Martin, S.J., writes Matera, a renowned biblical schol- brings punishment. “Speaking the that “Christianity parts ways with ar, makes essential points about the Word of God,” by James Martin, S.J., Buddhism” because Buddhism “says Judaism of Jesus and of the New names the virtues that members of that suffering is an illusion.” In truth, Testament. Why, however, does he the church appreciate in their spiritual Buddhism, like Christianity, recogniz- refer to Roman Palestine as the “land guides: clarity, patience and kindness. es suffering. The four noble truths of of Israel” and to the Hebrew Bible as Jim Hess Buddhism teach that all is suffering, the “scriptures of Israel”? Jesus was Irvine, Calif. that there are causes to suffering and a Palestinian Jew; David’s kingdom, that we can alleviate suffering by inten- called Israel, was long gone (722 B.C.). Burdens and Joys tionally embracing the practices of an Nazareth in Galilee and Bethlehem in Re “Take Up Your Cross” (3/3): I found eightfold path. Judah were in Roman Palestine. Do we it most valuable, especially as we ap- This path teaches practical methods avoid these facts lest we be considered proach the Easter season, for James of action and thought that assist a per- anti-Semitic? Is it right to use the term Martin, S.J., to share his focus on the son to work with the reality of suffering. Israel whenever we mean the Jews col- resurrection as the center of his faith. Coupled with meditation and self-giv- lectively? This message is most helpful to those ing, practitioners grow in compassion When the modern nation-state of bearing the burden (as well as the unique and wisdom. Both Christianity and Israel was established in the 1940s, joys) of raising a child with special needs Buddhism are deeply relational, seek to consideration was given to naming it (as my daughter and son-in-law are). heal the suffering of the world, and both Judah. That could have avoided the It provides comfort as well as practical arise out of compassion. This mutual major misconception of Zionism that examples of how even Jesus dealt with foundation is something to honor. somehow modern Israel is in geopolit- his suffering in both the Garden of In a world filled with wars fueled ical continuity with ancient Israel of 30 Gethsemane and on the cross. by ignorance of each other’s faith tra- centuries ago. We learn that acceptance does not ditions, to find common ground from Rosemary Reiss necessarily mean welcoming suffer- Lake Placid, N.Y. which to dialogue is imperative. As ing. And, while it may mean that we Catholics, we must gently listen to complain about, cry about and even A New Vision the teachings of other traditions and share our suffering with others, it does The March 10 issue ofAmerica offers learn from the wisdom of one another. not give us license to be insensitive and convergent ideas about how the church Together in mutual dialogue, we also mean to others. And, as Jesus did with might approach its mission. participate in alleviating suffering. Simon of Cyrene, we can let others help “The Prison Class” calls us to Michele Micklewright us in our burden. Brooklyn Park, Minn. “change the culture…from one of stig- matization and punishment to one of What you’re reading at americamagazine.org opportunity and care.” “See the Person” 1 Thank You, Professor, by James Martin, S.J. (3/31) asks ministers to encourage personal 2 Taking Liberties, by Ellen K. Boegel (Online, 3/18) growth. Father Langan writes that the 3 The Water That Time, a review of the film “Noah,” by John Anderson emphasis on “bureaucratic and legal (Online, 3/27) frameworks” forestalls discussion at 4 Market Reformer, by Jeffrey D. Sachs (3/24) the level of equal rights rather than the 5 Assault on Dignity, by the Editors (3/31) full consideration of Catholic values. Thus the church is cast as lawgiver and Letters to the editor may be sent to America’s editorial office (address on page 2) or letters@ judge rather than as teacher and guide. americamagazine.org. America will also consider comments posted below articles on In “Away With Fear,” John W. America’s Web site (americamagazine.org) for print publication.

April 21, 2014 America 7 More Deeply Into the World Michael Baxter and William T. Cavanaugh respond to “A View from Abroad,” by Massimo Faggioli (2/24).

e are the people Massimo other nations combined; promotes a Mr. Faggioli proposes renewal of the Faggioli warned you muscular, often idolatrous, civil reli- Catholic Common Ground Initiative Wabout. In his article on the gion; erodes the autonomy of faith- as an alternative to what we propose. polarization of Catholics in the United based institutions; has spent a trillion We are very much in favor of Catholics States, Professor Faggioli mentions us dollars over the last decade on a secre- across ideological spectra meeting by name as representing the road not tive security apparatus; and is run by to find common ground. What that to follow. We are accused of “with- two corporate-sponsored parties who should mean is that conservatives wor- drawal from the nation-state” and “re- respond almost exclusively to those ried about state-sponsored attacks on treat” from the polis. Our approach is with money. Half of the electorate al- religious freedom and liberals worried divisive, sectarian and, if implemented ready does not bother to vote, even in about state-sponsored torture and sur- in Europe, even “risks a return to the national elections. veillance can unite in recognizing that wars of religion that ravaged Europe We acknowledge that voting the United States is often unfriendly for at least a century.” and lobbying can make a difference, territory for the Gospel and that we The idea that we advocate with- though usually not much. But we do should consider ourselves Catholics be- drawal strikes us as odd. We work at not think it is adequate simply to en- fore considering ourselves Americans. the largest Catholic university in the courage Catholics to pick one of two The “social radicalism” that Mr. Faggioli country, with 24,000 students, many parties and get in the game. A Catholic identifies with Pope Francis would of whom are working class. Besides is right to feel homeless in the political seem to demand this shift from identi- teaching, we are involved in the Center process, both because a Catholic’s loy- fying with the centers of political power for World Catholicism & Intercultural alty transcends national borders and to identifying with the marginalized. Theology at DePaul, a forum for because neither of the parties comes Latinos offer an important signpost connecting Catholics from the glob- close to representing the just and for being Catholic in this country today. al South with those from the North. peaceful world envisioned by Catholic They have largely avoided easy charac- We sponsor lectures, conferences social teaching. terization into either side of the polarity and scholar-in-residence programs. This homelessness should not drive in the Catholic Church. Put more posi- There is a big world out there, much Catholics out of the world but more tively, Latinos in the United States have larger than the world of Republican deeply into it. We advocate for ex- a sense for mestizaje, “mixedness”—a versus Democrat, First Things ver- periments in face-to-face communi- sense that they can be both American sus Commonweal. Mr. Faggioli wants ty where democracy is not an empty and Mexican, for example. Not just Catholics to insert themselves into slogan: unions, buying cooperatives, Latinos but all Catholics can embrace U.S. politics as the particular into the houses of hospitality, credit unions and the reality of mestizaje, because it char- universal, but when compared with the so on. We do not think that communi- acterizes Jesus, who is both God and global embrace of the body of Christ, ty is restored simply by cutting people man, who forged a community from the nation-state appears as a “sectarian” off from government aid and leaving both Jew and gentile, who embraces all attempt to draw borders. them at the mercy of the market. peoples regardless of the politics of na- Do we advocate Catholic “with- Nor do we think the only thing peo- tion-states and who is gathering the na- drawal from the nation-state”? Not ple need is a check from the government. tions into a vast pilgrimage to our true any more than we could advocate with- Those who have withdrawn from soci- home. drawal from the weather. We drive on ety, or have been cast out, need personal Michael Baxter the roads, pay taxes, use the postal ser- care. Moreover, thinking and acting in a William T. Cavanaugh vice, obtain passports. What we advo- Catholic way should mean resisting the Michael Baxter is visiting associate cate is that Christians be more realistic unlimited pretensions of the limited professor of Catholic studies at DePaul about how the nation-state works. In nation-state in which we find ourselves. University in Chicago. William T. many ways the United States is a great Refusing to fight in unjust wars and Cavanaugh is director of the Center place to live. It is also the nation that treating the foreigner as oneself are the for World Catholicism & Intercultural spends more on its military than all opposite of sectarian. Theology at DePaul.

8 America April 21, 2014 April 21, 2014 America 9 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Immigration Reform Communion. Boston’s Cardinal Seán O’Malley U.S. Bishops at Mexico Border at the border fence in Push Mercy for Migrants Nogales, Ariz. hile comprehensive immigration reform remains stalled in Congress, members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops joined resi- Wdents, migrants and advocates from both sides of the U.S./Mexico border in Nogales, Ariz., on April 1. There they celebrated Mass together, re- membering thousands of migrants who have perished in the deserts of the U.S. Southwest, which one bishop described as “our Lampedusa.” This “Mission for Migrants” was inspired by the trip of Pope Francis to Lampedusa, Italy, last year to pray for migrants who died attempting to reach Europe by boat. “As a moral matter, our nation can no longer employ an immigration system that divides families and denies basic due process protections to our fellow human beings,” said Bishop Eusebio Elizondo, auxiliary bishop of Seattle and chairman of the U.S.C.C.B.’s Committee on Migration. During his homily at the border, Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, O.F.M.Cap., of Boston said: “Here in the desert of Arizona, we come to mourn the countless im- migrants who risk their lives at the hands of [human traffickers] and the forces of nature to come to the United States. Every year 400 bodies are found here at the border, bodies of men, women and children seeking to enter the United States. Those are only the bodies that are found. As the border crossings become more T he P ilot M edia G roup P hoto: G eorge M artell/ difficult, people take greater risks and more are perishing.” miliations of so many immigrants who and oppression, seeking a better life for Recalling the “hardships and hu- come to the States fleeing from poverty their children,” he said, “Sadly enough,

Syrian Refugee Crisis devastating. The country has expe- rienced serious economic shocks, in- Lebanon Reaches Grim Milestone cluding a decline in trade, tourism and investment and an increase in public he number of refugees fleeing Lebanon, a small nation beset by in- expenditures. Public services are strug- from Syria into neighboring ternal difficulties, the impact is stag- gling to meet increased demand, with TLebanon passed the one mil- gering,” said U.N. High Commissioner health, education, electricity, water and lion mark on April 3, according to U.N. for Refugees António Guterres. “The sanitation particularly taxed. officials, a bleak milestone exacerbated by Lebanese people have shown striking The World Bank estimates that the rapidly decreasing social resources and a generosity, but are struggling to cope. crisis in Syria cost Lebanon $2.5 billion host community stretched to the break- Lebanon hosts the highest concentra- in lost economic activity last year and ing point. Just over three years after Syria’s tion of refugees in recent history. We threatens to push 170,000 Lebanese conflict began, Lebanon has become the cannot let it shoulder this burden alone.” into poverty by the end of this year. country with the highest per capita con- The influx of Syrians escaping the Wages are plummeting, and families are centration of refugees worldwide and is civil war is accelerating. In April 2012, struggling to make ends meet. struggling to keep pace with a crisis that there were 18,000 Syrian refugees in Children make up half the Syrian ref- shows no signs of slowing. Refugees from Lebanon; by April 2013, there were ugee population in Lebanon. The num- Syria now make up almost a quarter of the 356,000; now, in April of this year, one ber of school-age children is now more resident population. million. Every day, U.N.H.C.R. staff in than 400,000, eclipsing the number of “The influx of a million refugees Lebanon register 2,500 new refugees. Lebanese children in public schools. would be massive in any country. For The impact on Lebanon has been The new president of Caritas

10 America April 21, 2014 In a teleconference sponsored by im- tion for millions of people by executive migration reform advocates on April 4, order. Kevin Appleby, director of migration At the border, which separates the and public affairs for the bishops’ con- civic “twins” of Nogales, Mexico, from ference, said the border events under- Nogales, Ariz., Cardinal O’Malley not- lined the urgency of dealing with the ed that the day’s Gospel “begins with humanitarian costs of the immigration a certain lawyer who is trying to test situation. Jesus,” demanding to know, “Who is “We went to [the border] to raise my neighbor?” Jesus responds with the the human issue, the moral issue,” said parable of the good Samaritan. “In Jesus’ Appleby. “We always talk about the eco- day the term ‘good Samaritan’ was never nomic, social and legal issues, but in the used by the chosen people,” the cardinal end, this is about 11 million human be- said. “The Samaritans were the despised ings living in the shadows. foreigners, heretics and outcasts. Yet “Immigration laws should protect Jesus shows us how that foreigner, that human rights, not undermine them,” he Samaritan, becomes the protagonist, added. the hero who saves one of the native Representative Luis V. Gutiérrez, sons who is rescued not by his fellow Democrat of Illinois, the most vocal countryman and coreligionists but by a congressional advocate for comprehen- stranger, an alien, a Samaritan. sive reform, said during the teleconfer- “‘Who is my neighbor?’ Jesus changed ence that he is optimistic that legislation the question from one of legal obligation can pass in the House before Congress (who deserves my love) to one of gift giv- recesses for the summer. If it does not, ing (to whom can I show myself a neigh- many immigrants spend years without he said, President Obama has the legal bor), and of this the despised Samaritan the opportunity to see their loved ones.” authority to ease the threat of deporta- is the moral exemplar.”

Lebanon has launched an appeal to the killed in Syria’s three-year-old civil war, reported in March that if the conflict international community to work hard- a third of them civilians, though the true were to end tomorrow, it would take the er for the “common good,” seek an end to toll could be much higher. The nation’s nation 30 years to recover. the conflict in Syria and do more to help Christians have become refugees who have fled to neighboring targets of displacement countries like Lebanon. The Rev. Paul and death threats and Karam said the needs surrounding his the subjects of extor- new job are huge. tion, kidnapping and The influx of Syrian refugees, he at times brutal homi- worries, poses existential social, polit- cides. Efforts to end ical and humanitarian questions for the conflict by bringing Lebanon. “These are very big problems together representatives for Lebanon. That’s why it is very urgent of President Bashar now, not tomorrow, and not after to- al-Assad’s government morrow, to see how we can resolve this and the opposition problem.” have so far failed. The The Syrian Observatory for Human United Nations peace Rights updated its count of the dead on mediator for Syria said arli n g/ C aritas April 1 as the conflict moves deeper into in early April that talks Mother and child. Souad Mohamed, a Syrian its fourth year. The group now reports were unlikely to resume refugee, with her her baby inside a tent in Lebanon’s

P hoto: S am T that at least 150,000 people have been soon, and a U.N. study Bekaa Valley, December 2013.

April 21, 2014 America 11 SIGNS OF THE TIMES Abuse Allegations Down in 2013 NEWS BRIEFS The number of allegations of sexu- Frans van der Lugt, a 75-year-old Dutch al abuse by clergy declined in 2013, Jesuit who refused to leave war-torn while diocesan spending on child pro- Syria, was beaten by armed men and tection programs increased under the killed with two bullets to the head, ac- U.S. Catholic Church’s “Charter for cording to a message sent from the Jesuits’ the Protection of Children and Young Middle East Province to the Jesuit head- Frans van der Lugt People,” according to a church-spon- quarters in Rome on April 7. • Linda sored annual audit. Dioceses and LeMura, named president of Le Moyne College in Syracuse on April Eastern-rite eparchies reported 370 4, is the first laywoman to be appointed president of a Jesuit college new allegations of abuse of a minor or university. • Calling torture “an intrinsic evil” under any circum- brought by 365 people against 290 stance, Bishop Richard E. Pates, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Committee priests or deacons, said the Georgetown on International Justice and Peace, supported Senate efforts on April University-based Center for Applied 2 to declassify parts of an intelligence committee report on C.I.A. in- Research in the Apostolate. About 69 terrogation practices. • Responding to criticism of his new $2.2 mil- percent of the alleged offenses report- lion residence, Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Atlanta apologized ed last year occurred or began between on April 3 in a column in the archdiocesan newspaper and vowed 1960 and 1984. Three-quarters of the to “live more simply, more humbly, and more like Jesus Christ who alleged offenders are already deceased or challenges us to be in the world and not of the world.” • The bloody removed from active ministry. Eight of Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria would be stopped, said Bishop the alleged perpetrators were deacons; Matthew Hassan Kukah of Sokoto, if the government would create 282 were priests. Spending on child “the environment to trap the energy of the youth and to channel it protection programs jumped to $41.7 toward national development.” million in 2013 from nearly $26.6 mil- lion in 2012. The audit reported that more than 99 percent of clergy mem- plan,” a blueprint for government that Taiwan, Vietnam, South Korea, China bers, 97.6 percent of church employees Chávez left behind. “Within it they are and Hong Kong; five are in sub-Sa- and 99.5 percent of educators had un- hiding the promotion of a totalitari- haran Africa—Guinea-Bissau, Togo, dergone safe environment training. an-style system of government, putting Ivory Coast, Benin and Mozambique; in doubt its democratic credentials,” he and one is in Latin America and the said, reading a church communiqué. Caribbean—Suriname. No countries in Bishops Slam Maduro Though it defended the right of stu- Europe, North America or the Middle In a hard-hitting statement released on dents and others to protest, the church East-North Africa region have as high a April 2, Venezuela’s Roman Catholic condemned both the demonstrators’ degree of religious diversity, according to Church accused President Nicolas tactic of barricading roads and the state’s the study’s index. Of the 232 countries Maduro’s government of “totalitari- suppression of dissidence. “The govern- in the study, Singapore has the highest an” tendencies and “brutal repression” ment is wrong to want to solve the crisis diversity score. The United States has of demonstrators during two months by force,” the church statement added. a moderate level of religious diversity, of political unrest that has resulted in “The solution is clear: sincere dialogue ranking 68th among the 232 countries the deaths of 39 people. The bishops’ between the government and all sectors.” and territories included in the study. denunciation is likely to revive church- Christians constituted a sizable majori- state tensions that were constant during Religious Diversity ty of the U.S. population (78 percent) in the 14-year rule of Maduro’s prede- 2010. Of the seven other major religious cessor, Hugo Chávez. Bishop Diego Highest in Asia groups, only the religiously unaffiliated Padrón, who heads Venezuela’s con- Pew researchers report that six of the claim a substantial share of the U.S. ference of bishops, said the principal world’s 12 nations with a “very high de- population, at 16 percent. cause of the crisis was the government’s gree” of religious diversity can be found attempt to implement “the fatherland in the Asia-Pacific region—Singapore, From CNS, RNS and other sources.

12 America April 21, 2014 April 21, 2014 America 13 James T. Keane To an Athlete Dying Young nother March Madness is matic 6-foot-7 (well, maybe) power in its region, but destroyed New over. We saw a few Davids slay forward, and Bo Kimble, a reserved Mexico State in the first round, even Asome Goliaths along the way 6-foot-2 (not by a long shot) swing- without Hank, setting up a game (nice job, Dayton!), but the N.C.A.A. man. Hank led the nation in scoring against the defending national cham- Men’s Basketball Final Four this year and rebounding in his junior year, and pions, Michigan, a team with five fu- remained the home of perennial pow- would have done the same again had ture N.B.A. players on its roster. erhouses. Not since Villanova knocked he not been slowed by medication he And maybe you already knew the off Georgetown almost 30 years ago took after fainting in an early-season outcome: sheer physical size and tal- has a true long shot taken home the game. Instead, Kimble led the charge, ent are no match for the human spirit. title. averaging 35 points a game to lead the A stunned Michigan squad found it- It has been almost as long since the nation, and L.M.U. steamrolled into self gasping for air at timeouts. L.M.U. most thrilling, inspiring and emotion- their conference tourna- never stopped running, ally wrenching run of all time in the ment with a 23-5 record. and L.M.U. couldn’t N.C.A.A. tourney, that of the 1990 Seven minutes into a Sheer miss. Jeff Fryer poured Loyola Marymount Lions. game on L.M.U.’s home physical in shots from 3-point I was a true believer in those days court against the Portland range, hitting 11 of 15 but not yet a student at L.M.U., a teen- Pilots, Hank took an al- size and (still a tournament re- ager who listened to their games on ley-oop pass on a classic cord). Bo Kimble fired in KXLU-FM in my parents’ living room, L.M.U. fast break and talent are another 37 points. The following the breathless announc- threw it down for a monster no match final score was 149-115, ers who could barely keep up with dunk. Slapping hands with the game concluding to L.M.U.’s fast-break style. I had other his teammates, he ran back for the thundering chants for reasons to cheer for L.M.U.—three of to midcourt and turned to human spirit. L.M.U. my siblings were undergraduates at the face the defense. Moments Suddenly a nation time, and four more of us would fol- later, he collapsed. was watching. The little low in the coming years—but my real With a crowd instantly around him, team from nowhere was on the cover reason was simple: there was no more Hank tried once to get up, then sank of Sports Illustrated, with the per- exciting team on earth. back to the floor. He was taken out- fect headline: “For You, Hank.” They Paul Westhead, former head coach side on a stretcher. After an eternity won again the next week, beating the of the Los Angeles Lakers, had in- of waiting, the news came in: a heart Alabama Crimson Tide and setting stalled a system that privileged speed attack, later diagnosed as the result of them up for a showdown against the and scoring above all else. Typical of- hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. University of Nevada, Las Vegas. The fensive plays resulted in a shot within And just like that, Hank was dead. winner would go to the Final Four. seven seconds. “See How They Run at Traumatic doesn’t begin to de- Alas, U.N.L.V., with four future Loyola Marymount” read a New York scribe it. L.M.U. was a tiny school N.B.A. players on their roster, de- Times feature on the Lions that year, then, barely more than 3,000 stu- stroyed the fairytale. They won 131- and run they did, averaging 122 points dents, and Hank was as visible in the 101 on their way to the championship. per game in the 1989-90 season. school cafeteria as he was on the court. Kimble went eighth in the N.B.A. Westhead’s success was also due to two A community wept along with Hank’s draft to the Los Angeles Clippers. Philadelphia playground legends who family and teammates. His funeral Paul Westhead was hired to coach provided the perfect inside-out punch: was held later that week in the gym the Denver Nuggets. L.M.U. soon Hank “The Bank” Gathers, a charis- where he had died. The upcoming returned to basketball obscurity. But N.C.A.A. tournament seemed like an the true believers remember a March James T. Keane is an editor at Orbis Books in Ossining, N.Y., and a former associate editor of afterthought. Madness that can never be forgotten. America. Follow him @jamestkeane. But wait. L.M.U. was seeded 11th For you, Hank.

14 America April 21, 2014

The Ecological Examen Entering a new world of Ignatian contemplation By Joseph P. Carver

long the coast of Oregon at the Nestucca The five movements in the ecological examen parallel the Wildlife Sanctuary, there are old-growth Sitka traditional examen. We begin with thanksgiving and grati- Spruce over 500 years old. I imagine that they tude for all creation, which reflects the beauty and blessing were around when St. Ignatius was a boy, and of God’s image. We ask: Where was I most aware of this AI feel connected to him through these soaring wonders. gift today? Second, we specifically request to have our eyes Sitting at the base of these towering creatures has long been opened by the Spirit as to how we might protect and care one of my favorite places to pray. As I stare out at the Pacific for creation. Third, we review the challenges and joys ex- from this sanctuary, I can easily follow Ignatius’ advice to perienced in this care, asking: How was I drawn into God find God in all things—es- today through creation? How was I pecially in creation. being invited to respond to God’s ac- The daily examen and tion in creation? Fourth, we ask for a Ignatian imaginative prayer true and clear awareness of our sinful- are two effective channels ness, whether it be a sense of superi- for cultivating greater mind- ority and arrogance in our relationship fulness of God’s presence to creation or a failure to respond to in one’s interior life. These God in the needs of creation. Finally, practices are rooted in the we end in hope: asking for hope in the belief that we experience future, asking for the grace to see the God’s movements in our incarnate Christ in the dynamic inter- feelings, moods, actions and connections of all creation. desires—that is, in our lived I always conclude my examen with experience as incarnate be- the prayer of Jesus: “The glory that you ings. God reveals himself have given me I have given them, so in our emotions as much as that they may be one, as we are one, I he does in our clear and dis- in them and you in me, that they may tinct ideas. In them we rec- become completely one, so that the ognize God’s ceaseless invitation to come closer, to be more world may know that you have sent me and have loved them like God, to be one with God. We also become conscious even as you have loved me” (Jn 17:22–23). This prayer in- of our resistance to God, which arises from sin in ourselves vites conversion and reminds us that all serious solutions to and in the world around us. These same spiritual tools can the ecological crisis of our time include the demand that we be used to cultivate ecological sensitivity and a heightened human beings change our thinking, relationships and be- awareness of God’s immanence in the natural world. haviors so that we may be woven into the unity of creation. The examen, like the Spiritual Exercises, progresses to Creation Re-Examened the point of exhorting us to a total commitment to the life Using the technique of the examen with an ecological lens al- of Christ. Inspired by the Spirit, looking at the events in our lows us to reflect prayerfully on the events of the day within lives and on the earth from an ecological perspective moves this larger world. We witness our relationship with creation, us to deepen our commitments, to return to daily life with and we detect God’s presence and direction for us within it. enthusiasm, inspired to transform, heal and recover the nat- Further, just as the goal of any examen is a discerning heart, ural environment of which we are a part. so the purpose of an “ecological examen” is to recognize our- In my experience, the practice of the ecological examen selves as creatures in and of the world: How is God inviting has led to profound experiences of gratitude for the gifts of us personally to see creation, and how are we responding? creation, especially those that might otherwise be missed in a merely spiritual process. This examen teaches us that our Joseph P. Carver, S.J., is president of Seattle Nativity School. ultimate purpose, “to praise, reverence and serve God,” en-

16 America April 21, 2014 tails a Christian environmental response as part and parcel of everything we do. Indeed, such a response becomes part of our service to each other, to our communities and to God. Like the traditional examen, the ecolog- ical examen leads us through three steps: awareness, appreciation and commitment. Awareness involves taking off the blinders that keep us focused on our own self-cen- tered pursuits. From this awareness comes appreciation, as we cannot appreciate what we are unaware of or not in relation- ship with. We learn to see as intrinsically valuable those things we may previously have only tolerated and treated as objects. Creation becomes an indispensible teacher rather than an opponent to be dominated or a resource to be exploited. Suddenly we find ourselves learning from and imitating our fellow creatures: the dung beetle in our kitchen compost; the flippers of humpback whales as a model for our spinning turbines. Finally, such graced appreciation leads us to committed action. We move beyond recycle and reuse, beyond stewardship to restoration and renewal. Healing the earth begins, according to Thomas Berry, C.P., by seeing ourselves and all creation as a com- munion of subjects instead of a collection of objects.

Prayer Reimagined Similar graces come from using our imagi- nation in prayer to contemplate scenes from the Gospel. In the Ignatian method, we are invited to engage the Gospels with all of our faculties, but most often this engagement EASY BEING GREEN. Sitka spruce at the Nestucca Wildlife Sanctuary is limited to taking on the role of anoth- er human being. By entering into Ignatian contemplations in non-human roles, however, we not only the fifth day in the third week of the month-long retreat, increase our sensitivity to creation but open our hearts to preoccupied not with Christ himself but with the intensity new depths of insights offered by the Spirit. Thus we are in- of Christ’s suffering, speaking again and again of the grue- vited to enter into the scene as if we were part of the natural someness of his contemplations. As we came to the end of world—seeds scattered on rocky soil or the oil that anoints our conversation, I invited him to place Christ in the tomb Christ’s feet. There are literally hundreds of opportunities by the end the day. Though I rarely give specific directives in the Gospels and seemingly endless examples when we in- like this, I felt compelled by the Spirit. He agreed. Then I clude the Hebrew Scriptures and the psalms, and these con- suggested that he imagine himself not as a human witness templations cannot help but provoke feelings of gratitude to this scene but as the tomb itself. Again he agreed. When and compel us toward action on behalf of creation. we met late the next day, he tearfully said four words: “Christ While directing the Spiritual Exercises last summer, I sat rose within me.” Deeply consoled, he went on to recount the hotos courtesy of the author P hotos courtesy with a retreatant who was spiritually spinning. He was on powerful contemplation he had experienced as the tomb. He

April 21, 2014 America 17 described himself trembling with life and energy, an inert from a profound sense of shame and guilt. Entering into this tomb quickening with essence, like a desert blooming after contemplation as the soil, she experienced a pervasive sense rainfall, an anonymous, indifferent place of death suddenly of healing. She returned the following day filled with joy to shooting color skyward. His contemplation of the tomb it- recount how she “had given birth to God’s Word...a living self allowed him an even deeper experience of the risen and Word!” She spoke of the new sense of being both a disciple life-giving Christ incarnate. and mother. (I have often wondered if any physical healing New insights arise when we allow ourselves to be con- came from this spiritual grace. Whether or not it did, her fronted by heretofore unimagined questions: Can we see healing gave her a mission, and in living this mission she re- and feel how the ground beneath the cross was the first mains a healing presence in the world.) chalice to receive the blood of Christ? Can we offer com- fort to Christ imagining ourselves as the oil that anoints Ignatian Inspiration his feet—softening scaly cracks, rejuvenating calloused, im- Looking at the life of Ignatius, as recorded in the saint’s au- penetrable heels? What does transformation feel like if we tobiography, we can see how God certainly enlightened him imagine ourselves as the water turned to through the Trinity in creation: “One day wine at Cana? Contemplating such scenes while reciting the hours of our Lady on On the Web evokes courage and a new kind of reveren- Scriptural reflections the steps of some monastery...he saw the tial humility for the gift of creation—the for Holy Week and Easter. Holy Trinity under the figure of three [or- same virtues Jesus cultivated in following americamagazine.org/abs gan] keys.” The fullness of the chord and the will of God by becoming part of the the harmony drew forth tears. He could natural world. not stop talking of the Trinity and spoke Combining this new language of images with the wonder of his visions of rays, the manner in which God created the and grace of creation also has the power to heal our own hurt earth and the luminosity of creation. or broken selves. A few years ago, when directing an eight- Further, we cannot ignore Ignatius’ experience at the day retreat, I invited a woman to pray using the parable of Cardoner River, which offered the most powerful single ex- the growing seed (Mk 4:26–29). She was grieving deeply perience of God he ever had: “While he was seated there, the over her inability to conceive, and for many years suffered eyes of his understanding began to be opened…everything seemed new to him.” Whether it was on the rooftop of the Jesuit curia in Rome or gazing at the starry heavens above Loyola, he beheld the stars as well as “the other things on the face of the earth” with new eyes (Spiritual Exercises, No. 23). Right up to the end of his life Ignatius referred to these unifying visions of the created world in the text of the Spiritual Exercises, his letters, the Constitutions and in his de- cisions of all kinds; and the prayers he left behind irrevoca- bly echo creation. I believe that Ignatius would delight in the beautiful irony that he, who gazed so lovingly on the stars, is himself composed of stardust. Yet such, we know, is the truth. The stars that taught him so much about reverence, awe and wonder are composed of the very same elements of which he himself is composed—God delighting in the very same elements in each. When I ask retreatants where they find God, they tell me stories of mountaintop views, the beach at night, a river they have long sat beside or old-growth Sitka at the edge of the Pacific. Never once has anyone told me they find God next to a polluted river, a mountaintop removed for mining or a trash-strewn alley. Today, in a world that can no longer sustain the dichotomies of spirit versus matter, or ecology versus spirituality, it is up to us—perhaps especially those graced by the gift of Ignatian spirituality—to reconcile these mislabeled opposites for the life of the world—to indeed find God in all things. A

18 America April 21, 2014 April 21, 2014 America 19 20 America April 21, 2014 Getting Out of Oil

Catholic universities can make a difference through divestment. By Doug Demeo

atholic colleges and universities have a long and investment and management of Catholic universities’ finan- storied history of providing full scholarships and cial endowments is one such area in which a new “living affordable higher education to low income, mi- endowment” could preserve and promote Catholic mission. nority and immigrant students. In addition, they In particular, he suggests that mission communities would Ccontinue to fulfill their mission to develop the whole per- “offer reviews of college policy and strategic planning and son (cura personalis) by linking liberal arts and professional foster a palpable Catholic culture as shaped by the religious studies to critical moral thought, promoting retreats, build- heritage of the founders.” While it would be interesting to ing faith-centered community service and justice programs examine more fully the issues, practices and value percep- and more. But today there are key issues that challenge the tions of “mission-based” investing at Catholic institutions, fidelity of Catholic colleges and universities to their core the singularly urgent issue of climate change—and the mission. John R. Wilcox, emeritus professor of religious powerful momentum that has been growing within the fos- studies at Manhattan College, has made a compelling case sil fuel divestment movement—deserves attention in this in these pages that there is an urgent need to address the moment. “erosion” of the “Catholicity” of Catholic colleges and uni- Considering the strength of Catholic teaching on climate versities (Am. 9/6/13). He argues that the best way to do change and ethical investing, the divestiture of stocks and this is through the creation of “mission communities” on bonds from fossil fuel corporations taking place in a growing Catholic campuses. Primarily, their call would be to “play number of secular and non-Catholic religious organizations a prophetic role, at times ‘speaking truth to power’” for the is bringing Catholic higher education—which, with a few purpose of “keeping Catholicity vital in all areas of [institu- exceptions, has been largely absent from the national conver- tional] life.” sation—to a crossroads of mission. At this critical junction Professor Wilcox offers several examples of how Catholic of institutional integrity, mission communities could play mission communities might work to maintain and strength- an important role in helping university administrators and en the Catholic character of colleges and universities. The trustees to envision a new way of being faithful to Catholic mission and to grasp the prophetic (and arguably financial) Doug Demeo, a fellow with GreenFaith, an interfaith coalition for the urgency of divesting from fossil fuel corporations. environment, is an adviser on socially responsible investments. The Catholic Church accepts that human actions like

April 21, 2014 America 21 burning fossil fuels have a negative impact on the earth’s cli- South Africa. Through a similar approach, the fossil fuel di- mate, and it understands that the effects of climate change vestment campaign seeks to redraw society’s collective moral raise crucial ethical issues as to how we tend to God’s cre- boundaries by asserting that institutions with a moral or ed- ation. In his message for the World Day of Peace in 2010, ucational mission should no longer profit from the fossil fuel Pope Benedict XVI highlighted the “urgent moral need for a industry. Its primary method is to force a morally challeng- new solidarity…in the face of signs of a growing [ecological] ing debate about the long-term impacts of climate change, crisis which it would be irresponsible not to take seriously.” the entrenched power of the fossil fuel industry and the in- He called for “strengthening the linkage between combat- compatibility of these with a thriving future for humanity ting climate change and overcoming poverty.” At the same and the wider community of life. time, scientists warn that our planet is rapidly reaching a To date, the divestment movement is supported by several level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that will likely faith communities, including the national United Church of cause permanent, accelerating climate change. As described Christ, the Anglican Diocese of Wellington, New Zealand, in numerous scientific reports from the Intergovernmental the Episcopal Dioceses of Olympia in Washington State Panel on Climate Change, a vast majority of climate scien- and Massachusetts, individual Lutheran and Unitarian tists agree that humanity can emit only 565 more gigatons churches in the United States and GreenFaith, an interfaith of carbon dioxide by 2050 if it is to avoid a catastrophic level alliance devoted to environmental stewardship, where I am a of climate change. Yet, the world’s largest fossil fuel corpo- fellow. On the Catholic side, the Franciscan Action Network rations still plan to burn the 2,796 gigatons of carbon di- recently made the bold decision to join the movement and is oxide in their reserves, a business strategy that would result encouraging Franciscan colleges and universities to support in levels of human suffering and ecological degradation un- growing student and faculty activism for divestment, which matched in human history. is already occurring on several Jesuit campuses. In order to address the systemic causes of climate change, an increasingly global array of religious groups, colleges and Corporate Responsibility cities are moving to divest from fossil fuel corporations in In its statement “Economic Justice for All” (1986), the U.S. order to diminish their political and economic influence. Conference of Catholic Bishops points out that while eco- Some are also pursuing reinvestment in clean technology nomic markets can encourage beneficial economic develop- and energy efficiency initiatives within their own facilities ment, markets alone do not “automatically produce justice” and holdings. The movement has been that protects the common good of all spearheaded by the Go Fossil Free cam- On the Web people, to which our climate is unmistak- paign, which calls on institutions to “im- The editors blog at ably linked, especially with respect to the “In All Things.” mediately freeze any new investment in americamagazine.org/things poorest among us. The church therefore fossil fuel companies, and divest from insists that when economic activity in free direct ownership and any commingled markets damages the common good, free funds that include fossil fuel public equities and corporate markets must be circumscribed by “ethical norms” ground- bonds within 5 years.” ed in Catholic teaching. Thus, the U.S. bishops’ document While the divestment campaign’s ostensible goal is to de- “Socially Responsible Investment Guidelines” urges inves- crease the value of fossil fuel corporations’ stocks, it carries tors to draw on “the values, directions and criteria which deeper implications. The campaign’s proponents recognize guide its financial choices from the Gospel, universal church that the political process has failed to produce a legislative teaching and Conference statements.” response to the grave threat represented by climate change, In “Ex Corde Ecclesiae” (1990), Pope John Paul II largely because of the outsized influence of the fossil fuel insisted that in order to remain faithful to the church, lobby. Campaigners believe that divestment represents a way “Catholic ideals, attitudes and principles [must] penetrate to turn public opinion against this lobby. At a time when and inform university activities” across all areas of an insti- there is no prospect for climate legislation, the fossil fuel tution. This necessarily includes the investment and man- divestment movement seeks to rekindle debate on a critical agement of a Catholic university’s endowment. Given the moral issue and to create an environment in which genuine magnitude of the climate crisis, as well as other destructive solutions become possible. impacts of fossil fuel extraction, such as mountaintop re- In that light, this campaign resembles past divestment moval and groundwater contamination, Catholic universi- campaigns, like the anti-apartheid efforts of the 1980s, in ty administrations should at the very least enter into the which impassioned divestment debates in educational, fossil fuel debate. Some, like the College of the Holy Cross governmental and religious institutions played a vital role in Worcester, Mass.—my alma mater—have taken steps in in undermining the legitimacy of the apartheid regime in this direction.

22 America April 21, 2014 The Duties of Justice In response to the claim that Catholic institutions should di- vest from fossil fuel holdings in order to uphold their Catholic mission, at least three rebuttals can be anticipated—and re- futed. First, college and university administrators and trustees might argue that the best way for Catholic institutions to ad- dress climate change is to focus on reducing their own carbon footprints. Although such direct activities to alleviate injus- tices are important and commendable, the U.S. bishops point out that their program The Two Feet of Love in Action calls for micro-level actions coupled with macro-level efforts (i.e., social justice) to address the systemic dynamics that cause and perpetuate what John Paul II, in “On Social Concerns” (1987), called structures of sin. Pope Pius XI cautioned in “Divini Redemptoris” (1937) that “no one [should] attempt with trifling charitable donations to exempt himself from the great duties imposed by justice.” Since fossil fuel corpora- tions are at the heart of the systemic perpetuation of climate change, Catholic institutions should take steps to divest from fossil fuel companies even as they continue to reduce their own carbon footprints and remain faithful to their mission at large. A second possible argument against fossil fuel divestment is that this activity may compromise institutional endeavors (like scholarships and facilities expansion) by restricting en- dowment growth. This is essentially an appeal to fiduciary responsibility. In response, it should first be mentioned that the highly-respected Chronicle of Higher Education reports that divesting from fossil fuel companies is unlikely to harm the endowments of colleges and universities. Many other fi- nancial studies likewise argue the fiduciary responsibility of divestment, given the looming prospects of “stranded assets” or a “carbon bubble”—meaning the future of fossil fuels is highly tenuous, at best. But even if fossil fuel divestment were to restrict endowment growth, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that for a given action the “end does not justify the means” (No. 1753). In reference to Catholic colleges and universities, the end of institutional advancement does not justify investment in fossil fuel companies that profoundly contradict Catholic teaching. This is especially true when the quality of the future of graduating students is at stake—a big reason why more of our students are raising their voices on behalf of divestment. A third argument is that socially responsible investment, rather than divestment, is the best way to mitigate climate change from an equity ownership perspective. Socially respon- sible investing, as described by Christian Brothers Investment Services Inc., a leader in Catholic S.R.I., involves sharehold- er advocacy and “a multi-strategy approach—stock screening, proxy voting, corporate dialogues and shareholder resolutions.” While S.R.I. has achieved notable successes with respect

April 21, 2014 America 23

to influencing corporate behavior, two points should be high- ing companies from our investment portfolios,” as Christian lighted about S.R.I. and the fossil fuel industry. First, scientists Brothers Investment Services says. This means that even in- say that fossil fuel corporations must keep 80 percent of their vestors actively committed to corporate engagement and ad- carbon reserves in the ground in order to keep climate change vocacy sometimes acknowledge that circumstances may justify from causing runaway harm. For all intents and purposes, this or even require the refusal to invest in a company or companies means that oil companies will have to stop drilling for oil and in order to remain faithful to Catholic teaching. Conscious of coal companies will have to stop mining coal. These activities the way fossil fuel corporations manifestly undermine Catholic are the principal ways that fossil fuel companies make their teaching by fostering climate change for profit, fossil fuel cor- profits, and shareholder advocacy is unlikely to effect changes porations are a prime example of companies (not unlike man- to core corporate practices to the degree required to reverse ufacturers of weapons of mass destruction) in which Catholic the most unthinkable effects of climate change. mission requires the use of such “avoidance screens.” Furthermore, S.R.I. in fact recognizes a role for “screen- Although fossil fuel divestment is a crucial tool to address cli- mate change, this strategy alone is an in- sufficient response to climate change for the Christian community. Local, nation- al and global leaders as well as the U.S. bishops have advocated that responses to climate change must provide transition- al and adaptation funding. Additionally, divestment must be accompanied by the type of reinvestment in clean energy technologies advocated by GreenFaith’s campaign Divest and Reinvest Now. While climate change and endow- ment investment are both complex issues demanding careful thought, Catholic mission requires that financial returns not foster or exacerbate climate change. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells his fol- lowers: “No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the oth- er, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mam- mon” (6:24). Climate change has brought Catholic colleges and universities that invest in fossil fuel corporations to a moral cross- roads. These institutions must now decide whether they will prioritize the integrity of their mission or the status quo of their investments in fossil fuels. Climate change shows the two to be mu- tually exclusive. One of the most important ways that mission communities can preserve and promote Catholic fidelity at colleges and universities is to advocate that adminis- trators and trustees divest their endow- ments from an industry whose essential practices blatantly contradict and un- dermine the teachings and mission of the Catholic Church. A

26 America April 21, 2014 Easter 2014 All Things Dead, Alive One family’s journey to Pascha By Lea Povozhaev ur family of five recently ing worked out in us. Faith focused brother serving at the altar. I ached moved into a brick castle atop me, and while life did not appear to at what seemed like a yawning divide Oa hill owned by my husband’s change as much as I desired, God between those I loved and myself. “It’s host family. Dima, my husband, came never strayed from us. heaven and hell,” I said. to the United States as a child, with- We anticipated Pascha through- Heaven was here, always radiat- out his parents, played hockey and out Lent. Like heaven and earth, light ing goodness, light and love, even attended school while living with a and dark, fasting and feasting, there throughout the fallen world. Christ family that has since become his own, himself suffered. He wept bitterly at and mine. Their generosity extends Lazarus’s tomb. But Christ did not into every aspect of our lives. Last make us to die. Creation was made in spring, as we prepared for Pascha, the image and likeness of Christ, who the Orthodox celebration of Easter, trampled death by death and then was they readied our Paschal basket with raised from the dead. Pascha was the sausage and cheese pancakes from a whole universe wonderfully recon- Russian store. Their kindness was ciled to him and held in perfect special in a season during which I unity. It was outside of time, span- was dealing with a nursing infant ning past ages to all ages to come. and a blanket feeling of distract- And yet, through the lens of the edness, which also had kept me Fall, we often fail to see what is from preparing a Christmas feast precious and full of life. Instead, the year before. we see the imperfect situations of It had been a difficult year for our own lives. us. We decided to move in order to save money and live closer to my Key to Salvation husband’s job. At Christmas, Dima On Holy Saturday, my husband un- had stayed home from church to stuff earthed my childhood jewelry box stockings, hung among boxes and the from our storage unit and brought it disarray of a household prepared to to our new home before we returned move. My heart had ached to be with was a symbiotic relationship among to church that night for Pascha. From him, but holding our baby girl and all things, giving birth to fullness in this box our middle son happily drew seeing the boys serve at the altar in- Christ. For even during the Lenten a small charm of a key. He slipped fused me with hope that the weight journey, bobbing up through the dark it on an old gold chain and wore it of our growing family, channeled in was radiant, risen light. I was driving around his neck along with a big, pow- Christ, would pull in the direction under a canopy of leaves, sun shining der-blue cross and two other crosses. I I longed to go: nearer to God. As on the fields and warming my Subaru was tempted to tell him he looked like the Lenten season leading to Pascha as I wound down country roads. a gypsy, but held my tongue. With our unfolded and I reflected, I believed Silence seeped through my soul and children and basket, we entered the that God’s love was continually be- into my body: heaven is here. During pleasant night air. “I feel like I’m going Holy Week, my friend asked how to my wedding,” I said giddily. Lea Povozhaev, a doctoral candidate at Kent State University, is the author of the mem- I was, noting the weight of the baby “Momma gets excited,” Dima oir When Russia Came to Stay (2012). in my arms, son at my heels and his chuckled to our older son. We arrived b o eckstei n art:

April 21, 2014 America 27 at church by 11:20 p.m. and placed sin—from hell itself—and the body of Good leads to God. Through words our food basket in the banquet hall to the risen Christ was the key that un- and nonverbal actions—touches, fa- be blessed by Father after the service. locked the bonds of death. All things cial expressions, simply facing another There was an air of excitement as other fallen, raised. All things dead, alive. person—I encouraged others to love. young families scuttled sleepy children I expected all these insights to come and baskets from the hall to the sanc- The Christian Perspective at the first hour, but in my grand web tuary. We bowed down before Christ It was easy to doubt then and now. of worries, exhaustion wound me into whose resurrection we would celebrate Even with faith, sometimes I cannot fitful distraction. Humility silenced within the hour, bounced a happy and fully accept that Christ is risen. My my tongue. Throughout my Lenten rested baby Elizabeth between us and host-mother said, “What difference journey, I wondered how to share life settled the groggy boys. The fullness of does it make? I still have to pay the with those not in the Orthodox tradi- the hour was upon us, and I marveled bills.” How difficult it is to experience tion and with those who do not profess that we had come, and that Christ in- the Christian perspective. Truly, it is faith in Christ. I wondered how to live vited us, sinners, to his banquet. a gift of grace to experience joy in the in a way that reached out to the other Eight years before, at my first Lord, and one should not judge oth- in truth and love, expressing the heart Pascha, the service had seemed outra- ers struggling to do so. Remembering and genuinely listening and caring for geously long and nothing had quite fit that the mark of a Christian’s life is the other. together. Still, it had been in that place, joy in Christ, I marveled at how easily St. Seraphim of Sarov told us, at that time, that Christ had come to I strayed from the Christian perspec- “Acquire a peaceful spirit and thou- me, a sinner, and given me what was tive, still fettered in chains that Christ sands around you will be saved.” This necessary to believe. He was still com- had undone. It was a struggle for me in seems to apply only to those who have ing, and this time I was waiting for the Paschaltide to maintain the Christian a spiritual radar, only to those pilgrims bridegroom with anticipation. The perspective sought after, and in mo- eager to engage the truth and to be- earthly experience of Pascha is always ments experienced, during the Lenten come more obedient to it. I wondered new. journey. When Bright Week—the sev- about those around me, those I heard The next morning, Pascha dawned en days after Easter in the Orthodox say: I used to go to church, and then bright and the sunlight seemed enough tradition—arrived, I found the mus- I grew up. St. John Chrysostom, arch- to fuel me, despite having had only cles of my heart already weakening. I bishop of Constantinople, tells us in a three hours of sleep. While the chil- had not understood that Christ risen Paschal sermon that the table is fully dren slept, my mind flitted about, meant all things fallen rise, and that laden. All are invited to come and feast: landing on the memory of my son’s key heaven was on earth—reconciled in those who anticipate the Lord from the on his necklace. At the Pascha service Christ. My mind seemed to be moving first hour, and those who wait until the Father spoke of how Pascha was not a closer to this understanding. Still, my 11th hour. Each is personally, lovingly symbol of Christ’s resurrection, but an flesh was slow to follow, and the strug- invited. St. Mary of Egypt came. The actual saving event central to salvation gle to rejoice with family and friends, woman at the well came. The sinner on in Christ. This “key” was Christ’s de- especially as most are outside of the the cross came. God’s love draws each scent into the underworld to free the church, remained difficult. of us together in him. captives, from Adam and Eve on. He In times like these, the best we “Christ is risen from the dead!” liberated creation from the bondage of can do is encourage good in others. means that all who have fallen are raised up in him. “Indeed, he is risen!” is confirmation that we believe in God, that there is heaven and that goodness triumphs. Trampled underfoot is ev- ery lesser thing that so typically bogs us down. “Rejoice, O Full of Grace, the Lord is with you” is extended to each Christian from the loving, helping hands of the Lord’s mother. May we accept Pascha in our inner- most beings, granting Christ the key to our hearts that turns our perspectives ever more to him. A

28 America April 21, 2014 April 21, 2014 America 29 30 America April 21, 2014 After the Resurrection An Ignatian meditation By Lucretia B. Yaghjian St. Ignatius suggests that in prayer we contemplate Jesus appearing after his resurrection first to the Virgin Mary. He explains: “Though this is not mentioned explicitly in Scripture, it must be consid- ered as stated when Scripture says that he appeared to many others.” The med- itation that follows imagines how that encounter might have unfolded.

he other women asked me to go with them to the tomb that Tmorning to prepare his body for burial, but how could I anoint for burial one who was destined to rise again? I was drawn so strongly back to his cross on Golgotha that I asked John—his beloved disciple and now my son—to accompany me there be- fore daybreak, when we could be sure that no Roman soldiers would be there to remove the crosses or interfere with our visitation. He willingly joined me, final, self-emptying words—“It is fin- of blessing at his presentation at the and we set out in the early morning ished”—and died. So John withdrew Temple; his first, faltering but soon dark and made our way once again out to a small cluster of olive trees on the firmly planted steps in front of our of the city to that holy, horrific place of other side of the hill to wait for me, home in Nazareth; then growing up— my son’s execution. and I walked closer to the cross, re- so suddenly it seemed—at 12 years of As we expected, the hill was aban- membering with cruel detail my son age and staying behind in Jerusalem, doned and desolate at that early hour, hanging there yesterday, but at the so many Passovers ago, to be about but the three empty crosses still stood same time comforted that the cross “his Father’s business.” I knew then high against the morning sky, which was was now empty. that this would be no ordinary child, now slowly giving up its darkness to the At first I simply stood there, look- and that just as I had said yes to God first slivers of sunrise still to come. a ing at that stark, unforgiving sight of in bearing him, I would soon have to I asked John to leave me for a while three crosses standing sentinel against let go of this child my womb had wel- so that I could grieve and pray on this the dawn-streaked morning sky, reliv- comed into the world for more than holy ground where I last saw my son ing every moment of my son’s agony just my own maternal pleasure. alive, where he called to me for the last and mine: for surely the pain I endured In the shadow of this looming time—“Woman”—then spoke those as I watched him die was a thousand cross, now bare of my son’s body but

times more excruciating than what I still bearing dark smudges of dried . Verkade (1927) i n C armelites church Lucretia B. Yaghjian recently retired from experienced when giving birth to him blood where the nails had been—and Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, Chestnut Hill, Mass., where she taught writ- in Bethlehem. to my eyes its arms seeming to cradle ing. She currently teaches writing at Episcopal But as I continued to stand be- him toward resurrection—I could Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass. She is the au- fore his cross, his life was again be- not help myself: I finally broke down thor of Writing Theology Well: A Rhetoric for Theological and Biblical Writers fore me: images of an infant nursing and wept, kneeling at the foot of his ata S edmako v i n D o b li g, Vie nn a. P hoto: S hutterstock/ R e ata (Continuum). at my breast; Simeon’s strange words cross, kissing it through my tears and n ti g b y P from a pai detail

April 21, 2014 America 31 asking my God, “Why? Was it for this that you asked me to bear this child? Was it for this unspeakable end that my soul first magnified the Lord? Holy and Righteous One, in the face of this terrible crucifixion, how can I believe in your resurrection?” But as I wept and railed at the God who let this happen, I kissed the cross again and was flooded with a warmth and sweetness that suffused my being like the summer breezes off the Sea of Galilee, and moments afterward the sun rose over Golgotha and bathed the cross in an almost blinding light. I remained kneeling there, kissing the cross a third time and letting my body and soul absorb the warmth and light of dawn, when I saw a shadow pass be- tween me and the sloping hill behind the cross, and as I watched, the shadow seemed to come toward me. Thinking that it was John returning to come and get me, I got up slowly from my kneeling position, and before turning around, said to him, “John, I did not mean to stay here so long, but I am ready now to return home.” But I had not finished speaking when anoth- er—not John—said in a voice unmis- takably his own, “Woman, behold your Son! I am risen, as I said.” I turned around, afraid to trust this voice, but it was his, and there he stood, in a clean white tunic like many that I once washed and hung out to dry— my beloved son and God’s—standing before me with eyes brighter than the rising sun, and the tenderest of smiles now spreading across his face as we em- braced freely in front of the empty cross that had held him in darkness yester- day, but now was as bright as day. I would have liked to invite him home for breakfast. But just as he would have done when he still lived with us, he let me go and said, “I must go and tell the others now, but we will meet again be- fore I ascend to the Father. Perhaps we can break bread together then.” “My beloved son,” I said, “the table will be set for you when you come.” A

32 America April 21, 2014 April 21, 2014 America 33 Books & Culture spring books | Eugene C. Kennedy hung like ground fog over the Grail of the deepest and most dangerous hu- Pulling No Punches man secrets. Neither Mailer nor Hemingway—a Norman Mailer the truth of his subject. paperback copy of one of whose A Double Life Mailer and Teddy Roosevelt, each a books lay on Mailer’s otherwise spare By J. Michael Lennon burly and electric presence, shared not writing desk—would put aside T.R.’s Simon & Schuster. 960p $40 only a driving curiosity about life but big stick as they used a club fighter’s a code of living. It was a code adopted feints and punches to stake their claim After he finished reading an earlier also by Ernest Hemingway, in whose on the heavyweight title of American biography of himself, Norman Mailer big, two-hearted river of style Mailer writing. As Lennon makes clear, told me, with a mixture of rue and tri- bathed like a biblical pilgrim, about Mailer, the Saturday morning ama- umph, “He missed the twinkle.” His finding courage by stepping boldly into teur boxer and the brawling score-set- new biographer, J. Michael Lennon, the tiger’s cage to stare him down or tler at Saturday night society parties, does not miss the twinkle or much else was, like Hemingway, never done with about the writer who swaggered across affirming his manhood as he wrote, a half century of American life, writing using as many styles as Picasso, about novels, plays, poems, essays, journal- human love, human strife and human ism, even some theological speculation longing, scaling the walls of an over- along with directing movies. Near the grown Eden to find the Grail of true end Mailer stood, propped on two experience. canes like a wounded mercenary who The tree of the knowledge of good had fought behind the lines all his life, and evil still stood, a gnarled and si- a writer/celebrity as drained by the lent witness to the Fall and every daring and scope of his ambition to human impulse compromised and find the Northwest Passage to the or- infected by this original failure, in- igins of American mores as Theodore cluding the birth of lust and the mur- Roosevelt was when, scarred and fe- derous impulse for brother to slay vered, he emerged from his post-pres- brother. With exquisite and pain- idential search for the source of the ful sensitivity, Mailer felt the hard Amazon. human truths that lay beneath the I knew Mailer well for 35 years, hypocritical repressions of the 20th but I know him better after finishing century and, again like Hemingway, Lennon’s remarkable evocation of his used his own experience as a sound- Promethean life. One of Norman’s ing board, to chart the painfully un- favorite quotations was from André wrestle him barehanded to his doom earthed secrets about love and betray- Gide, “Please do not understand me or one’s own. Is it a coincidence that al, of every brave and every mean act too quickly.” Lennon has not done this. these three are often pictured in safari committed by humans down through He has proceeded with the patience jackets, the armor of secular knights the uncounted generations. of a medieval artist from Ravenna bound to obey the Arthurian com- Lennon follows Mailer from his ob- contemplating the array of glittering mand to “enter the forest at its darkest scure Brooklyn boyhood to the sum- tiles on his work table, then selecting part,” where no one had cut a path be- mit of his fame in the apartment, the and testing their tone and clarity by fore? Mailer, like Hemingway, would lower floors of which he sold off to turning them one by one against the take gambler’s risks (his father was a pay off his taxes, in Brooklyn Heights. sun before fitting them carefully into gambler) to steal the fire of the gods In an unhurried way he tells a hand- a panel that reveals the tort cake-like to scatter the choking mist of dread, ful of tales about Mailer’s growing up, layers, some bitter but many sweet, of a concept much used by Mailer, that spoiled by a bevy of aunts but especial-

34 America April 21, 2014 ly by his mother, Fan, who whispered in dusty university archives, Lennon vivid accounts of political conventions in his ear as a baby that she hoped he knew Mailer well, observed everything and campaigns in the turbulent Sixties. would grow up to be a famous man. and gives a master class in Mailer’s Lennon recounts all this of Mailer, Lennon does not force the story but writing with which Norman would lashed to the wheel of his own storm lets it tell itself about the influence of not disagree. struck vessel, endlessly searching for these indulgent women on his sense of that Northwest Passage into the heart power and destiny. His Conquest of the nation’s experience. Mailer once told me that if he were The story of Norman’s conquest of He never gave up on that quest and, arrested for killing 1,000 people at American letters with his World War writing of himself in the third person, a shopping mall, his mother would II novel, The Naked and the Dead, produced The Armies of the Night, say that these people must have done made him famous at 25 and set him grasping, as he once told me, “the high something terrible to upset Norman so on a career marked with follow-up wire of irony,” in a masterly account of much. She seems to have felt as much disappointments to himself and most the anti-Vietnam War march on the in one of Mailer’s most notorious acts, of the critics with The Barbary Shore Pentagon in 1967. That book, like the using a pen knife on his wife Carole and his novel of Hollywood,The Deer tightly disciplined masterpiece, The that wounded her far more grievous- Park, a work whose main character Executioner’s Song, about the murderer ly than he intended and landed him was named Sergius O’Shaughnessy, a Gary Gilmore, won the Pulitzer Prize in Bellevue Hospital for a psychiat- not incidental indication of his fasci- and placed Mailer once more in the ric evaluation. Mailer’s collision with nation with the Irish, and a book he front ranks of American writers. the feminist movement earned him never quite let go of, tinkering with it, While all this was going on, Mailer the disdain of leaders like Germaine trying everything but mouth to mouth was still working on his long await- Greer. When the Chicago Tribune resuscitation, even dramatizing it for ed Egyptian novel, Ancient Evenings, book editor John Blades asked me to Broadway, to stir it to life. that, when it finally appeared in 1982, ask Norman to review a book by her Mailer, smoking pot and drinking, brought a mixed chorus of reviews but for that newspaper, he replied with wrote in a creative fog for a period a recognition of the sections, like the good humor, “Some checks should in the 1950s, but he worked his way opening one on the embalming and never be cashed.” through that and all the collateral entombing of an Egyptian royal, filled The stories of Mailer’s pursuit of damage his behavior did to his home with the kind of magic of which Mailer six wives, with whom he fathered nine life and his professional reputation. was capable. children, are counterpointed by serial He emerged, riding the political and Lennon matches Mailer’s literary infidelities, affairs as ripe and plen- cultural winds of the times, with col- and personal lives seamlessly, inform- tiful as a bumper crop, that Mailer lections like Advertisements for Myself ing and educating the reader at the only seriously tried to stop under the and Cannibals and same time. Mailer influence of his last wife, the bright Christians, which On the Web kept writing and beauty queen, painter and writer from shine, in their un- The Catholic Book Club discusses making public ap- Arkansas, Norris Church, who stood nerving accuracy Morte D’Urban, by J. F. Powers. pearances even af- up to him, forcing him, as he said, into in rendering the americamagazine.org/cbc ter his bad knees his last great experiment, fidelity. This national mood and required him to was not a complete success either, as their sheer genius stump about on a Lennon makes clear as he, so to speak, for presenting himself as the sound- pair of canes. A week after 9/11 he uses the backstory of Mailer’s mar- ing board for American experience. invited my wife and me to a gathering riages as the equivalent of color com- His essay on “The White Negro,” with of American intellectuals at the Cape mentary on his prodigious literary its provocative attribution of a kind Cod home of the psychiatrist Robert J. output. of courage to those who broke out of Lifton. The attack, Norman whispered Lennon, a onetime literature pro- their sociological no man’s land by vi- to us, had left them reeling because it fessor, observes Norman, with whom olent acts, placed him in the limelight, shredded the flag of the politics that he worked for 30 years, with great some would say the crosshairs, of crit- had become the equivalent of their human understanding for Mailer but ics and the reading public. His long creed. Mailer spoke to this issue in a applies his critical faculties dispassion- Esquire piece, “Superman Comes to powerful extemporaneous talk that re- ately to his subject’s writing. Unlike the Supermarket,” on John F. Kennedy vealed the overflowing reservoir of his many literary biographers who try to attracted wide attention and set Mailer own spirituality and the small spilled recreate their subject from months on a career within a career, providing cup of his listeners.

April 21, 2014 America 35 Meeting God to collaborate with him by drawing our own lives. God, therefore, is win- Mailer told me afterward that he him out with questions about God. ning here one day and losing there would visit Ground Zero if my wife His only condition was that Lennon the next, but the eternal stakes are and I went with him “because there not give him the questions in advance high and being human demands that are spirits there.” We made the trip, a so that his answers would be sponta- we commit ourselves one way or the kind of pilgrimage for Norman, who neous. The book, finally calledGod, other. Lennon questions him on a insisted on walking with his canes de- An Uncommon Conversation, is fasci- broad range of subjects, and many of spite the pain from his knees, some- nating in its revelation of Mailer’s rich his responses would not be unfamiliar thing he felt that he should suffer on imagination and his determination to to process theologians. What always this landscape of sorrow and loss. He find that Northwest Passage before struck me about the exchange was had written a novel in the previous de- he died. He had Lennon send me the the seriousness, perhaps passing that cade, The Gospel According to the Son, chapters to read as each was completed of any other contemporary American in which he took on the voice of Jesus and asked me to comment. He wel- writer, with which Mailer, famed for to tell the story that had pulled at his comed my comments but, as I expect- his seeming social infamy, addressed sleeve for attention ever since he had ed, changed nothing because of them. the major issues of life. There may not read it again some years before in a ho- He often quoted St. Thomas Aquinas, be a better definition of morality than tel room’s Gideon Bible. “Trust the authority of your own in- taking seriously “all that,” in Joyce’s A few years later, after open heart stincts.” phrase, “is grave and constant” in life. surgery, his 80th birthday and his Mailer speaks, as he often had, of Norman originally wanted to call the feeling, as Lennon tells us, that he an “embattled God” the outcome of book “Into the Mystery,” for he knew had become a battered freighter still whose contest with Satan depends that he would soon, as he would say, plying the sea lanes, he asked Lennon on how we carry the tide of battle in be “taking the bus,” and he wanted to

Martyrdom Is for the Young

Ursula, shot dead, marched the ten thousand had it come to this with his gift for healing virgins, just walked them! with the pope in tow and his luck, now bound by an empire to a tree to say she could or to prove maybe that as the archers, job done, departed from their the purity of youth was worth the shock malfeasance back to the voiceless and blind in the of Huns beheading them, each and every town? one, as God’s synchronicity seems to bargain lives away in those old stories, And Jesus, of course, we know his knowing or not knowing, never having been to Rome or seen the leaving ribs and shoulder blades and femurs enemies intricately piled like lattice beneath of the state suspended like sacks on their limbs the church floor and the bishop’s slippers. snapped by the roadside. Too late! How did she reckon her sad pilgrimage He could not have been man and not regretted, or, at eleven, marriage to a king? wiser as he confronted Pilate at the bloody bowl, And Sebastian’s painterly wounding— how much good was left to do and how What of that? His torso lean and slightly his angel knew him in the darkness as awakened, and infinite and finite. twisted in the beautiful agony of arrows, while behind his abandoned look By Peter Kozik skyward he must have been thinking how

Peter Kozik is a graduate of Williams College and Syracuse University where he received an M.A. in English and creative writing and a doctorate in teaching and curriculum. He lives in central New York State with his wife, Carolanne, with whom he raised five children, and teaches in the Education Division at Keuka College.

36 America April 21, 2014 make sure that he put the jigsaw puzzle into the face of death. spective is that economic activity is of his life into as good order as possi- Here was Norman, I felt, the lion in taking place that they are not profiting ble. Lennon recreates these last months autumn, ever courteous and ever curi- from. with an insight and tenderness that do ous, the man in full that Lennon brings The first two-thirds ofReign of not block out his biographer’s integrity. to life in this book. “We love you, Error reviews the many claims that He recounts what I remember when my Norman,” I said as we embraced, and public education is in crisis (which is wife and I visited him in Provincetown he whispered “I love you too.” That is often reduced to declining test scores a few weeks before he died. The table the remarkable man behind all the fire- and the education gap between the was crowded, but he asked us to sit on works of his life whom you will meet United States and our economic com- either side of him. He ate only some for yourself in J. Michael Lennon’s grip- petitors). Each of these chapters starts sticks of chocolate, the last thing he ping and touching biography. with a review of the rhetoric of govern- could really taste. He would be heading ment failure (and the need for privat- to the hospital for surgery on his lungs ization) and then moves to a review of Eugene C. Kennedy is emeritus professor of and the outcome was uncertain. Still, psychology at Loyola University Chicago . His the actual evidence. An illustrative ex- he was brimming with life as he looked most recent book is Believing (Orbis). ample is the gap in test scores between American students and those from other rich countries. A study in 2010 Charles M. A. Clark of 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Development ranked the Corporate Classrooms United States 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in mathematics. The Reign of Error for the people.” evidence shows that our low ranking is The Hoax of the Privatization Using test scores as their prima- due to U.S. willingness to allow near- Movement and the Danger to ry metric, the corporate reformers of ly one in four of its children to grow America’s Public Schools public education argue that inefficien- up in poverty. American students in By Diane Ravitch cies in the running of schools, includ- school districts with low poverty rates Knopf. 416p $27.95 ing tenure and pay based on seniority in fact score at the top of international and education, have cre- rankings. When John Maynard Keynes said ated a crisis in education The privatization that the world is ruled by the ideas of and that turning schools movement in education economists and political philosophers, into businesses (char- seems to assume that “both when they are right and when ter schools) and treat- poor test scores are the they are wrong,” he left out that often it ing teachers as workers cause of poverty and is not evidence or logic that determine motivated mostly by that reversing test scores which ideas “rule the roost”; it is Karl financial gain (merit is the best way to elim- Marx’s dictum that the ruling ideas pay) will improve pub- inate poverty. Michelle would be “nothing more than the ideal lic education (raise test Rhee, Bill and Melinda expression of the dominant material scores). Ravitch calls Gates and others in the relationships.” into question both the corporate reform of ed- In Reign of Error, the historian of diagnosis of the prob- ucation movement pose education Diane Ravitch documents lem and, more import- the question: Should how the material interests, and the ant, the efficacy of their we wait to end pover- ideology that best represents them, are remedies. We should not fail to see the ty before we improve schools in poor reshaping public education, transform- financial interests of those who would neighborhoods? This is a false choice. ing it from a public good based on the like to privatize public education. Like The evidence (laid out by Ravitch and civic virtue of the common good and the movement to privatize social secu- many others) clearly shows that pover- transforming it into a commodity to be rity, the ultimate goal is for business to ty (or the income of parents and envi- chosen by consumers and a profit cen- redistribute a large share of public ed- ronment) is the most important vari- ter of corporations. At stake is more ucation spending away from students able in determining student outcomes. than public unions, tenure and test and providers of education and toward Teachers, good or bad, have a much scores; it is Lincoln’s hope for a “gov- capital (Wall Street and corporations). smaller influence on student outcomes. ernment of the people, by the people, The main inefficiency from their -per Using merit pay to incentivize teachers

April 21, 2014 America 37 to raise test scores in poor school dis- Reign of Error presents a series of re- essential attribute of a private good is tricts as the primary anti-poverty and forms designed to improve education the ability to exclude others from using education policy is like trying to reduce based on evidence. Part of real reform it (this is necessary for market efficien- lung cancer deaths by only improving of education requires lessening the im- cy). Education and knowledge are the cigarette filters. Poverty, like all social pact poverty has on students’ ability last things we should be privatizing. outcomes, is complex, and reducing to learn, starting at the very beginning The application of the “market men- poverty will require both changing with universal prenatal care and con- tality” to public goods like education is economic and social institutions and tinuing with better trained teachers transforming the Unites States into an improving schools in high poverty ar- and more resources for schools in low association of consumers rather than eas. It is both/and, and not either/or. income communities. a nation of citizens. The distinction, I Reducing poverty will require reduc- While the market mechanism and think, is fundamental, for it may leave ing inequality, which means less mon- profit motive can be useful social in- us with government for the people, but ey for those behind the privatization stitutions for providing private goods it will not be of the people and by the movement. we consume as individuals, they have people. Furthermore, the proposals that the never been able to provide the public corporate reformers are implementing goods that bind us together as a com- Charles M. A. Clark, a professor of econom- ics, is senior fellow at the Vincentian Center for (charter schools, merit pay, elimination munity. In a modern economy, these Church and Society at St. John’s University, of tenure, etc.) do not work. The privat- include health care and education. The New York City. izers rely on Stephen Colbert’s “truthi- ness” to defend their war on public education. While there are examples Diane Scharper of charter schools that are successful, on average they are no more successful The Costs of Belief than public schools. It is worth not- ing that one of the biggest successes Death of the Black- upbringing. Yet if there’s an underly- in Michelle Rhee’s experiment with Haired Girl ing truth to Stone’s life and work, it is Washington, D.C., schools involved By Robert Stone that what goes around, comes around. an improvement in one school’s pass- Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 288p $25 Abandoned by his father, Stone ing rate on reading tests to 84 percent was raised by his schizophrenic moth- from 44 percent in two years. This A lapsed Catholic, Robert Stone con- er. Because she was often hospitalized, earned the principal and teachers high siders his loss of religion one of the he spent much of his early childhood bonuses. pivotal events of his life. If nothing in an orphanage run by the Marists. Later it was discovered that on the else, it provides inspiration for his He also attended a Marist elementary answer sheets for these tests, an average award-winning fiction school and high school of 12.7 answers had been changed by and for the religious where, as he said in an the teacher from wrong to right (com- impulse behind his interview, he learned pared to the city average of one erasure work. In his eighth nov- to read and write and from wrong to right.) With pecuniary el, Death of the Black- would later earn writing reward as the main incentive and test Haired Girl, religion awards. scores as the main metric, we should shapes the lives and At 17, Stone rejected not be surprised that stories of cheat- aspirations of the main Catholicism because of ing on standardized tests have become characters but not in its dogmatic nature— all too common. If we view public ed- ways one would expect. at least as Stone saw ucation as just another market activity, Winner of the it. He became a mil- then we should not be surprised when National Book Award itant atheist and was educators become more like bankers. for Dog Soldiers (1974), expelled from school. As with all institutions, public edu- finalist for the Pulitzer After passing a high cation is not perfect and has many ar- Prize and recipient of school equivalency test, eas in which it can be improved, yet to numerous awards, Robert Stone is he joined the Navy and took up jour- undertake improvement it is impera- considered one of America’s greatest nalism. Later, he studied at New York tive to know what the actual problems living authors. But one would not University, then Stanford, where he are and their causes. The last third of have predicted his success from his began writing his first novel, the best-

38 America April 21, 2014 selling Hall of Mirrors (1967). seling. But that’s difficult for a former fetuses. Her thought—“no offense Stone would reconnect to his spiri- missionary nun. One of the most pow- intended…to the Holy Romantic tual side at Stanford while working on erful scenes in the story occurs when Megachurch itself ”—is that abor- his master’s degree and taking LSD as Carr forgets herself and, while visiting tion is no big deal. Nature/God is the one of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. a patient in the hospital, offers to bap- “Abortionist” par excellence. What he found, though, was less the tize him, then realizes “that the sacra- But Maud is offensive. Her language person of Jesus Christ whom he had ment would lay him down and out and is inflammatory, blasphemous and so come to know (and reject) in the break him in half.” overdone that at times it’s almost funny Catholic Church and more of a pres- Carr left her religious order partly (at least to this reader). Unfortunately, ence. As he explained it in an interview, because she believed that the Catholic the small college town of Amesbury he witnessed “an enormously power- Church did not do enough for the poor has more than its share of religious ful, resolving presence within which and partly because she was afraid of a crazies. Unfortunately also, Maud is all phenomenology was contained…. renegade priest who has since died. quarreling with Steve Brookman, who In spite of all the horrors, way down Now, 10 years later, Carr thinks she wants to end their relationship and, in deep, everything was all right….” This not only sees the priest (known as The a fit of irritation, refuses to check the sense of a resolving presence resonates Mourner) but also talks to him. She, suitability of Maud’s article. in Stone’s novels. They deal with many who doesn’t believe in visions or in So her story is published, and the of the concerns that Stone himself has spiritual claptrap, doesn’t know what plot becomes decidedly more interest- grappled with—including drugs, men- to think about this turn of events. Her ing. After Maud is killed, the towns- tal illness, the problem of evil, the ex- musings and the attention given to her people think the perpetrator is one istence of a caring God and the teach- interior life allow her character a depth of the crazies. There are several sus- ings of the Catholic Church. that the others lack. pects. One is the schizophrenic John Now, with Death, 76-year-old Stone The novel provides teasing glimpses Clammer, a vociferous anti-abortion- continues mining the territory—al- into the rest of the characters. These ist who wanders in and out of mental though in a shorter and less-realized include Maud, a college senior whose hospitals and is fond of quoting lines form. Caught in a morally ambiguous problems set the story into motion and from Francis Thompson’s “The Hound universe, the characters search for the who is killed in a hit-and-run accident of Heaven.” meaning of life while hoping—but not about halfway into the novel; Professor And there’s Professor Brookman. necessarily believing—that their lives Steve Brookman, Maud’s faculty advi- Brookman is seen arguing with a have a meaning. sor, who is also her lover; and Eddie drunken and visibly upset Maud, who Set on the campus of an elite liberal Stack, Maud’s father, who is a retired has come to his house in order to have arts college in New England, the novel policeman. it out with him. As the shouting match is both a mystery and a meaning-of-life Maud skewers a group of pro-life ensues, some believe that Brookman story. The mystery—who killed the demonstrators in a newspaper arti- pushes Maud into the path of an on- black-haired girl and why—provides cle with photographs of malformed coming car. the background for a look at philo- sophical and ethical issues. The first half of the story is some- what slow. The characters are hastily sketched, and the prose seems heavy with catch-all phrases and inside jokes whose point never quite comes through. Instead of a protagonist, there are several central characters, among them Jo Carr, the college councilor. Carr, who is the most fully realized of the characters, tries to help Maud Stack (the black-haired girl of the ti- tle) survive in a world where immedi- ate gratification is the order of the day. Carr, though, vows to use a scrupu-

lously nonreligious approach to coun- “The owners are very anxious to sell.” n : b o eckstei cartoo

April 21, 2014 America 39 Ethical questions attempt to hold article. Everyone, it seems, is angry and so much more. Newman’s cardi- the novel together. What is the prop- with the church, although in Carr’s nalatial motto was “Cor ad cor loqui- er relationship between teachers and case the anger is more a lover’s quarrel. tur”—“heart speaks to heart.” As Short students, between spouses and be- The church infuriates her, but she can’t remarks, “never did he practice it more tween fathers and daughters? What get away from it. Neither, apparently, lovingly than within his own fractious are the kinds of love? Does mankind’s can Robert Stone. family.” suffering have meaning? There’s even Ultimately, it is Carr’s perspective John Henry Newman was the el- concern with liberation theology, the that gives rise to the force that drives dest of six: three brothers and three post-Vatican II church, as well as this novel. As Stone puts it describing sisters. Their shared intimacy was the correctness of conservative ver- one of Carr’s introspective moments, profound—which made their subse- sus liberal thinking in the Catholic “The effort of belief, the replacement quent divisions all the more painful. Church, which never looks very good of it with sheer terror and a sense of Short devotes a chapter to Newman’s in this story with “all the...slobbering what she thought of as her own cow- father and mother, and one to each of priests.” ardice, had cost her.” In one way or an- the siblings. He adds another, crucial- Maud, Eddie and Carr are fall- other, belief or the lack of it costs every ly important chapter, on Newman’s en-away Catholics. Maud detests any- character here, and they pay the price. correspondence with his nephew, thing connected to her former religion. As they do so, the plot—while never John Rickards Mozley, eldest son of Eddie, who lost his faith after his wife a page-turner—carries the story to a his sister Jemima. For the most part, died, is furious with the pig-headed mostly satisfying conclusion. the chapters draw from the letters ex- monsignor (as Stone portrays him) changed between Newman and the who won’t allow Maud’s ashes to be person in question. But Short, the au- Diane Scharper teaches English at Towson placed beside her mother’s, presum- University and is the author of several books, thor of a fine volume titledNewman ably because of Maud’s blasphemous including Radiant: Prayer Poems. and His Contemporaries, also provides ample excurses on other writings of Robert P. Imbelli Newman, as well as representative fig- ures of Victorian England. Heart to Heart I can only hint at some of the riches of the present work. Though all the figures Newman and his Family lishing the community of the Oratory of this intriguing family deserve close By Edward Short in England, could ever find time to attention, two perhaps exercised, in dif- T&T Clark. 448p $34.95 compose some of the finest letters in ferent ways, a particular influence upon English literature. the development of Newman’s charac- The achievements of John Henry Yet volume after volume of these ter and vision. The business failures and Newman are staggering. He did noth- letters have been carefully edited and disappointments of his father and the ing less than craft a language that en- published, revealing sudden death of his be- abled many 19th-century men and the mind and heart of loved sister Mary at age women to affirm the awe-inspiring this extraordinary fig- 19 left indelible marks mystery of God in not merely a con- ure. Nor, of course, are upon him. Short sum- ventional notional manner, but with a we speaking of a limit- marizes: “If the lesson of real apprehension that influenced and ed-character “tweet” but his father’s life had been changed their lives (to use a distinction of a substantive, often to renounce worldly suc- that permeates his work). musically modulated cess, the lesson of Mary’s Moreover, he did so in a rich variety outpouring of insight, death was to see mortal of genres: sermons and essays, novels whimsy, polemic, grief attachments as intima- and plays, poems and prayers as well as and sometimes heart- tions of immortal tidings his matchless treatises. His genius was felt self-revelation. All to come.” These words far-ranging—as was his correspon- these qualities appear in bring to mind Newman’s dence. One marvels that Newman, the letters he exchanged most famous poem, “The whose literary production issued not over 70 years with mem- Pillar of Cloud,” which from the solitude of the cloister, but bers of his family. It is begins, “Lead, kindly from active engagement in education, the merit of Edward Short’s gener- Light.” The poem concludes with his preaching, pastoral ministry and estab- ous volume to give us access to these, own intimation of time-transcend-

40 America April 21, 2014 ing immortality, which Mary’s untimely demonstrable basis in objective truth. Edward Short’s superb knowledge of death had but heightened: “And with the Against this increasingly prevalent view, 19th century English literature and his- morn those angel faces smile/ Which I Newman had set himself from his ear- tory illumines his presentation. At times have loved long since, and lost awhile.” ly days. And nowhere was he more en- this very knowledge and the enthusiasm The lengthy correspondence with gaged in this struggle, charitably but it engenders lead him to take leisurely the other siblings, Charles and Frank, insistently, than with his own brothers. strolls down fascinating bypaths. But Harriet and Jemima, by turns affec- The chapter devoted to Newman’s eventually the reader is guided back to tionate and argumentative, sets in bold relationship and correspondence with the main road, and the interrupted dis- relief, within the narrow focus of fami- his nephew, John Rickards Mozley, cussion is taken up again, now enriched. ly, the two defining issues of Newman’s sums up the tension between Victorian Of all the members of the fam- life and illustrates the cost they exact- society’s fading religious inheritance and ily, undoubtedly the one closest to ed. The sisters embody the Anglican its growing materialism and rational- Newman’s heart was his mother, Jemima establishment’s horror of all things ism. The outcome, in Newman’s eyes, Fourdrinier, of Huguenot heritage. “Romish”; they never became recon- was to dull the “pied beauty,” to flatten Short writes: “Newman had a deep bond ciled to John’s conversion. The brothers the multidimensional nature of reality. with his mother—one forged in heart- represent, each in his own fashion, the His counterstrategy was not a retreat break and loss, as well as love and affec- 19th century’s growing moralistic rel- from the world, but an untiring effort tion—and it showed him not only the ativism and skepticism regarding reli- to articulate and evoke a sacramental vi- vanity of human wishes but the wisdom gious truth claims and the normativity sion: a vivid sense of “real presences.” For of empathy.” That “empathy” is apparent of revelation. Newman all hints and intimations find in the letters Newman exchanged, not This latter attitude Newman fa- their fulfillment in Christ’s eucharistic only with family, but with countless men mously characterized in his “Biglietto presence. And, though he may not have and women over the course of his long Address” (on the occasion of being made succeeded with his brothers or neph- and fruitful life. Empathy also marks a cardinal) as “the spirit of liberalism in ew, many, like the Jesuit priest and poet Edward Short’s wise study. religion.” He understood by this the re- Gerard Manley Hopkins, drew endur- duction of religion to an individualistic ing inspiration from Newman’s vision Rev. Robert P. Imbelli is a professor of the- morality and private sentiment with no and witness. ology at Boston College.

April 21, 2014 America 41 of other things | Michael Rossmann Tales of a T-Shirt

love the feel of an old T-shirt. I teams and, it seems, all the universi- T-shirts are also evidence of a dis- had a Hulk Hogan shirt from the ties that played in March Madness. posable society and a culture of waste. I1980s that was already well-loved Not surprisingly, I often see shirts Go to any consignment store, and when I bought it from a thrift store in from my alma mater, Notre Dame, you will find many T-shirts that were middle school. It amazingly never got which has legions of T-shirt-wearing worn only once or maybe not at all, in- a hole, but by the time I parted ways fans and a bookstore that appears cluding the ubiquitous family reunion with it after college, my sunscreen had to carry more apparel than books. T-shirt. As an experienced thrift- a higher SPF than this T-shirt, which Globalization has seemed particularly store shopper myself, I can attest that you could see through. real to me, however, when I’ve spotted no one wants to buy another family’s I used to see a T-shirt as simply my men in Tanzania wearing shirts from reunion shirt. (Of course, that doesn’t childhood clothing of choice when I my hometown youth soccer league stop people from donating them and didn’t have to follow my school dress and from my tiny consignment stores code, but the more I’ve traveled and Catholic high school from trying to sell lived abroad, the T-shirt has become in Iowa. T-shirts them.) a defining symbol of our global, in- In a country where are evidence I find the humble terconnected world and, strangely people don’t keep dogs T-shirt to be also a enough, a metaphor for our church. as pets and where of a good symbol for our Since the publication of Thomas there is no booming disposable universal and increas- L. Friedman’s book The World Is Flat Irish population or ingly “flat” church. (2005), people have often used the anyone named Keith, society. Feeding the global “flatness” of our world as a metaphor it can be entertaining glut of T-shirts is a for the ease with which we can now to see people wear- desire to represent or both communicate and compete with ing T-shirts identify- remember a very par- people all over the world. ing them as “World’s ticular group or event, While people often focus on how Biggest Poodle Fan” like the homecoming we now can video-chat with loved ones and “Keith’s Me, I’m powder puff game at around the world or on how work that Irish.” I once saw a Lincoln High School was previously done in the United young man who could in 2013. Similarly, States by professionals can now be not have been more the root of the big-C outsourced to India or other countries, than 18 years old Church is a very few things illustrate the flatness of our sporting a T-shirt em- small-c community of world and a catholicity of connections blazoned “Proud Grandfather of a people praying together. more than the simple T-shirt. Michigan State Graduate.” While there has always been a In much of Africa, most clothing Just as globalization has lowered movement of materials in order to pro- is the same mass-produced stuff that the prices of so many of the products duce things, like a T-shirt, the scope we wear in the United States. In fact, we rely on, used clothing here is very of trade has expanded dramatically much of it was first worn in America. affordable. While some shirts seem in recent decades. Analogously, even After clothing has been produced in a out of place, spending less on clothing our creed states the catholic—that is, factory in Asia or Latin America, then enables families to spend more in oth- universal—nature of our church, but used in the United States and donated er areas. the flatness of information, communi- to a second-hand shop there, it often At the same time, the simple cation and migration offer our church ends up in a developing country. T-shirt can also represent some new opportunities and new challenges. African markets are full of T-shirts negative elements of our flat world. Just as a T-shirt held over from from American high school sports Mass-produced used clothing has childhood will no longer fit the same made clothing very cheap, though it way, and it would be silly to try to wear Michael Rossmann, S.J., teaches at Loyola High School in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. also employs far fewer people than if it, we as a church will also need to adapt Follow him @RossmannSJ. clothes were locally made. to our increasingly flat world.

42 America April 21, 2014 April 21, 2014 America 43 hometown, catching the dynamism art | Karen Sue Smith of local dancers and fiddlers, showing women at work making lace, brew- ing beer, herding livestock and sort- a Swedish Master ing fish. Zorn’s nudes, mostly of ro- An American gallery revisits the work of Anders Zorn. bust local women, are noteworthy for their sensuality and natural context. he sumptuous colors, daz- traveled to exotic places and exhibited Strawberry blonde women wade into zling brushwork and sheer the paintings he made to the public in the water or climb out of it on rocks; Tdrama in the paintings of London and Paris. The current exhi- mothers take children for a swim. Such Anders Zorn (1860-1920) earned the bition contains astonishing watercol- natural gestures in a rural landscape Swedish artist fortune and fame during ors from Zorn’s early travels in Spain, contrast starkly with the artificiality of the Gilded Age. But Zorn’s work and Portugal, Algeria, Italy, Turkey and nudes positioned like statues in French name gradually fell into obscurity out- Cornwall, England. art studios or made to appear as if at side Sweden. As a result, his brilliant He also painted scenes of Mora, his their toilette. In Zorn’s paintings, one body of work has not been shown in the United States for 100 years—un- til now. A major retrospective, “Anders Zorn: Sweden’s Master Painter,” which includes oil paintings, watercolors, etchings and several sculptures (90 works in all) runs through May 18 at the National Academy Museum in New York City, after a debut in San Francisco. The quality of these works ought to re-establish Zorn’s artistic reputation and reignite his popularity among Americans. Zorn’s style has been compared favorably with that of John Singer Sargent, a peer whose oil portraits and watercolors continue to attract crowds and buyers, as well as with that of Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, a Spanish master of light and the quick brushstroke. In Zorn’s day, his por- traits were sold for larger sums than Sargent’s were; his name was better known. It would have seemed strange at that time that the American public would later come to know Sargent’s name more than Zorn’s. But history is full of surprises and reversals. Although Zorn, the illegitimate son of a brewer, came from humble rural Ev i n ger atric beginnings, his “divine gift” was recog- nized at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm, where the teenager won prizes and became a student leader. To establish himself internationally, Zorn did what other M ora/ P images: Zor n museet, artists of the Belle Epoch had done: he “Summer Evening,” 1894, oil on canvas

44 America April 21, 2014 can smell the water and 55, a rudy-faced, bull of the trees, see the sunlight a man, stands before us or feel the chill; in a nat- in a three-piece red suit, ural habitat his nudes with both arms bent and look relaxed and at home. a cigarette in one hand, as Viewers will find much though caught on his way to admire in Zorn’s ren- out the door. dering of water, whether Anders Zorn was sun-drenched or rush- a creative genius, a ing beneath an overcast hard-working entrepre- sky. Water is a subject in neur and a virtuoso, but many of Zorn’s paint- he was no solo act. Emma ings. “Sea Study,” a post- Lamm, Zorn’s wife, card-sized, nearly mono- brought upper-class fam- chrome image of sea and ily connections to their sky, is at once simple and union. She posed for her riveting. husband, traveled with At 29, Anders Zorn him and for 20 years after had become a success in Zorn’s death established Paris, the city of artists. his legacy through the His works had been ex- Zorn Museum in Mora. hibited at the competi- A beautifully illus- tive annual salons; and he trated catalogue of the had won a gold medal at exhibition published by the World’s Fair in Paris Rizzoli, “Anders Zorn: in 1889. That same year Sweden’s Master Painter,” the French state inducted is available online and at Zorn as a knight into the the museum. It contains French Legion of Honor. helpful essays by Johan Zorn began to culti- “Self-Portrait in Red,” 1915, oil on canvas Cederlund, director of vate lucrative commis- the Zorn Museum in sions in the United States as a portrait mysterious and dark—depict the Mora, and several others. painter. In “Clarence Barker,” one of the over-sized personalities of Theodore Finally, viewers who wish to com- most charming watercolors on view, a Roosevelt and the sculptor Auguste pare Zorn’s figurative works with the grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt ex- Rodin, among others. Zorn perfect- paintings of a contemporary master changes loving glances with his dog. ed his etching technique, he said, by will not want to miss “Philip Pearlstein: In 1894, at the Chicago World’s Fair, studying the works of Rembrandt. Six Paintings, Six Decades,” a concur- Zorn befriended the Boston art pa- Once upon a time Americans rent exhibition also at the National tron Isabella Stewart Gardner, whose couldn’t get enough Academy. In these visage appears twice in this exhibition. of Zorn. He visited On the Web six large paintings, In Zorn’s oil portrait of her, an exuber- the United States John Anderson reviews one finds no celeb- ant Gardner, dressed in a long white seven times, during “Noah” and “Divergent.” rities and no nat- americamagazine.org/film gown, bursts into a room through a which he painted the ural surroundings. pair of French doors as fireworks light portraits of bank- Rather, Pearlstein’s up the night sky behind her. Gardner ers, industrialists and their wives, and nudes are all carefully positioned in- is also the subject of a small etching, two presidents—Grover Cleveland, doors and juxtaposed with selected rather static by comparison. Taken as on view, and William Howard Taft, props. They are distinctly modern, a whole, however, Zorn’s etchings are whose portrait hangs in the White provoking viewers to ask what makes one of this show’s liveliest surprises. House. Zorn also made a number of them “modern.” These small monochrome works— self-portraits that show how he looked some dashed off in lines that throb at various ages, evincing his energy and Karen Sue Smith is the former editorial di- with life, others intricately hatched, resolve. In “Self-Portrait in Red,” Zorn, rector of America.

April 21, 2014 America 45 CLASSIFIED Books Religion & Civility (faith & reason) Together; www. wordunlimited.com. Positions Chaplain, Austin Preparatory School, Reading, Mass. Austin Preparatory School is a Catholic co-ed- ucational independent school in the Augustinian tradition located within the Archdiocese of Boston. Austin Prep seeks an ordained Roman Catholic priest for an academic calendar year position. Applications are completely confidential. Please submit résumé and cover letter by email to: [email protected].

Administrator. St. Peter Catholic Church, staffed by the Jesuits in Charlotte, N.C., is seek- ing a full-time Parish Administrator. The Parish Administrator will work under the direction of the Pastor and will be responsible for all general opera- tions of the parish, including oversight of parish staff, business office, facilities, communications, ministry and faith formation operations. Full job description can be viewed at www.stpeterscatholic.org. Send ré- sumé, cover letter and any questions to stpeterspar- [email protected].

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46 America April 21, 2014 THE WORD

Acts speaks of how “they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and Radical Witness generous hearts.” Prayer would have Second Sunday of EasteR (A), April 27, 2014 been central to their lives even prior to Readings: Acts 2:42–47; Ps 118:2–24; 1 Pt 1:3–9; Jn 20:19–31 following Jesus, and it remained at the core of their communal life together. “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship” (Acts 2:42) In fact, the communion the early hortly after the ascension, the worship, nor “Seven Easy Steps to Start disciples experienced with each other number of believers in Jerusalem Your Religion” and not even a focus might be seen as the fulcrum between was about 120, according to Acts group or a PR firm. One of the great the ordinary and the radical. It was in S the love of neighbor and God gained 1:15. Whether the number is exact or shocks of Jesus’ mission is how large a symbolic of a restored Israel, the church role was given to the nascent church to through discipleship with Jesus, the started small. fulfill Jesus’ earthly ministry. It would penetration of God’s word of mercy The crowds who pressed around be up to the disciples of and grace and the communion Jesus in Galilee and greeted him during Jesus to take what he had of the Holy Spirit among his triumphant entry into Jerusalem taught them and what them that decisions were were gone. The believing community they had witnessed and made that radicalized this consisted of a small group who had not reflect on all they had band of followers. We are only followed him through the cruci- experienced in order told that “all who believed fixion, but were giving testimony to the to bring the message to were together and had all resurrection. When the apostles chose a the world. Yet within things in common.” This 12th apostle to replace Judas, the crite- decades the church had was not simply generous rion was that the disciple chosen must spread throughout the have been present from the “baptism of Mediterranean world and be- PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE John until the day when he was taken yond. What is even more surprising up from us—one of these must become than the rapid extent of their reach Imagine yourself amid the earliest Christians. What in their communal life a witness with us to his resurrection.” was the combination of radical and most helps you experience the presence There is good reason that Easter is ordinary in the establishment of the of Jesus? the center of the church’s witness and church’s witness. its origin: without the belief that Jesus Though the first Christians felt a. du nn e tad art: had been raised from the dead, to what the press of the eschaton, they spent sharing, but radical transformation of would these followers of Jesus have time on the ordinary acts of living and the place of worldly goods. borne witness? How could they have worshiping together. Acts tells us that The earliest disciples “would sell carried on as church? It was through the first followers “devoted themselves their possessions and goods and dis- the resurrection that they understood to the apostles’ teaching and fellow- tribute the proceeds to all, as any had Jesus was Lord and that salvation ship.” The teaching must have been the need.” Material goods were necessary to came through his name. Their mission, oral tradition of Jesus’ own instruction meet the needs of daily life; they were which they chose to accept, was “that and the recounting of the events of his necessary so they could witness to salva- you may come to believe that Jesus is passion, as well as understanding Jesus tion in Jesus. They did not choose man- the Messiah, the Son of God, and that in the context of the Scriptures. The sions, fortune or fame, however, but the through believing you may have life in fellowship (koinonia) certainly includ- communal life and radical sharing of his name.” But how would 120 people ed the teaching and “the breaking of goods in order to better witness to Jesus bear witness to the world? bread and the prayers,” but even more so that all might believe. Acts says that There was no blueprint for the fundamentally the sense of oneness in “many wonders and signs were being church as to how to evangelize and their communion. The breaking of the done by the apostles,” but the greatest bread signals the eucharistic celebra- wonder is that their ordinary lives and tion in nascent form, but we should not choices powerfully bore witness to Jesus John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. overlook the actual sharing of meals as the primary goal of their mission. Paul, Minn. together that marks community. Later John W. Martens

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