FALL BOOKS 1 Of Many Things Published by Jesuits of the United States n the morning of May 25, We knew John at America from 106 West 56th Street 1979, 6-year-old Etan Patz the many interviews he conducted New York, NY 10019-3803 left his Manhattan apartment here over the years, the last one in Ph: 212-581-4640; Fax: 212-399-3596 O Subscriptions: 1-800-627-9533 to catch the school bus and was never the office where I write this column. www.americamagazine.org seen again. The case was cold for He had come here to talk to me about facebook.com/americamag decades, until a suspect came forward America’s interview with Pope Francis. twitter.com/americamag last year and confessed to the crime. A His viewers would not have known it, trial is set to begin this January, though of course, but the papal interview was President and Editor in Chief Matt Malone, S.J. the authorities are still evaluating the not just another story for John. He Executive Editors credibility of the suspect’s confession, was a man of deep faith and, like so Robert C. Collins, S.J., Maurice Timothy Reidy many of us, was deeply moved by the as well as his mental capacity. Tragic Managing Editor Kerry Weber new pope’s words and actions. By sheer and heartbreaking though it was and Literary Editor Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. remains for Etan’s loved ones, the boy’s coincidence, John was a parishioner at Senior Editor and Chief Correspondent disappearance helped spark the Missing the church in Larchmont, N.Y., where Kevin Clarke Children’s movement; new state and I say Mass a few times a month. I got Editor at Large James Martin, S.J. federal legislation soon provided to know him better there, as well as his Poetry Editor Joseph Hoover, S.J. additional resources for preventing and lovely wife, Suzie, who was with him Associate Editor and Vatican Correspondent prosecuting such cases. Etan’s picture, when he passed. Gerard O’Connell in fact, was the first picture of a missing John would have loved this issue of Associate Editor Ashley McKinless Assistant Editors Francis W. Turnbull, S.J., Olga child to appear on milk cartons, perhaps America. A lifelong student of politics, Segura, Joseph McAuley the most visible component of the new he would have liked seeing these two Art Director Sonja Kodiak Wilder public awareness campaign. political titans from opposite sides of Columnists Helen Alvaré, John J. Conley, S.J., The public outcry that prompted the aisle talking about the pope, the Daniel P. Horan, O.F.M., James T. Keane, John W. policy makers to act was orchestrated poor and the proper role of government. Martens, Bill McGarvey, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Margot Patterson “That’s a good story,” I’m sure he would in part by the local and national media. Correspondents Chief among Etan’s champions was have said. John Carr (Washington), Jim McDermott, S.J. John Slattery, a reporter at WCBS-TV, “You know what I admire about (Los Angeles), Timothy Padgett (Miami), Steven Schwankert (Beijing), David Stewart, S.J. (London), the CBS network affiliate in New York you,” I told John after Mass one Judith Valente (Chicago), Mary Ann Walsh, R.S.M. City. Every autumn for almost 30 years, Sunday. “During the week you might (U.S. Church) John filed a story on the progress (or be interviewing a president or a master Moderator, Catholic Book Club lack thereof ) of the boy’s case. A parent criminal, or covering a distant war or a Kevin Spinale, S.J. Editorial e-mail of three, John approached the story major political campaign; but on most [email protected] with a father’s heart as well as the keen Sundays, no matter what, you’re here eye and inquiring mind of a seasoned working as a lector, worshipping with Publisher and Chief Financial Officer Edward Spallone broadcast journalist. your fellow Catholics.” He laughed and Deputy Publisher John Slattery died of a sudden heart said, “Father, here I get to read the good Rosa Del Saz attack last week at the age of 63, one news.” That was John: big-hearted, Vice President/Advancement month short of his 30th anniversary at faithful, fast with a quip, down to earth. Daniel Pawlus Development Coordinator WCBS. During the course of his 40 I don’t know who’ll cover the Etan Patz Kerry Goleski years in broadcasting, John chronicled case this winter, but it’s hard to imagine Operations Staff the triumphs, tragedies and foibles of the anyone doing it with as much intelligence Chris Keller, Glenda Castro city that never sleeps. A four-time Emmy and humanity as John Slattery did. Advertising contact winner, he was one of the first reporters Many people criticize television news, [email protected]; 212-515-0102 to arrive at ground zero on the morning mainly for being shallow or sensational Subscription contact/Additional copies [email protected]; of Sept. 11, 2001, just in time to watch or just plain unhelpful. Some of that 1-800-627-9533 the second plane strike the World Trade is obviously true. But like most things Center. He was also there after the first human, television journalism can also be © 2014 America Press, Inc. World Trade Center attack in 1993. He noble and beautiful and true. That’s still braved the elements to cover the blizzard possible, though, in my humble opinion, Cover: Paul Ryan, left. Photo: Shutterstock.com./ Christopher Halloran. Joseph P. Kennedy III, of February 1994 and the devastation of it just got a lot harder. right. Photo: Reuters/Jessica Rinaldi. Flag. Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Matt Malone, S.J. Photo: Shutterstock.com/Maureen Perez Contents www.americamagazine.org Vol. 211 No. 10, Whole No. 5064 October 13, 2014

articles 16 Preferential Options ‘Vanguard’ experiments in fighting poverty Paul Ryan

21 A Greater Reality Faith, the final frontier Thomas A. Cahill

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

4 Current Comment

21 5 editorial Proceed With Caution

6 Reply All

8 Signs of the Times

14 Column Confronting the Caliphate Margot Patterson

26 Vatican Dispatch Francis the Diplomat Gerard O’Connell

27 Faith in Focus Remain Here With Me Joan Miller

46 the Word Payment Due John W. Martens

27 BOOKS & CULTURE 30 fall books 1 African Journeys; Cycle of Lies; In Quest of the Jewish Mary; Tennessee Williams; Plato at the Googleplex of other things Body-Building

ON THE WEB Gerard O’Connell reports from Pope Francis’s trip to Albania, and Judith Valente celebrates Bruce Springsteen’s 65th Birthday. Full digital highlights on page 23 and at americamagazine.org/webfeatures. 30 CURRENT COMMENT

crowd marched along singing “We Shall Overcome.” Jesuit Breaking Ebola scholastics, Sisters of Charity, Capuchin Franciscans from Six months into the unprecedented outbreak of the Rome, rabbis, imams, victims of Hurricane Sandy, movie deadly Ebola virus in West Africa, the United States and stars, jazz bands and politicians made this People’s Climate international community are finally trying to catch up March—the largest of the 2,646 climate-change events to the crisis. On Sept. 16 President Obama committed held in 156 countries that day—radiate a moment of hope 3,000 military personnel and $750 million to coordinate while the planet warmed, oceans rose, species of wildlife relief efforts. Two days later the United Nations Security disappeared, the food supply shrank and we whom God Council convened its first emergency meeting on a public made stewards of creation learned that we must act, even health crisis, unanimously declaring the epidemic “a threat sacrifice, to save our planet. to international peace and security.” We know that the concentration of carbon dioxide in The question now is: Will these efforts be enough the air is now 42 percent above pre-Industrial Revolution to avoid what health officials see as possible worst-case levels and that human activity has warmed the planet by 1.5 scenarios? According to the Centers for Disease Control degrees Fahrenheit. If this trend continues for the next 30 and Prevention, the number of Ebola cases in Liberia years, The New York Times reports, the temperature “would and Sierra Leone, two of the hardest hit countries, could likely be incompatible with human civilization in its current reach between 550,000 and 1.4 million by January absent form.” If we fail to stem these rising tides, the marchers “additional interventions or changes in community warned us, “There Is No Ark.” behavior.” But the C.D.C. director, Tom Frieden, held out hope, saying that if 70 percent of Ebola patients receive proper care, the disease could run its course by The Internet Wants to Be Free mid-January and that the recent surge in global support is “Net neutrality” does not sound like a term that would “exactly what’s needed.” arouse much passion. Yet more than a dozen religious bodies, The next couple of months will be especially crucial, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, have and few institutions can deploy as rapidly as the U.S. issued a sharp joint letter to the Federal Communications military or match its logistical capabilities. But if and when Commission urging policymakers to keep the Internet this fever breaks, it will be worth asking whether this is “neutral” for the benefit of all of its users. the best way to confront health emergencies. The World “We are concerned about paid prioritization and other Health Organization is the natural alternative, but it has policies that will increase costs and limit opportunities come under criticism for its slow response to the escalating for our organizations and the communities we serve,” the Ebola epidemic. W.H.O., however, is only as effective statement said. The letter comes as the F.C.C. considers the as U.N. members make it, and it went into West Africa possibility of a “two-tiered” Internet that would allow service underfunded and understaffed. The time for properly providers to charge companies like Netflix a premium for funding its efforts was yesterday, but the international delivering faster service. community can still come together to prevent the next On the blog of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops crisis. on Sept. 16, Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City argued: “Instead of adopting rules that permit the wealthiest United Front on Climate companies to purchase the best service, the F.C.C. should On an overcast Sunday, Sept. 21, veterans of protest who insist on fair treatment for everyone, no matter our income.” marched for civil rights and against the Vietnam War Bishop Wester contends that a bifurcated system would in the 1960s joined hands with over 300,000 citizens of harm religious and nonprofit groups, which would be unable every generation, social and economic class, religion and to pay for premium speed. This would make it more difficult political commitment to walk 2.2 miles through Midtown for them to communicate with their members and promote Manhattan shouting and carrying banners: “Wake up, their online activities. Over time large content providers America”; “The dinosaurs didn’t see it coming, either.” would come to dominate the digital realm. Religious groups A nearly block-long string of marchers carried a banner so already have a difficult time conveying their message in enormous it could be read only from a distance: “Capitalism the din of our commercialized culture. They deserve equal Is Killing the Planet.” While delegates prepared for the treatment from government regulators. A free and equal upcoming United Nations climate summit, the boisterous Internet should be an essential condition of our digital age.

4 America October 13, 2014 EDITORIAL Proceed With Caution n confronting the quandary of Iraq and Syria, President True enough, but how to achieve Obama is tasked with choosing the least worst among the secretary’s aim? Ia number of awful policy options. The “new” strategy This reluctant return to battle over President Obama described in a speech on Sept. 10 and put Iraq and now Syria must be different into action a few weeks later appears painfully similar to the from past campaigns. Use of force must failed policies of the recent past. For over three decades, four be clearly associated with protecting presidents have tried to bomb this complex and troubled the vulnerable, and unreasonable region into submission. Now the United States and new care should be paid to preventing allies of varying enthusiasm are extending the effort into noncombatant casualties. More generally, the historical cycle Syria to suppress the burgeoning threat of the self-described of U.S. indifference and inaction interspersed with periodic Islamic State. detonations of violent intervention must be broken. U.S. and allied forces have struck multiple targets Islamic extremism is an idea, not an army. The United in Syria and Iraq, joined in the desperate defense of the States can continue to play whack-a-mole in Yemen, Somalia Kurdish city of Kobane near the Turkish border and even and within the haphazard territory ISIS has created for engaged a new enemy, the Khorasan Group in Syria. The itself within the fading borderlines drawn by the Sykes- air assault so far appears thoroughly improvised, raising the Picot Agreement, but it can never defeat a state of mind with worrying possibility of another limitless campaign against more missiles. On the contrary, the perception of Western terrorism. persecution feeds this viral ideology. The current strategy—opportunistic air attacks The breakdown of political and social order in accompanied by training and equipping the presumed Iraq and Syria must be understood within a complex of “moderate” forces within the Syrian resistance—is a recipe competing tribal, regional, religious and economic interests for years, if not decades of more suffering for the people of that at this moment appear intractable. With war-planning Iraq and Syria. Worse, it is precisely in such environments commandeering U.S. attention at the Pentagon, are the of bloodshed and chaos that groups like ISIS thrive. Pax State Department and Obama administration devoting as Christi in Denmark properly notes that “the costs of setting much energy and analysis to the campaigns on nonmilitary unclear and moving targets are that violence is compounded fronts that could make the essential difference this time? while victory remains elusive.” The battle in the skies over Iraq and Syria can only If returning U.S. troops to Iraq is indeed a nonstarter be one part of a multilateral offensive against terror, one (as it should be), and if airpower alone is not sufficient to regrettably abetted by squadrons of fighter-bombers, but drive back ISIS gains, as military analysts attest, are U.S. primarily conducted by politicians pursuing a comprehensive and allied forces merely helping confirm the apocalyptic political and economic strategy to contain ISIS, prosecute vision of ISIS leadership? its agents and buttress Sunni communities in Iraq willing to Pope Francis asks for the “unjust aggressor” in the resist it. That will mean responding to the justified grievances region to be stopped, and American Catholics properly of Iraq’s Sunni minority; defusing the social and cultural ask if that “stopping” can be accomplished in a manner that forces that drive young people into ISIS-mediated nihilism; protects noncombatants and proposes a reasonable path and economically isolating this quasi-state and exposing its to an eventual cessation of violence. That latter challenge supporters in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and elsewhere. remains to be addressed. It should mean vigorously pursuing a diplomatic “Terrorists must be defeated,” said U.N. Secretary offensive in conjunction with renewed military pressure General Ban Ki-Moon during the opening of a Security that is willing to include all parties to the conflict, including Council summit at the United Nations on Sept. 24, “but Syria’s Bashar al-Assad and even representatives from ISIS, we must do so in a way that avoids the deliberate acts of if they can be peeled away from the group’s bloody resolve. provocation that they set for us—victimization, further And no issue, including the redrawing of the tattered Middle radicalization and more civilian deaths…. Over the longer- Eastern map, Kurdish independence, the disbursement of term, the biggest threat to terrorists is not the power of oil revenue and Sunni provincial autonomy, should be off missiles—it is the politics of inclusion.” the table.

October 13 , 2014 America 5 REPLY ALL sue, and until we make it so, there will child, and of Jesus for these parents who be no renewal of family life. held their daughters but briefly, but for- Abigail Woods-Ferreira ever in their hearts. Thank you for shar- Marriage Justice Online Comment ing this poignant love story. Re “Remarriage, Mercy and Law,” by (Deacon) Jim Grogan The Editors (9/22): As a Catholic hap- God’s Children Freehold, N.J. pily living in a sacramental marriage, Re “A Complicated Grief,” by Kerry I deeply value the indissoluble nature Weber (9/22): Having, along with my Natural Love of that union. But my limited expe- wife, suffered through three miscar- In “Make Room at the Debate” (9/15), rience of people who have divorced riages, I know the emotional pain that Helen Alvaré seems to be setting up is that almost always the divorce was tugs at our hearts during a problem or multiple straw men. Few people would inevitable, or one party was innocent. risky pregnancy can feel like torture. consider having contraception available There is nothing less convenient than Years later, as a widower, I share a dif- under their for-profit employer’s health a divorce—who would go through that ferent sense of grief and joy, believing plan as having anything at all to do with for anything other than a complete and that my wife has already met these the value of motherhood. Many couples intolerable breakdown of the relation- three children. How do you find the who value motherhood seek reliable, ship? How can mercy not be extend- joy in the midst of sadness? Our bap- modern, safe methods of birth con- ed to people who go through that and tismal faith is a central part of that joy, trol that are less damaging to the daily then find love again? whether the death we hold close is a rhythms of their married lovemaking. There also is a social justice angle, child, a too-young spouse or our elder- The church’s recommended method, I think. Divorce is far more common ly family members. Ms. Weber’s story “natural” family planning, is unwork- among low-income families because of Marian Elizabeth has touched me, able for most couples, at least for those a lack of economic stability makes and I am certain many other readers; who value married lovemaking as one it so difficult to keep a marriage to- it reminds me of the child of my good of the strongest unitive forces available gether. While I think it is vital for the friends, Emily, whose genetic difficulty for supporting their marriage. It total- church to strongly advocate for social led to a life of only a few hours, too. The ly ignores the natural rhythms of love- and economic conditions that will re- fact that Emily continues to shape the making in most marriages and treats duce divorce among the poor, it is also lives of those who hold her family dear, women’s natural cycle of libido (which important that the poor aren’t being just as Marian Elizabeth has a story to peaks during her most fertile period) as disproportionately excluded from the be told again and again, stands as proof of no importance. table of the Lord because of the situ- that these children continue to help in What makes a marriage a sacrament ations they find themselves in—not the unfolding of God’s creation, sacra- is the love relationship between the because they are less moral but because mentally transforming those who pause spouses, not the biological function of they often have so many more crosses to consider their short lives and the procreation. to bear. Marriage is a social justice is- profound love of these parents for each The vast majority of Catholic wom- en not only take advantage of mod- Status Update have been helped to identify patterns ern methods of birth control, but give Readers respond to “Remarriage, so they did not repeat them. Mercy thanks to God for inspiring human Mercy and Law,” by The Editors is valuable, always, but how we define beings to develop this gift to all hu- (9/22). it matters. mankind at precisely the right time in Elizabeth Scalia the evolution of human history that it I’m all for mercy, and I applaud the became needed. Who can doubt God’s pope’s marrying couples that had co- Divorces create new families. To wisdom in this timing? habited or even experienced divorce, Anne Chapman exclude from the sacraments a per- Online Comment but annulment was part of that. I’m son serving their family in love does not sure how, theologically, you skip more to discredit the newly config- Simpler Solution annulment. Reform the annulment ured family than it does to legitimate In “American Exodus” (9/15), Gabriel process; it’s arduous and sometimes the first one. Celebrate families and Romeri asks us to “Imagine if people of beyond arduous. But I know too the love they engender, even the ones all faiths came together to make room” many people who have also experi- that do not follow the patterns we for unaccompanied children coming enced great healing from the process thought and taught were ideal. across our border. Perhaps we could of annulment—and in some cases Forrest Todd Parkinson also imagine if the leaders of people

6 America October 13, 2014 of all faiths had the spiritual depth to to influence Israeli policy, if our govern- garding Israel in a qualitatively distinct competently address the underlying ment has the political will to attempt to category, which Father Conley should issues that drive the rampant drug us- do so. When a person (or government) have appreciated in attempting to draw age in the United States. That would has the ability to protect the innocent, comparisons. do more to solve the violence and refu- there is at least a moral right—if not a Philip Allen Lacovara Sanibel, Fla. gee problems in Central America than moral obligation—to do so, whereas a bigger doors and bigger Band-Aids. person (or government) has no compa- Questioning Sources What if we all preached and practiced, rable duty to act when any action would While I readily admit to a pedestri- “Live Simply That Others May Simply be pointless. Assad in Syria cares little an knowledge of the recent Israeli- Live”? Such a radical concept would for U.S. expressions of condemnation Palestinian conflict, Margot Patterson’s likely ruffle many comfortable folks. of maltreatment of his citizens (absent “Gaza Again” (8/4) made some factual Rick Sherman a credible threat of force). The Saudis Online Comment statements that were news to me. Ms. may have repressive attitudes toward Patterson writes, “the kidnappings women, but they are unlikely to change Mysterious Fruit were not ordered by Hamas leader- these cultural attitudes in response to Father DeSiano asks: “Can it be that ship but committed by a rogue cell in U.S. criticism. The Chinese do not care people are involved in God’s grace Hebron.” Where did The Forward, a much what the United States thinks without even the dimmest recognition New York City Jewish daily publica- about Tibet. But as our closest ally in of it?” This is a good question. Jesus tion and these “other sources” that Ms. the Middle East, Israel cannot blithe- teaches us that to enter the kingdom of Patterson relies on, get this informa- ly ignore what Americans believe, if God, we must become like little chil- tion? these concerns are expressed vigorous- dren. I wonder if children are aware of (Deacon) Thomas J. Giacobbe ly enough. That puts the situation re- Skillman, N.J. the grace they bring to a given situa- tion. Are they aware of the fruit they Letters to the editor may be sent to America’s editorial office (address on page 2) or produce when they laugh out loud at [email protected]. America will also consider the following for print publication: random or when their eyes fill with comments posted below articles on America’s Web site (americamagazine.org) and posts on Twitter and public Facebook pages. All correspondence may be edited for length. tears over situations that many of us might not even notice? Is it possible to be so consumed with love that you are an intentional disciple although you have never been catechized or in- structed in the official sense? It is pos- sible that there is a quiet mother some- where who has given birth to one or two children and who spends her days nurturing them. She seems not to pro- duce much fruit; no one has been con- verted in her name or by her example except her son or daughter. Is it also possible that because of the love this child received, she goes on to found an order or discover a cure or lay down her life for others? How can we know when someone is producing fruit? It is, perhaps, too beautiful a mystery. Kristen Hoffmaster Online Comment

False Equivalence John Conley, S.J., misses a couple of important points when he decries the criticism of Israeli policy in “For Israel” (8/4). The United States is in a position

October 13 , 2014 America 7 8 America October 13, 2014 SIGNS OF THE TIMES from the turkish border I was part of a delegation with the Migration and Refugee Services of the Refugees, Fleeing ISIS, Threaten to United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in late September; we heard Overwhelm Turkish Resources stories from refugees at the Turkey- Syria border about the reasons they Yazidi exodus. These refugees escaping left their homes behind. One Christian from Iraq into Turkey were joined in September by waves of Syrian Kurds in flight from ISIS. Iraqi woman told us, “ISIS came to my village and said either convert or die!” Another left after a neighbor received a package at her doorstep that contained the head of a relative, forcing the whole family to flee in fright. Only 13 percent of the refugees in Turkey are living in government-run camps. The vast majority have moved into Turkish cities, and, as generous as the current state institutions in Turkey have been, they do not have the mech- anisms needed to meet the massive social challenges created by the refu- gee population. Many recently arrived Iraqi refugees we talked to could not even get an appointment to begin ref- ugee status determination until 2023. For many refugees, making it across Photo: Ümit Alg a n the border into Turkey is only the first n Sept. 18, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria began a military offensive step. Complicated issues lie ahead outside of the Kobane area in northern Syria, and in no time they had that will involve either integration, Oterrorized and seized 60 of the surrounding villages. Over the next three return or resettlement. “We are safe days an unprecedented flight of 160,000 refugees escaped across Turkey’s south- in Turkey now,” said one Syrian wom- ern border. The sudden exodus put the refugee issue back on the international dip- an, “But our situation is bad. We feel lomatic front burner, but this time, as one official noted, “The pot is now boiling weak, we have many needs, and many over and the water is spilling onto the kitchen floor.” people still don’t understand what we Turkey already has more refugees than it can handle. Since the Syrian con- have lived through.” flict started in March 2011, about 1.7 million Syrian refugees have escaped into As world leaders gathered at the Turkey. When ISIS took control of Mosul in June of this year, as many as 200,000 United Nations in late September to more Iraqis came, joining tens of thousands of Afghans, Iranians and others. address ISIS, Ebola and other global Turkey has now become not only the borderland between Europe and Asia, but threats, I asked a number of refugees the borderland between the violence of the home countries of these refugees and what they would say to them. the hope of a better life. One teenage girl said, “We feel in- According to official Turkish estimates, the country has already spent $4 bil- secure, and we want you to help make lion responding to the refugee crisis. The rest of the international community has a stable future for us. Please pay atten- added only $240 million to help Turkey in this effort. If the town of Kobane falls tion to what we are going through. All in the coming weeks, another 300,000 refugees could flee across the Turkish bor- we want is to live in peace again.” der. In addition to the Muslim Arabs who came over in earlier waves, now many A Syrian man who teaches refugee Kurds, Yazidis and Christians are fleeing for their lives because of the violence in children in Turkey said: “The Syrian their homelands. war has gone on too long. We want to

October 13 , 2014 America 9 SIGNS OF THE TIMES go home. We want to return, rebuild hospital,” whose mission must be inex- costly, unpopular and risky. our schools and teach our children.” tricably intertwined with the poor and This approach stands in sharp con- For those who have been in Turkey suffering of the world. trast to many U.S. immigration poli- as refugees for some time, the feeling The generous response of the cies and our animosity to those suffer- of displacement only adds to the ag- Turkish government, their willing- ing on the other side of our borders. ony. In addition to losing his ability ness to adopt magnanimous protec- Although the United States has made to walk because of the fighting, one tion policies and their welcome of great strides in refugee resettlement 25-year-old man said, “What you these refugees as brothers and sisters in recent decades, its immigration learn as a refugee is that when you in spite of enormous social and finan- policies could be more generous and lose your home country, you lose accommodating, especially for something very precious.” those most threatened. Having When asked what they missed delayed taking executive action most about home, some children on immigration reform until after pointed to neighbors, friends and elections in November, President their school. But one 12-year-old, Obama was unable to negotiate notably perplexed by the question, a humane accommodation for chimed in and said, “I don’t have a the surge of nearly 63,000 unac- house any more.” companied children crossing into Many Iraqis we talked to could the United States from Central not imagine going back home. America because of the political “Would you? We can’t go back. risks involved. There is no peace.” Because they Worldwide, refugees are the know firsthand the effects of re- most insecure and vulnerable hu- jection and violence, some refu- man beings today. And this issue gees told us that respect—mutu- is not going away anytime soon. al respect—has been one of the The bigger challenge is not just most important things they have when these refugees will go back learned through their suffering. home, but how we will learn to While the bombs continue to live together in our differences, drop on the ISIS infrastructure, strengthen each other in our suf- these stories remind all of us that fering and walk together in a com-

an enormous humanitarian battle Photo: Ümit Alg a n mon hope. still needs to be waged. In a state- LOST INNOCENTS. Exhausted children in flight When our delegation asked a ment on Sept. 23, Pope Francis from ISIS. tent full of refugee children what said the theme for next year’s they would say to the president of World Day of Migrants and Refugees cial costs is one bright light in this our country, one 6-year-old—who had is “Church without frontiers, Mother overwhelming humanitarian crisis. undergone much violence himself— to all.” Its leaders have prioritized hospitality paused a moment. Realizing a group He said, “The mission of the over hostility, humanitarian costs over of foreigners had just crossed over his church, herself a pilgrim in the world political costs and human solidarity borders and entered into his tent space, and the Mother of all, is thus to love over national and personal fears, even he raised his hand. As if to answer a Jesus Christ, to adore and love him, as it tries to manage risks to Turkey’s deeper, but unasked question, he said, particularly in the poorest and most own security. In some parts along the “This place is much more beautiful be- abandoned; among these are certainly Turkish border, ISIS-controlled ter- cause of your presence in it.” migrants and refugees, who are trying ritory is only a few kilometers away. Daniel Groody to escape difficult living conditions Nonetheless, there is an unflinching and dangers of every kind.” Moreover, recognition on the part of Turkish of- Daniel Groody, C.S.C., a consultant to the U.S.C.C.B. Committee on Migration and his remarks further illumine an un- ficials that helping these refugees is a Refugee Services, is reporting from the Turkish- derstanding of the church as a “field moral imperative, even if it is difficult, Syrian border.

10 America October 13, 2014 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

South Sudan’s Bishops Call for End to Conflict NEWS BRIEFS South Sudan’s bishops reiterated their Returning to her home in Miami after a month- call for an end to fighting in their coun- long assignment to West Africa, Dr. Aileen Marty, try and warned of a humanitarian disas- a former U.S. Navy doctor and expert in infectious ter. “The fighting and killing must stop diseases, said on Sept. 22 that the deadly Ebola immediately and unconditionally,” the outbreak will be contained only if all ports of entry bishops said on Sept. 25, at the end of in the region are adequately screened for infected a three-day meeting that coincided with carriers. • Pope Francis, who has said the Catholic the renewal of peace talks in Ethiopia. Church has “not yet come up with a profound Last December, conflict erupted be- theology of womanhood,” named five women, a tween forces loyal to South Sudan record number, to the International Theological Dr. Aileen Marty President Salva Kiir and those loyal Commission on Sept. 30. • The former chancellor to the rebel leader Riek Machar, Kiir’s of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Michael Lovell, became former vice president. The fighting the first lay president of Marquette University on Sept. 19. • The soon split the country along tribal lines. U.S. bishops’ Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities has prepared a packet Thousands of South Sudanese citizens for the observance in October of Respect Life Month that is available had been killed and hundreds of thou- online at www.usccb.org/respectlife. • In a statement during the U.N. sands displaced. The bishops said dis- Climate Summit on Sept. 23, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal placed people were living in appalling Pietro Parolin observed that “warming of the climate system…is a conditions and warned that a famine is very serious problem which...has grave consequences for the most looming in parts of the country. “Once vulnerable sectors of society and, clearly, for future generations.” again we declare this war immoral, and we demand an immediate end to all hostilities so that these humanitarian Ricardo Valenzuela Rios of Villarrica three top leaders of the Catholic concerns can be addressed,” they said. del Espiritu Santo will temporarily ad- peace organization also called upon The bishops urged the internation- minister the diocese. A Vatican state- the world, particularly the United al community to continue to support ment said the “onerous decision” to dis- Nations, to work together to seek non- development in the country because miss Bishop Livieres was made after a violent alternatives to stop the Islamic “freezing funds meant for development “careful examination” of the findings of State’s expansion and influence in Iraq is an invitation to more insecurity and a Vatican investigation conducted by and Syria. Bishop Kevin Dowling of suffering.” the congregations for bishops and for Rustenburg, South Africa and Marie clergy. In the exercise of his ministry Dennis, Pax Christi International protecting unity among bishops and co-presidents, and Jose Henriquez, Pope Calls for Unity the faithful, according to the statement, the organization’s secretary-gener- In Paraguay Pope Francis “asks the clergy and all the al, proposed alternatives to war, like people of God” in the diocese to accept wide-ranging diplomacy, including After a Vatican investigation, Pope the decision “with a spirit of obedience, direct talks with Islamic State leaders Francis removed a Paraguayan bishop docility and a neutral attitude.” and economic actions aimed at limiting from his post as head of the Diocese the group’s access to millions of dollars of Ciudad del Este because of “serious in oil revenues that fund weapons pur- pastoral reasons.” But the bishop shot chases. “We believe that especially the back later the same day, charging in an Air Strikes Will Aid ISIS expansion of bombing is more likely to open letter that he was the victim of an Expanded airstrikes on Islamic State create significant recruiting bonanza ideological campaign by Paraguayan positions in Syria serve as little more for some of the extremist groups, ISIS bishops in league with Vatican offi- than a recruiting tool for extremists included,” Dennis said. cials. Bishop Rogelio Livieres Plano, and place more innocent people in 69, was told to step down as head of danger, the leadership of Pax Christi the diocese, effective Sept. 25. Bishop International said on Sept. 23. The From CNS, RNS and other sources.

October 13 , 2014 America 11 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

crack the minimum wage, In-N-Out dispatch | los angeles starts its employees at over $10 an hour. Managers make over $100,000 a year Faith With Those Fries? plus benefits and performance-based ou might think the cuisine du here is mystifying. You cannot order a incentives like all-expenses-paid vaca- jour of Los Angeles would be salad at In-N-Out. They do not serve tions. Ysomething trendy or healthy— lattes, nor a dozen different “combos” Yet despite all those positives, be- something out of Mexican or an Asian in multiple sizes. The official menu yond the corporate website and a few culture perhaps; definitely something has only six items on it: hamburg- facts and figures on In-N-Out food “fusion.” But it turns out the real pas- er; cheeseburger or double-double (a wrappers, the company refuses to pro- sion of Angelinos, one that unites the two-patty cheeseburger); French fries; mote itself. It has no celebrity spokes- many disparate peoples and tastes of milkshakes; soda. person, no commercials gone viral or this massive community, is a fast food A secret menu, with fun-to-say staged events. In-N-Out just makes hamburger joint with a name more terms like “Animal Style” or “The Flying hamburgers, and people show up. suggestive of digestive problems than a Dutchman,” provides a few addition- The Hollywood ending to a story White Castle slider. al menu items and modifications. But like this has the company overcom- No matter where you live or wheth- compared to McDonald’s or even ing cocky fast-food super-conglomer- er or not you’ve ever heard of ates to win some international In-N-Out Burger, your life has hamburger contest or Charlton been affected by them. In 1948, In many ways Heston racing into frame when they were first starting In-N-Out’s success here screaming about secret ingredi- in the L.A. neighborhood of ents. Baldwin Park, the founders is mystifying. But much like its popularity Harry and Esther Snyder were in Los Angeles, the final twist on able to obtain only 10 square feet of Subway, In-N-Out remains very much In-N-Out is anything but the expect- land, nowhere near enough for seat- a no-frills operation. ed. Check any wrapper, any paper cup ing. To make a go of it, Harry created The same goes for its corporate or fry boat from In-N-Out and you a two-way speaker box and opened presence. In a town known for its will find somewhere, in small type, a California’s first drive-through. press agents and spin, the manage- citation from Scripture. The inside of Today there are 286 In-N-Out ment of In-N-Out doesn’t give in- the bottom rim of one milkshake cup Burgers in five states. The chain’s owner, terviews. Inquiries for this article on has “Prov 3:5” (“Trust in the Lord with Esther and Harry’s 32-year-old grand- even the most banal of topics—How all thy heart”); at the edge of the burger daughter Lynsi, is the youngest female did the secret menu first come about? wrapper, “Rev 3:20” (“Behold, I stand billionaire in the United States, and its What kind of training does your staff at the door and knock”). popularity is without parallel in the get? What do you think is the biggest The company offers no explanation fast-food world. Drive-through lanes challenge facing the fast-food industry for the Scripture citations (of course). regularly stretch a dozen cars; cherry today?—were all politely, repeatedly Perhaps they are a quiet means of red seating inside and out teems with rebuffed. evangelization or a moment of grateful a United Nations of customers. Most The company has an amazing sto- praise for all the success the business venues pulse with the kind of nonstop, ry to tell. Everything it sells is fresh; it has known. elbow-to-elbow action and fast-talking has never used transfats; and nothing Or perhaps it’s a kind of blessing cashiers one expects to find rather in is ever microwaved or frozen (except on the meal and all those who will eat the harried realms of the distant East the ice cream in the homemade milk- it, people from all walks of life whose than in the laid-back metropolis of Los shakes). Chefs from Julia Child to paths do not otherwise cross, that Angeles. Gordon Ramsay have praised the qual- elsewhere in the world might even be In many ways In-N-Out’s success ity of In-N-Out’s food. in mortal conflict. Here they sit, cheek They’re also apparently quite good by jowl, all together, relishing their to their employees. In an industry in Jim McDermott, S.J., is America’s Los lunch. Angeles correspondent. Twitter: @jmcdsj. which entry-level employees rarely Jim McDermott

12 America October 13, 2014

Margot Patterson Confronting the Caliphate ts new war on the Islamic State While many Americans view Islam The United States has to go beyond puts the United States in the mid- as a violent religion, studies show that blunt militarism or the narrow coun- Idle of the multiplying fault lines in the primary drivers of Islamic terror- terterrorism approach outlined in the the Middle East. Polls show that most ism are political. In fact, a high pro- president’s speech, Mideast experts Americans support it but doubt it will portion of people in I.S., higher even say. be any more successful than our previ- than in Al Qaeda, are religious novices “We are trying to once again apply ous war in Iraq, which bred instability who know little about Islam. They see air power to a problem or set of prob- and the Sunni jihadists overrunning themselves as purifying the Islamic lems that it can’t resolve,” said Chas Syria and Iraq whom we are now seek- world, but their tactics and behavior W. Freeman, a retired diplomat who ing to destroy. I turned to an array of are so clearly un-Islamic that they have served as U.S. ambassador to Saudi Mideast scholars and experts to learn little credibility as Muslims. What Arabia during the Desert Storm and more about the mission the United I.S. does offer, however, is a Desert Shield opera- States has set itself. powerful change narrative. tions. “I think the so- A few facts: An offshoot of Al In Syria, where I.S. is the called Islamic State is Qaeda, the Islamic State, known as most brutal and effective The United a serious threat that I.S., ISIS or ISIL, is now being de- opposition group, it is uni- States has to be addressed, fined as much or more by its differenc- fying people who would not but putting the United es from Al Qaeda as by its similarities. naturally be unified. has to go States in the lead to do Unlike Al Qaeda, I.S. seeks to gain What are the challeng- beyond so is a mistake and will and hold territory. It is a transnation- es in mounting a coalition not work.” al movement that threatens the exist- against I.S.? They begin blunt At a minimum, the co- ing regional order and thus the global with the question of wheth- militarism. alition needs significant economy. I.S. is smart, media-savvy er the United States should buy-in from Arab allies. and rich, taking over banks, businesses lead it, the unresolved con- “It’s going to have to look and oil fields in the area it administers. tradictions in U.S. poli- like a Western/Arab/ About four million people now live cy—the strongest foes of I.S. are Iran, Muslim armada,” said John Esposito, in areas I.S. controls, where it acts as Hezbollah and the Assad regime, chair of Georgetown University’s center a state, providing security and social parties the United States treats as en- for Christian-Muslim understanding. services. According to Haroon Ullah, emies—the fact that military might “Then they’re going to have to be very who serves on Secretary of State John alone cannot defeat an ideology and strategic in what they do. You cannot Kerry’s policy planning staff, it is the the fractured nature of the coalition have this look like a primarily U.S.-led largest extremist organization in the the United States is assembling. intervention and have a lot of collateral world. Authoritarian countries like Saudi damage.” In proclaiming itself a caliphate, Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and If all goes well, will the war against the Islamic State signaled it does not Egypt are now waging an undeclared I.S. be enough to staunch the further recognize the borders of the existing war on moderate Islamists—especial- disintegration of the region? As long nations in the region but wants to in- ly the Muslim Brotherhood—whom as the violence continues in Iraq and corporate these nations within itself. they see as a greater threat to their hold Syria, probably not. While the United The jihadists seek to provoke a mas- on power than extremists. The actions States and its allies can militarily de- sive military intervention from the they are taking to suppress dissent at grade I.S., that won’t be sufficient to West like the one that brought down home threaten to fuel radicalization create peace or stability. Unfortunately, the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. and terrorism at a faster rate than they despite the 200,000 people killed are fighting it. They reinforce the argu- there, neither the United States nor Margot Patterson is a writer who lives in ment made by I.S. that an Islamic state those waging a proxy war in Syria Kansas City, Mo. can only come about through violence. seem serious about ending it.

14 America October 13, 2014 October 13 , 2014 America 15 Preferential Options ‘Vanguard’ experiments in fighting poverty By Paul Ryan

Editor’s Note: This article is the first in a two-part series. We enhance human dignity. So the question is not whether we asked two prominent members of Congress, both Catholics with should use the market or the government; it is how to use famous names, to respond to Pope Francis’ repeated calls to em- them both. And one of my guides is Catholic social teaching. power the poor. The second response, by Congressman Joseph Instead of two competing principles, I rely on two comple- P. Kennedy III, Democrat of Massachusetts, is online and will mentary principles: solidarity and subsidiarity. appear in print on Oct. 20. Solidarity is a shared commitment to the common good. It is the belief that we are all in this together, so we should ome years before he became Pope Francis, look out for each other, both in our private lives and in our Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was talking with a public policy. As St. Paul once wrote, “If [one] part suffers, friend about serving the poor. When helping all the parts suffer with it; if one part is honored, all the people in need, he said, his first concern was ma- parts share its joy” (1 Cor 12:26). Our goal, then, is to fos- terial: “Are you hungry? Here, here is something ter a healthy economy, one that promotes the most talented Sto eat.” But poverty isn’t just a form of deprivation; it’s also a and protects the most vulnerable. This is what we mean by form of isolation. People always need to eat, and often they a preferential option for the poor. Just as a doctor heals a need something more, like a teacher or a job. In other words, wound to help the whole body, we take care of people in they need other people. So “the poor must not be perpetu- need because the whole country will benefit. ally marginalized,” the cardinal warned. Instead, “we [must] Subsidiarity, meanwhile, is a prudent deference to the integrate them into our community.” people closest to the problem. Whenever there is hard- I could not agree more. There is a lot of untapped po- ship—whether it is unemployment, addiction or illness— tential in this country; I have seen it firsthand. In the past we first look to the people on the ground to solve it because two years, I have traveled to 10 different communities that they know their communities best. They know the simple are fighting poverty every day, from a homeless shelter in but vital facts: Who is looking for a job? Who is hiring? Denver to a rehab center in San Antonio. Every person I What skills are in demand? And only when the community have met has had a different story. But every story they have is unable to solve the problem on its own do we ask the gov- told has had the same message: Once people find a niche and ernment to step in. And even then, government must work put down roots, they draw strength from the people around with the people in the community, not against them. them and they grow. So to expand opportunity in this coun- Every public policy should strike a balance between these try, we have to bring the poor back into our communities. two principles. Too much solidarity would blind us to our And the safety net can serve as the missing link by helping different needs. And too much subsidiarity would blind us people find work. to our shared goals. These principles are not mutually exclu- sive; in fact, they are mutually reinforcing. If solidarity is the Market and Government team spirit, then subsidiarity is the game plan. We have to Before we can repair the safety net, we have to repair the remember that though each part of our country looks out thinking behind it. In all these debates over poverty, people for the whole, each part makes a different contribution to tend to think there are two competing principles at work: the whole. As St. Paul wrote, “If the whole body were an eye, the market and the government. In other words, people where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, think you have to pin all your hopes on either private charity where would the sense of smell be?” (1 Cor 12:17). or public assistance. That is a false choice—because both the market and the government are tools. We use them for our Confronting ‘Deep’ Poverty own purposes. And we should make them work together to Good Catholics can disagree over how to strike that balance, and we do. But in the fight against poverty, I think we can all agree that we can do better. Each year, the federal gov- hon. Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is an eight-term member of Congress from Wisconsin’s 1st ernment spends almost $800 billion on at least 92 different Congressional District. programs to help people in need. And yet the poverty rate is

16 America October 13, 2014 a ul y P

SUCCESS STORY. Michael Gordon, left, has become a manager for a furniture bank run by Caritas, an agency providing

services to homeless people in Richmond, Va. C N S p hoto/J a the highest in a generation. Over the last three years, deep works full-time year-round for $7.25 an hour (or $15,080 a poverty has been the highest on record. The fact is, too many year). To give you some perspective, she is making just below families are living paycheck to paycheck. They are working the poverty line for a family of two, which was $15,730 in harder and harder to get ahead, and yet they are falling fur- 2014. Now imagine she is offered a raise to $10.35 an hour ther and further behind. (or $21,528 a year). If she accepts, much of her federal aid And we have to understand why. Today, technology is will instantly disappear. At this point, thanks to higher taxes changing constantly—and with it the global economy. But and lower benefits, she will effectively keep only 10 cents of the rest of our society has not kept up. Everything from our every extra dollar she earns. So the federal government is ef- education system to our safety net still works according to fectively discouraging her from getting ahead. bureaucratic formulas set in the 20th century. So many of This is a crucial flaw in the safety net—one that demands our people do not have the skills they need to compete in correction. “There is no worse dispossession,” Cardinal the 21st century. They cannot find work, and as a result, they Bergoglio himself said years ago, “than not being able to earn cannot take part. one’s own bread, than being denied the dignity of work.” The And because the federal government is so disorganized status quo does not respect the dignity of work, and that is and dysfunctional, Washington is in many ways deepening why it is unacceptable. the divide: It is not helping people get back into the work- What we need to do is coordinate aid to families in need. force; in fact, it is effectively encouraging them to stay out. We need to get the public and private sector pulling in the Many federal programs are means-tested, so as families earn same direction, so we can smooth the transition from as- more money, they get less aid. Any system that concentrates sistance to success. Each person’s needs fit into a coherent aid on the most vulnerable will face this tension. But the whole: a career. And each person fits into a coherent whole: a current system exacerbates it by layering on program after community. So if the public and private sector work together, program without ensuring any coordination among them. we can offer a more personalized, customized form of aid— Take an example: a single mom with one child. Imagine she one that recognizes both a person’s needs and their strengths.

October 13, 2014 America 17 Opportunity Awaits day. Third, the state would have to offer at least two service I do not have all the answers. Nobody does. But I do think providers. The state welfare agency could not be the only we can build a safety net that embraces both the principles game in town. And fourth, the state would have to measure of solidarity and subsidiarity. I would begin by starting a pi- progress through a neutral third party. lot program, which I would call the Opportunity Grant. It If approved, the state could use that money to expand would consolidate up to 11 federal programs into one stream state programs and to partner with local service providers. of funding to participating states. The idea would be to let So families in need would have a choice. There would not states try different ways of providing aid and then to test just be a state agency or a federal agency. Instead, they could the results—in other words, more flexibility in exchange for choose among non-profits like Catholic Charities USA, more accountability. Participation would be voluntary; no for-profits like America Works or even community groups state would have to join. And we would not expand the pro- unique to their neighborhood. And instead of offering a gram until we had tested a number of different approaches bunch of different benefits, these groups could offer a more and gathered all the evidence. holistic form of aid through case management. Here is how it would work. Each state that wanted to Earlier this year, I saw the benefits of case management in participate would submit a plan to the federal government. action when I met a woman at Catholic Charities in Racine, That plan would lay out in detail the state’s proposed alter- Wis. When she first came to Catholic Charities, she was native. If everything passed muster, the federal government homeless and unemployed. So she sat down with a case- would give the green light. And the state would get more worker and put together a life plan. With the caseworker’s flexibility to combine programs such as food stamps, hous- help, she and her fiancé each found work, and now she is ing subsidies, child-care assistance and cash welfare. earning her degree in health management. The point is, with The federal government would grant approval on four someone to coordinate her aid, she did not just find a job; conditions. First, the state would have to spend all the fund- she started a career. ing on people in need; it could not use that money on other The woman told me one of the most important things her priorities like roads or bridges. Second, the state would have caseworker did was give her advice. She had received a num- to maintain work requirements and time limits for every ber of federal benefits before, but she never knew how to able-bodied recipient—just as there are for cash welfare to- manage them all. With the case manager’s help, she learned

18 America October 13, 2014 how to write a budget and stick to it. Catholic Charities gave her greater control over her life, and now she is getting her life back on track.

‘Reconceiving’ Government Under the Opportunity Grant, states could partner with a number of local service providers, so we could have more such success stories. I would not force states to use case management. I mean only to highlight one promising mod- el. States would have to maintain work requirements and time limits, but they would be free to use whatever methods they preferred as long as they tested the results. Not every- one would need case management, and states would have the flexibility to provide different types of aid for people in different circumstances. And all this time, a neutral third party would keep tabs on each provider and its success rate. This third par- ty would keep track of key metrics: How many people are finding jobs? How many people are getting off assistance? How many people are moving out of poverty? Any provider who came up short could no longer participate. And at the end of the program, we would pool the results and go from there. So I would reconceive the federal government’s role. No longer would it try to supplant our local communities. Instead it would try to support them. It would work hand in hand with community groups like Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services and others. In my view, the feder- al government would be the rearguard; it would protect the supply lines. But the people in our communities would be the vanguard; they would fight poverty on the front lines. They would lead this effort, and Washington would follow their lead. Under my proposal, people could use federal aid to get from where they are to where they want to be: a new job, a new neighborhood, a new life. By channeling the market forces of choice and competition, government could help get people back in the hustle and bustle of life. In short, we would have a stronger, more stable safety net, based on the twin principles of solidarity and subsidiarity. By drawing more attention to people in need, we would maintain the principle of solidarity. And we would revive the principle of subsidiarity by harnessing the knowledge of our local communities. I understand that not everybody, nor every Catholic, will agree with my proposal. But at the very least, I hope to start a conversation. I will be the first to acknowledge there is plenty of room for debate. But I hope we all recognize, as Pope Francis has said, we have to make room for families in need. We have to welcome them back into our commu- nities—because that is where they belong, and that is where they can take root and flourish. A

October 13, 2014 America 19 Women and Christianity: Unsettled and Unsettling Questions 10TH ANNUAL RITA CASSELLA JONES LECTURE ON WOMEN AND U.S. CATHOLICISM

Presented by Sidney Callahan, Ph.D. As Catholic women of faith reconsider themselves, their bodies, and their gender, Callahan will look to the psychological sciences to provide vital resources for the dialogue. Callahan is a psychologist, theologian, and distinguished scholar at the Hastings Center. She is the author of numerous articles and 11 books, including the Chris- topher Award-winning With All Our Hearts and Minds: The Spiritual Works of Mercy in a Psychological Age and Created for Joy: A Christian View of Suffering. Tuesday, October 21, 2014 | 6 p.m. Tognino Hall | Duane Library | Rose Hill Campus Fordham University | Bronx, N.Y. A reception will follow celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Rita Cassella Jones Lecture Series and the Curran Center’s dedication. RSVP by October 16, 2014, to [email protected] or 718-817-0662. All are welcome.

The Rita Cassella Jones Lecture Series, endowed by the Jones family, honors the Curran Center’s earliest and most devoted supporter. A woman of extraordinary strength and vision, Rita Cassella Jones was also a devoted and critical member of the American Catholic community. The series fittingly focuses on the concerns and issues of women in the U.S. Catholic community.

15-0460_CACS Rita Jones Lecture America Ad.indd 1 9/22/14 10:04 AM A Greater Reality Faith, the final frontier By Thomas A. Cahill

magine this: Against long odds, you, a midcareer anthro- data on your iPad. But on the way back from checking your pologist working with four other university teams, have equipment, you slip and fall on the rough, barely visible track gained grant support from the U.S. National Science you follow to access the monitoring site. Your iPad slips unno- Women and Foundation and permission from the government of ticed out of your backpack and into the brush. IBrazil to be the sole research team allowed to investigate a In the village, a key ingredient of the poison sap used to Christianity: newly discovered tribe of Amazon Indians deep in the Unsettled and Unsettling Questions remotest jungle. This tribe 10TH ANNUAL RITA CASSELLA JONES LECTURE ON WOMEN AND U.S. CATHOLICISM has had no contact with any Western peoples and little contact with equally Presented by Sidney Callahan, Ph.D. remote neighboring tribes, As Catholic women of faith reconsider themselves, with whom they have had their bodies, and their gender, Callahan will look to unpleasant and even warlike the psychological sciences to provide vital resources encounters. The tribe has its for the dialogue. own language and has built up a considerable popula- Callahan is a psychologist, theologian, and distinguished tion that controls significant scholar at the Hastings Center. She is the author of areas of the jungle, and has numerous articles and 11 books, including the Chris- probably done so for centu- topher Award-winning With All Our Hearts and Minds: ries. The Spiritual Works of Mercy in a Psychological Age and The conditions of your Created for Joy: A Christian View of Suffering. unique access are draconian, however. There must be no contact whatsoever between Tuesday, October 21, 2014 | 6 p.m. your research team and any Tognino Hall | Duane Library | Rose Hill Campus member of the tribe. For Fordham University | Bronx, N.Y. this reason, all surveillance A reception will follow celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Rita will be done at long range, Cassella Jones Lecture Series and the Curran Center’s dedication. using high-tech equipment RSVP by October 16, 2014, to like powerful automatic [email protected] or 718-817-0662. cameras, carefully camouflaged, and long-range microphones. stun fish is running low. One villager is chosen to cross the All are welcome. Moving cautiously and guided by surreptitious flyovers river and access the rare trees that produce this sap. Tracking of ultralight drone aircraft with infrared sensing capabilities, through the jungle, the villager comes across this weird object The Rita Cassella Jones Lecture Series, endowed by the Jones family, your research team is able to arrive unseen at the edge of the in the brush, unlike anything he has ever seen before. Racked honors the Curran Center’s earliest and most devoted supporter. A tribe’s territory and locate a village across a river that, as far as with fear and uncertainty, he picks it up in a large leaf so as not woman of extraordinary strength and vision, Rita Cassella Jones was also you can determine from the surveillance, is never crossed by to touch it and runs back to his canoe and crosses the river to a devoted and critical member of the American Catholic community. The the tribe members. On a low bluff across the river, you set up his village. series fittingly focuses on the concerns and issues of women in the U.S. your equipment and begin recording the sights and sounds of Meanwhile, there is panic among the members of the re- Catholic community. the village. search team. They race back to find the iPad only to see a vil- One day, several months later, you download the week’s lager pick it up and head back across the river. The loss of the iPad is such a gross violation of the terms of the grant and Thomas A. Cahill is a professor of physics and atmospheric sciences at access that the entire project is terminated.

the University of California, Davis. After some discussion the village decides it wants noth- c om p o s ite hoto: hutter to k. om/ a meri ca

October 13, 2014 America 21

15-0460_CACS Rita Jones Lecture America Ad.indd 1 9/22/14 10:04 AM ing to do with this object, and it is carried across some miles What is he to make of this? Obviously the object has in- to where the tribe’s chief shaman resides. The shaman con- ternal capabilities that are simply beyond anything the tribe templates this object, using a keen intelligence that is in no can conceive. Equally he suspects that the technology of the way inferior to that of the now-disgraced research scientist device is so advanced that the Greater Reality could probably who lost the iPad. While the have destroyed the village if it so tribe knows about metals from We are faced with the certain wished. But the careful surveil- the native copper deposits in lance certainly shows that the the nearby hills, the metal of existence of a Greater Reality Greater Reality was interested in the iPad is different, smooth- the tribe and took great care not er, shiny, unlike anything the that can never be approached to interfere with the tribe; other- shaman has ever seen. He also wise the surveillance would have knows of transparent crystals, through the scientific method, been discovered months ago. clear topazes found in deposits since no measurements are That such care was taken at least on the riverbanks, but the screen hints that the Greater Reality he sees is far beyond anything even conceivable outside of cares for the tribe and protects like that. Thus he concludes that them from this alien knowledge there is some “Greater Reality” our universe. that alone could destroy the care- out there capable of making this ful fabric of the tribe’s existence. object, whose existence is undeniable but whose nature can So it is with our universe. We have discovered that the laws be learned only by contemplation of the iPad and intelligent of physics also include parameters, roughly 30 in number, that speculation. tie the laws to the physical universe. The statement “The laws of physics are constant in systems moving at constant rela- The Foundations of the Universe tive velocity” is the principle of relativity, whose key constant So it is with physics today, where the existence of the Big is the speed of light in a vacuum, c, roughly 187,000 miles per Bang that started our universe roughly 14.73 billion years ago second. This parameter appears again in Einstein’s mass-en- cannot be denied. At the Big Bang, there came simultaneous- ergy relationship: energy equals mass times the speed of light ly into existence the four foundations of our universe: time, squared, c2—which is absolutely key to the energy of stars space, all the energy of the universe and the laws of physics and how long they can burn. These 30 or so constants can- and its fundamental free parameters. These laws are sweeping not be predicted but must be measured. All evidence shows philosophical statements, like “the laws of physics are the same that these laws and their fundamental parameters, once estab- throughout the universe” or “the laws of physics are constant lished, span all of space and time and have not changed since in time.” These lead to the great conservation statements: that instance. Physics shows a one-way universe that proceeds “Energy-mass is conserved in all interactions.” But the laws of according to the arrow of time to a demise in the grey death our four-dimensional universe do not allow for the Big Bang. of entropy, the big rip of dark energy or other means as yet Albert Einstein said that “the most incomprehensible thing unknown. about the universe is that it is at all comprehensible.” He said Thus, like the shaman, we are faced with the certain ex- this well before the stunning discoveries of the last half of the istence of a Greater Reality that can never be approached 20th century that have pushed physics and its ancillary disci- through the scientific method, since no measurements are plines to the very frontiers of space and time. What we found even conceivable outside of our universe. We can only learn of has laid a whole new foundation for belief that has shaken the nature of the Greater Reality through intelligent specula- the natural skepticism of many of the most profound thinkers tion: scientific, philosophical or theological speculation guid- in physics. The Big Bang violates almost every law that phys- ed by our native intelligence and the nature of the observable ics has uncovered. Thus, it is certain that there has to be a universe, unless the Greater Reality chooses to intercede. “Greater Reality” able to spawn our universe that is not limit- ed by the laws of our tangible universe. A Garden of Spirit Returning to our shaman, in the course of handling the The discoveries of the past 30 years show that the laws of our iPad, he turns it on by accident and sees on the screen scenes universe are exquisitely crafted so as to allow, even demand, of the villagers that very morning, with their speech and ac- the development of carbon-based life on Earth-like planets tions recorded over several hours. As he slides his hand on the around other stars that, every week, grow in number. That screen, more images from previous days appear, showing that such laws occur by accident is statistically impossible, mean- the Greater Reality was observing their village life over weeks, ing that in trillions of random universes with slight differ- even months. ences in the 30 fundamental parameters of physics, not one

22 America October 13, 2014 would have the right combination for life to occur. As one of conceivably large number of parallel universes possible, but 30 examples, if the speed of light—“c”—were very slightly unprovable, via M theory might by statistical chance have greater, the sun and other main sequence stars would burn the right parameters for life. This explanation shows such out so fast that evolution would not have enough time to an ugly inefficiency that I find it unattractive, while it only evolve sentient beings. A slightly smaller “c” would not allow kicks the conceptual can farther down the road and requires most stars to burn at all, thus vastly reducing the number of the spawning of trillions upon trillions of universes, not just planets that could exist in the zone of liquid water, which is one, to get intelligent life. essential to carbon-based life. I believe that the Creator, having gone to such enormous Clearly our Greater Reality is not random but is coded so and careful efforts to craft a universe designed for intelli- that life and intelligence can evolve, given enough time and gent life, would, like any gardener, carefully cultivate and favorable conditions. One of the benefits of this approach is encourage the fruits of the land, with spiritual intervention, that one can never view the stars at night as simply a cold, indirect and direct. The Creator, to continue the gardener sterile collection of hot plasma spheres. What one is looking analogy, also expects a harvest. I propose that the harvest at is an enormous garden, a garden of life, a garden of intel- is the fruits of the spirit, love, honor, beauty and so forth ligence, a garden of spirit. The evolved creatures on other from freely choosing intelligent beings that are able to dis- planets may not look like us physically, but they and we have cern that the Creator exists and cares for us and, as a corol- a level of intelligence that can discover the laws and secrets lary, are able to actively care for all of creation and especially of the universe. They and we can value non-physical spiritual our fellow sentient beings. So we, if we choose wisely, can be realities like truth, love, honor and beauty. So we can modi- the harvest and can bring back to the Creator the one thing fy Einstein’s statement to read: The most incomprehensible that the Creator cannot do, the one aspect of creation that is thing about the universe is that we exist to discover that it is not defined by the immutable laws of science—the spiritual at all comprehensible. fruits of freely choosing beings, and their lifetime of love of The simplest explanation for the recent discoveries of the Creator and fellow intelligent beings, and love and pro- physics is an all-powerful and intelligent Creator, the dread- tection of all of creation. I believe that the new physics in the ed “strong anthropic principle.” One can achieve the same re- past 30 years has laid a firm foundation of fact that supports, sults via the “weak anthropic principle,” in that one of the in- and does not challenge, Christian belief. A

Digital Highlights

from our blogs The Boss Turns 65, Judith Valente the national catholic review Scotland’s Lessons for American Politics, Robert David Sullivan Blog Did Jesus Exist? John W. Martens Thomas P. Sweetser, S.J., on how to say goodbye at a parish that is closing. what you are reading A Complicated Grief, Kerry Weber Pope Francis Celebrates 20 Weddings ARCHIVES at St. Peter’s, Elizabeth Tenety A selection of America articles by Bishop Blase Cupich, the pope’s choice for Archbishop Blogging Pope Francis: An Interview with Mark Shea, Sean Salai, S.J. of Chicago. Blase Cupich in America James Martin, S.J. BLOG Remarriage, Mercy and Law Gerard O’Connell reports from Pope Francis’ trip The Editors to Albania, where he honored the nation’s martyrs.

What You’re Talking About: “When Cardinal Dolan notes that ‘our schools now belong to everybody,’ what does that mean for inclusion for those with mild to moderate disabilities?” — Dr. Sharon Valente on Learning Curve Wednesdays at 1 p.m. on The Catholic Channel 129

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October 13, 2014 America 23

VATICAN DISPATCH Francis the Diplomat ope Francis has a highly orig- side the box and act in unprecedented the Chinese leadership and bridge the inal approach to problems in ways that traditional diplomacy might 63-year-old divide between the Holy Pthe diplomatic field. This has eschew. See and China. He believes this would emerged clearly in public on at least We saw this clearly last May be to the benefit of humanity. He two separate occasions over the past when, bypassing the Vatican’s diplo- knows that Paul VI, John Paul II and six months; first in relation to Israel matic channels, he made direct con- Benedict XVI tried in various ways and Palestine and, more recently, in tact with the presidents of Israel and to resolve the differences using tradi- relation to China. Palestine through the intermediary of tional Vatican diplomacy but without In this week’s Vatican Dispatch a Spanish-speaking Israeli TV report- success. Francis wants to explore other I want to take a first look at Francis’ er, Henrique Cymerman, whom he routes. originality, as I think it may help us met for the first time on June 13, 2013, As I explained in my blog post understand a little better how he op- when the reporter interviewed him in of Sept. 17, Francis tapped two erates in other fields too as he governs the Vatican. Argentinians who the universal church. Francis is a strategist, claimed to have access The originality, I believe, comes with a particular gift for There is to the highest levels from the great inner freedom he en- spotting people who may no world of China’s leadership joys, which is also a fruit of his Jesuit be able to help him achieve for this delicate task: spirituality. Francis is not hidebound his goal in a particular area. leader Ricardo Romano, a by traditions, customs or structures— Once identified, he deals today leader of Argentina’s however ancient or modern—that are directly with that person. Justicialist Party (the not an essential part of the Gospel. As I explained in my first truly free main Peronist party He is not afraid to jettison them if post on America’s blog In like Francis. in Congress), accom- they are not serving a good purpose or All Things (5/24), this is panied by José Lujan, achieving the end for which they first what happened when he a representative of the came into existence. discovered that Cymerman has direct Academy of Chinese Sciences to His personal history shows he has contact with the Israeli and Palestinian Mercosur. always had a significant level of inner leaders. He used him as a trusted in- Francis had a 90-minute meeting freedom, and this enabled him to act termediary to help him bring about with them on Sept. 3 and gave them a in some highly original ways both as the historic meeting to pray for peace signed, sealed letter, which they took to Jesuit provincial superior in Argentina in the Holy Land in the Vatican gar- Beijing and handed over to a Chinese (1973-79) and during 21 years as dens on June 6 with President Shimon diplomat, designated by China’s gov- bishop in Buenos Aires. Peres of Israel and the Palestinian ernment, who is said to enjoy the con- What strikes me most, however, is President Mahmoud Abbas. That fidence of President Xi Jinping. that since becoming pope 18 months event was the direct fruit of the Jesuit Surprisingly, however, on Sept. 16, ago, he seems to enjoy a much greater pope’s original initiative. the lead intermediary, on his own ini- degree of inner freedom and originali- We saw another of his “thinking tiative, revealed the story to an online ty. I would dare to say that there is no outside the box” diplomatic initia- news outlet in Buenos Aires. A senior world leader today truly free like him, tives in early September, when Francis Vatican diplomat told me he is con- or as original. His inner freedom en- tapped Argentine intermediaries to cerned that this may be counterpro- ables him to courageously think out- give a personal letter to President Xi ductive, as China could misinterpret Jinping of China, inviting him to meet the publicizing of what was meant to discuss world peace. to be a confidential initiative. Francis Gerard O’Connell is America’s Rome Ever since his election, the Jesuit has not commented; he’s praying for a correspondent. America’s Vatican coverage is sponsored in part by the Jesuit communities of pope has been looking for a way to breakthrough. the United States. Twitter: @gerryorome. open a substantial conversation with Gerard O’Connell

26 America October 13, 2014 FAITH IN FOCUS Remain Here With Me Recovering from the trauma of rape By Joan Miller ix years ago I boarded a plane to two best girlfriends. Each met my call this happen to me. Italy and left my family, friends with a similarly apathetic tone. My shame started to silently but ef- Sand boyfriend of three years for Once I returned to the United fectively kill everything beautiful and what I imagined would be an amazing States, my boyfriend wanted nothing bright in my world. I poured all my an- study-abroad experience. For months to do with me. My girlfriends pretend- ger and loneliness into my schoolwork. it was just that. I enjoyed traveling ed nothing had happened. I don’t know I earned a 4.0 G.P.A. during my senior around Europe, immersing myself in whether or not their reactions were year, and I started a new job on Wall Italian city-life, culture and cuisine. As due to shock, fear or uncertainty about Street soon after. But even amid the my study abroad experience came to what to say. I have not asked. I just excitement of New York City, I felt life- an end, my American cohort was invit- know that people who ed by a friend of a friend to join him had loved me and who at his family hotel for the weekend. I I expected to be there felt grateful for one more adventure for me had left me to and for the experience of living abroad, deal with this deep pain knowing it had changed me. I did not alone. I retreated inward yet know that the weekend at the hotel into darkness. would change me too. When the rape first When we arrived, we were wel- happened, I felt I was a comed by the young man who had in- victim of violence. Over vited us. Later that night he raped me. time this morphed into Afterward, I was left stunned and was something that I slowly filled with a fear I did not know I was and quietly came to be- capable of feeling. I limped through the lieve I had somehow de- rest of the weekend in pained silence. served. The rape, along When I finally returned to my apart- with the lack of sup- ment I immediately called my parents. port from family and I was frantic, and the magnitude of the friends, made me feel trauma began to settle in. indescribable shame. I As I dialed their phone number, I became disconnected had no doubt that my parents’ reaction from the world—from would be one of rage and fear and that my parents, my friends they would be determined to get me and from God. I went home as soon as possible so they could through my final year take care of me. All my life, through any of college like an empty small catastrophe, they had been there shell. I had no one who could meet me less. I felt this way for two more years, to pick me up and hold and love me. Yet where I was. I felt I had no place where and continued to long for joy and peace when I told them what had happened this new me would be accepted and in my life. I was met with silence. In disbelief I loved. I was afraid to open up to others Then a friend introduced me to called my then-boyfriend and then my for fear of being judged. I tried praying the concept of spiritual direction. and turning to God, but it seemed like Something about this approach to my Joan Miller is a pseudonym. The author a waste of time. I felt God had left me spirituality felt right, and fortunately works in finance in New York City. just like everyone else—that he had let I had the grace to seek out a woman s e a n quirk a rt:

October 13 , 2014 America 27 who was able to meet with me. Prior During my time in spiritual direc- ry my heavy and painful cross alone. It to my first session, I felt very nervous tion and through prayer, the way I saw was exhausting. and unsure of how I would be received. Jesus and my relationship with him This way of living changed about I would not have blamed anyone for started to change. He became more three years ago when I began dating a not wanting to step inside my world. relatable. My feelings of shame, aban- man who was compassionate and kind. Instead, my spiritual director poured donment, betrayal and loneliness were After several months, I realized I was love and kindness into the darkness feelings I knew Jesus had experienced as falling in love with him. Yet I still car- and my light started to shine. I felt safe well. I prayed with Scripture from Holy ried the weight of my story with me, sharing with her. Instead of apathy or Thursday and Good Friday. Scenes and I feared he would leave me if he disgust, I was met with love, compas- from the Garden of Gethsemane reso- knew. Eventually, I decided it was bet- sion and care. I was finally able to cry nated in my heart. In the garden Jesus ter to tell him. If he did not accept me, I over what had happened to me. turns to his disciples and says, “My wanted to know as soon as possible, so soul is very sorrowful, even to death; that I could end the relationship before An Open Heart remain here, and watch with me.” We the pain of rejection was too much to In those sessions, which were spread know that, instead of keeping awake, bear. I braced myself for a reaction sim- over several years, I realized I was deep- his friends fell asleep. ilar to those I had experienced before: ly angry at God and felt abandoned by In my prayer, I imagined Jesus walk- silence or apathy. Instead, he wept. him—but even worse, I felt I somehow ing back from his prayer only to find He cried for me and for the pain I deserved his abandonment. My spiritu- his friends had fallen asleep. I imagined had been holding in my heart the last al director invited me to share my pain him feeling betrayed. These were men four years. He said he wished he could with Jesus in prayer. In my prayer I was he loved and who loved him. Yet these take away all my pain. His tears became able to ask questions: How could this friends—friends Jesus called upon in all those tears that no one cried for me have happened to me? God, do you real- a time of true need—let him down. In before; the tears I barely allowed myself ly love me? Do I deserve your love? Am my prayer, I felt compassion, love and to cry. The cross I had been carrying for I good enough for you? I wanted to hear understanding for Jesus and his suffer- so long was no longer being carried by God tell me: I do love you. I made you in ing. At the same time, I was able to feel me alone. my image and you are beautiful just the his compassion for me. I no longer felt Like John, the beloved disciple who way you are. I never left you. I was with alone. Jesus knew my suffering. Jesus stays at the foot of Jesus’ cross, this man you the night you were raped, the morn- had lived through it himself. stayed by my side. Finally, I had another ing you called your parents. I held your Despite the fact that I was starting person to be with me in my pain. John hand on your long painful walks to the to realize Jesus could understand my loves Jesus to the end. John shows up. clinic to see if you had contracted H.I.V. suffering, I was still unwilling to accept His love for Jesus is unconditional. This I stroked your hair and whispered in your Jesus could love me for what had hap- man was my John. I married him. ear: I loved you when you felt misunder- pened to me. Relationships, in general, Only after I had the grace to receive stood and abandoned. The courage to tell were still difficult. I did not trust any- my husband’s unconditional love for me your spiritual director after years of silence one other than my spiritual director did I realize what I had been missing, came from me. I never wanted this to hap- with my story. I believed that others what I desired most: I wanted to come pen to you. I know and understand your would look at me differently once I told home to the love of Jesus. This desire has pain and I only want you to be healed. them about my rape. I preferred to car- always lived inside me, but it was so hard for me to find it. I had always felt that my darkness was too much for God. I now know this is not true. With help I have found a place of surrender and trust. And yet my journey of healing is not over. I continue to pray and to share my story and to grow in my relationship with God. I have a new willingness to let God be God and heal, restore and renew me. I know that Jesus has al- ways loved me. Even in my darkest mo- ments, all I have ever desired or needed has been with me all along. A

28 America October 13, 2014 October 13 , 2014 America 29 Books & Culture

Fall books 1 | Jon M. Sweeney ism and Christian missionaries. Did Joseph Conrad write an African African Journeys novel in Heart of Darkness? Did Graham Greene in his A Burnt-Out Case? Africa Novels from the diaspora provides their settings—but the moods of the place, the emotions of the char- Americanah “Novelists are sorted by the language acters, the meaning all comes second By Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie they wrote in,” Steven Moore explains or third hand. What can a Conrad or Anchor. 608p $15.95 in the preface to his new, massive work, Greene really know of African milieus, The Novel: An Alternative History, myths and values? Other beautiful nov- Dust 1600-1800 (Bloomsbury Academic, els like Someone Knows My Name, by 2013). Moore divides them into By Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor Lawrence Hill, and Mating, by Norman Knopf. 384p $25.95 Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Rush, are also written by white profi- Persian, etc., even delineating English cients recreating something that they’ve All Our Names from American. But the scholar has only briefly experienced and under- no categories for Swahili, Yoruba or stood. By Dinaw Mengestu Oromo; his study does not include the Random House. 272p $25.95 Something else to consider: When 19th-21st centuries. The African novel talking about contemporary African is too recent. novels, we don’t usually think of writ- he African novel has come of What exactly makes a novel ers like the talented Ian Holding age in the early 21st century “African”? No one writes in an African (Unfeeling and Of Beasts and Beings), TNorth American diaspora. language. The most famous of them a Zimbabwean. Holding is white. His Straddling homelands, histories, myths, all is surely Chinua Achebe’s Things second novel was even about white looking for values and identity some- Fall Apart (1958), but even the great guilt. Nadine Gordimer, winner of the where in between—those are the grand Nigerian wrote in English as he ex- Nobel Prize for Literature, who died on topics of the African novel. posed the exploits of British colonial- July 13, champion of the novel in her native South Africa, is similarly missing Library in Lake Bunyoni, Uganda from today’s conversation. The reason is simple: In the 21st century, we’re talking about blackness when we talk about African novels, writers from Africa who know what it means to be black in a white world. Today’s master of the genre is the still only 37-year-old Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, winner of many awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship. Educated in the United States since she was 19, she has attended Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Yale and Harvard, but she grew up in West Africa. She is already one of the best (and best-selling) nov- elists of the 21st century, adored almost equally by critics and readers. In this re- spect she is in rare company, including Hilary Mantel and Cormac McCarthy. Adichie writes about race, blackness, p hoto: Bl ac k Shee M edi a / Shutter s to c k. om

30 America October 13, 2014 October 13 , 2014 America 31 homeland, Africa and America—what she knows. In an interview in the Center for Religious Humanism’s magazine Image, she explained her Catholic childhood in Nigeria: “We went to church every Sunday. I was drawn to religion, but I was the kid who just wouldn’t shut up. I had questions. Everybody else went to church and came home. I wanted to go to the sacristy and talk to the priest about why he said that, I’m sure much to my father’s irritation.” In the same interview she continues: “I was drawn to the drama of the Catholic Church. I would cry at Paschal Mass when we raised the candles…. When it was time to renew your vows and they would light the candles, I would burst into tears because I was so moved. I loved the smell of incense and I loved the Latin. I keep meaning to write about it. I was a happily Catholic child.” So, yes, you guessed it, she also writes about be- ing Catholic. Central characters in an Adichie novel are not Peter and Julie, but Ugwu, Odenigbo and Kainene (Half of a Ye l l o w Su n ), or Ifemelu and Obinze in Americanah, the novel under review here. Whether Ugwu or Ifemelu, these characters are always trying to navigate how to belong and understand them- selves in a world where their race, class and dreams tend to set them apart. Another important African- American (the term doesn’t seem quite right in this context) novelist today is Dinaw Mengestu, also a MacArthur Foundation grant recipient. Born in Addis Adaba, Ethiopia, in 1978, Dinaw’s family fled during the years of communist revolution, when he was just 2; they raised him in subur- ban Chicago. The first sentence of his latest effort,All Our Names, sets the now-familiar scene: “When Isaac and I first met at the university, we both pre- tended that the campus and the streets of the capital were as familiar to us as the dirt paths of the rural villages we had grown up and lived in until only

32 America October 13, 2014 a few months earlier....” This capital Adhiambo Owuor’s Dust actually does more bucolic settings, Dust’s charac- is Kampala, Uganda. Mengestu’s de- remind one of Joseph Conrad and ters struggle with themes we find as but, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Graham Greene. The novel depicts essential backdrops to African novels: Bears, which made his name, follows an Africa that we too often see in the racism and the legacy of colonialism. the story of a man in Washington, news. Owuor is a Kenyan now living For good reasons the African nov- D.C., who fled the Dreg, or Ethiopian in Australia, and the opening page of el has come of age. There are more Revolution, more closely mirroring the his debut effort reveals a young soldier African-born first, second and third experiences of his own family. whose “fingers tremble on the trigger generation men and women living in In All Our Names, as in The of an old, shiny AK-47” that was three the United States, Canada and Britain Beautiful Things, money swirls around weeks earlier in the hands “of a minor than ever before. But I am not one of the heads and in the imaginations of Somali warlord.” Adichie’s warm hu- them, and still I find these novels mov- Mengestu’s characters, and it confus- manity, cultures intertwined, this is not. ing, often unforgettable. This is prob- es them. Week-old newspapers in the But once again, in Dust, as in ably because the displacement felt by village are replaced by simultaneously Adichie’s Americanah, the African- characters in Adichie, Mengestu and happening events and real, danger- born emigrate. A sister and brother es- Owuor is common in the lives of many ous opportunities. The second-hand cape their dusty homeland in northern of us, whether we’ve moved from one Victorian-era novels they read back Kenya, one to Canada, the other to the country to another or not, fled vio- home did not begin to prepare them to big city, Nairobi. When the brother lence or not or are living settled in our speak English or understand the West dies a violent death, pursuing justice chosen place. We are all seeking more in the 21st century. And the memories for others, the sister comes home. With meaningful ways to belong. We all feel of violence, loss and pain from their the spiritual sensitivities of Marilynne fractured in some way. pasts do not easily leave them. They Robinson, Owuor then traces the look desperately for values that will sister’s path back to her childhood Jon M. Sweeney is a critic who lives in Ann pull them forward as they leave Africa place, and parents, as she reflects on Arbor, Mich. His book, When Saint Francis Saved the Church, is available as physical behind. the meaning of place, identity, past book and ebook from Ave Maria Press, and in Meanwhile, one more: Yvonne and future. But, foreign to Robinson’s audio from Franciscan Media. GENERATION FAITH

34 America October 13, 2014 October 13 , 2014 America 35 Perry Petrich athletic ability (he’s world class, but, ac- cording to one teammate, there were a half-dozen other cyclists with more tal- Back-Pedalling ent) than his spectacular gift at doping Cycle of Lies rin, cortisone, testosterone, ephedrine, and not getting caught. On the Tour de The Fall of Lance Armstrong nicotine, horse ointment (whatever France, morality is for losers. By Juliet Macur that is), whiskey, caffeine, chloroform, So, what better setting could there Harper. 480p $27.99 morphine, anabolic steroids and the be for a morality play? Macur writes Armstrong-favorite, eruthropoietin. one that reads like a can’t-put-it-down “The ideal man,” Ayn Rand wrote, This last drug, developed for patients thriller. As Armstrong wins each suc- commenting on Friedrich Nietzsche’s with severe anemia and AIDS, thickens cessive tour and more and more peo- Übermensch, “is predestined by birth the blood and increases its oxygen-bear- ple are drawn into his doping and its to rule others and sacrifice them to ing capacity. Take too much and that coverup, Lance starts to look like a himself, [he believes] that reason, logic, blood congeals, growing too thick for the Texan Michael Corleone—watch- principles are futile and debilitating, ing him, your faith in humanity’s that morality is useless, that the goodness fades and you wonder to ‘superman’ is ‘beyond good and evil,’ yourself, “just how much is he going that he is a ‘beast of prey’ whose to get away with?” Everything and ultimate standard is nothing but his everyone around Armstrong con- own will.” If that’s the case, no one is trived to keep him winning “clean.” more ideal than Lance Armstrong, Remember those ubiquitous yel- at least as he’s found in Juliet Macur’s low Livestrong bracelets? Turns out fine new chronicle, Cycle of Lies: The their creation was timed to steal the Fall of Lance Armstrong. She tells his news cycle from a first set of doping story as if it were a morality play— accusations aimed at tour riders. Armstrong, the amoral superman, Armstrong’s drug dealers laundered does whatever it takes to win, while their money through his team’s spare his virtuous foes, bound as they are bikes, provided—with a wink and a to act on their immovable moral nod—by Trek. Even Congressman principles, try to stop him. Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of There’s no place better suited Wisconsin, is implicated—lobbing for supermen than long distance threats at the government organiza- cycling. Take the Tour de France, tion investigating Armstrong. The the sport’s greatest race. This year’s book is worth reading for those de- event covers 3,656 km over 21 days tails alone. (think Detroit to Los Angeles with It is also worth reading for the Alps standing in for the Rockies Macur’s delightful characteriza- and the Pyrenees for the Sierras). tions. Most impressive is her por- As one 1924 rider put it, the (then trait of Betsy Andreus, the wife of shorter) tour “is like martyrdom. And heart to pump. In the worst cases, the an early Armstrong teammate, Frankie even the Stations of the Cross had blood becomes so hard to move that the Andreus. Forthright and fearless, Betsy, only fourteen stations, while we have heart stops beating. From 1987 to 1993, the “fresh-faced brunette,” demands to fifteen stages.” Condemned to pedal performance enhancing drugs, includ- know if her future husband is Catholic these two-wheeled crosses, competitors ing eruthropoietin, played a role in the and pro-life before she’ll date him. Her have always sought a chemical Simon of deaths of at least 23 cyclists. From 1996 world is black and white, good versus Cyrene to help them along this Chemin to 2010, only one Tour de France win- evil, and she plays the perfect foil to de Croix. Macur’s historical inventory ner—2008’s Carlos Sastre—has never Armstrong’s guiltless lying. of performance-enhancing drugs would tested positive for PEDs. Playing it safe Considering the depth of her por- make Charlie Sheen blush: amphet- and following the rules is not an option trayal, it’s all the more odd that Macur’s amines, cocaine, strychnine, wine (we for tour competitors. And so Macur portrait of Armstrong himself comes are in France, after all), human growth shows us that what enables Armstrong off as one-dimensional. To Macur, hormone, nitroglycerin, folic acid, aspi- to win seven tours in a row is less his Armstrong is nothing more than a bully

36 America October 13, 2014 October 13 , 2014 America 37 willing to do whatever it takes to win. It is difficult to believe Lance could be so simple. One wonders if Macur is not so offended by Armstrong—he has the regrettable habit of compar- ing those investigating him to Osama bin Laden and Adolf Hitler—that she cannot see straight. Which is O.K., really, because the book is not about Lance. This is a tale of good and evil. Macur has transposed a medieval morality play into contem- porary cycling. Performance-enhanced, win-at-all-costs, Armstrong plays Vice, casting off futile and debilitating mo- rality so that his will might triumph. Virtue is Betsy Andreus, whose single- minded commitment to fidelity, fairness and the truth lead her to place her fam- ily’s livelihood at the feet of Armstrong’s lawyers in a never-ending crusade to reveal the truth about Lance’s ill-gotten success. Betsy recalls the first encounter between good and evil: “You can’t con- trol everything in your life, you know,” Virtue warned Vice, “because that’s what God’s for.” Vice’s reply? “Betsy, that’s bullshit, I control my own fate.” Macur’s parable shows how ugly and foolhardy that Randian hero can be. For all the Atlas Shrugged talk on the Christian right—think Rand Paul and Paul Ryan—living out Ayn Rand’s philosophy, as Armstrong did so well, seems less than Christ-like. “He treats people like bananas,” one friend de- scribed our former champion. “He takes what he needs, then just tosses the peel on the side of the road.” Rare is the book today where the good guys win. And rarer still is the book where this triumph is free from sentimentality, and—at the same time—unabashedly moral. But Macur does it—harnessing our disgust at Armstrong’s amorality to remind us that good and evil do still exist and sometimes good wins. Armstrong’s fall is our hope.

Perry Petrich, S.J., teaches English at Brophy College Preparatory in Phoenix.

38 America October 13, 2014 Sidney Callahan feminism from the inside. Jesus now lives for her as an observant Jewish rabbi with female disciples. Being able Woman of All Seasons to find the Jewish Jesus in historical In Quest present day Judaism and its relation- context gives wings to her quest for the of the Jewish Mary ship to Christianity. As Jewish Mary. The Mother of Jesus in History, a scholarly woman of Exciting new arche- Theology, and Spirituality faith she has combined ological and Biblical By Mary Christine Athans devotion to Mary with research reveals the Orbis. 240p $19 research in feminist Second Temple Judaism thought and theology. of Jesus and Mary as a Few works deliver on the promise of Her intellectual insights complex and conflicted their title with such success as Mary into the continuity of society. The land with Christine Athans’s book on Mary. The Christianity with its its diverse population scholarship is solid, the prose acces- Jewish roots have been was embroiled in the sible and her personal reflections en- deepened by participat- politics of a multicul- gaging. The book can also be provoca- ing in Hebrew prayer tural client Jewish king- tive, since discussions of Mary lead to services with Jewish dom dominated by the questions about the contested role of congregations, Jewish power of the Roman women in the church. scholars and ecumen- Empire. Poor peasants Mary Christine Athans, B.V.M., is a ical groups of women. were cruelly exploit- religious sister who has dedicated her Athans demonstrates ed by their rich Jewish life’s work to understanding past and loving understanding of Judaism and landlords as well as by the foreign con-

October 13 , 2014 America 39 queror. Misery and unrest prevailed. Pluralism within Jewish groups pro- duced internal conflicts and bitter con- troversies in the struggle for religious control. Athans describes the diverse scene and delivers some surprising facts. Who knew that the Pharisees were di- vided into more rigid and more liberal factions? Or that Jesus’ teachings over- lap with that of those Pharisee groups who followed the great sage Hillel? He famously taught that love of God and neighbor were the core of the law. His group of Pharisees stressed “the inte- riority of the Covenant” and the “oral Torah,” and asserted that the conver- sion of hearts and minds produces the merciful deeds that please God. Even more significant for modern women is the accrual of evidence that some Pharisee groups may have had independent female members partic- ipating in the study and discussions. In fact, wealthy women played leading roles in the synagogues, and poorer women members participated in the reading and study of Torah. Mary would have known of the example of strong Jewish women in the tradi- tion, like Miriam, Judith, Ruth, Esther and the mother of the Maccabees. Observant Jewish women would have known of these heroines, prayed their prayers, recited the psalms and cel- ebrated the liturgical rituals of the season. While the material culture of poor Jews struggling to support their families could be minimal, knowledge of the Torah, the psalms, the proph- ets and ritual celebrations in home and temple generated a rich religious heritage for men and women. Women could also be supportive members of a teacher’s disciples, as in the case of Jesus himself. Athans asserts that Mary not only would have prayed, read and studied Torah with Jesus in the local gather- ing or synagogue, but in all likelihood would have been friends and co-work- ers with his female disciples. After

40 America October 13, 2014 the resurrection, Mary was present sentially opposite male. And so on. into our future church life is going to with the disciples at Pentecost and the Today the scripturally based church bear much fruit. It may even make us, birth of the church. Athans envisions reforms of the Second Vatican Council through history and meeting, worthy the actual Mary as a strong woman have blessedly allowed past distortions of the promises of Christ. of heroic faith working in the early in Marian devotion to fade away. Mary church’s “disciples of equal.” In naming Athans’s message is more than cor- Sidney Callahan is a psychologist and dis- Mary “prophet,” “friend of God” and rect. Assimilating the Jewish Mary tinguished scholar at the Hastings Center. “truly our sister,” who takes a leading role in church ministry, a Christian feminist message is delivered. A new Franklin Freeman understanding of Mary gives new im- petus to bring about the full and final The Hurt Life equality of women in the church. Understanding the 2,000-year-long TENNESSEE WILLIAMS sorts, each member of the family a story of Mary’s role in the Western Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh player—except perhaps his father, church is also essential in order to By John Lahr Cornelius, also known as C.C., who move forward in the present. In the W. W. Norton & Company. 784p $39.95 believed only in making money. In this first part of her book, Athans gives a toxic environment, Williams turned to succinct and fascinating account of I’ve heard it said: hurt people hurt. writing, something Edwina encouraged Mary, “the woman of a thousand fac- If anyone was ever hurt as a child, to drive C.C., who considered all writ- es”—and of manifold titles and im- not physically but emotionally, it was ers loafers, up the wall. But Williams ages. In theological struggles to un- Tennessee Williams. succeeded better than derstand the Incarnation, Mary’s role His mother Edwina’s she probably wanted becomes debated and contested. In denial did the hurting, him to and escaped contact with pervasive pagan worship denial she turned into C.C.’s philistinism and of feminine goddesses, Marian devo- an art form, which her what Williams called tion is influenced and exaggerated. It son turned into art. his mother’s “monolith- also seems true that Mary’s tender ma- And John Lahr, senior ic Puritanism.” His play ternal mercy was an important count- drama critic of The “The Glass Menagerie,” er to distorted Christian images of a New Yorker for over based upon his family wrathful father-God and judging Son. 20 years, has written a drama, was a huge hit Similarly, when the Holy Spirit was beautiful biography of on Broadway from its all but forgotten, Mary subsumed its the artist. opening night, March creative role as bringer of beauty and What Edwina de- 31, 1945. wisdom. nied, probably be- From then on When royalty and empire are glo- cause her father, an Williams hurled him- rified, images of Mary as queen or Episcopalian clergy- self into his writing empress are adopted with appropriate man, denied it in him- and into what he called cultural forms. As Christians finally self, was the flesh. Williams believed a “mad pilgrimage of the flesh,” which, separated from their Jewish roots, am- that his maternal grandfather, the aside from the writing, meant for nesia for the Jewishness of Jesus and Reverend Dakin, had been blackmailed Williams a promiscuous homosexu- Mary grew along with anti-Semitism. because of a homosexual encounter in al “cruising” lifestyle relieved by the Mary as the blonde, blue-eyed Nordic Key West, Fla. Williams lived for much occasional stable relationship with a princess was born. In eras of senti- of his childhood with both his parents man he loved. His longest relationship mental romantic mores, Marian im- and the Reverend Dakin and his wife. was with Frank Merlo, with whom ages and ideals of pure behavior were As Lahr writes, “Williams, who often Williams shared a house in Key West, constructed that constrained women’s complained of feeling ‘like a ghost,’ a place Williams loved for “the water, intellectual and social development. grew up in not one but two haunted the eternal turquoise and foam of the Essential feminine gender identities households where secrets and the un- sea and the sky.” as passive, receptive brides were pre- sayable suffused daily life with a sense But no matter how stable life was scribed and justified as Marian char- of masquerade....” in Key West, Williams hurt the people acteristics that complemented the es- He grew up, then, in a theater of in his relationships, both professional

October 13 , 2014 America 41 and personal. His erratic and some- tainly cast it. “What implements world, Williams left a trail of times perfidious behavior ultimately have we but words, images, col- beauty so that we could try to ruptured his collaborations with Elia ors, scratches upon the caves find him. Kazan, the famous director, who de- of our solitude?” he said. In the manded Williams revise his plays into game of hide-and-seek that he Franklin Freeman writes from Saco, Me., better shape, and his longsuffering and his theater played with the where he lives with his wife and four children. agent Audrey Wood. The fall of the playwright came from a combination of changing times—the romantic freedom of the flesh he had M. Ross Romero dramatized boomeranged to say he was out of date, the struggle was over—and Modern ‘republic’ his abuse of himself through pills and alcohol. Empty, he tried to fill him- Plato at the Googleplex shares the stage with a famous psycho- self. He tried psychoanalysis, which Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away therapist and a tiger-mom celebrity au- helped a little but which he stopped By Rebecca Newberger Goldstein thor who debate the best way to raise too soon; he even tried God when his Pantheon 480p $29.95 children. Both invoke Plato’s Republic brother Dakin prodded him to convert as support for their respective position. to Catholicism. He had a deep devo- When I was in doctoral studies in phi- Then Plato appears on a cable news tion to Our Lady, and, when he was losophy, a Jesuit professor in another show called “The Real McCoy,” where receiving an honorary doctorate at discipline asked me what my disser- a Jesuit-educated, “straight-talking” Harvard, knelt before Mother Teresa, tation topic was. “Plato!” he chafed, host bombastically declares his view of put his head in her lap and was bless- “What could you possibly have to philosophy. It’s one of those we-don’t- ed. But the pilgrimage ended with him say about Plato that hasn’t already have-anything-to-teach-so-we’ll-just- holed up in a hotel room with booze been said?” His remark provided me lecture-you-on-and-on-about-your- and Seconal and an overdose, no one with ample motiva- own-moral-superiority knows whether intentional or not. tion to finish my dis- subjects. Finally, Plato Lahr has written a masterful por- sertation. From the visits a neuroscience trait. How he apparently hops around standpoint of academic lab on a university chronologically while still telling the scholarship, Rebecca campus, where he and a story in a progressive way, all the while Goldstein doesn’t offer philosophically trained supplying interpretations of the plays, much that is new about lab assistant debate a something he says has been lacking in Plato. Instead, in Plato famous neuroscientist all previous biographies, defies anal- at the Googleplex, she whose findings about ysis. It probably has something to do does something better: the brain take aim at with the 12 years it took him to write Goldstein brings Plato free will. In a nice clos- it. There were only a few times when back to life. ing touch, the book I felt a touch of vertigo and wondered By casting Plato as ends as Plato is slid where I was in the playwright’s life. the main character in inside of the magnet in And the book is gloriously free of the what she calls “dialogues order to get a picture of grinding of any personal, political or out of time,” four con- his own brain (much as religious axes. versations in settings Socrates’ own life end- I can do no better than to quote familiar to us, she shows the endur- ed when he drank the cup of hemlock). Lahr’s last paragraph, which points to ing value of philosophical question- Along the way, Plato at the Googleplex the heroism of Williams’s life: ing. First, Plato goes to Google head- offers many compelling insights about quarters in Santa Clara, Calif., (the the field of philosophy. Progress in In his single-minded pursuit of Googleplex) where he learns about the philosophy, for example, is not as ap- greatness, Williams exhausted Google algorithm and its technique parent as it is in the sciences because himself and lost his way. “I want of crowd sourcing from a software philosophical progress is invisible: “… to get my goodness back,” he engineer. Plato concludes “Google is it is incorporated into our points of frequently said. If he didn’t find gathering information.... It’s not clear view.... We don’t see it, because we see the light, his outcrying heart cer- it’s gathering knowledge.” Next, Plato with it.” Moreover, philosophy is a field

42 America October 13, 2014 that is assumed by everyone whether they admit it or not: “…all people have a stake in believing themselves masters of much of the domain of philosophy, most especially the questions of how life should be lived. To think oneself to be anything less than a master seems to diminish one’s very humanity.” The facile dichotomy between sciences and humanities must be challenged— without either of them you don’t have knowledge. We also observe as Goldstein’s Plato displays his familiarity with massive open online courses, or MOOCs (this is how he learned neuroscience), but also critiques them since they do not honor the pedagogical paradox of the field of philosophy. Although it is the student (the putative receiver) who is transformed, the physical presence of the teacher is still essential precisely because “knowledge itself is non-trans- ferable from teacher to student.” Plato also examines his own assumptions and willingly corrects his biases. In one dialogue a quick-witted book publi- cist named Cheryl teaches him to au- to-correct his own sexist language. We see him serve as a guest columnist for a romantic advice column, discover his “type” on the Myers Briggs Personality Test (he’s an INTJ, the mastermind) and make his first Google query. In a very poignant scene, Plato’s search for “Socrates,” his friend and teacher whose death he still mourns, yields over 4,700,000 hits. While Plato at the Googleplex offers four lively dialogues that engage con- temporary debates and vividly illustrate the enduring relevance of philosophy, its shortcomings parallel those of aca- demic philosophy in the undergraduate classroom. The four chapters of dia- logues are interspersed with four addi- tional lengthy chapters that are much too academic in tone. Do you remember those moments in philosophy class when the discus- sion was just heating up and becoming relevant to your life and inexplicably

October 13 , 2014 America 43 the professor retreated behind the po- Theology has several spaces still available for its dium, picked up his yellowed lecture CLASSIFIED Winter/Spring Sabbatical Program beginning Jan. 19. Presenters include Michael Fish, Gerald notes and droned on about arcane con- Books Coleman, Carolyn Foster, Jim Zullo, Joann cepts and figures for the rest of the pe- Religion & Civility (faith & reason) Together; Heinritz and Michael Crosby. Come to our riod? If you do, then this is how those www.wordunlimited.com. San Francisco Bay location to relax with God and minister to yourself. For more information, four chapters may feel to you. The not- go to www.satgtu.org or contact Celeste Crine, so-subtle message is this: philosophy Rosaries O.S.F., Associate Director, at (510)652-1651. Rosaries. Beautiful hand-crafted and Italian can be fun; now eat your vegetables. Scholarships available. rosaries are available at The Rosary Beads Second, Goldstein sometimes un- Company. Visit http://rosary-beads.co. necessarily resorts to 50-cent words. Translator She writes, for example, that Plato, as Sabbatical I will translate into Spanish your books, arti- compared to Socrates, “was anything Winter/Spring Sabbatical at SAT cles, essays, pastoral letters, ministry resources, — A time for rest, theological renewal and spir- websites and newsletters. Luis Baudry-Simon, but epistemologically insouciant.” itual transformation. The School of Applied [email protected]; (815) 694-0713. Finally, the interspersed chapters con- tain lengthy tangents that make them a tough grind. Here she draws on figures from the history of philosophy like Spinoza, Pascal, Nietzsche, Russell, Ryle and Harry Frankfurt. These sec- tions contain Goldstein’s intellectual autobiography, and while these will be engaging to some readers (not least of all because she once won a MacArthur “genius” award), others will find them dull. This reveals another problem that Plato at the Googleplex shares with some philosophical classrooms—pro- fessors who are genuises (and many who are not), sometimes teach as if this were all that mattered. Showy lectures allow them to avoid the nit- ty-gritty and vulnerability of actual philosophical dialogue. In undergraduate Jesuit higher-ed- ucation these days, we are watching as the prominence of philosophical clas- sics and concepts gives way to more popular and user-friendly fields. At our universities, undergraduates, who used to take better than 15 hours of philosophy, now get by with a course or two. Goldstein’s book, then, is a welcome and refreshing reminder of the enduring importance of the art of philosophical questioning and of the discipline that practices it.

M. Ross Romero, S.J., is assistant profes-

America (ISSN 0002-7049) is published weekly (except for 13 combined issues: Jan. 6-13, 20-27, April 28-May 5, May 26-June sor of philosophy at Creighton University and 2, June 9-16, 23-30, July 7-14, 21-28, Aug. 4-11, 18-25, Sept. 1-8, Dec. 8-15, 22-29) by America Press Inc., 106 West 56th author of Without the Least Tremor: The Street, New York, NY 10019. Periodical postage is paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices.C irculation: (800) 627- 9533. Subscription: United States, $56 per year; add U.S. $30 postage and GST (#131870719) for Canada; or add U.S. $56 per Significance of the Sacrifice of Socrates, year for international priority airmail. Postmaster: Send address changes to: America, P.O. Box 293159, Kettering, OH 45429. forthcoming from SUNY Press.

44 America October 13, 2014 of other things | Kerry Weber Body-Building ast month, after a long and it with wonder, saying, “This has been Ministry Office in Springfield, told meticulously planned journey in his mouth.” iobserve.org that among those visit- Lfrom a shrine in Padua, Italy, Both saints and celebrities are of- ing the relic there was a true sense of to Springfield, Mass., a relic of St. ten reduced to mere ideas or idols, av- community. It was “as if we knew each Anthony arrived at the aptly named atars of their flesh and blood bodies. other for many years,” she said, “as if St. Anthony Maronite Catholic It is all too easy to forget our shared we were related.” Church there. My mother proclaimed humanity. Often, we reach out to And it turns out my skepticism was this news to me with excitement, them because we want to be closer to misplaced. The organizers of the event knowing that Anthony is my favor- the qualities they embody. But while estimate that between 15,000 and ite saint and the inspiration for my our efforts to follow today’s celebrities 20,000 people came to venerate the confirmation name. I shared her ex- tend to be motivated relic during its nine- citement, but a part of me also was by a desire to be clos- Relics are day stay in Western skeptical. How many others felt the er to their fame, the Massachusetts. Special same? Would people really come from corporeal reality of the difficult to Masses were celebrat- all over to view a wrinkled piece of a saints who came be- explain to ed for Catholics of holy man? Was the entire thing just a fore us ideally reminds Italian, Portuguese, bit too odd or outdated for Catholics us of the very real those Polish, Latino and in the 21st century? challenges they faced unfamiliar Vietnamese heritage, Relics are, admittedly, one of the in living lives of faith. including Masses in more difficult elements of Catholicism Virtual connec- with the both the Latin and to explain to those unfamiliar with tions proliferate in Marionite rite and the concept. And yet, the desire to be our everyday lives, so concept. one dedicated to the close to people we admire is universal. an in-person encoun- Christians in Syria We hardly blink when fans reach out ter holds even more and Iraq. After an to grasp the leg or arm of a rock mu- weight. Yet an encoun- evening Mass of heal- sician playing to the crowd; we laugh- ter with St. Anthony’s ing, the church stayed ingly suggest that we’ll never wash our relic isn’t exactly the open until 1 a.m. to hand again after shaking hands with a same as meeting him allow all who attended favorite actor. face to face, and many to venerate the relic. We even vie for the celebrity equiv- may find it strange. The inspiration alent of second-class relics. Once, Alessandro Ratti, the Conventual and passion surrounding the relic of after seeing Hugh Jackman perform Franciscan priest who brought the rel- St. Anthony allowed many to return on Broadway, I watched a theatergo- ic from Padua to Springfield, admit- to their families and communities er bid (and pay) $10,000 for one of ted as much in a talk he gave to young feeling renewed. Standing in line be- the actor’s sweaty tank tops, worn Catholics. “For some a relic might tween an elderly woman who asked during the show. (The money was seem weird or scary, but we are people for help to lift up her granddaughter donated to a good cause, but the ag- of the body,” he told iobserve.org, the to touch the relic glass and a young gressive bidding indicated that own- diocesan news website (full disclosure: man wearing gold chains and de- ing the shirt was a major incentive.) my mother works for the diocese). signer sneakers solemnly bowing his On another occasion, my sister saw “We have always thought the human head in prayer, I couldn’t help but feel a teenage girl pick up a chewed piece body is a powerful link between those connected to those around me and of gum that had been discarded by in heaven and those on earth.” grateful for this strange little piece of Johnny Damon, then the Red Sox A powerful link was formed a saint that had united us. Together centerfielder. The girl lifted the gum, among the community, as well. The we were striving to lead holy lives in wrapped in a tissue, and gazed upon opportunity to be close to a piece of the real world. Inspired by the bodily a saint brought many people closer to presence of a saint, we set out to work Kerry Weber, managing editor of America, each other. Lucy Ramos, the execu- toward becoming more fully the body is the author of Mercy in the City. tive secretary for the Catholic Latino of Christ.

October 13 , 2014 America 45 THE WORD

seems: the coins that bear the emper- or’s likeness are owed to the emperor. Payment Due The government, even that of the pa- Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time (A), Oct. 19, 2014 gan Roman state, exists only through Readings: Is 45:1-6; Ps 96:1-10; 1 Thess 1:1-5; Mt 22:15-21 the true sovereignty of God, and tax- es are a part of the obedience due to “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?” (Mt 22:17) it. Another proposal points to the ne of Jesus’ most famous say- God in accordance with truth, and enigmatic nature of the saying, whose ings challenges us to consider show deference to no one; for you do meaning depends upon whether one Oa simple question: what do I not regard people with partiality”—is believes that all things belong to God, owe to whom? The saying is mellifluous intended to lower the guard for a trap. in which case Caesar is owed nothing, in the King James translation, “Render What is the trap? Would Jesus or whether one believes the emper- therefore unto Caesar the things which align himself with the for- or is entitled to taxes, in which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things eign occupiers by accepting case payment is owed to that are God’s.” It is teasingly straight- payment of taxes to Rome, Rome. Whatever the case, forward, so straightforward that the and so offend Jewish re- Jesus places the onus on saying cannot be made simpler, and yet ligious sensibilities, or his interlocutors to an- its meaning is not obvious. What are would he reject payment swer their own question the things due Caesar and what does of taxes to Rome, a popular and avoids the trap that not belong to God? stance among the people, but direct support of either Some interesting context is offered potentially treasonous to the Jewish religious zealots or by Isaiah 45, in which God establishes Roman oppressors. the Roman state would have the Persian king Cyrus and calls him, Jesus was comfortable on caught him. But the question, a Gentile ruler just like Caesar, “his other occasions avoiding questions anointed” (mashiach). In Isaiah God designed as traps, like the demand PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE employs Cyrus “to subdue nations be- to reveal the source of his authori- Imagine yourself in the midst of this fore him and strip kings of their robes,” ty (Mt 21:23-27), but Jesus seems encounter: how do you understand Jesus’ even “though you do not know me, so to have felt compelled to answer answer? a d . dunne that they may know, from the rising of this question, even if the question- t a rt: the sun and from the west, that there is ers intended malice, the flattery which now belongs to us, often is seen no one besides me; I am the Lord, and was insincere and the answer offered to be answered when we decide who is there is no other.” Cyrus is the instru- puzzling. The matter of the relation owed the denarius. In fact, as an on- ment by which God’s divine majesty is between God and emperor, or church going process of assessment and deci- demonstrated. Whatever power Cyrus and state, required a response. sion, the deeper question is: What do has is on loan from the Lord. This Jesus asked his questioners, there- I owe God? belief in God’s sovereign rule over all fore, to “show me the coin used for the The coin itself, minted by the humanity would have been shared by tax,” and they showed him a denarius. Roman state, belongs to Rome, but all Jews. The image on the denarius was most the denarius portrayed Tiberius as di- So when some Pharisees and likely that of Tiberius, who was styled vine, a status reserved for God alone. Herodians ask Jesus, “Is it lawful to on coins as “Tiberius Caesar son of the Perhaps Jesus is saying that in the di- pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” The divine Augustus,” thereby attributing vine economy, money is not the cur- question is meant to be the coup de divinity to Augustus and Tiberius. rency that counts, so give it to those grace in an attack by flattery, in which When the Pharisees and Herodians who minted it, which includes delud- the set-up—“Teacher, we know that identify the coin as Caesar’s, Jesus says, ed earthly rulers. The payment due to you are sincere, and teach the way of “Give therefore to the emperor the the sovereign God alone is worship, things that are the emperor’s, and to and it is owed to no other. And if the God the things that are God’s.” things of Caesar and the things of John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. So, who is owed what? Some schol- God collide? God is Lord of all. Paul, Minn. Twitter: @BibleJunkies. ars suggest that it is as simple as it John W. Martens

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