THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY NOV. 1, 2010 $3.50 OF MANY THINGS

PUBLISHED BY JESUITS OF THE UNITED STATES he first book survey I ever Federal Reserve Chairman Ben wrote reviewed a number of Bernanke, the newest Supreme Court EDITOR IN CHIEF Drew Christiansen, S.J. Ttitles in futurology. There were Justice Elena Kagan or her old boss profound studies like Jacques Ellul’s Attorney General Eric Holder. They EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT

Calvinist critique The Technological keep the system running. They don’t MANAGING EDITOR Society , more popular works in the vein aspire to more. If, like Holder, they Robert C. Collins, S.J. of Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and a once hoped for grander achievements EDITORIAL DIRECTOR study by Herman Kahn, the controver - (closing Guantánamo, increasing civil Karen Sue Smith sial author of On Thermonuclear War . rights enforcement), they have made a ONLINE EDITOR Kahn proposed that in the future, habit of folding under pressure. They Maurice Timothy Reidy advanced societies, like the United represent the best of a meritocratic CULTURE EDITOR States, would follow a two-tiered ethic: elite, trained by professional schools to James Martin, S.J. Epicureanism for the masses and manage but not to govern. The problem LITERARY EDITOR Stoicism for the ruling elites. By that he we now face is that some among the Patricia A. Kossmann meant that the vast majority of the elite cadres, who might have been POETRY EDITOR population would pursue their own expected to exert themselves with stoic James S. Torrens, S.J. interests and amusement, panem et discipline and self-sacrifice on behalf of ASSOCIATE EDITORS circenses , bread and circuses, as the the common good, are suffering attri - George M. Anderson, S.J. Roman satirist Juvenal wrote. tion because of the advance of the Kevin Clarke Meanwhile, the elites would exercise Epicureans. Kerry Weber the personal austerity and public disci - In the session of Congress now end - Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. pline necessary to keep the ship of state ing, it was not the more democratic ART DIRECTOR on a steady course. House of Representatives, but the sup - Stephanie Ratcliffe At the time, I questioned Kahn’s posedly more deliberative Senate that ASSISTANT EDITOR thesis. His argument was preoccupied repeatedly failed to realize gains for the Francis W. Turnbull, S.J. with the self-indulgence of the 1960s common good. Senators failed to carry ASSISTANT LITERARY EDITOR radicals. Having only recently graduated out the most perfunctory governmental Regina Nigro from college myself, I was determined functions, with hundreds of judicial and to defend the honor of my generation executive appointments placed on hold, BUSINESS DEPARTMENT along with the idealism of the civil making even the ordinary business of PUBLISHER rights and antiwar activists and espe - government sclerotic. Jan Attridge cially the peace and justice commit - Important international negotia - CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER ments of the churches. tions, like those on trade and currency Lisa Pope I wasn’t entirely wrong. The civil rates, falter for lack of Senate approval ADVERTISING rights and peace movements changed of experts to take up senior administra - Julia Sosa American society, and the church’s tive positions. Court cases have been social justice mission has helped trans - allowed to back up for months while 106 West 56th Street New York, NY 10019-3803 form international politics and bring scores of judicial appointments were freedom to Eastern Europe. put on hold out of the pettiest of Ph: 212-581-4640; Fax: 212-399-3596 But Kahn was more prescient than I motives—to deny President Obama the E-mail: [email protected]; imagined. Any honest observer would possibility of exercising the power of [email protected] Web site: www.americamagazine.org. have to admit our popular culture is appointment. One recent analysis sug - Customer Service: 1-800-627-9533 Epicurean. Indeed, that may be too gested that the electorate is upset over © 2010 America Press, Inc. grand a name for an entertainment the decline of the United States. world that has given us “Jersey Shore” But it is a self-inflicted decline. The and Lady Gaga. The emphasis is on country has been hollowed out from individual satisfaction of the most tran - within by lack of discipline, self-sacri - sient, titillating and often extreme sort. fice and vision. We will need more than Today’s Stoics are, like Kahn him - Stoic managers and politics to pull us Cover: Moccasin Lake, in Hiawatha self, pure technocrats. Think of out of this collapsing political culture. National Forest, Michigan. Photo: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner or DREW CHRISTIANSEN, S.J. Shutterstock/Dean Pennala CONTENTS www.americamagazine.org Vol. 203 No. 12, Whole No. 4910 NoVember 1, 2010

ARTICLES 13 CATHOLICS AS CITIZENS Today’s ethical challenges call for new moral thinking. M. Cathleen Kaveny

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS 4 Current Comment

5 Editorial A Woman Dies

13 8 Signs of the Times

11 Column Voting Angry John F. Kavanaugh

35 Letters

38 The Word Angelic Legacy Barbara E. Reid

BOOKS & CULTURE 18 18 FALL BOOKS II The Box; The Warmth of Other Suns; Swan; By Nightfall; Almost Christian; The American Catholic Revolution FILM David Fincher’s “The Social Network”

ON THE WEB ON THE WEB Theologians and other scholars respond to M. Cathleen Kaveny , right. Plus, John P. McCarthy reviews Clint Eastwood’s “Hereafter,” and America ’s Book Club discusses Seamus Heaney’s Human Chain . All at americamagazine.org. 31 CURRENT COMMENT

gang member was seen associating with a 30-year-old ‘God Has Never Left Us’ homosexual, they lured the older man to a party. There he From more than a mile underground, a letter came up and two teens who were thought to be gay were stripped, from one of the 33 men trapped in the Chilean mine. beaten and sodomized. News reports depict poverty- “There are actually 34 of us here,” wrote Jimmy Sanchez, stricken young men, some with arrest records but without age 19, “God has never left us down here.” Those words education, drunk, aimless, desperate to dominate someone may be worth more than a year of homilies on “the mys - weak. Two of the teen torturers have recently impregnated tery of suffering.” their girlfriends. For several weeks, the world was transfixed by the saga One teen victim, appearing confused, says he is still of the men trapped in the collapsed mine and by the heroic considered “one of the brothers.” They all went to church attempts to rescue them. Much of the coverage centered on together. It wasn’t personal, he was told, just discipline. He the technical know-how required to bring the men to the claims that he is in fact not gay. He also says he has surface. Diagrams of the burrowing machines were remi - learned something: “Gangs are no good, for anyone. Being niscent of the images of the drilling equipment used only a in a gang will get you nowhere.” Though this is true, this is few months before in the Gulf of Mexico to control the not the only lesson that he—and we—have to learn. Deepwater Horizon oil spill. This time, however, the workers on the surface were focused not on stopping the upsurge of a natural resource, but on raising up a more Voting Rights for All valuable resource: human life. Thanks to the restoration of voting rights to people who While the media focused on technology, however, many have served their prison sentences for felonies, 800,000 miners were focused on God. “I was with God, and I was more Americans will be able to go the polls in November. with the devil,” said Mario Sepulveda, “and God won.” Since 1997, reform of state disenfranchisement laws in Mario Gómez, one of the oldest miners, fell to his knees in 23 states has moved steadily toward the goal of total prayer after his ordeal ended. What the miners experi - restoration for all. But this goal is still far off. A coalition enced is hard to imagine, but the experience of suffering is of organizations is pressing for the passage of the not. Many feel, in tough times, as did Mr. Sepulveda, the Democracy Restoration Act, legislation sponsored by inner struggle between despair and hope. Senator Russ Feingold, of Wisconsin, and Representative The cynic will wonder why God did not simply prevent John Conyers Jr., of Michigan, both Democrats. The leg - the catastrophe from happening in the first place. The islation would restore voting rights to all citizens who miners most likely had such a question too, but were still have been released from prison. Currently five million able to trust in God, the one who never leaves us. people remain disenfranchised. Racial disparities are evi - dent among them. In Kentucky, for instance, the disen - franchisement rate for African-Americans is almost four The Bronx Eleven times what it is for other citizens. The case of the Bronx Eleven demands that we look at our So far, nine states have either repealed or amended life - culture and ask who we are. Eleven Bronx Latino gang time disenfranchisement laws. Because New Mexico has members (ages 16 to 23), drunk on malt liquor, tortured repealed its lifetime disenfranchisement provision, almost for hours two teens and a 30-year-old and his older broth - 70,000 more individuals can now vote. Maryland, too, has er, whom they also robbed. restored voting rights to over 50,000 Americans. New Consider this in the confused context of how we deal Jersey just this year passed a comprehensive package of with homosexuality. The Republican candidate for gover - voting reforms that included lifting the ban on food stamps nor of New York condemns the gay lifestyle; then, to prove for persons with felony drug convictions—a major prob - he is not homophobic, he outs his nephew. A Rutgers lem for mothers returning home after incarceration. Texas University student commits suicide after his roommate has been reforming its disenfranchisement laws since secretly films him being intimate wih a male and puts it on 1983. Once a state that imposed a lifetime prohibition, it the Internet. A judge voids the Army’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” now automatically restores voting rights for all on comple - regulation, but some senior officers resist. tion of sentence. Because voting is one of the fundamental Police failed to note the gang had been partying in the rights of citizenship, the Democracy Restoration Act empty apartment all summer. When a 17-year-old new should be enacted into law.

4 America November 1, 2010 EDITORIAL A Woman Dies

hen Teresa Lewis was executed on Sept. 23, she implementing capital punishment. became the first woman to be put to death in Over 90 percent of those on death WVirginia in almost a century. A 41-year-old row could not afford their own woman who was borderline retarded, with an IQ of 72, she attorney and had to rely on court- had married her job supervisor at a textile factory. Her adult appointed lawyers or public defend - stepson in the U.S. Army Reserve took out a $250,000 life ers, who frequently have little expe - insurance policy when he was called to active duty, and he rience and few resources for handling capital cases. As named his father as the beneficiary. Teresa schemed with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said, “People who are well two young men to kill both father and son for the life insur - represented do not get the death penalty.” ance. The murder took place in 2002, when her two accom - According to Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty plices, armed with shotguns, entered her trailer and shot Information Center, Teresa Lewis had a court-appointed both husband and stepson in their beds. attorney who chose not to present the case before a jury, Her supporters did not dispute her guilt, nor did she, from which she might have obtained clemency. “She was not but they emphasized her mental limitations in an effort to well represented,” Mr. Dieter said, since evidence of her persuade Gov. Robert McDonnell to commute the sentence mental disability was not fully brought out, nor were all the to life in prison. The Supreme Court had ruled in 2002 in mitigating circumstances presented. One co-defendant, another Virginia case, Atkins v. Virginia, that it is unlawful who committed suicide in prison, admitted to having been to execute anyone with mental retardation. The widely the mastermind of the crime. The second defendant accepted measure for that condition is an IQ of 70 or less. received not the death penalty, but life without parole. Ms. But accuracy in judging such matters is rough at best, with Lewis’s appeals lawyers later did a thorough job, Mr. Dieter a considerable margin for error. During the appeals pro - said, in terms of additional psychological testing and further cess, two psychiatric experts who examined Ms. Lewis said mitigating evidence, such as a letter from one of the gunmen that she did not have the mental acuity to plan such a mur - admitting he was the driving force behind the crime, and a der for hire. Eventually, the case went to the Supreme more thorough analysis of Ms. Lewis’s mental problems. “If Court in an effort to block the execution, but the justices placed before a jury, it is very possible that at least one juror declined to halt it. would have found this mitigating evidence sufficient to give The European Union asked the governor to commute a life sentence,” he said, adding, “but by then it was too late.” Ms. Lewis’s sentence to life because of her mental status, but The late Justice Harry Blackmun, who at one time again the request was denied. The E.U. ambassador to the supported capital punishment, said before his retirement United States wrote that the union “considers the execution that carrying it out “remains fraught with arbitrariness, dis - of people with mental disorders of all types contrary to min - crimination, caprice and mistakes.” For Teresa Lewis, the imal standards of human rights.” The union’s action shows issue of mental competency should have led at most to life that western European countries, which have abandoned without parole rather than death. Clemency was called for. capital punishment, take disapproving notice of its continu - Those who knew her in prison spoke of how she had com - ing use in the United States—not least in Virginia, which is forted other prisoners, singing and praying with them. Her second only to Texas in the number of executions since the appeals lawyer, James E. Rocap III, said of her after the exe - death penalty was reinstated in 1976. But the larger ques - cution: “Tonight the death machine exterminated the beau - tion remains: How much longer will the United States con - tiful, childlike and loving spirit of Teresa Lewis.” tinue to make use of capital punishment? Its inequities are Pope John Paul II, in his 1995 encyclical “The Gospel evident. Among the 35 states that permit it, there are many of Life,” emphasized the church’s opposition to the death differences in how it is applied. A murder in one state might penalty. It is permissible, he wrote, only in cases of absolute result in its use, for example, while the same crime in anoth - necessity, “when it would not be possible otherwise to er state would not. defend society.” He added that “such cases are very rare, if Inadequate legal representation for prisoners from not practically non-existent.” Certainly imprisonment was low-income backgrounds is another cause for concern in available as a sure remedy in the case of Teresa Lewis.

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November 1, 2010 America 7 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

ROME Interfaith Efforts Build Bridges for Peace hile Eastern Catholic bishops gathered for the synod for the Middle East in Rome, an interfaith Wmeeting titled “Building Bridges of Hope: Success Stories and Strategies for Interfaith Action” brought together Christians, Jews and Muslims at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University on Oct. 12. “We believe that interfaith strategies can help solve many of the world’s biggest problems,” Miguel H. Diaz, U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, told partici - pants. The event was hosted by the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican. Keynote speaker, Joshua Dubois, head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, told the religious leaders that every day, brick by brick, men and women of faith “lay the moral and intellectual foundation of our public life and dialogue, and you are the ‘first responders’ when...that foundation is shaken.” Trusted religious leaders have the power to persuade peo - ple to choose the more difficult and sometimes unpopular path in combating major crises when politicians cannot do that, said Fazlun Khalid, founder and director of the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Science. And businesses that are infused with a phi - losophy of social responsibility found - Conciliation in Boston, works with your hand, I see it is like mine, and I ed upon religious principles likewise Arabs and Jews in Israel. He empha - see you were born a baby, too,” he said, can have an enormous impact, accord - sized the need for both sides to talk looking at Levine. ing to Adnan Durrani, chief executive about their “pained memory.” Bygones Archbishop regularly counsels con - officer of American Halal Co., a food should not be bygones, he said, and the ciliation. When tourists express their company based in Stanford, Conn. past should be dealt with in order to disappointment with the Israeli securi - Durrani worked for many years on “siphon off the hatred.” ty wall, he said he tells them, “Do not Wall Street, where he saw “material - The Melkite Archbishop Elias try to destroy the wall, it’s too strong ism on steroids.” Yet he learned a lot Chacour of Haifa, Israel, shared his for you.” He added, “I try to hide the about the importance of social respon - memory of pain with conference par - wall with bridges” by creating connec - sibility from his Jewish partners, he ticipants. As Palestinians, he and his tions of friendship and understanding said, and he strove to build the first family were forced from their homes between one Jew and one Arab at a socially responsible company in after the creation of Israel and wan - time. America based on Islamic values of dered along the Jordan River for The archbishop turned to Levine justice and responsibility toward soci - months, because even bordering Arab and said, “Convince your Jewish ety, employees and clients. Values- countries did not want to take in brothers that we are not your enemy. based businesses like his can be like refugees, he said. We will never be your enemy.” But “weapons of mass enlightenment, the “But thank God I was not born a Christians, Arabs and other non-Jews real smart bomb,” he said. Christian; I was born a baby. And I are tired of being second-class citizens Hillel Levine, founding president of don’t know about you, if you were in Israel and “are looking for integra - the International Center for born a Jew or a Muslim, but I look at tion,” he said.

8 America November 1, 2010 sitions and strategic partner - Pennsylvania voters to reject the re- Melkite Archbishop Elias Chacour of Haifa, Israel, speaks at an interfaith ships have been conducted in election bids of the Democratic repre - meeting in Rome on Oct. 12. our health care community for sentatives Paul Kanjorski and Chris years—long before the pas - Carney, who voted in favor of the final sage of the [Patient Protection health reform package. A blogger on and] Affordable Care Act,” that site, Thomas Peters, also criti - said Mr. Cook, president and cized Carol Keehan, a member of the chief executive officer of Daughters of Charity who is president Mercy Health Partners, in a and chief executive officer of the statement on Oct. 10. “Our Catholic Health Association, report - decision announced last week ing an accusation first made at conser - was due to many factors.” vative media outlets that she had bul - Cook added, “The rationale lied Cook into retracting his state - for our initiative has been ment. mischaracterized by certain In a statement on Oct. 8, Sister politicized media outlets and Keehan addressed “alarmist” media severely distorted by some reports. She said Mercy leaders had special-interest groups.” “determined that their own resources Mercy Health Partners is were insufficient to meet the needs of made up of Mercy Hospital in the community going forward” and Scranton, Mercy Special Care that “reports that health reform is the Hospital in Nanticoke, Mercy primary motive behind the sale are Tyler Hospital in completely false, misleading and polit - Tunkhannock and several out - ically motivated.” Sister Keehan said it patient facilities. It is part of was “also important to note that health Catholic Healthcare Partners, reform does not in any way imperil the based in Cincinnati. Reports ability of Catholic hospitals to operate HEALTH CARE that health reform had forced the clos - as they always have—in accordance ing of a Catholic hospital surfaced after with their values and in full compli - C.E.O. Denies Cook told a Scranton television news ance with the religious and ethical reporter on Oct. 6 that health reform directives of Catholic health care.” Reform Forces “is absolutely playing a role” in the deci - Sister Keehan denied pressuring or Hospital Sale sion to explore the sale of one or all of even speaking with Cook and added the hospitals. “Was it the precipitating that she did not know him personally. evin Cook’s off-the-cuff com - factor in this decision? No, but was it a A C.H.A. spokesperson, Fred Caesar, ments in a televised interview factor in our planning over the next said that Sister Keehan had, in fact, Kinadvertently launched a five years? Absolutely,” Cook said. He not spoken with any members of the national controversy over the near- said health reform changes could mean Sisters of Mercy or board members at term impact of pending health care lower federal reimbursements for the Mercy Health Partners about the reform measures. Now Mr. Cook, Scranton-area hospitals, which already furor generated by Cook’s interview. head of a Scranton, Pa., Catholic suffered from underutilization. He said that “normal contact” took health system, has denied widespread Scranton’s population has endured a place between “lower levels” at the media reports that the decision to put relentless decline for decades. C.H.A. and Mercy Health Partners. three hospitals in northeastern Claiming that “three Scranton-area Regarding the content and timing of Pennsylvania up for sale was a conse - Catholic hospitals are shutting down press releases refuting media reports, quence of the health care reform bill because of ‘Obamacare’ regulations,” Caesar said, “You stand by your mem - passed in March. the Web site CatholicVote.org said it bers. We followed their lead and sup - “Discussions about mergers, acqui - had developed a radio ad calling on ported our member.”

November 1, 2010 America 9 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Shots Fired at Honduran Cardinal NEWS BRIEFS The auxiliary bishop of Tegucigalpa, Holy Family Hospital in Bethlehem marked a mile - Honduras, confirmed that a bullet stone on Oct. 18 with the birth of its 50,000th baby fragment was found on Oct. 11 in an since 1990, born to a young Muslim couple from a office belonging to Cardinal Oscar West Bank village. • Australia’s former Prime Minister Rodríguez Maradiaga but said the Kevin Rudd defended the Catholic Church’s response Tegucigalpa prelate was never in dan - to child abuse, suggesting that the canonization of ger. Auxiliary Bishop Darwin Andino Mother Mary MacKillop should prompt Australians Ramírez said that Cardinal Rodríguez to a fairer appreciation of the church’s historical contri - Hafsah was not working in the office, which is butions. • L’Osservatore Romano has declared that the Radaydiah and part of the archdiocesan headquarters new daughter, television cartoon characters Homer Simpson and his in the Honduran capital. Bishop Aisha dread son Bart are Catholics, even suggesting parents Andino said on Oct. 15 that it was should not be afraid to let their children watch “the adventures of the unknown who was responsible, but little guys in yellow.” • More than 5,000 Canadians gathered in Rome that a gunshot shattered a window in Oct. 17 to attend the canonization of Blessed André Bessette , the office. The discovery underscores Canada’s first native-born male saint. • Haiti’s devastated St. Francis the lingering political tensions in de Sales Hospital in Port-au-Prince hosted its final event on Oct. 13: Honduras and the controversial role of a Mass to say goodbye and remember the 70 people who died when the Catholic Church in the aftermath the pediatric unit collapsed during the earthquake on Jan. 12. • In a of a coup on June 28, 2009, that step necessary to “guard the liturgical and sacramental life of the removed President Manuel Zelaya church,” Archbishop George J. Lucas of Omaha suppressed on Oct. from office. The coup badly divided 15 the Intercessors of the Lamb Inc., a public association of hermits in Honduran society and the church. his archdiocese.

Archbishop Pleas For Disarmament and create a world fund for develop - Ten Catholic institutions made the An y discussion of disarmament and ment programs. He also warned that top 400 this year, and many seemed to arms control must take several ideas the sale of arms was not equivalent to buck the downward trend. The only into consideration and must under - “other goods in the marketplace,” noting agency in the top 10 was Catholic stand the link between weapons reduc - that the possession, production and Charities USA, which ranked third. It tion and people’s development, said the trade of military weapons must be reg - brought in $1.28 billion last year, a 66 Vatican’s new representative to the ulated since they carry with them “deep percent increase over the prior year. United Nations. “Policies promoting ethical and social implications.” Three other service agencies are in the disarmament and arms control reflect 400. They are: Catholic Medical an idea of order which the people of the Charitable Giving Down Mission Board (No. 52) with $279 world desire,” said Archbishop Francis million, up 35.5 percent; Catholic Chullikatt. The archbishop spoke in 2009 Relief Services (No. 67), with $240 before a committee of the U.N. General The Chronicle of Philanthropy report - million, up only 0.7 percent; and the Assembly during general debate on dis - ed this week that giving to the 400 Phoenix-based St. Mary’s Food Bank armament and international security on largest charities in the United States (No. 152), which raised $127 million, Oct. 11. In his address he decried the was down 11 percent overall in 2009, up 53.5 percent. Father Flanagan’s increase in world military expenditure the worst drop in the two decades since Boy’s Home in Nebraska (No. 160) during the last decade and echoed the the Chronicle began ranking its brought in $121 million, up 130.8 per - decades-old plea of the Holy See in Philanthropy 400. Collectively, the 400 cent. favor of reducing military spending in top charities raised over $68 billion last order to redirect resources to the poor year, about $7 billion less than in 2008. From CNS and other sources.

10 America November 1, 2010 JOHN F. KAVANAUGH

Voting Angry t is a strange paradox of our elec - tainable costs, awaits a new Congress bizarre stories and fake urgency. torate that we are willing to that will possibly rescind it or refuse to Perhaps they like it that way. The latest Iendure the endless pain of poli - finance it. One might have hoped that reports are that in September and ticking but will do anything to avoid a real reform package—single-payer October alone $46 million have been the pain that can result from the actu - based basic health care with optional spent by Republicans on advertising, al choices made by politicians. tiers of buy-in coverage—had been on with another $7 million spent by By many accounts, election day will the table. At least we would have had a Democrats. In my own state, most com - bring a rejection of a reputedly “do- debate. As it stands, unwilling to face mercials comprise a parade of accusa - nothing” Congress that is now accused the sacrifices required of us, we are still tions that the opponent—choose your of doing too much. The in-crowd sup - left with a breaking system. party’s candidate—is a liar. That’s bet - posedly will be replaced by a group Our economic system may also ter, I guess, than the race in Delaware devoted to undoing the last two years’ break. That could come at between “the witch and meager doings: a feeble health plan the hands of China, a Two years of the Communist,” as one derided as socialism, an economic stim - Communist country that pundit laughingly put it. ulus program that has not stimulated has out-maneuvered us in opportunities (This case is particularly much more than the banking industry, bare-knuckle capitalism. disgusting because of and a supposed attack on our wealthiest Some Americans call for have been the ridicule poured on a citizens who have all the while been China to restrain its preda - lost, avoiding woman for statements amassing even greater wealth. tory practices, but if the made in her early 20s.) A The next campaign does not same call is made to the essential race in California will be promise much more than the one just American capitalists, the and pursuing decided by whether completed: two years of opportunities cry is: “socialism!” A presi - Jerry Brown allowed a lost, spent avoiding the essential and dent who is surrounded by the trivial. naughty and sexist word pursuing the trivial. bankers and staunch capi - to be uttered about It has somehow become politically talists to guide our economy is called his opponent. And the voters of unwise to seriously question the two anti-capitalist and anti-business. He Connecticut are weighing the moral sig - wars that are depleting our resources, can’t please anyone. nificance of professional wrestling ver - costing the lives and well-being of our Rather than address challenges, our sus distorting a military record. armed forces and offering no prospect politicians and the enabling media Needless to say, I may be feeling of prevailing over terrorism. When have entertained us with evasions and some of the anger and frustration proposals are offered to help the unin - trivial pursuits. I have not heard one shared by many in our present elec - sured, to extend unemployment assis - candidate suggest that there might be torate. Readers of this column may tance and to protect families on the sacrifices that every American will experience something similar, brink of falling into homelessness, the have to make. I have not seen one although for quite different reasons. mantra is: “We cannot afford it.” Democrat explain how we are to pay Maybe this column itself is an irritant. When the cause is war, however, over a for our two wars. Nor have I seen any So it goes. Elections happen. trillion dollars are magically found. Republican enumerate the specific Disasters may come, and more pain Our continuing health care crisis is cuts in expenditures that will have to will follow. Nonetheless, I do not treated with timorous neglect. The be made if the Bush tax cuts are believe the prophets of apocalypse. modest reform bill that was passed, extended. Like automatons, our politi - People are resilient, especially having prompted cries of “death pan - cians are stuck repeating catch phrases Americans. And if bad things happen, els,” rationing, socialism and unsus - while specific questions are ignored. maybe those bad things will draw us In the absence of actual debate, the together, newly focused on more JOHN F. KAVANAUGH, S.J., is a professor of philosophy at St. Louis University in St. media have made the campaign seem important national challenges—like Louis, Mo. like another reality show, filled with war, poverty and justice.

November 1, 2010 America 11 N o t e l p a t s

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t The entrance of St. Dominic Catholic Church polling station in Cleveland, Ohio. o h p

12 America November 1, 2010 TODAY ’S ETHICAL CHALLENGES CALL FOR NEW MORAL THINKING . Catholics As Citizens

BY M. CATHLEEN KAVENY

ay a good Catholic vote for a political candidate who is pro-choice? In the last two presidential elections, some Catholics, including a few bishops, argued that it was always wrong to do so, at least if a pro-life candi - date were running in the same election. In making this Mclaim, however, they were being more rigorist than the current pope, whose answer to this very question was not “never” but “sometimes.” In 2004, in his capacity as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger dusted off the old moral theo - logical framework of “cooperation with evil” to address the question of voting for pro-choice politicians. That framework was developed in order to assist confessors in evaluating the complicity of penitents in the wrongdoing of others. Although the technical terminology can be frus - tratingly abstruse, the underlying distinctions continue to be useful. Cardinal Ratzinger states that a good Catholic cannot vote for a can - didate because he or she is pro-choice. In traditional terms, such a vote would constitute formal cooperation with evil. Because it is a type of inten - tional wrongdoing, it is always morally impermissible. But what about voting for pro-choice candidates despite their stand on the life issues? According to Ratzinger, “when a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia, but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.” To understand this statement, three points need to be kept in mind. First, and most important, unlike formal cooperation, in cases of material cooperation the cooperators do not intend to further the wrongdoing of other agents. Instead, they act for their own legitimate ends, foreseeing

M. CATHLEEN KAVENY is the John P. Murphy Foundation Professor of Law and a professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.

November 1, 2010 America 13 but not intending that their action will facilitate that wrong - women facing crisis pregnancies to have children. They can doing. Second, while formal cooperation is always prohibit - simply travel to a state where abortion is legal. ed, the permissibility of material cooperation is determined Finally, pro-life groups might argue that whether or not on a case-by-case basis and depends upon a variety of fac - electing pro-life politicians is sufficient to outlaw abortions, tors. How grave is the wrongful act in question? Does the act much less to reduce their number significantly, it is certain - of the cooperator overlap physically with the act of the ly a necessary step. Given the constitutionally protected sta - wrongdoer? If not, how much distance is there between the tus of abortion, the pro-life movement must convince a two acts in terms of time, space and causal connection? Will majority of voters not only to oppose abortion, but to make the wrongful act take place anyway, regardless of whether the opposing it in a coordinated, disciplined fashion a top polit - cooperator goes forward with the act of material coopera - ical priority. tion? Is the cooperation an isolated act or an ongoing pattern This argument might work as a pro-life political strategy. of involvement? Will my cooperation cause “scandal”? It is, however, largely irrelevant to the traditional matrix of Third, holding one’s nose and voting for a pro-choice cooperation with evil. The point of that matrix is negative; politician (or any politician who publicly advocates it aims to identify the actions that must be avoided in order immoral policies) falls under the subcategory of “remote to avoid sinning. It is not meant to provide the positive material cooperation.” It is remote because it is extremely engine for a program of social reform. Still less is it meant to removed in terms of time, space and causation from the use the threat of sin and eternal damnation in order to pro - wrongful act in question (enacting permissive abortion mote the coordinated action necessary to overcome systemic laws), and even further removed from the underlying injustice. wrong (the act of abortion itself). As Cardinal Ratzinger But that’s not the end of the story. indicated, remote material cooperation can be justified by “proportionate reasons.” An Emerging Problem in Moral Theology Some Catholics have argued that nothing is proportion - Not only does the traditional category of cooperation with ate to the great evil of abortion, functionally turning the car - evil offer little assistance in addressing the question of vot - dinal’s qualified permission to vote for pro-choice politi - ing for politicians who favor abortion rights; it also does not cians into an absolute prohibition. This approach, however, help us evaluate other questions, like whether we should misapplies the criterion. In assessing proportionate reason, shop at big-box stores, whose goods are less expensive the focus stays on the particular act of cooperation and its because they are made in sweatshops. It is also not very use - particular consequences; it does not migrate to the global ful in thinking through the issues involved in paying taxes evil with which it is associated. We cannot simply set 1.5 that support an unjust war. Do these examples mean that million annual abortions on the negative side of the equa - the actions involved raise no moral problems? Absolutely tion as if they are entirely caused by one vote. A single vote not. Rather, it means we need to develop new ways of ana - for a pro-choice politician is not likely to make any signifi - lyzing the involvement of individuals in systemic structures cant difference to any particular woman’s decision for or of complicity. against abortion, given that abortion is currently a constitu - Of course, the idea of structural complicity is not new to tionally protected right in this country. In fact, we might Christian thought. The doctrine of original sin has long well judge that voting for a candidate who supports a large pointed to the common human plight of failing to live up to safety net for mothers and dependent children would be a our obligations to God and one another. St. Augustine, better way to increase the number of children brought to Pope John Paul II and liberation theologians have all exam - term, especially at the state level. ined how individuals can be caught up in social practices In response, some pro-lifers might argue that while a vote marred by entrenched sinfulness. It seems to me, however, for a pro-choice politician may not cause many new abor - that individual involvement in structural wrongdoing has tions, a vote for a pro-life politician, particularly a pro-life garnered more attention in the present era. Why? For one, president, is the way to prevent them. Even here, however, residents of developed countries are enmeshed in increas - the causal chain is tenuous. A president may not have the ingly complicated webs of production and consumption. We opportunity to make appointments to the Supreme Court; buy goods made on the far side of the globe. We ensure our if he/she does, no president has control over how justices safety not only by deploying U.S. soldiers but also by forg - vote once they are seated. If the Supreme Court overturns ing alliances with other nations and private contractors. Our Roe v. Wade, many states will legalize the procedure on network of relations is increasingly pluralistic. We do not their own. It is not at all clear that voting for a pro-life pres - share the same values with all members of our political com - ident will prevent abortions in any significant number, par - munity, still less with those in our global economy. Finally, ticularly if other executive policies make it harder for thanks to the Internet, ordinary individuals know far more

14 America November 1, 2010 about these political and economic relationships than in the past. Coordinating action, including boycotts and other protest campaigns, is far easier than it used to be. In short, individuals are not isolated agents. Nor are they totally immersed in their own families or churches or communi - ties. They are networked agents. How does the “networked self” experience moral respon - sibility? Catholic moral theology has done a good job ana - lyzing the actions of individuals and small groups, on the one hand, and the social structures that contribute to just and unjust societies, on the other. There needs to be more reflection, however, on the intersection of these two realms: How should we think about the actions of individuals and small groups in relation to larger social structures? Can we say anything more helpful than that it is “remote coopera - tion with evil,” justified by “proportionate reason”? Making progress on these questions will require more sophisticated theoretical treatment of three issues. 1. Aggregated agency. Remote material cooperation is a large category. It describes the citizen voting for a politician who supports unjust policies, a big-box store customer buy - ing cheap goods made by slave labor and a worker paying taxes, some of which will go to support an unjust war. It also covers taxi drivers delivering drunk passengers from the air - port to the Las Vegas strip. What sets the first three cases This Will Be apart from the last one, however, is the pressing problem of aggregated agency that they raise. Taken by themselves, my Remembered of Her individual vote, my isolated purchase and my tax payment Stories of Women Reshaping the World are largely inconsequential. But taken together, the actions of voters, consumers and taxpayers have a significant effect Megan McKenna on the practices they facilitate. When should I think of myself primarily as a member of a class in evaluating my action, and when do I take into “This book — and the women celebrated in it — account my own particular needs and desires? This question cannot but stir us to courage and creativity, is relevant for two distinct purposes. The first has to do to compassion and the work of making the world with the development of my own character and the charac - more just and livable for all.” ters of others for whom I am responsible, like family mem - — Bishop Gabino Zavala bers. What sort of barrier should I set between myself and President of Pax Christi USA the large social evils of our time? How can we express soli - “An important and thought-provoking book about darity with those harmed by those evils? If we need to shop women, both sung and unsung, from Iran to the at a big-box store because of the prices or location, is there American Southwest and beyond.” any countervailing action we can take to offset complicity, — Booklist like donating to an organization that combats child labor? If we vote for a pro-choice politician, can we find time to vol - unteer at a crisis pregnancy center? - ʙÇn‡ä‡näÓn‡È{ș‡ÇÊUÊÓ£{Ê«>}iÃÊUÊ«>«iÀL>VŽÊUÊf£x°ää The second purpose is related to bringing about social reform by coordinated action. What means should be used At your bookstore, or call 800-253-7521 to bring about change? Letter writing or something www.eerdmans.com stronger? In essence, the bishops who tried to forbid all Catholics from voting for any pro-choice politician were try - Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. ing to organize a political boycott. A boycott is a legitimate 2140 Oak Industrial Dr NE method of agitating for social change, as Martin Luther Grand Rapids, MI 49505

November 1, 2010 America 15 King Jr.’s famous boycott of the segregated bus system in both on the manner in which corporate agents can be said Montgomery, Ala., demonstrated. It is not always, however, to “act.” In particular, we need to consider how to evaluate an appropriate or successful method, as Dr. King found out the “wake” of the actions of corporate agents—the manner a few years later in Albany, Ga., when his broader and more in which they shape the context in which other agents, both diffuse protests not only failed to produce the changes he corporate and individual, plan their own actions. We need sought, but also engendered frustration and violence. When to think about how corporate agents affect the common is a boycott a legitimate method to protest injustice, and good not only directly, but also indirectly by creating incen - when are its ancillary costs, including harm to innocent par - tives for other agents to act. ties, too great? 3. The inbreaking kingdom of God. As Catholics, we know 2. Currents of action. How should we think about broad that the kingdom of God has already been inaugurated by causal patterns and our place within Christ’s death and resurrection; we also them? Systemic injustices cannot be ana - ON THE WEB know that it will not be fully realized until lyzed by looking solely at the actions of Theologians and other scholars the end of time. Until then, Christians individuals. We are dealing with the respond to M. Cathleen Kaveny. need to keep two values in creative ten - americamagazine.org actions and reactions of corporate agents, sion by honoring the insights of two including nations, transnational regulato - groups of devout Catholics, which I call ry bodies and multinational corporations. Moreover, these the prophets and the pilgrims. do not always act independently; they respond to incentives Prophets emphasize the importance of clear, unambigu - and pressures created by the others. Corporations, for ous witness to the transformative power of the inbreaking example, move production facilities abroad when they can - kingdom of God. They believe that the purity of their wit - not continue to make a profit for their shareholders at ness to those values will be compromised if Catholics, espe - home. cially Catholic institutions, appear resigned to the great sys - The Catholic moral tradition has done a very good job temic evils of our time. Consequently, in evaluating ques - analyzing the practical reasoning and deliberations of indi - tions of complicity, they are likely to stress the need to main - vidual moral agents. More work, however, needs to be done tain significant distance from the wrongful acts of others, particularly if significant portions of the population do not agree that those acts are wrongful—for example, abortion Discernment,Diiiscernmentt, Growth,GrowGrowwth,th, Integration...IInteteggratiion... LLIFEIFFE or extramarital sex. NEW DIRECTIONS SABBATICALSABBAABBAATICALTICAL PROGRAM In contrast, pilgrims are acutely aware of just how far human society still remains from the kingdom of God and how difficult the journey continues to be. The consequences CCustomizedustomized to youryour of sin and the sting of death are still all around us. The only needs to o er a unique experience that will way to ameliorate those consequences is by doing justice, alloalloww yyouou to integrate loving mercy and walking humbly with God. It is not spiritual, personal and enough to avoid sin; we have to love and serve our neigh - intellectualintellectual renewal.renewal. bors. Ameliorating injustice and practicing the corporal works of mercy often involve contact with, and sometimes cooperation with, wrongdoers. We cannot expect to avoid such contact until the end of time. Until then, as St. K Augustine reminds us, the wheat and tares will grow ‡ ‡ together. ‡ The different eschatological sensibilities of prophets and ‡ pilgrims account for their different judgments on such ‡ issues as whether it is permissible to provide condoms in ‡ developing countries to prevent H.I.V. infection or whether Catholic hospitals may ensure their financial stability by affiliating with systems that perform sterilizations. In the JESUIT SCHOOL OF THEOLLOOGGYY best of circumstances, the tension between prophets and of Santa Clara University pilgrims can be creative, pressing us to think more deeply %QIQFIV SJ XLI +VEHYEXI 8LISPSKMGEP 9RMSR about both requirements for following Jesus Christ. But we 0I6S] %%ZZIRYI &IVOIPI]] '%    ˆ   ˆ *E\   )QEMPEHQMWWMSRW$$NNWXFIHY :MWMX YW EEXX www.scu.edu/jst must guard against allowing creative tension to become mutually assured destruction. A

16 America November 1, 2010 New Titles from Liguori Publications

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From the First Sunday of Advent This lift-the- ap board book Don’t Drink the Holy Water! explains This modern take on the classic through Christmas and Epiphany for brings the well-known characters the Mass with creative, full-color story of creation is approached each liturgical year (A, B, and C), this of Christmas to life for little ones. illustrations and simple descriptions with creativity, joy, and wonder. book will help prepare for and deepen Sturdily constructed to last for years, that resonate with kids. A special It’s a perfect reading tool for young your experience this holy season. this book invites children to take section at the back of the book helps children and also an easy read-along 128-page paperback – 4¼ x 7 an active role in discovering the adults answer kids’ questions about for Sunday schools, libraries, and 978-0-7648-1940-7 • $6.99 mysteries of Our Lord’s birth. the sacrament. bedtime at home. 20-page board book – 5⅞ x 7½ 64-page hardcover with DVD – 8 x 8 24-page hardcover – 8⅔ x 8⅔ 978-0-7648-1964-3 • $10.99 978-0-7648-1948-3 • $19.99 978-0-7648-1906-3 • $10.99

Available at your local bookstore or call 800-325-9521. Mention Source Code 11-330 www.liguori.org • Liguori Publications, 1 Liguori Drive, Liguori, MO 63057-9999

November 1, 2010 America 17 BOOKS &CULTURE r e k r a p

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PETER HEINEGG shot at him and recount his life from their perspective, while he remained SINS OF THE FATHER on the sidelines, mostly silent and invisible. THE BOX writer, Günter Grass, was/is a bear - For whatever reason, those chil - Tales From the Darkroom ish-but-affable man with dren, now parents them - By Günter Grass, Tr. Krishna Winston a walrus moustache and a selves, seem to have Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 208p $23 penchant for singing too practically no hard feel - loud and out of tune, a ings toward the old man; nc e upon a time there was a zestful carnivore and and their reminiscing world-famous German nov - cooker of meats, a sessions, full of disputes, O elist, a man with eight chil - Luddite who never jokes and unfinished dren, five boys and three girls, from learned to drive and sentences, turn out to be four different wives or mates; and typed all his books on a quite mellow and har - soon after turning 80, the man decid - little Olivetti. More prob - monious (we often can’t ed to tell (part of) his life story, but lematic, he was a distract - tell exactly who’s talk - indirectly. So he imagined all his chil - ed absentee parent, who ing). Their collected dren, now grown up, coming together spent most of his time confabulations make up in various configurations, at various alone, writing. So, per - The Box . times and at various dinner tables, to haps by way of making amends, he The title refers to a box camera, a tape-record their recollections. The invited his children to take their best cheap old Agfa (just which model no

18 America November 1, 2010 one knows), wielded by Mariechen, or once marching side by side with Rudi subject is Grass’s books, especially The Maria Rama (1911-88), a mysterious Dutschke), creative—an organic Tin Drum , Dog Years , The Flounder , figure to whom Grass dedicates his farmer, an audio technician, an actress, Headbirths , The Rat and Crabwalk and book. “Little Marie” was an insepara - a midwife, a film director, etc.—and, the omnipresent symbol of his capa - ble family companion, possibly Grass’s more often than not, with failed mar - cious lyrical visions, Mariechen’s box lover (though probably not), married riages in their rear-view mirror. They camera. It’s a lively show, down-to- to a professional photographer and an voice no bitter resentment toward the earth, unpretentious—and ably trans - expert darkroom technician herself, Papa who seldom played or spent lated by Krishna Watson—except that but above all a magician whose photos much time with them, but whose in the end it doesn’t reveal very much. capture not just present reality, but the string of bestsellers Unless, of course, worlds of her subjects’ past, future and enabled him to pro - that’s the whole ON THE WEB heartfelt or whimsical desires. In other vide them with big, America ’s Book Club discusses point: that the bru - words, she is an image of Herr Günter rambling houses and Human Chain, by Seamus Heaney. tal egotism, the rage, Grass, who also happens to be a other needful americamagazine.org/podcast the woundedness, trained sculptor and graphic artist. things; and they the sense of aban - So, aided by the childless, laconic, have very little to say donment, the pent- bony Mariechen, who was far better about their respective mothers. up aggression that readers might informed than the others, the Grass Call it a golden glow of patriarchal expect to find smoldering beneath the children reconstruct their father— egoism. There are all sorts of mostly surface of this discombobulated family gently. As the narrator says early on, cheerful anecdotes: about a dog named were not in fact there. Could be; but “ …the children must never find out Joggi who regularly rode the West we have only Grass’s word for it; and what the father has suppressed. Not a Berlin subway, about Daddy butcher - he’s a notorious—if notoriously gift - word about guilt or other unwelcome ing eels and cooking lentil soup, about ed—liar. deliveries.” And, on a still more confes - the usual childhood scrapes, from sional note, he later adds, “Now the flunking courses in school to robbing a PETER HEINEGG is a professor of English at inadequate father hopes the children cigarette machine. But the recurrent Union College, Schenectady, N.Y. will feel some compassion. For they cannot sweep aside his life, nor he theirs, pretending that none of it ever BILL WILLIAMS happened.” Critics are likely to link this plea to SOUTHERN EXODUS the scandal that erupted in 2006, when just before the publication of his THE WARMTH of that historic movement. The book previous volume of memoirs, Peeling OF OTHER SUNS effectively blends sociology, history the Onion , Grass told a radio audience The Epic Story of America’s Great and poignant stories of servitude, loss that in the last year of World War II, Migration and courage. age 17-18, he had served in the Waffen By Isabel Wilkerson Wilkerson interviewed more than SS (though without, he added, ever Random House. 640p $30 1,200 people, but focuses on three as firing a shot). Coming from Germany’s representative of the most celebrated left-wing writer, this During the six decades broader movement. Ida quickly engulfed Grass in a storm of between World War I and Mae Gladney had condemnation; and it may be that he the mid-1970s, some six become tired of the was just looking here for a little peace million black Americans backbreaking routine of and quiet. fled the South in a mass picking cotton 12 hours In any event, his brood, pseudony - migration that was “per - a day when she left mously presented as Pat and Jorsch haps the biggest underre - Mississippi in the 1930s (twin boys), Lara, Taddel, Jasper, ported story of the twen - and eventually settled in Paulchen, Lena and Nana, sound like tieth century.” Chicago. George an agreeable lot, high-spirited, gener - The Warmth of Other Starling, fearing he ous, and rather like—surprise!—their Suns is Isabel Wilkerson’s might be lynched for old man. They are solid liberals (e.g., monumental examination organizing citrus-grove campaigning for Willy Brandt and of the causes and impact workers, said goodbye to

November 1, 2010 America 19

Florida in the 1940s and moved to time and place of upcoming lynchings, Focusing on three people proved to New York City. And Robert Foster, a which were festive events for thou - be a brilliant narrative device. surgeon who could not operate in sands of white citizens. Wilkerson spent years researching the white hospitals because of his color, Bombings were common. When a subject and excavating the memories moved in the 1950s from Louisiana to black civil-rights worker in Florida was of the main characters, all three of Los Angeles. seriously injured in a blast in 1951, he whom have since died. She traces the “They were stuck in a caste system was rushed to a hospital. By the time sadness, setbacks and joys of their as hard and unyielding as the red the only black doctor in town arrived, lives as she tells a much bigger story Georgia clay,” Wilkerson writes. “In the victim was dead. Presumably, no about the significance of this mass the end, it could be said that the com - white doctor would touch him. migration. mon denominator for leaving was the Mean-spirited caste system rules Ida Gladney eventually became a desire to be free, like the Declaration and threats were part of the fabric of hospital aide in Chicago. Before she of Independence said.” life. Blacks had to step off the curb left Mississippi, white men had seized Wilkerson won the 1994 Pulitzer when they passed a white person. her husband’s cousin for allegedly Prize for feature writing while at The They also had to take separate eleva - stealing turkeys and severely beat him New York Times, and now teaches tors and stand on separate train plat - with a chain to the point where his journalism at Boston University. This forms. Plantation owners routinely clothes were soaked in blood. It turned is her first book. cheated black sharecroppers out of the out the turkeys had wandered into the Stories of horrific violence against money due them, but they dared not woods, but no one apologized for the blacks, as well as the daily humiliations protest out of fear of being whipped or beating. of life in the Jim Crow South, are worse. George Starling dreamed of finish - woven into the narrative. Someone Wilkerson herself is a child of the ing college, but never got the chance. was hanged or burned alive, on aver - great migration, her parents having After fleeing Florida in his 20s, he age, every four days during the four moved from the South to the North, spent the rest of his working years as a decades ending in 1929, Wilkerson which may account, in part, for the luggage handler on trains running says. Newspapers told readers of the book’s empathetic tone. along the East Coast. On the run to

22 America November 1, 2010 Florida, he had the job of moving ried and remain married, more likely This scrupulously researched and black passengers from the white cars to raise their children in two-parent reported book will be essential reading to the Jim Crow car before the train households, and more likely to be for future historians and anyone inter - entered Virginia. employed…[and] less likely to be on ested in its deep insights into the half- Robert Foster encountered unex - welfare.” century-long exodus of black pected racism in Los Angeles but Wilkerson displays obvious affec - Americans determined to escape from eventually established a successful tion for her subjects, driving one to a a shameful “feudal caste system.” medical practice. In one of the book’s medical appointment and tenderly Wilkerson has set a high standard most moving episodes, Wilkerson holding the hand of another, but never for what is possible with narrative describes in harrowing detail the time shies away from their difficulties and nonfiction. in 1953 when Foster left Louisiana setbacks, such as broken marriages, a and drove through Texas, New Mexico child turning to drugs and Robert BILL WILLIAMS is a freelance writer in West Hartford, Conn., and a former editorial writer and Arizona, disoriented and barely Foster’s consuming gambling addic - for The Hartford Courant. He is a member of awake from exhaustion, but for most tion. the National Book Critics Circle. of the way could not find a motel that would admit a black man. Because Foster’s brother, also a ANGELA O’DONNELL physician, was barred from practicing medicine in white hospitals in MARY’S GOOD NEWS Louisiana, he carried a portable oper - ating table with him to perform SWAN holiness of life. So too is the terrain— surgery and deliver babies in patients’ Poems and Prose Poems the natural world and its creatures. homes. By Mary Oliver Yet these are themes and terrain that The book’s title comes from the Beacon Press. 96p $23 have been sounded and celebrated by author Richard Wright, who left the poets for as long as South in 1927 and headed for Chicago Mary Oliver’s new book poetry has been com - to feel “the warmth of other suns.” of poems, Swan , opens posed. Somehow, we do Moving north was no panacea. with a good-humored not mind hearing this Blacks encountered discrimination in query that might occur Good News (which, jobs and housing, often paying double to any of her readers: paradoxically, is not the rent a white family had paid for the “What can I say that I “new” at all), again and same apartment. As blacks were mov - have not said before?”— again. As William ing north, Eastern European immi - an honest and pressing Carlos Williams has grants were flooding into the same question for a 74-year- observed, poetry not cities, competing for jobs and housing, old poet who has writ - only offers pleasure and which sometimes led to tension and ten 20 collections of consolation; it tells us violence. poems, won generations what we most need to Wilkerson lists famous sons and of loyal readers and earned the art’s hear: “It is difficult/ to get the news daughters of the Great Migration, and highest accolades over the past five from poems/ yet men die miserably wonders what would have happened decades (and counting). Thus com - every day/ for lack/ of what is found to them if their parents or grandpar - mences Oliver’s playful and serious there.” Oliver, as a faithful practition - ents had not left the Jim Crow states. engagement of what it means to spend er of her art, is willing to fill this The list includes Michele Obama, a lifetime making poems. need, and so responds generously to Toni Morrison, Diana Ross, Bill The themes in Swan are familiar the question she has posed: “So I’ll Cosby, Condoleezza Rice and Oprah indeed—the astonishing beauty of say it again.” And “say it” she does in Winfrey. the earth, the mystery of being, the Swan , with all of the grace, wit and The book challenges the widely accepted belief that black migrants were responsible for urban America’s ON THE WEB dysfunction. Compared to blacks Free newsletters to assist teachers in the classroom. already living in northern cities, the americamagazine.org/education migrants “were more likely to be mar -

November 1, 2010 America 23 exuberance her readers have come to expect. Many of the poems in the collection echo this call-and-response mode, a method that invites the reader into the process of discovery. Often the ques - tions are addressed directly to us and serve as challenges to cultivate the dis - cipline of attention the poet practices with such admirable expertise. Oliver’s prodding of her apprentice reader pro - duces some wonderfully fresh articula - tions of the ordinary, as in “More Evidence”: “Do you give a thought now and again to the/ essential sparrow, the necessary toad?” Good master that she is, the poet embeds the answer within the question, reminding us just how “necessary” the toad is even as we are invited to ponder it. This interrogative method is fea - tured most effectively in the volume’s title poem. “Swan” unfolds as a series of seven questions, beginning with a query regarding a simple matter of fact and ascending gradually to questions of metaphysical meaning and spiritual significance. Thus the invitation to share the seemingly ordinary experi - ence of seeing the creature (“Did you, too, see it, drifting all night on the black river?”) culminates in the insis - tent question of what the reader intends to make of what is, in reality, a visionary moment: “And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?/ And have you changed your life?” The VFKRODUVKLSV sighting of the swan constitutes, to the DYDLODEOH poet’s mind, a revelation—a piece of extraordinary good news so powerful one must be changed by it if one is 6$76DEEDWLFDO3URJUDP truly alive. &HOHEUDWLQJ This is Oliver’s vocation as a poet: 3ELF CONTAINED OPTIONAL to urge the reader to bear witness to ANDFLEXIBLEMODULESARE 

24 America November 1, 2010 denly and unexpectedly feel joy.... Give also because that is what poets are “This is all I can give you,/ not being in to it.... Don’t be afraid of its plenty”; made to do. Like her literary mentor, the maker of what I do,/ but only the “Let laughter come to you now and Walt Whitman, whose joyful voice one that holds the pencil.” Thus Swan again, that sturdy friend”; “Refuse all echoes throughout these poems, Mary arrives as unexpected gift, for both cooperation with the heart’s death,” Oliver continues to practice her voca - poet and reader, and full of the news and, “Sing, if you can, and if not still tion, writing and rewriting her own we need. be/ musical inside yourself.” Leaves of Grass well into late age, much This is wisdom the poet imparts to our good fortune. In the concluding ANGELA O’DONNELL is a professor of English and associate director of the Curran through words, the medium of her lines of the volume, she places her Center for American Studies at Fordham message and a vital resource she alter - book, an offering, at our doorstep: University in New York City. nately loves and laments, possesses in too great abundance and claims to lack entirely. This paradoxical attitude KEVIN SPINALE toward language pervades Oliver’s poems. “April” cautions, “not too/ PETER’S PRINCIPLES many words, please, in the muddy shallows the/ frogs are singing.” Words BY NIGHTFALL plain daughter. It catalogues the events must be used sparingly, lest these A Novel of six days in Peter’s life when his wife’s sounds meant to communicate the By Michael Cunningham brother, nearly 20 years younger, subtle music of nature overpower it. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 256p $25 comes to crash at Peter’s apartment. Yet later in the collection, “More Over the course of the narrative, every Evidence” counters this concern with Michael Cunningham delights in writ - interaction, every flashback, every the ecstatic exclamation “Words are ing about New York City. His character and event emerges through too wonderful for words” and cele - Pulitzer-prize winning novel, The the single point perspective of Peter brates “The vibrant translation of Hours (1998), culminates in New Harris, that is, through the vanity, things to ideas” only words can accom - York, just south of Washington ambition and fear of a semi-successful plish. Square Park at the bot - New York gallery owner. Oliver wants to have it both ways tom of a dark and foul Peter’s world, even his (as do most poets, trafficking in airshaft between two reflections on his wife, ambivalence and ambiguity). The apartment buildings. Rebecca, and daughter, unspoken assumption of poetry is that His last novel, Bea, are as distorted as Saul we fall in love with the things of this Specimen Days (2005), Steinberg’s 1976 New world in part because we have been is comprised of three Yorker cover that depicts taught to love them through the agen - novellas set in New the world as seen from cy of words. Language acquisition is York of the past, pre - Ninth Avenue in the beginning of knowledge of the sent and future. Manhattan looking west - world, the other and God even as we Though he identifies ward. perceive our separation from them. It Virginia Woolf and Peter looks upon every - is then through words that we try to Walt Whitman as thing as an object, even his mend that separation. Thus poetry muses for these two most intimate friends and possesses the power to redeem even as novels and incorporates their lives and family. But some objects, like great it signifies our fall from grace. their writing in his narratives, Woolf works of art, affect Peter deeply. The Throughout Swan Oliver reminds in The Hours and Whitman in sight of an old friend with breast can - us of the mystery and necessity of Specimen Days , New York City is cer examining the gaping maw of a poetry, whose source is, ultimately, the Cunningham’s most persistent muse dead shark suspended in a tank of Creator. The poet’s song is the ana - and influential character. Once again, aqua formaldehyde at the logue to those sung by all creatures: New York City, its neighborhoods and Metropolitan Museum of Art initiates “The leaf has a song in it,” the king - its values, inspire and shape in him a visceral feeling of mortality. It fisher his “hurrah,” and the river “an Cunningham’s new novel, By Nightfall . is this encounter with Damien Hirst’s unfinishable story.” The poet sings, The book tells the story of Peter “The Physical Impossibility of Death and writes, to translate those songs Harris, a 44-year-old art dealer with a in the Mind of Someone Living, ” cou - into language we can understand, but beautiful wife and a disappointingly pled with the reality of his friend’s ill -

November 1, 2010 America 25 ness, that begins to provoke in Peter a consideration of his own mortality. Moments before this scene, Peter Clergy Retreat 2011 had lingered at Rodin’s “The Bronze Retreat . . . Renew . . . Return Refreshed Age” and marveled at its substantial, Twenty waterfront acres in North Palm Beach, Florida enduring beauty. In contrast to the shark, which will both lose its profun - February 28-March 4, 2011 With dity once it is removed from the Met Archbishop Harry J. Flynn, D.D. and eventually rot, the bronze, by Archbishop Flynn is deeply devoted virtue of its subject and the medium of to the spiritual formation of clergy. its construction, will persist in its He often serves as retreat master beauty. for dioceses and religious commu- nities. He celebrated his 50th year The next five days of Peter’s life will as a priest on May 26, 2010. describe Peter’s struggle to possess This Retreat Stipend is $500 such perpetual youth and beauty for himself. He will risk the forfeiture of every object and relationship he has Private Retreats Also Available held dear to grasp one thing, one man - ifestation of beauty because such an Our Lady of Florida Spiritual Center object, he thinks, will radiate youth A Passionist Retreat and beauty and life unto him. 1300 U.S. Highway 1 561-626-1300 Ext. 117 Peter’s intuitions about mortality Contact Maggie Albee: [email protected] and the interactions he has with the Details on our Web site: www.ourladyofflorida.org objects of his life reduce his emotions to those of arousal and fear. Every cab driver, waiter, waitress, employee and artist he comes across is briefly con - “Heinz treats us to a glimpse of how Christmas will continue to sidered, quickly dissected and dis - be meaningful for years to come.”—Kristin M. Swenson, Author of Bible Babel missed as some inferior object doomed to failure or mediocrity. The Christmas only objects that merit further consid - Festival of Incarnation eration are Peter’s wife, Rebecca DONALD HEINZ Harris, and her younger brother, Heinz’s description of the Ethan, the mistake (the child was religious and cultural history born to elderly parents who had tried of Christmas, from its origins to prevent any further births). Both in the sacred texts of early are classically beautiful in the way that Christianity to the fi gure of Rodin’s “The Bronze Age” is beauti - Santa Claus to the commercial ful. Both assert confidence and spree of today, is a marvelous grandeur, yet now one is youthful pilgrimage through lived religion while the other is aging and becoming as it appears in folkways, music, more distant. Peter is at once fearful art, and literature.Yet he also of his own solitude as an aging hus - probes the meaning of this central festival and points us to band and father and aroused by the a deeper appreciation of the proximate intensity of Ethan’s reck - reality of incarnation today. lessness, youth and beauty. 978-0-8006-9733-4 288 pp pbk $25.00 Unfortunately, arousal and fear are the only emotions that Cunningham offers his readers, the only emotions apparent in this entire novel aside from the despair and insomnia of At bookstores or call 1-800-328-4648 fortresspress.com nightfall.

26 America November 1, 2010

The language of this novel seems, at through to the last 60 pages in which a data toward a broader theological times, to be inspired by Time Out story is finally told, free of flashbacks interpretation. Dean argues that the New York or New York Magazine. It is and Peter’s self-absorbed descriptions deep crisis of the missiological imagi - triumphant and bitter and, beneath its of objects and people as objects. nation of the church is the chief theo - cynical sheen, quite vapid. A car is Perhaps, however, the novel as a logical matter revealed in this research. “Toyota-ish”; a hostess is “smart and whole is relevant to those interested in Only a renewed missiology emerging noisy and defiantly vulgar”; a particu - Ignatian spirituality and a contempo - from local church practices can lar outfit can be “defiantly downtown”; rary literary grounding of the First address the grim challenge presented to vomit in a cab would be a disgrace, Week of the Spiritual Exercises . For by studies of teen faith. (Disclosure: for “You can’t be sick in public, not in Cunningham succeeds in conveying Dean and I have discussed the study’s New York. It renders you impover - masterfully the emptiness and despair findings in some detail, separate from ished, no matter how well you’re inherent in narcissism. Then again, this book.) dressed.” There are detailed walks much of contemporary art and litera - What is that challenge? Moralistic through downtown Manhattan, cri - ture is saturated with depictions of Therapeutic Deism, a term coined by tiques of boutique dress shops, allu - despair, violence and mortality. Smith and Denton in Soul Searching . sions to the Whitney Museum bienni - Unfortunately, By Nightfall , as a This is the operative religion of most al, descriptions of apartment interiors work of art, is as transient and uncap - teenagers in the United States (espe - and artists’ lofts, gallery openings and tivating as a dead shark in a tank. It cially of young Catholics). Its “doc - reading the Sunday Times in bed. lacks the beauty of works constructed trines” are that religion exists to make The first 180 pages of the novel are of richer, sturdier, more lasting emo - people into good persons, God shows written for someone familiar with the tions. up only to help in personal crises, and New York City of the last decade, for it niceness is the most desirable trait of is only a familiarity with the character KEVIN SPINALE, S.J. , is a Jesuit scholastic all. In other words, this is a functional of New York that can pull a reader studying at the University of Chicago. religion of “whatever works,” so long as one does not criticize or become criti - cized by others for one’s choices or TOM BEAUDOIN beliefs. This characterization of early 21st-century youth has already TEEN SPIRIT become an influential model in aca - demic and pastoral discussion of ALMOST CHRISTIAN for discussion of faith and youth cul - youth culture. What the Faith of Our Teenagers ture for the next decade or more. The Dean accepts the accuracy of the Is Telling the American Church latest entry in this literature is Almost diagnosis, and underscores the related By Kenda Creasy Dean Christian: What the Faith of Our finding that parents are the greatest Oxford Univ. Press. 264p $24.95 Teenagers Is Telling the American influences on teens’ religiosity. Church , by Kenda Creasy Dean of Therefore this deism is much more the The National Study of Youth and Princeton Theological problem of the adult Religion is the most comprehensive Seminary. One of the American church than of study to date of teenagers and faith in leading theologians of teens, and for Dean it is the United States. Under the direction youth culture, Dean fundamentally at odds of Christian Smith of the University served on the original with orthodox Christian- of Notre Dame, and funded by the N.S.Y.R. interview team. ity. Against M.T.D., Dean Lilly Endowment, the study surveyed In Almost Christian , takes two overlapping well over 3,000 young persons. The the author gives an theological tracks. First, first fruit of that study was the now- impassioned theological she describes church-sus - famous book by Smith with Melinda interpretation of Soul taining practices like Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: Searching and related studying Scripture, moral The Religious and Spiritual Lives of studies on the state of accountability to a com - American Teenagers (Oxford youth and religion. This munity, self-denial and University Press, 2005). The study is is the first book to go explicit talk (and love) of presently generating many additional beyond what religiously-informed Jesus. These practices are consistent, books that will help set the standard social science says about the N.S.Y.R. she argues, with a normative Christian

November 1, 2010 America 27 doctrinal story that is fundamentally conversation-starter in Christian sec - ty of others’ lives and values. This chap - in conflict with teens’ deism, because it ondary and higher education, local ter has a lot of love and loss in it, and undercuts all self-seeking American congregations and campus ministries. seems to capture most nakedly the spirituality. Authentic church practices It would strengthen the argument if mood of the book as a whole. I wonder make known a Trinitarian God who Dean conceded more theological agen - what Almost Christian would have been desires to share our humanity through cy to those who embrace moralistic like if Dean had begun there. No one Jesus Christ, his dying for us and rising therapeutic deism. She tends to use who cares about young Christians in joy. This saving action allows the M.T.D. as a conceptual category today, however, will be indifferent to her courage and creativity of the Holy instead of theologically parsing actual defense of a generous Christian partic - Spirit to find ever new occasions for us statements made by teens (or adults). ularity. This is true even if one feels to love God and neighbor. This can be But perhaps most profitable of all is the sympathetic, as I do, to Dean’s closing seen in the classic saints of the tradi - last chapter, which reconsiders all that gestures beyond the “either-or” tion as much as in the unheralded comes before. There Dean makes a con - approach that characte rizes most of activities of struggling but faithful fession of sorts regarding the “defeat” this important book. youth ministries. she feels at the ascendance of M.T.D., Dean’s second theological track con - and thinks out loud about balancing TOM BEAUDOIN teaches theology in the sists in creatively showing how the her understanding of the Gospel with Graduate School of Religion at Fordham small minority of religiously active and the importance of honoring the integri - University in New York City. informed teens do what they do. What sort of theological lives do they lead, and what message do they bear for the larger church? The national study KATHLEEN CUMMINGS found that Mormons are the most reli - giously committed and active youth in TUMULT AND TRANSFORMATION the United States. Dean devotes an interesting chapter to exploring what THE AMERICAN CATHOLIC reading along the way. makes Mormon faith-education so REVOLUTION Massa devotes chapters to Charles effective, and then relates those findings How the ’60s Changed Curran, the draft-file raid of the to other highly committed youth, such The Church Forever Catonsville Nine, and other recogniz - as conservative and African-American By Mark S. Massa, S.J. able characters and events from the Protestants. She finds four qualities Oxford Univ. Press. 224p $27.95 era. But he also covers some less famil - that highly “generative” religious youth iar territory. He opens with Frederick share: claiming a creed; belonging to a I look forward to the publication of a McManus, a Boston priest and canon community; pursuing a larger purpose; new Mark Massa title with roughly the lawyer who served on the Committee and harboring a specific hope that same level of excitement with which on the Liturgy of the National draws them forward. These theological my daughter anticipates the release of Conference of Catholic Bishops after “tools” highlight the difference between the next Harry Potter movie. I exag - the Second Vatican Council. orthodox church culture and M.T.D. gerate only slightly. Massa’s two previ - McManus may not be a household culture as conflicting ways to imagine ous books—one a study of name now, but in the decade after the what life and church are all about. Catholicism and American culture in council he played a singular role in This readable, jargon-free book the 1950s and the other a history of shaping the reception and implemen - could be profitably read alongside Soul anti-Catholicism in the United tation of the Second Vatican Council Searching or other related books, so States—changed the way I think and in the United States. Through his fre - that readers can see how Dean moves teach about those subjects and turned quent contributions to Worship, between social science and theology. It me into an admirer of the author’s McManus provided accessible com - is filled with scriptural examples, writ - keen wit and thoughtful prose. Massa’s mentaries on the “new Mass” that ten with the sober insight of one who latest book, The American Catholic helped facilitate American Catholics’ cares deeply for the church. Its clarion Revolution , met my expectations and surprisingly swift and overwhelmingly missiological call will encourage read - more. Written in his characteristically positive reaction to the decrees of ers to define their own stance, and the engaging manner, it not only offers an Sacrosanctum Concilium . Massa’s deci - author’s challenge to how youth and insightful interpretation of a turbulent sion to begin his study with liturgical adults live Christianity should be a period, but also makes for entertaining change is both deliberate and wise. As

28 America November 1, 2010

Catholic Social Teaching and World Poverty: Issues of Development and Justice Villanova University

March 21-23, 2011

Villanova University invites papers and/or creative work on the following themes:

i Evaluation of the Millennium goals and steps for implementation; the financial crisis and implications for development and development strategies; critiques of income equality and strategies/policies/laws to deal with inordinate economic inequalities in society.

i Explorations of the “preferential option for the poor in current economic life; what would a new Popolorum progressio look like?; wealth creation and the common good; environmental degradation and the poor.

Papers should apply Catholic social teaching to these and related issues or illuminate new research in the humanities, social or natural sciences as well as public policy measures that can be brought into dialogue with Catholic social teaching.

The deadline for submitting papers for review is January 14, 2011. Submissions must include a title and abstract.

Submit manuscripts to: Journal of Catholic Social Thought Villanova University – 800 Lancaster Avenue – Corr Hall – Villanova, PA 19085

For more information about the conference: http://www.villanova.edu/mission/officeofthevicepresident/activities/conferences/

Invited Speakers

Peter Cardinal Turkson Jeff Madrick President, Pontifical Council for Justice & Peace Senior Fellow, Roosevelt Institute and the Maria Terese Dávila Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis Boston College Martin Ravallion Daniel Groody, C.S.C. World Bank University of Notre Dame Shaun Ferris Stephen O’Connell Catholic Relief Services, Senior Advisor in Swarthmore College Agriculture and the Environment

November 1, 2010 America 29 he asserts, ordinary Catholics experi - awareness: “What the good fathers at time now that the labels of “liberal” enced the impact of Vatican II most Vatican II were quite blithely under - and “conservative” are of limited use - decisively through the “new Mass.” For taking in promulgating their famous fulness in interpreting the council and that reason, he argues that the documents,” Massa writes, “now its aftermath. Massa agrees, pointing “American Catholic revolution” began appears more like placing sticks of out time and again that such labels in 1964, with the implementation of dynamite into the foundations of often obscure as much as they explain. the “Constitution on the Sacred Tridentine Catholicism than simply But while most scholars end with a cri - Liturgy.” Whereas liturgists and the - opening the windows of the Church to tique of the existing narrative, Massa ologians might have predicted many the world outside.” goes a step further by proposing a elements of the new Mass, the average Subsequent chapters model to replace it. lay Catholic had almost no prepara - explore what happened While the book does tion for what appeared to be dramatic when American Catholics not quite deliver the shifts in worship and practice. Here is came face to face with “the new “master narrative” where McManus entered the picture. radical lessons of history”: promised by its jacket, Between 1965 and 1975, McManus’s the nonreception of the the lens of historical careful and canonically exact commen - encyclical Humanae Vitae consciousness does taries convinced thousands of U.S. and the subsequent con - offer a fresh and inter - Catholics that these sudden transfor - troversy with Charles esting way to unify the mations did not represent a radical Curran at The Catholic seemingly disparate break with the past, but a necessary University of America; the events of the Catholic return to a tradition in which new prolonged conflict between ’60s in a manner that forms and prayers were routinely Cardinal Francis McIntyre leaves tired and reduc - incorporated into the church’s central and the Immaculate Heart tive categories behind. liturgical act. of Mary sisters in Los Angeles that Scholars who follow Massa’s lead in But McManus’s commentaries had ensued when the sisters decided to the future would do well to apply his other, unintended consequences for take seriously the council’s exhortation thesis more comprehensively to issues the American Catholic community. to return to their roots; the raid at of women and gender. Alas, his book is Encoded within his “sedate and Catonsville, Md., and the Catholic indeed a “master narrative” in the sense arcane” articles on the liturgy was a anti-war movement it inspired; and that, with the notable exception of more insidious message: “things the unintended consequences of Avery Mother Caspary of the I.H.M.s, all its change,” even in a church long under - Dulles’s brilliant Models of the Church protagonists are men. A discussion of stood to be timeless and unchanging. (1974), which, according to Massa, women’s ordination or the abortion In this sense, Massa argues, “this eru - lent considerable intellectual and theo - question would have enhanced the dite Church lawyer quite unwittingly logical heft to the growing acceptance study. Strictly speaking, of course, helped to give birth to the Catholic of the fact that pluralism was “the both Roe v. Wade and the Women’s sixties, a birthing process that began most profound Catholic stance of all.” Ordination Conference belong to the on the parish level with the implemen - Massa excels in recounting the 1970s, but they do fall within the tation of the new Mass.” Indeed, the more comic events of the period. purview of “the long ’60s,” a term most protagonist of Massa’s story is not Although he is sympathetic to the American historians use to limn the McManus, the Berrigan brothers or eventual tragic outcome for the period. More significantly, though, any other single person, but history I.H.M.s, he delights in recounting the both of these developments were itself. The American Catholic spectacle of McIntyre’s intervention at undoubtedly rooted in the events Revolution is primarily a study of U.S. the council. Well-known among bish - Massa describes, and they were—and Catholics’ encounter with history or, ops for his inability to grasp even rudi - remain—quite central to any discus - more precisely, the dawning of histori - mentary Latin, McIntyre delivered an sion of an “American Catholic revolu - cal consciousness among a people con - impassioned plea for retention of the tion.” ditioned for centuries to believe that Latin Mass, arguing that to do other - Speaking of revolution, Massa pro - the Church was insulated from histor - wise would merely distract and con - vides a timely reminder that the ical change. Church leaders evinced a fuse those “whose intellectual capacity American Catholic one is still unfold - stunning lack of appreciation for the was not great.” ing. Stories about women religious momentousness of their actions and Historians of American Cathol- being subjected to “arbitrary visita - the implications of this new historical icism have been aware for quite some tions” or about Catholic pacifists tak -

30 America November 1, 2010 ing church and state leaders to task for has done so with such grace and off campus; a guy longing for attention supporting an unjust war will have an humor will win Massa more admirers, from a girl, for acceptance, for fame; a eerie resonance with contemporary not only among scholars but also computer programmer who straddles readers. That the history Massa among the coveted and elusive “general and sometimes crosses the line between recounts is so recent makes his book readers.” being motivated and being obsessed. even more remarkable. He has pro - (He is also, more often than not, a jerk.) duced a credible description of the for - KATHLEEN CUMMINGS is associate director The real-life Zuckerberg has denied of the Cushwa Center for the Study of est while most of us are still busy scru - American Catholicism at the University of any such motivations. tinizing individual trees. And that he Notre Dame, Ind. Near the start of the film, in a series of wide shots of the campus at night, Zuckerberg walks quickly, head down, | FILM KERRY WEBER passing by more leisurely paced stu - dents on his way to his dorm room UN-FRIENDLY after being brutally dumped by his David Fincher’s ‘The Social Network’ girlfriend. Throughout, the camera’s shallow depth of field reinforces this The key to enjoying The Social and written by Aaron Sorkin, are separation between Zuckerberg and Network, the big-screen version of the based on actual people who were what surrounds him, reflecting the founding of the Web site Facebook, is instrumental in the origins of character’s ability to tune out others to acknowledge that at its core the film Facebook, not to mention others who and turn inward as quickly as the cam - is not about the founding of Facebook. wish they were. This much is certain: era can change focus. Eisenberg’s per - Drawing inspiration from the book in a dorm room at Harvard University formance is outstanding, particularly proposal for The Accidental Billionaires in 2003, Mark Zuckerberg created a in his ability to portray his character’s (written by Ben Mezrich, who admit - Web site that is now worth billions of awkwardness and arrogance while ted that many events described in his dollars and in the process made more maintaining a sense of vulnerability. book have been embellished, com - than a few enemies. At Fincher’s Harvard, the muted pressed and otherwise altered), the Sorkin’s hyperarticulate script colors and dimly lit dorms provide a film is an exaggerated version of the includes a character named Mark stark contrast to the bright, industrial founding of the stunningly successful Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg. offices of Facebook in Silicon Valley social network, more storytelling than The Zuckerberg of the film is a shown later in the film. (Fans of reporting. But the main characters in Harvard student desperate to enter one Fincher’s “Fight Club” and “Zodiac” the film, directed by David Fincher of the elite, private, all-male “final clubs” will instantly recognize his character - istically dark palette in the scenes in Cambridge, Mass.) Much of the action—the parties of the upper-crust and middle- crust, the hazing for the tony Harvard clubs, the planning for Facebook— takes place at night. At times Zuckerberg’s room seems more like a lair than a dorm. In thriller-like fashion, the film alternates the narrative of Facebook’s early days with scenes from two depositions that were part of two real-life Andrew Garfield as Eduardo Saverin (left) and Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg lawsuits filed against (center right) in “The Social Network” Zuckerberg. One suit was

November 1, 2010 America 31 filed by Eduardo Saverin, a co-founder Beatrice and Benedict jealous. tus updates and messages while decid - of Facebook and Zuckerberg’s former The soundtrack by Trent Reznor ing what to “like” and whom to best friend, who provided the startup and Atticus Ross also helps to propel “friend,” it is easy to forget that the funds and served as chief financial offi - or suspend the action throughout, and ways we define ourselves extend cer until he was pushed out of the its electronic sounds capture the world beyond the choices provided by the company. Saverin’s character, played by in which Zuckerberg lives. This world, site’s profile options or fan pages or the Andrew Garfield, garners the greatest at least in the film, slowly isolates number of comments on a wall. sympathy in the film, as his betrayal at Zuckerberg from the individuals In contrast to the infinitely nuanced the hands of Zuckerberg seems both whose opinions he valued most at the real world, Facebook’s blue-and-white vicious and deliberate. start of the film. homepage offers an easily categorized The second lawsuit was filed by Sex, jealousy and revenge fuel much alternative; in that world, the word Tyler and Cameron Winkelvoss, iden - of the action taken by both “friend” carries a very loose definition: tical twins and fellow Harvard stu - Zuckerberg and the Winkelvoss that girl I haven’t spoken to since third dents, who claim Zuckerberg stole brothers. The most important ques - grade, my mom, an ex-boyfriend—all their idea for an exclusive social net - tion for college students, the film’s friends on equal footing as far as working site. In the film, both broth - Zuckerberg says, is: “Are you having Facebook is concerned. And this list of ers—dubbed the “Winklevi” by sex or aren’t you?” He is then inspired “friends” can be pared down with the Zuckerberg in one of his few humor - to add the “Relationship status” func - click of a mouse. ous asides—are played by Armie tion on the site’s profiles, so that those In real life, as “The Social Network” Hammer with different hairstyles and who are interested can answer that demonstrates, relationships are much some C.G.I magic. question. The addition of this final more complicated. These relationships The scenes from one deposition in touch convinces him provide Fincher and which Marylin Delpy (Rashida Jones), the site is ready to go ON THE WEB Sorkin with the a young, sympathetic (and fictional) live. John P. McCarthy reviews Clint material for a com - lawyer, discusses the case with But the more Eastwood’s film “Hereafter.” pelling story. While americamagazine.org/culture Zuckerberg seem forced, serving as an important questions no one can claim awkward vehicle both for plot exposi - posed by the film that “The Social tion and for what is perhaps the film’s concern identity and friendship. The Network” is entirely accurate, it neatly most famous line, which Sorkin is said character of Sean Parker (Justin captures a sense of a greater truth to have heard from a Facebook execu - Timberlake), who founded the Web through its commentary on friendship tive who read a draft of the script: site Napster and provided advice to and betrayal, ambition and identity. It “Every creation myth needs a devil.” Zuckerberg during Facebook’s early raises an important question: How Despite uttering these words, Delpy is days, contributes to Zuckerberg’s inflat - much of your real-life social network the least compelling of the few female ed ego and immediately grasps are you willing to risk for money, fame characters in the film, all of whom are Facebook’s potential power. He or success? one-dimensional and seem to exist describes the site as “the true digitiza - Facebook advocates a more open solely as muses, admirers or groupies tion of your life.” society and urges users toward this by of the lead male characters. Is such a thing even possible? If so, asking them to share their lives online, Overall, the film moves at an unusu - is it desirable? Web sites like to define themselves through a limited ally rapid pace considering that the Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are set of characteristics, by a list of likes characters spend much of their time sit - increasingly popular; they allow peo - and dislikes or selected photos. But ting in front of computers or talking ple to present to others tailored ver - what the movie does, more than any - around a table. This should not sur - sions of themselves and to connect thing else, is demonstrate that building prise anyone familiar with Sorkin’s fast- with others in new ways. But there is real social networks is not that simple. paced writing; he is probably best something to be said for learning the The complexities of the human experi - known for his work on “The West name of a new friend’s favorite band, ence, of relationships, of an individual Wing” and the film “A Few Good Men.” book or movie through a good, old- or even a company, cannot be fully cap - Even as characters become bored, fashioned conversation rather than by tured by a few lines of code or images angry, drunk or indignant, Sorkin’s skimming an online profile. on a screen. writing renders them capable of the Facebook is an innovative, game- kind of sharp one-liners and rapid-fire changing, entertaining and addictive KERRY WEBER is an associate editor of banter that could make Shakespeare’s Web site. Yet amid the barrage of sta - America.

32 America November 1, 2010 Growing Dynamic Scholarship in the Catholic Intellectual Tradition he Institute for Advanced cation and responsibilities as a Catho- disciplines as diverse as sociology, bi- TCatholic Studies at the Uni- lic intellectual. This collegial dialogue ology, and literature. Three weekend versity of Southern California is proud enhances the scholarship of junior meetings provide opportunities for to announce its groundbreaking Gen- scholars while building inter-genera- prayer and discussion, enhanced by erations in Dialogue Program. In this tional academic community. continuous contact over the two-year innovative program, junior scholars Devoted to exploring the chal- term to leading Catholic intellectuals. dialogue with a distinguished senior lenges of connecting scholarship and All expenses are paid and a fellow- scholar in an exploration of their vo- faith, upcoming cohorts may hail from ship is provided. Previous participants have commented: “Generations in Dialogue helps a new generation of responsible, Catholic, For information about the Generations public intellectuals to integrate their lives as scholars and Christians.” in Dialogue program, please contact — Bronwen McShea, Yale University Gary Adler at: [email protected] “Generations in Dialogue renewed my sense of vocation as a scholar.” or by phone at 213-740-1864. — Anne McGinness, University of Notre Dame

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LOOKING FOR DIRECTOR OF LITURGY. St. Mary’s Seminary Wills and University in Baltimore invites applications Please remember America in your will. Our legal title from Roman Catholic priests for a position as is: America Press Inc., 106 West 56th Street, New Director of Liturgy for the School of York, NY 10019. Theology/Seminary program, beginning fall 2011. A JOB The Director is responsible for the planning and America classified. Classified advertisements are IN THE CATHOLIC SECTOR? supervision of all seminary liturgies. He works with accepted for publication in either the print version of the Director of Liturgical Music and reports to the America or on our Web site, www.americam - HIRING AT YOUR President-Rector. Graduate-seminary level teach - agazine.org. Ten-word minimum. Rates are per word CHURCH OR SCHOOL? ing in liturgical and/or sacramental theology and per issue. 1-5 times: $1.50; 6-11 times: $1.28; 12-23 service as a formator in the Sulpician tradition are times: $1.23; 24-41 times: $1.17; 42 times or more: GET THE WORD OUT WITH additional responsibilities of the position. The suc - $1.12. For an additional $30, your print ad will be cessful candidate should have both experience in posted on America ’s Web site for one week. Ads may practical liturgical direction and academic creden - be submitted by e-mail to: [email protected]; AMERICA! tialing. A terminal ecclesiastical degree in the field is by fax to (928) 222-2107; by postal mail to: Classified preferred; an earned graduate degree beyond ordi - Department, America , 106 West 56th St., New York, Job Listings are accepted for nation requirements is acceptable. Academic rank is NY 10019. To post a classified ad online, go to our publication in America's print and commensurate with prior achievement. home page and click on “Advertising”at the top of the web editions. Competitive salary and benefits package. page. We do not accept ad copy over the phone. Send letter, curriculum vitae and names of ref - MasterCard and Visa accepted. For more information For more information contact Julia erences to: Timothy Kulbicki, O.F.M.Conv., Dean call: (212) 515-0102. Sosa at [email protected] of the School of Theology, St. Mary’s Seminary Telephone: 212-515-0102 or visit: and University, 5400 Roland Avenue, Baltimore, America (ISSN 0002-7049) is published weekly (except for 13 combined issues: Jan. 4-11, 18-25, Feb. 1-8, April 12-19, June 7- MD 21210; or send e-mail to tkulbicki@ 14, 21-28, July 5-12, 19-26, Aug. 2-9, 16-23, Aug. 30-Sept. 6, stmarys.edu. Sept. 13-20, Dec. 20-27) by America Press, Inc., 106 West 56th WWW.AMERICAMAGAZINE.ORG Street, New York, NY 10019. Periodicals postage is paid at New York, N.Y., and additional mailing offices. Business Manager: Lisa ST. PATRICK’S SEMINARY & UNIVERSITY , the Pope; Circulation: Judith Palmer, (212) 581-4640. Subscriptions: United States, $56 per year; add U.S. $30 postage and GST Roman Catholic seminary of the Archdiocese of (#131870719) for Canada; or add U.S. $54 per year for interna - America San Francisco, announces the following faculty tional priority airmail. Postmaster: Send address changes to: America, 106 West 56th St. New York, NY 10019. Printed in the positions for the 2011/12 academic year: U.S.A.

34 America November 1, 2010 LETTERS But that is what happened when the Bible study classes in our parish. American English translation of the These experiences have been spoiled Do It My Way Latin Roman Missal was published for me by facilitators who vilify liberals I write to suggest a better way to elim - after the Second Vatican Council. and plug the pro-life agenda at every inate poverty than that proposed by Your comment disapproves of the opportunity. I often feel that your editorial “Robbing Peter to Pay” translation “for all” being changed to Democrats and/or liberals are no (9/27). It’s time to change fundamen - “for many.” But the original Greek longer welcome in the church. I tally the way our society approaches word is polys , in Latin multis , in thought Catholics were supposed to poverty. We should lobby Congress to English many . After Vatican II the show concern and compassion for the rewrite the tax code so that tax money bishops made it “all.” That’s not a new poor, for illegal immigrants and for used for social welfare would be translation; it’s a rewrite. those unjustly oppressed. I thought we returned to the people who earned it. CLAUDE GOLDEN were supposed to care for the environ - Shoreline, Wash. We need to let these people—through ment. All the emphasis on right-wing their God-given free will—decide how politics is driving many good people No Liberals Allowed that money will be spent. The time has away. I wish the Catholic clergy here in come to trust the Holy Spirit to guide LINDA PFEIFER South Carolina could read the review Bluffon, S.C. our charitable actions, not the federal by John Coleman, S.J., of the PBS government. MICHAEL SHESTERKIN series “God in America” (10/11). Exactly Who Is Not Saved? Livonia, Mich. Referring to James Davison Hunter’s Your current comment “The New To Change the World , Father Coleman Mass” (10/4) reminded me that I was Thou Shalt Not Rewrite says “Christians have opted for politi - taught in Catholic school that Christ I must say, in response to your current cal strategies that equate the public died for the sins of all men and comment “The New Mass” (10/4), with the political in ways harmful to women, not for “many.” that I’m sorry, but it is not O.K. to both religion and politics.” It appears that the new translation rewrite the Bible. Not even a commit - Since moving here from Michigan, I is heretical, since it implies exclusive - tee of bishops is authorized to do so. have tried to deepen my faith by taking ness by not adhering to the usage “all

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November 1, 2010 America 35 men.” Can Rome let us know for Reading your editorial, I am left $1(:3$571(56+,3 which men and women Christ did with the impression that much of the not die? difficulty with the present negotia - EDWARD J. THOMPSON tions is the fault of the Palestinians, Farmingdale, N.Y. who delayed their entrance into the peace negotiations. And if the subju - When Will We Know? gation of the Palestinians “is begin - I was saddened to read your editorial ning more and more to look like “Israel’s Choice”(10/11). Benjamin apartheid,” I am left wondering what Netanyahu is on record as saying that criterion you would use to determine he stopped the Oslo accords and that when it actually happened. The America is something that can be eas - $PHULFDLVSOHDVHGWR Palestinians are being deprived of ily moved. Your mention of the “con - their land while the world looks on, DQQRXQFHRXU tention by the Israeli pacifist group and the United States continues to FROODERUDWLRQZLWK Peace Now that construction slowed give aid. Israel retaliates many times 0LUDGD*OREDODQRQOLQH but did not freeze completely during over for any aggression on the part of MRXUQDOWKDWEULQJVWRJHWKHU the moratorium” gives the impression Palestinians, and Gaza has become a DUWLFOHVIURP-HVXLW that it is only one opinion; it is fact. prison camp. SXEOLFDWLRQVLQ1RUWKDQG Illegal construction continued unabat - I find it tragic that our American 6RXWK$PHULFD5HDGRXU ed, while planning and gathering sup - media, including this fine publication, ZHHNO\VHOHFWLRQIURP plies for “legal” construction continued continue to paint the picture as a during the break in actual construc - 0LUDGD*OREDODW struggle between equals and ignore the tion. According to the Geneva accords DPHULFDPDJD]LQHRUJPJ egregious violations of international and U.N. resolutions, Israel’s very 2UYLVLW0LUDGD*OREDODW law on the part of the Israeli govern - presence in the occupied territories, PLUDGDJOREDOFRP ment. much less their colonizing efforts, is MAURICE RESTIVO, C.S.B. already illegal. Angleton, Tex.

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November 1, 2010 America 37 THE WORD Angelic Legacy THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (C), NOV. 7, 2010 Readings: 2 Mc 7:1-2, 9-14; Ps 17:1-15; 2 Thes 2:16-35; Lk 20:27-38 “They can no longer die, for they are like angels and they are children of God” (Lk 20:36)

here is within the human spir - ducees pose to Jesus what looks like a angels appear at the most critical it an indomitable will to preposterous question. As usual, they moments. Their function is to to inter - T live—not only our earthly life, are antagonistic toward Jesus, and their pret puzzling and disturbing events but beyond it. Few share the perspec - question is meant to show the impossi - through divine eyes. Gabriel announces tive of the artist Andy Warhol: “I never bility of resurrection, a belief Jesus to Zechariah and to Mary God’s ability understood why when you died, you espoused (Lk 14:14). to bring forth life and blessing in didn’t just vanish. Everything could just They try to show that the most impossible of circum - keep going on the way it was only you Jesus’ belief is at odds stances. At the transfiguration just wouldn’t be there. I always thought with the law of two heavenly messengers, I’d like my own tombstone to be blank. Moses. They cite Moses and Elijah, interpret No epitaph and no name.” the levirate law Jesus’ impending death as the Most people want to be remembered (Dt 25:5-6), new Exodus (the Greek word for having made a difference in the whose intent exodos means both “departure” world during their earthly sojourn. was to ensure Sometimes we muse about what we that a man’s name not would want on our tombstone. For be blotted out of Israel. Instead, the PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE what do we most want to be remem - Sadducees frame the question in • How does belief in resurrection make you bered? For people in Jesus’ day, it was terms of the men’s possession of the a messenger of hope in the present? important to leave their mark in the woman in the afterlife. world through the children they left Jesus’ response undoes their mis - • How are you already writing your own tombstone? behind. Some, like the Sadducees, did perceptions by affirming that there e N N not believe in any other form of life will be no patriarchal marital • Contemplate the God of the living, to u d

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The notion of resurrected life only will be no need to ensure one’s lega - a began to emerge some 200 years cy through the children one leaves before Jesus. Ideas varied about what it behind. Rather, one continues to live and “death”) to liberated life (Lk 9:31). would be like. In the first reading as God’s child, no longer haunted by At the empty tomb, two angelic figures today, we see the belief expressed that the shadow of death. Using their own (24:4-7) convey a message of hope in only the just would be raised, not the exegetical tools, Jesus shows the the most terrible moment. Angelic life, wicked. In other texts we find the Sadducees that Moses himself can be as Luke portrays it, consists in being a notion that both would be raised, the read as affirming that life continues messenger of hope in the most awful of former for eternal reward, the latter beyond the grave. We can hear as well, circumstances. It is the refusal already for everlasting punishment (Mt in Jesus’ response, God’s desire for an in this life to allow evil to triumph; it is 25:46). end to any abuse of women. As not simply delayed reward in the In the Gospel today, some Sad- beloved daughters of God, they are no beyond. It is, as Maya Angelou wrote of longer passed on from man to man. the “dreams and the hopes of the slave” BARBARA E. REID, O.P., a member of the Feeding our curiosity about what in her poem “Still I Rise”: “You may Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids, Mich., is resurrected life will be like, Jesus drops shoot me with your words/ You may a professor of New Testament studies at one small hint: “They are like angels,” or cut me with your eyes/ You may kill me Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Ill., where she is vice president and academic heavenly messengers ( angelos in Greek with your hatefulness/ But still, like air, dean. means messenger). In Luke’s Gospel I’ll rise.” BARBARA E. REID

38 America November 1, 2010 REAL PRESENCE NEEDED! . d e v r e s e r

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Modern Spiritual Masters Series

Frank Sheed David Steindl-Rast & Maisie Ward Essential Writings Spiritual Writings Selected with an Introduction by Selected with an Introduction by Clare Hallward David Meconi, S.J. One of the most influential spiritual “[They] combined a love of the church writers of our time on such themes with a generous, zealous, and courageous as gratefulness, prayer, silence, and spirit. This collection of their spiritual love. Here monastic wisdom meets writings will help cement their the spiritual questions and hungers contribution.” — Dana Greene, author, of our age. The Living of Maisie Ward 978-1-57075-888-1 pbk $20.00 978-1-57075-887-4 pbk $20.00

Hidden in Enter Justice Rising the Rubble the Story The Emerging A Haitian Biblical Biblical Vision Pilgrimage to Metaphors for JOHN HEAGLE Compassion and Our Lives Takes Jesus’ phrase, Resurrection FRAN FERDER “a spring of water GERARD THOMAS This delightful gushing up to STRAUB reading of the eternal life” as a Offers a powerful Scriptures shows metaphor for the and haunting how our lives emergence of God’s challenge to enter are part of the solidarity in all into compassionate solidarity with the great mystery of holy stories that human relationships. poor at our doorstep. keep unfolding. 978-1-57075-884-3 pbk $22.00 Photos 978-1-57075-897-3 pbk $18.00 978-1-57075-885-0 pbk $18.00

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