OF MANY THINGS 106 West 56th Street or most of his life my father has that he was not sure whom he was going New York, NY 10019-3803 Ph: (212) 581-4640; Fax: (212) 399-3596 been a man who “votes for the to vote for because he is so disgusted Subscriptions: (800) 627-9533 person, not the party,” even if with our national politics. Hilary, www.americamedia.org F facebook.com/americamag that person is more often than not a Marco, The Donald—we’re all on a twitter.com/americamag Republican. This has always made sense first-name basis now with these people to me, for Dad is a conservative guy we’ve never met. I suspect my father and President and Editor in Chief (lowercase c); he generally needs to hear I could adapt to that unwelcome though Matt Malone, S.J. Executive Editors a good reason for changing something still rather minor social innovation. Robert C. Collins, S.J., Maurice Timothy Reidy that seems to have worked well for quite It’s the rest of it that is so deeply Managing Editor Kerry Weber a while. Yet he is also an undogmatic, troubling. I have spoken with parents Literary Editor Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. critical thinker, pragmatic and who have told me they don’t let their Senior Editor and Chief Correspondent independent. You’re never going to see kids watch the debates because they Kevin Clarke Editor at Large James Martin, S.J. him on the floor of a G.O.P. convention don’t want them to think that that is Executive Editor, America Films wearing a Stetson and waving a placard. an acceptable way for adults to behave. Jeremy Zipple, S.J. Still, he loves politics, a passion I’ve spoken with high school principals Poetry Editor Joseph Hoover, S.J. he bequeathed to me. Boys often who have told me that their students Associate Editor and Vatican Correspondent accompany their dads to ball games see little use for politics except as a Gerard O’Connell Associate Editor and Director of Digital and the like. But I was the only one punchline. I myself wondered whether Strategy Sam Sawyer, S.J. who asked if I could go with him to a single young person watching this Senior Editor Edward W. Schmidt, S.J. Town Meeting, my hometown’s own spectacle would be moved to enter Associate Editors Ashley McKinless, Olga incarnation of that venerable New public service. Would any one of them Segura, Robert David Sullivan England tradition. From a young think that this is a noble calling that is Assistant Editor Joseph McAuley Art Director Sonja Kodiak Wilder worthy of the best in ourselves? age, I saw there in our middle school Editorial Assistant Zachary Davis gymnasium democracy in action, with Over this last weekend, after Donald Columnists Helen Alvaré, John J. Conley, S.J., all its beauty and comic error, its low Trump called Ted Cruz “a liar” and Daniel P. Horan, O.F.M., James T. Keane, John W. Martens, Bill McGarvey, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, stakes and high drama. Marco Rubio “a choke artist,” Mr. Rubio Margot Patterson, Nathan Schneider My dad would explain every detail pushed back by mocking Mr. Trump’s Correspondents John Carr (Washington), An- to me, pointing with pride, for example, appearance, the size of his fingers and thony Egan, S.J., and Russell Pollitt, S.J. (Johannes- to the fact that the rules required us even the size of his genitalia. Mr. Rubio’s burg), Jim McDermott, S.J. (Los Angeles), Timothy Padgett (Miami), Steven Schwankert (Beijing), to refer to one another as “Mr. Smith” crowds cheered him on, much like first- David Stewart, S.J. (London), Judith Valente or “Mrs. Jones” and to the chair of century Romans at a gladiatorial contest. (Chicago) the proceedings as “Mr. Moderator.” The media, meanwhile, who share a Moderator, Catholic Book Club Kevin Spinale, S.J. hefty size of the blame for our descent The inherent nobility of the event, he Editor, The Jesuit Post Michael Rossmann, S.J. explained, required a certain decorum into gutter politics, sat back in faux- Editorial e-mail and civility. shock, pretending not to know how all [email protected]

On the way home from Town this came to be. Publisher and Chief Financial Officer Meeting, I would pepper my dad with When the major candidates for Edward G. Spallone Deputy Publisher Rosa M. Del Saz Vice President for Advancement Daniel questions about what had happened, president of the United States are Pawlus Advertising Sales Manager Chris Keller why so-and-so had said what he did, saying and doing such things and are Development Coordinator Kerry Goleski why what’s-his-name voted the way then rewarded for it in poll after poll, Business Operations Staff Khairah Walker, Glenda Castro, Katy Zhou, Frankarlos Cruz he did. My father would patiently then I no longer recognize my own Advertising Contact [email protected]; explain and then wrap up the evening country. Like my father, I don’t know 212-515-0102 Subscription contact/Additional copies 1-800-627-9533 Reprints: reprints@ by reminding me that politics is a noble whom I’ll vote for. A pro-life, pro- americamedia.org pursuit and civic duty is something we immigration, economic liberal who is © 2016 America Press Inc. take seriously. After all, most of the no fan of guns but still a constitutional world at the time did not have the right originalist has no natural home in to vote for anything. either party. My father, I suspect, is now My dad taught me all that, virtues similarly homeless. But he would likely Cover top: Sara Lazzaro as Mary and Adam and memories I cherish. You can say that he didn’t leave the Republican Greaves-Neal as Jesus in “The Young Messiah,” Photo: Focus Features/Philippe Antonello. Bottom: imagine, then, how dispiriting it was to party. The party left him. Joseph Fiennes as Clavius and Tom Felton as Lu- hear during a recent visit with my father MATT MALONE, S.J. cius in “Risen,” CNS photo/Columbia Pictures. Contents www.americamagazine.org VOL. 214 NO. 9, WHOLE NO. 5121 March 14, 2016

ARTICLES 14 FINAL REWARDS The place of death and mourning in contemporary life Alice McDermott • Thomas Lynch

19 A DOWNSIZED DREAM Building solidarity at the margins Doug Demeo

COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS

4 Current Comment

14 5 Editorial What Did He Say?

6 Reply All

8 Signs of the Times

12 Column Gloves Off James T. Keane

22 Vatican Dispatch Plane Speaking Gerard O’Connell

25 Faith in Focus The Mystery of Sadness Jeffrey Essmann

38 The Word Dying as He Lived John W. Martens

25 BOOKS & CULTURE

28 FILM “Risen” and “The Young Messiah” POEM The Wind of God… OF OTHER THINGS It’s Been a Privilege BOOKS Between the World and Me; Agents of Empire; Inventing American Religion

ON THE WEB On “America This Week,” Elias D. Mallon, S.A., right, talks about challenges to religious liberty, and the Catholic Book Club discusses When Breath Becomes Air, by Paul Kalanithi. Full digital highlights on page 27 and at americamagazine. org/webfeatures. 28 CURRENT COMMENT

has been impressive, and those casting Democratic ballots Replacing an Ancient Ritual have gone overwhelmingly (83 percent in New Hampshire) The practice of female genital cutting is a longstanding for Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont over Hillary tradition in many parts of Africa and in some Arab Clinton. Many older Democrats are startled by the success countries. Also called female genital mutilation or of a self-identified socialist, and some are concerned that female circumcision, the procedure involves cutting, younger women in particular are failing to rally around removing or stitching together some portion of the female Mrs. Clinton, who would be the first woman to secure a genital organs for nonmedical reasons. A recent report major-party nomination. from the U.N. Children’s Fund found that it is more The older generation may not be wrong: Mr. Sanders’s widespread than once thought. The group discovered ambitious proposals would likely go nowhere in a that approximately 60 million women in Indonesia have Republican Congress, and his ability to win a general undergone genital cutting; Indonesia is the 30th country election is questionable. But it is short-sighted to dismiss in which the practice has been identified. Genital cutting is his supporters as naïve or ignorant of history. Younger seen as a rite of passage for girls as young as 6 years old and voters have good reason to demand changes to a political often is motivated by a cultural desire to ensure a woman’s process and economic system that seems more responsive purity, obedience or submissiveness. While some women (“rigged,” Mr. Sanders calls it) to high-income campaign are proud to participate in the procedure and feel it builds contributors than to the majority of Americans, who face community, for many of the more than 200 million women widening income inequality and fewer opportunities for worldwide who have experienced it, genital cutting can upward mobility. They are not satisfied with candidates’ result in both immediate and long-term health issues. résumés or with arguments about who has “earned” the As recently reported by Global Sisters Report, Sister presidency, nor should they be. Ephigenia Gachiri has spent 16 years traveling through Kenya—where 27 percent of women aged 15 to 49 have undergone some form of genital cutting—in an effort to Breaking Up With Europe change cultural ideas around the practice. As part of her When is the last time you heard good news coming out of efforts, she has created an alternative, Christian, coming- Brussels? Between the Greek debt crisis and a resurgent of-age ritual that could replace the practice of genital Russia, ISIS-inspired attacks and an influx of refugees, cutting. It is an idea that should be implemented widely, it has been a rough few years for the European Union. aided by the local outposts of the global church. The option Now many in the United Kingdom want out. Following of an alternate ritual, whether based in religious or local marathon negotiations with European leaders in February, tradition, could help communities to recognize the dangers Prime Minister David Cameron, fulfilling a campaign of genital cutting and protect the health of young women promise, announced a referendum, scheduled for June 23, while still showing respect for the importance of tradition, to decide the future of the country’s E.U. membership. community and the dignity of the person. Mr. Cameron called for the vote only after winning a number of concessions from Brussels, including limits on the benefits that must be paid to E.U. migrant workers; fair The Youth Vote, Seriously treatment for countries that opt out of the euro; and, most The youngest voters in this year’s presidential primaries had significant, assurance that “references to ever-closer union not yet learned to walk when the House of Representatives do not apply to the United Kingdom.” While the prime impeached President Bill Clinton in December 1998. Few minister is now campaigning to remain within that union, of them have heard of Vince Foster, the Clinton advisor a number of his fellow Tories support the so-called Brexit, whose suicide was exploited by conspiracy theorists, and and the British public is almost evenly split on the question. they have no personal memory of Hillary Clinton’s TV Many of the challenges facing Europe—from migration interview in which she first identified a “vast right-wing to climate change—do require a unified response. But E.U. conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband leaders cannot combat growing euroskepticism, not just since the day he announced for president.” in Britain but in countries from Greece to Germany, by This generation can be unnerving to older voters whose simply dismissing nationalist sentiment as a relic of the last political worldviews are still defined by the partisan battles century. If the future is not to be “ever-closer union,” E.U. of the 1990s and, in many cases, the Cold War. In this defenders need to formulate a new vision for the European winter’s first few contests, turnout among voters under 30 project—and they should not wait until June 23 to do so.

4 America March 14, 2016 EDITORIAL What Did He Say? ope Francis was drawn into the U.S. electoral cir- best reserved for Sunday morning pi- cus at the close of his Mexico trip in mid-February. eties. This is a strange presumption— PDuring the return flight to Rome, a reporter asked that well-educated people, informed on about some comments made by Republican candidate the matters of their times, should none- Donald Trump. “A person who thinks only about building theless restrict themselves exclusively to walls, wherever they may be, and not of building bridges, matters of personal expertise. What a ba- is not Christian,” the pope said, emphasizing that he would nal civil discussion that limitation would pro- give the candidate the benefit of the doubt. duce, were it ever prescribed for people outside ecclesiastical These off-the-cuff comments were just enough to leadership. begin—again—a small media frenzy. Pundits and pew-sit- Yes, the pope speaks with authority on issues outside ters alike objected that the pope had no business involving his personal credentials, and he should be attended to when himself in the U.S. elections; others were already agitated he does. His experience and erudition are broader and deep- by the symbolic moment Francis had orchestrated earlier er than many suppose. When he speaks of a throwaway eco- that day, pausing in prayer alongside the Mexican bank of nomic system, he speaks from a real-world perspective that the Rio Grande for migrants lost attempting to reach the Catholics in North America would do well to consider. And other side. they may rest assured that the commentary offered by Pope Many people do not blink when the pope sounds off Francis is buttressed by a legion of unseen experts hidden on issues related to what are perceived as personal morality; away in the Vatican. he in fact deplored abortion as an “absolute evil” in the same Pope Francis and bishops, domestic and internation- back-of-the-plane press conference without drawing much al, not only possess the expertise and the authority to make attention. But when Pope Francis and other church leaders “political” pronouncements; as the moral and spiritual lead- have shared their perspectives on some of the other concerns ers of the world’s 1.25 billion Catholics, they have an obliga- of contemporary times—typically economic, ecological or tion to do so. And Catholics have the obligation to consider social issues—their authority has been challenged and the prayerfully the instruction they offer. As faithful citizens usefulness of their contributions to the domestic or interna- their vocation is to bring their perspectives into the public tional dialogue undermined. Mr. Trump himself had earlier forum. Francis offers an example of how to do this fruit- described the pope as “political” because of his frequent calls fully, speaking freely and assuming the good intentions of for a humanitarian response to migration. people on the other side of an argument. (See “Francis’ Call The pope’s clever response on this note is instructive. to Conscience,” by Bishop Stephen E. Blaire, at americamag- Pope Francis embraced the attempted pejorative, moving po- azine.org.) litical away from the squabble and bicker with which it has Suggestions that Pope Francis and church leaders become associated and restoring some of its Aristotelian should demur from important debates because they are too splendor—as a descriptive term that should connote the best “technical” or “political” convert religion into a pale, flighty expression of policymaking reached through civic and civil thing. In this instance, short-sighted co-religionists ally with dialogue. Of course he was political, the pope said; all peo- confirmed secularists to diminish the vibrant social role reli- ple who live in society together are by definition political. It gion should play in public discourse, corralling it into a safe is through the political that personal views and concerns are liturgical and private preserve. expressed and practical things get done. Resetting expectations about what the pope “should” Recalling Jonah’s warnings and admonitions to the say would be healthy, psychologically and spiritually. This people of Nineveh, Pope Francis in Ciudad Juárez urged the pope has been a miracle of thinking-out-loud reform. The episcopal and social elite of Mexico to convert before they results can be refreshing and transformative, but it is not a lead their nation to ruin. Was Francis speaking politically or risk-free style of ecclesial leadership. Some missteps are in- prophetically in these moments? Is there a difference? evitable. Better to learn how to live with that tension with- Another frequent objection to “papal overstepping” is out hitting panic buttons whenever something Pope Francis that the pope does not have the expertise to comment on says jars us awake, remembering that being awakened from weighty matters outside church walls, as if his insights were complacency is never a bad thing.

March 14, 2016 America 5 REPLY ALL of abortion and starvation in poorer citizens too many. developing countries, might we not HENRY GEORGE A Quieter Politics want to reconsider the church’s strin- Online Comment Most of what is written in “Election gent objections to some forms of birth A Challenging Cycle Angst” (Editorial, 2/22) is rather su- control? Overpopulation, even relative “The Pope in Mexico” (Editorial, 2/8): perficial and has been over-talked and overpopulation, in poor countries has Am I missing all the editorials express- over-written so much that most peo- contributed to the refugee problem ing deep concerns that both leading ple have already heard it in one form and destruction of social infrastruc- Democrat candidates are enthusiasti- or another. Moreover, the Ignatian ture and has strained limited natural cally favoring the abortion industry at suggestion of inner silence and re- resources, contributing to social and every opportunity? The border issue flection is common not merely to the political instability and environmental is indeed challenging for Catholics to Google executive but, more import- catastrophes. consider, of course. But I would like ant, to equally old or older Christian I am sensitive to the church’s moral to also read the editors’ opinion on the and non-Christian traditions than objections to many forms of contra- deeply troubling number of Christians that of St. Ignatius. ception. But I cannot help wondering supporting these Democrats. There The former notwithstanding, how- if the lack of contraceptive resourc- is much to be upset about across the ever, inner silence can be a curative for es has not contributed to unwanted board this election cycle. fear, which fuels frustration, anxiety, pregnancies, especially in the poorer MINDY LANDRY anger and violence. It is old wisdom segments of our own society, and in- Baton Rouge, La. in a world of noise. But taking up the creased reliance on abortion services, banner of wisdom and good judgment particularly among the young and un- The Problem With Purity is not exactly the historical marker of wed. I would prefer health care dollars “Create in Me a Just Heart,” by Megan human beings. For those who may not to be spent on prevention and not one McCabe (2/8), an analysis of porn as have read it but are particularly interest- penny spent on abortion. a societal sin, is enlightening and well ed in a deeper exploration of solitude, I JAMES MURPHY researched. The most important part would recommend the book Solitude: Philadelphia, Pa. of this piece is the ending, because the A Return to the Self, by Anthony Storr critique of the bishops’ focus on purity Another’s Burden (1988). Unfortunately, most are too as inadequate applies to many prob- hurried, preoccupied and extrinsic to Re “Immigrant Flood—Really?” lems besides porn. This view of sexual- engage in the personal peace that al- (Current Comment, 2/15): The ques- ity is a festering problem in our church lows us to see more clearly ways to solve tion is not how much of a change tradition. Sexual morality ought to be our problems, elect integrated persons there has been in the number of peo- centered in just relationships, rather to high office and give comfort to the ple crossing the borders, but what be- than moral purity. Whether an act or many who feel absolutely overwhelmed comes of them after they arrive. Are desire offends against purity is a sec- by nonresponsive others. they exploited by employers? Go vis- ondary question. The primary ques- JAMES BOOTH it your local slaughterhouse. Do they tions ought to be, “Does this behavior Online Comment put undue burdens on public facili- enhance or degrade proper loving re- ties? Visit your public school or hospi- lationships?” “Is a human being being Contraception Compromise tal. Do they “take” jobs from American used as an object?” “Does this desire “The Greatness of a Nation,” by Bishop citizens? Hire a contractor to do work affirm or violate the dignity of self and Robert McElroy (2/15), should be on your house and check every work- others?” read by all Catholics of voting age. The er’s papers. This approach has helped me in “four pillars of life” he identifies are in- The vast majority of readers of my own spiritual development in a deed priority issues that all American America do not fear losing their jobs way that obsessing about purity never Catholics should be considering as to “undocumented migrants” and do could. I believe many problems in the they choose to support candidates this not face depressed wages because an church, the first being the sexual abuse election year. undocumented worker might take scandal, would have been handled We need also, however, to consid- their job. I do not know what the just better if a sexual ethic of just relation- er in what areas compromise might solution to the problem is, but 10.9 ships were integrated and consistently positively affect these issues so funda- million undocumented migrants is practiced. mental to respect for life. If we want to not a small number; and if you are un- TRACEY HOELZLE offer realistic solutions to the horrors employed, it may be 10.9 million non- Fremont, Ohio

6 America March 14, 2016 A Stronger Point paralyzed, there is little comfort in highlighting any faith. The university I agree with the overall point in feeling ever so sorry I am paralyzed. complied.” “What’s Catholic About It?” (2/8), by Someone must minister to me with A crucifix, as we all know, has no J. Michael Byron, but I do not think healing forgiveness, with a mercy to power in and of itself any more than the analogy with professional schools be heard. Ecumenism doesn’t need to a scapular does. Yet I wear my scapu- works. Offering “legal studies” in a law move forward as much as it needs to lar daily, and we have a simple crucifix school would be silly, but “Catholic move ever deeper. There is no comfort hanging in our home prominently so studies” in a Catholic university does in pretending not to be paralyzed or to that we can be reminded daily. The faith not transfer. Yes, the Catholic ethos be excused from moving more deeply walk is a journey. A fall here, a rise there, of an educational institution should from a tolerance in sharing apologies rock upon rock, stone upon stone. It is pervade the study of every discipline, to a communion in mutual forgiveness. the little things that form us day by day but that is different than saying that Undoing paralysis is a Lenten project! and tell others who we are. in a Catholic university you study Mercy with its forgiveness needs to be GUILLERMO REYES “Catholic economics,” “Catholic math- received at the Vatican, at Jerusalem, at Online Comment ematics,” etc. To this end, one can make Mecca and eventually on the earth. a case that “Catholic studies” can justi- (REV.) JEROME KNIES God the Mother Racine, Wis. fy its distinct existence alongside other It is lamentable that the word moth- disciplines. I think the stronger point er does not appear in “The Merciful Small Signs of Faith here is that Catholic studies promotes Father,” by Msgr. Peter Vaghi (2/1). “Our Reason for Being,” an excel- the “sectarian or ideological notion of God is as much a loving mother as a lent article by Don Briel, Kenneth E. Catholicism.” loving father. This is duly recognized in Goodpaster and Michael Naughton REBECCA KRIER Pope John Paul II’s encyclical “Rich in Online Comment (2/1), brought to mind the controversy Mercy,” albeit only in paragraphs 52 and over religious symbols (or lack there- 61. The Name of God Is Mercy is the title A Mercy to Be Heard of ) at Georgetown University. In 2009, of a book by Pope Francis, but the Year In “Interreligious Leaders” (2/1), Gerard President Obama went to Georgetown of Mercy logo still shows the familiar O’Connell reports a day of reflection to give a speech on economic policy “10 old man with a long beard. Too bad, be- at the Vatican during Lent for inter- years after the university decided to cause “God the Father” is not exclusively religious dialogue among Christians, install crucifixes in classrooms,” wrote male, “God the Son” became a male only Jews and Muslims. “Speaking with Laura Engshuber in The Hoya (“At at the incarnation, and the image of a Mercy” (Signs of the Times, 2/8) re- a Crossroads,” 3/29/12). “The White benign patriarch no longer resonates layed Pope Francis’ message for World House requested that the IHS symbol, much, especially in men. Communications Day. This ecumen- which denotes Jesus Christ, be covered LUIS GUTIERREZ ical dialogue must move from merely up to provide a simple background not Online Comment “speaking with mercy” to “hearing.” There is a mercy to be heard—that is, a forgiveness to be received. In the in- terest of ecumenism, many apologies are sincerely spoken. Compared to for- giveness, however, apologies are offered from a position of power and comfort. Apologies are spoken. A forgiving mer- cy needs to be heard. The distinction between apolo- gy and forgiveness becomes obvious when the questions are: When, where or how has the church ever received forgiveness for its anti-Semitism, the Inquisition or colonialism? Apologies are offered, but forgiveness is received. That’s the hard part. Think of the par- alyzed man in the Gospels. If I am BOB ECKSTEIN CARTOON:

March 14, 2016 America 7 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

SYRIAN CIVIL WAR FUN AMONG THE RUINS. On the day before a ceasefire began two As Conflict Continues, Holy See Syrian boys play with a toy gun and soccer ball between destroyed Officials Promote Peace Under Fire buildings. ven in the midst of bombings, Vatican ambassadors stay put, risking their lives while working to end what Pope Francis has termed a “piecemeal” EWorld War III, said the Vatican minister of foreign affairs. “Let’s not be kidding ourselves about what the stakes are here: If we are going to bring peace, if we are going to reconcile nations, if we are going to secure countries and com- munities, particularly minorities, particularly people who are persecuted, we are going to have to make an unprecedented effort,” Archbishop Paul R. Gallagher said on Feb. 25. Archbishop Gallagher, whose formal title is secretary for relations with states, oversees Vatican diplomatic efforts to “know what is going on in the world, un- derstand it and interpret it” in order to advise the pope and others in the Roman Curia, the church’s central administration. Pope Francis has earned a reputation for taking risks with his own safety—for example, when in November he traveled to the Central African Republic, an active war zone. “From the top, that example is being given,” Archbishop Gallagher said. Knowing the pope willingly puts his life in danger “inspires the rest of us to go the extra mile with him as well,” he said. A case in point is Archbishop Mario Zenari, the Vatican nuncio in war-torn Syria, Archbishop Gallagher said. Archbishop Zenari, “throughout the time international negotiations have tremists who are prepared to embrace whole of this conflict, has remained at brought any degree of quiet in Syria’s violence and terrorism, one is com- his post and has made a very signifi- five-year civil war. But success re- pletely at a loss to say what one can do cant contribution” to the peacemaking quires adherence by multiple armed with such people,” he said. effort that is underway, he said. factions—and the truce is made more Nevertheless, the archbishop Speaking specifically of the crisis in fragile because it allows fighting to stressed that “there will be an end to Syria and Iraq, where so-called Islamic continue against the Islamic State this conflict in Syria. It will take a lot State militants have captured large group and Nusra Front, which could of goodwill, a lot of sacrifice on the swaths of territory and driven out easily reignite broader warfare. part many of the actors, but we have tens of thousands of Christians and The Syrian government and the to bring it about. It must happen.” members of other minority groups, opposition, including nearly 100 reb- Archbishop Gallagher said he is hope- el groups, have said they will abide by IRISH ELECTIONS ful for a resolution of the conflict. A the cease-fire despite serious skepti- cease-fire brokered by the United cism about chances for success. States and Russia came into effect Archbishop Gallagher said the Year of the across Syria on Feb. 26, marking the Vatican and its diplomats are working Independents? biggest international push to reduce with people on the ground in Syria to violence in the country’s devastating foster interreligious dialogue in the re- reland’s 2016 general election conflict. The United Nations envoy, gion as part of the peacemaking effort. has produced a parliament full of Staffan de Mistura, announced that “We are not in dialogue with Ifeuding factions and no obvious peace talks would resume on March Daesh,” Archbishop Gallagher said, road to a majority government, spur- 7 if the cessation of hostilities “largely using another name for the Islamic ring lawmakers to warn on Sunday holds.” State. “Unfortunately, it’s true that that the country could face a protract- If it does, it would be the first [with] the extremists, particularly ex- ed political deadlock followed by a sec-

8 America March 14, 2016 which rebounded in this vote just five troduction of controversial new prop- years after facing electoral ruin for erty taxes, water charges and income nearly bankrupting the country—said taxes, not to mention the transfer of a they would find it extremely hard to huge amount of private debt into the forge any coalition that keeps Prime public domain. Ireland’s flawed health Minister Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael in system has dominated the debates this power. election, along with the housing crisis The trouble is, Ireland’s voters have and homelessness. never produced a parliament like this The mutual hostility between before. And there’s no third party Ireland’s two dominant parties has strong enough to give Fianna Fáil or been festering for decades, though it Fine Gael a parliamentary majority may mystify outsiders who do not have of at least 79 seats. Both parties have a grasp of Ireland’s peculiar politics and ruled out working with Sinn Fein, its roots in the civil war struggle nearly the only party that could get either of a century ago. In fact, the real question them close. When the new parliament for many Irish voters is no longer pars- convenes on March 10 to elect a prime ing the difference between Fianna Fáil minister to appoint a government, both or Fine Gael, but between those who Kenny and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál feel they have a stake in Irish public Martin say they will put themselves life and those who feel completely dis- forward as rival candidates. Failure to illusioned and disconnected from the create a new government would mean political system. The crash hit every

AP PHOTO/HASSAN AMMAR Kenny’s five-year-old coalition with home in the country, if not through job Labour continues indefinitely in a loss or emigration, then through con- ond election. For the first time in Irish lame-duck caretaker role. troversial new taxes and levies. electoral history, the combined pop- Fine Gael swept to victory in the The shift in the Irish psyche is not ular vote on Feb. 26 for Ireland’s two last election, capitalizing on the cat- unlike the one in the United States political heavyweights—the Fianna astrophic fall from grace of Ireland’s that has led to the rise of Donald J. Fáil and Fine Gael parties—fell below other traditionally dominant party, Trump and Bernie Sanders, candi- 50 percent as voters infuriated by aus- Fianna Fáil. The latter saw Ireland dates propelled by an electorate that terity measures shifted their support through the boom- to a Babel of antigovernment voices. ing Celtic Tiger COUNTDOWN TO COALITION. Fianna Fáil Leader Micheál The results left parliament with years, but its poli- Martin, right, and Michael McGrath celebrate their party’s at least nine factions and a legion of cies ultimately led strong showing at City Hall in Cork, Ireland, on Feb. 27. loose-cannon independents, few of to the collapse of them easy partners for a coalition the Irish economy in government, none of them numer- 2008. As the major- ous enough to make a difference on ity party since 2011, their own. With 12 seats in Ireland’s Fine Gael has pro- 158-member parliament still to be moted the idea that filled, the ruling Fine Gael won 46 it brought Ireland seats, and its longtime foe Fianna Fáil back from a crip- 42, the Irish nationalist Sinn Féin pling recession with 22 and junior government partner jobs and investment. Labour just six. An eye-popping array While that recov- of tiny parties, umbrella groups and ery is evident, the parochial mavericks won the rest. process has not been

CHRIS RADBURN/PA VIA AP CHRIS RADBURN/PA Leading members of Fianna Fáil— painless, with the in-

March 14, 2016 America 9 SIGNS OF THE TIMES feels disenchanted with the political establishment. If 2016 is the year of NEWS BRIEFS the outsider in the United Sates, it has become the year of the independent in The Italian Senate passed on Feb. 25 a con- Ireland. troversial bill that grants legal recognition to nonmarried heterosexual and homosex- ual couples, after sponsors removed a clause Protecting Manila Bay that would have allowed a nonbiological Manila area church officials said pro- parent in a homosexual union to adopt the Mozambique refugees posed land reclamation projects in the biological children of his or her partner. metro area may not be environmen- • A Canadian parliamentary committee recommended on Feb. 25 tally sound and would likely affect that physician-assisted suicide be allowed for people with psychi- the livelihood of the poor. Msgr. José atric conditions and children younger than 18 and that physicians Clemente Ignacio, vicar general of the who object to assisted suicide be required to make a referral for such Archdiocese of Manila, said a 365-acre action. • About half the refugees from Mozambique at a crowd- proposed tourist city on an elevated ed camp in the village of Kapise, Malawi, have contracted malaria, platform in Manila Bay, to be called said Rufino Seva, the Malawi country director for the Jesuit Refugee Solar City, is a particular concern for Service. • Archbishop Robert Carlson of St. Louis has formed a new the church. “We see the dangers that it committee for girls’ formation after expressing ongoing concerns in will cause to society, to marine life, to a letter on Feb. 18 that the policies of Girl Scouts USA and the our food, for our livelihood, so all these London-based World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts things will affect us,” Msgr. Ignacio said were in “conflict with Catholic values.” • About 150 former pupils in mid-February. “And because of man’s and boarders at the former Montreal Institute for the Deaf who self-centered concept of development were sexually abused between 1940 and 1982 will share $21.6 mil- and growth and profit-orientedness, lion after their class action lawsuits were settled in mid-February. we do not see the effect it will have. Especially for the poor.” Msgr. Ignacio said Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si’, on Care for Our Common Home,” along the riverbank. “We need infor- diocesan director of pastoral planning, makes a clear connection between ad- mation about what lies ahead, about the diocese recently unveiled a draft vocating for creation and social justice the health precautions we should take, pastoral plan that strives to create and how “capitalistic philosophies” about how long it will be before peo- parishes “where the faith is lived out, have an impact on the environment ple can fish again,” said Sister Carmen grows and attracts people into it.” The and the poor. Gomez, a member of Servants of diocese reports that by 2025, only 31 St. Joseph mission that operates the priests will be available to serve as pas- school. The pipeline break was one of tors. Currently, 58 priests are active in Pipeline Break in Peru three that occurred in northern Peru pastoral ministry. Bishop R. Walker Five hundred indigenous middle- and between late January and mid-Febru- Nickless of Sioux City said it was im- high-school students will arrive in ear- ary, bringing to 20 the number of oil portant to take a proactive approach in ly March at a Catholic-run boarding spills from the pipeline since 2011, ac- planning for the future of the diocese. school in Wachapea, an Awajun vil- cording to Peru’s environmental over- “As bishop, I have to be a good stew- lage in Peru, but the sisters and staff sight agency. ard of our resources, and one of the do not know where they will take most important and valuable are our baths. The Chiriaco River, where the Sioux City Faces priests,” he said. “I need to take care students usually bathe, play and wash of them.” Many of the diocese’s active their clothes, turned black on Feb. 10 Reorganization priests are baby boomers reaching the as oil from a broken pipeline upriver A pastoral planning process— age of retirement, and the bishop said washed downstream during a heavy Ministry 2025—has begun in they deserve the chance to retire. rain. Although the slick is gone, a tarry the Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa. residue remains on the soil and plants According to the Rev. Brent Lingle, From America Media, CNS, RNS, AP and other sources.

10 America March 14, 2016 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

DISPATCH | CHICAGO cestry and identified himself as Irish- American.) “Tolton’s name is held in Making Saints in Illinois precious memory by many people,” said Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Perry of llinois might not be considered ucator and prolific writer of spiritu- Chicago, who is spearheading the can- a saintly place. Chicago was the al tracts. Archbishop Cupich said he onization effort. “He is certainly one of Ihome base for the organized crime would be “very pleased” if the congre- the stars of our heritage.” leader Al Capone; two of its former gation decides to advance Newman’s The late Cardinal Francis George of governors are currently in jail, and canonization. “I have a great affection Chicago suggested opening the cause “Chicago-style politics” is often used for him having read his writings over for Father Tolton during the 2010 as a synonym for political corruption. the years. His book of sermons and Year for Priests. If the cause is success- So it comes as somewhat of a surprise meditations I use quite a bit.” ful, Father Tolton would be the first that the state is playing a major role Cardinal Newman was a convert American-born priest to be canonized. in the potential canonization of three to Catholicism from the Church of Meanwhile, the Diocese of Peoria, well-known Catholic figures. England, and his writings were enor- in central Illinois, is pressing the case One is Cardinal John Henry of Bishop Fulton Sheen, a former Newman, the theologian and ed- philosophy professor at Catholic ucator whose name adorns many The state is playing University of America, best known university Catholic centers. In as one of the earliest clergymen to 2010, Pope Benedict XVI de- a major role in three use television as an evangelization clared Newman blessed after a canonizations. tool with his popular weekly pro- miracle was attributed to him. gram, “Life Is Worth Living.” Jack Sullivan, a deacon from Bishop Sheen was declared ven- Marshfield, Mass., was found to erable in June 2012, and in March have recovered from a spinal cord dis- mously influential. If canonized, he 2014 the Congregation for the Causes order through Newman’s intercession. would be the first person of English of the Saints approved a miracle at- Now a claim of the miraculous descent named a saint since the 17th tributed to his intercession. The mir- healing of an Illinois resident has been century. “There is so much that’s com- acle involved the birth of a child who investigated by the Archdiocese of pelling in this man’s life, it’s clear to appeared to be stillborn, even after Chicago. “Our report was that there me that the church would be blessed doctors performed life-saving proce- was validity to the claim,” Archbishop to have him in the canon of saints,” dures. The child’s parents said they Blase Cupich said. “There were no Archbishop Cupich said. prayed for the bishop’s intervention physical causes that would have al- The canonization is being closely and the infant revived. lowed us to determine [another] rea- watched by the gay community as well, The child remains in good health son for the healing that took place.” which has adopted Cardinal Newman today. Bishop’s Sheen’s cause, howev- The archbishop said he is not at liberty as an unofficial patron saint. While er, has become mired in a dispute be- to disclose details of the possible mir- there is no evidence that Cardinal tween the Diocese of Peoria and the acle but that a report was submitted to Newman was unfaithful to his priestly Archdiocese of New York over his the Vatican late last year. vows, he had a close 30-year friend- remains. Peoria had requested that The case for Newman’s canoniza- ship with Ambrose St. John. He wrote the body be transferred there from tion opened in 1958, and the Sacred of his friend with great affection and its tomb in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Congregation for the Causes of Saints requested that they be buried together. New York for an official inspection proclaimed him venerable in 1991, The Chicago Archdiocese is also and the taking of relics. The New based on his life as an evangelizer, ed- promoting the canonization of the Rev. York Archdiocese has so far declined Augustus Tolton, considered the first to grant that request, and the Sheen African-American priest. (The Rev. cause remains stalled. JUDITH VALENTE, America’s Chicago corre- James Augustine Healy, who eventu- Perhaps a little Chicago-style polit- spondent, is a regular contributor to NPR and “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.” Twitter: @ ally became bishop of Portland, Me., ical arm-twisting is in order. JudithValente. was of mixed Irish and African an- JUDITH VALENTE

March 14, 2016 America 11 JAMES T. KEANE Gloves Off ow many divisions does the of the pair. But, history tells us, this is with the following quip in the pages of pope have? This famous not the first tangle between popes and National Review: “Going the rounds in Hquestion, asked by Joseph politicians. On our side of the pond, it conservative circles: ‘Mater sí, Magistra Stalin in 1935, was perhaps the most is usually a dog-whistle to evangelical no.’” (“Mother yes, teacher no”). Years blunt expression of an opinion held Christians who fear popish plots. For later, Garry Wills confessed he was by many a practitioner of realpolitik some Vatican officials, historically it has the author of the quip, back when the through the centuries: that all things resulted from a suspicion of democracy former Jesuit seminarian was a com- considered, the pope should not stick and/or American-style capitalism. mitted distributionist. This ridicule his nose into politics. Centuries before On their shores, it usually involves of an encyclical, unthinkable a decade Stalin, Napoleon Bonaparte recog- a suspicion of the pairing of democracy earlier, was a signal moment—a prefig- nized that military might was not the and wealth. And we do well to remem- uring of the widespread dissent against only kind of influence, instructing his ber that one of the most dreaded here- “Humanae Vitae” a few years later. Mr. envoy to Pope Pius VII to “treat with sies in the Vatican’s eyes a century ago Wills can tell you more about that. His Holiness as if he had at his back was called Americanism. The editors of this mag- one hundred thousand bayonets.” But The long papacy of azine rallied to Good Stalin’s question holds today: Why John Paul II, and the ex- This is not Pope John’s defense: pay attention to a leader with no bay- tension and intensification the first “Lines spoken to the onets at all? of his policies under Pope Pope just shouldn’t Our all-American version of this Benedict XVI, have per- tangle sound like lines pitched sentiment was best expressed recent- haps made us forget this between at the editors of The ly by Jerry Falwell Jr., who defended fact. President Reagan and New York Post,” they his endorsement of Donald J. Trump both President Bushes did popes and noted. In a personal in his recent war of words with Pope not have much to fear from letter to Thurston N. Francis by saying, “It’s not our job to St. John Paul II. And even if politicians. Davis, S.J., the editor choose the best Sunday school teach- Rome firmly rejected the lat- in chief of America, er.” Mr. Trump went further. Incensed ter Bush’s war in Iraq, there were those Mr. Buckley acknowledged his words that the pope suggested his call for who threw him a huge assist by suggest- may have been “in imperfect taste.” His walling off Mexico from the United ing that John Kerry should not receive memory failed him two decades later, States was “not Christian,” he called Communion because of his support however, when he claimed Father Davis the pope’s remarks “disgraceful” and of legal abortion (no such advice ever had “tried to have me excommunicated.” suggested Francis would be sorry emerged around the issues of torture or But back to today: Why so much when ISIS captured Rome. Take that, just war). In those days in the United drama over the opinions of a rascal Swiss Guard! States, “good Catholic” more often than pope in far-off Rome? Mr. Trump fears Many reactions to this fight have not meant “Republican.” the same thing Napoleon feared two been surprisingly ahistorical, with pub- But it was not always thus. centuries ago: “Qui mange du Pape, en lic figures suggesting that the brawl is In 1961, for example, the reaction- meurt” (“He who takes a bite out of a novelty, the result of two wild cards ary superhero William F. Buckley Jr. the pope dies from it”). What Donald being played at once. The New York complained that Pope John XXIII’s Trump is demanding is the same thing Times columnist Ross Douthat actu- encyclical on the economy, “Mater et Mr. Buckley wanted half a century ago: ally claimed that Donald Trump and Magistra,” was not only naïve but un- an admission that faith has nothing to Francis had much in common, a belief fairly critical of capitalism (sound fa- do with politics, that Jesus doesn’t care. that would surely horrify at least one miliar?) and “a venture in triviality com- Like most of us, however, I have ing at this particular time in history.” an alternative point of view. Frankly, I A month later, Mr. Buckley doubled think Jesus does care. Jesus has much JAMES T. KEANE is an editor at Orbis Books in Ossining, N.Y., and a former associate editor of down, riffing off Fidel Castro’s famous to say on topics dear to poor Donald America. Twitter: @jamestkeane. rallying cry of “Cuba sí, Yanqui no!” Trump’s heart. Mater Sí! Magistra Sí!

12 America March 14, 2016

Final Rewards The place of death and mourning in contemporary life

In October 2015, the Fordham Center on Religion and Culture masterpiece The Dirty Dust, or the dead in “Our Town,” or hosted two exceptional writers—the novelist Alice McDermott even “No Exit,” Christopher Tilghman’s In a Father’s Place or and the poet and essayist Thomas Lynch—for a dialogue about Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. death and mourning in contemporary life. The program was ti- If, as Tom Stoppard writes in “Rosencrantz and tled “Unto Dust: A Literary Wake” in the hope that the two Guildenstern Are Dead,” every exit is an entrance some- interlocutors would envision their conversation not just as an where else, then serious novelists have for the most part left exercise in cultural criticism, but also as an opportunity to tell the details of that somewhere else to the genre writers, to stories about the beloved dead and conjure the reflective mood, the zombies and the ghosts and the vampires of commercial the straightforward encounter with mortality and the sense of entertainment—although a striking exception to this may humor proper to a wake. be Stanley Elkin’s 1979 novel, The Living End, where heav- That these two writers are Irish-American, members of en is depicted as “everything they say it is”—pearly gates, a tribe that has a certain reputation for savoring the topic of streets of gold, manna, ambrosia, fond reunions and endless death, is not incidental. Yet their reflections on how we engage, beauty— and hell is “the ultimate inner city,” with stinking, or choose not to engage, with perennial challenges raised by our sulfurous streets and endless pain. It is a portrait that Elkin experiences with death are hardly tribal in nature. manages to make both hilarious and touching, both a mock- The essays below represent the first of two parts of a rich and ery but also an acknowledgment of the impossible substance varied dialogue between Ms. McDermott and Mr. Lynch. A of things hoped for—a literary sleight of hand that perhaps longer version of this conversation can be found at America’s can be performed only once a millennium. Because who can website, americamagazine.org. blame our novelists for avoiding any literal portrait of the af- —James McCartin, director terlife? Any such depiction, after all, risks, on the one hand, Fordham Center on Religion and Culture sentimental cliché and, on the other, existential darkness and despair, which is its own cliché. Our Literary Wake Thinking about the theme of a literary wake—and hop- BY ALICE McDERMOTT ing that the literary life we are here to mourn is not mine —I ome years ago, I was interviewed on a call-in radio have been wondering if the stylistic pitfalls that face a nov- show out of the Midwest. Well into the hour, a wom- elist who tries to turn her observational skills to the afterlife San called to ask why my novels dealt so exclusively and the wise decision most of us make to avoid the subject with the concrete details of everyday life, details every read- has a parallel in the larger community of non-writers, or er can recognize. This struck me as not an entirely unusual what I like to call normal people. Among normal people, it question until she added, “Why don’t you use your powers seems to me, death scenes also abound, not only in our en- of observation to write about the details of the afterlife in- tertainment, whether they be the walking dead, the dramat- stead? We need someone to show us the details of heaven ically diseased or the hastily and violently dispatched, but in and hell.” our everyday exchanges as well. War, gun violence, terror- Before the radio host moved to cut the woman off, I said ism, accident, illness, daily obituaries remind us that death something about Dante having covered that material pretty is general, whether we pause to philosophize about it or not. well. Then, apologetically, I promised the caller that whenev- Death is general, and in the 21st century we accept this fact er I had the opportunity to observe the details of the after- like grownups, with a cluck of the tongue or a shake of the life, I would indeed include them in my work. head or a shrug. We routinize mourning. In literary fiction, death scenes abound. There is Tolstoy’s I confess to being both comforted and dismayed by my Ivan Ilyich, Flaubert’s Félicité in “A Simple Heart,” Flannery recent encounters with the hospice industry, sincere and O’Connor’s Hazel Motes in the last pages of Wise Blood, professional women, well-versed in the details of the dying, Katherine Anne Porter’s jilted Granny Weatherall, to name who reminded me nevertheless of the real estate agents I only a few. But scenes of heaven and hell, not so much. The have known, with their clipboards and their informational dead, if they have any congress at all, are most likely depict- binders and their brief, well-scripted role as friend and sup- ed as eavesdroppers or hangers-on. I think of the opening porter at this difficult time. pages of William Kennedy’s Ironweed or that Irish-language In the 21st century, we take leave of the dead with an-

14 America March 14, 2016 ecdote and celebrations of life, supermarket flowers tied to not die. I am the living bread that came down from lampposts or helium balloons released into the air, and if heaven. If you eat this bread, you will live forever. we speak of an afterlife, we do so with vague piety—“He Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eter- is with God,” we say—or cautious facetiousness, tentatively nal life, and I will raise them up on the last day. suggesting reunions with loved ones and somehow-no-lon- ger-annoying relatives. Normal people, it seems, like writers, Thinking about this literary wake of ours, I have begun are well aware of the constant procession of exits that life to wonder if it is not death that we are reluctant to acknowl- entails, but few of us, normals and writers alike, broach the edge here in the 21st century, but the awkward outlandish- details of that corresponding entrance into somewhere else. ness of the notion of eternal life; if even among Christians This is understandable. As I said, clichés abound. Language the foolishness of the claim that “heaven is somewhere, we and imagination fail us. No observer has yet to report back just don’t know where,” and “hell has this thing we call fire” with the facts, and any claim to the contrary risks supersti- compels us to shelter in the less detailed and far less risky tion or betrays wishful thinking. notion that the promises of Christ are actually metaphori- The prose of the Catholic Church itself grows flat-footed cal, not literal; that what we mean when we say eternal life is in the attempt. Here is the Catholic Encyclopedic Dictionary “forever in our hearts” or “as long as we have our memories” on heaven: “The place and abode of God and the blessed, or “the spirit of our ancestors resides within us all.” where all the faithful shall see God, the Blessed Virgin, and As a writer, I am O.K. with this. I like metaphor. I believe all the saints face to face. Where it is, is not known.” our language is rich enough to convey through metaphor And hell: “Here the damned suffer primarily the pain of more than we intend or know about the substance of things loss by being deprived of the sight of God face to face,” and hoped for. But as a Christian wrestling with faith, I often secondly, “the pain of sense, a positive physical punishment find myself on the side of that lady who called in to the radio which we call fire.” Descriptions that are neither eloquent show. “I would like someone to provide more detail, please.” nor particularly convincing. When it comes to the outrageous promise of eternal life, I Yet there is this: am with Flannery O’Connor in her famous reply to Mary McCarthy’s words about the Eucharist: “Well, if it’s a sym- I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate manna in the bol, to hell with it.” desert, but they died. But the bread that comes down As a struggling Christian, I look for the resurrection of

from heaven is of such a kind that whoever eats it will the dead and the life of the world to come, but as a writer PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/ KAMELEON007

March 14, 2016 America 15 and as an occasionally normal person, I wonder what our Sally really did chocolate chip cookies well,” or “Dad really reluctance, all of us, to say, to imagine, to wrestle with pre- knew how to golf,” or “After a few drinks, he made a mess of cisely what this afterlife business might mean indicates. Is everything.” it a failure of our faith or a triumph of our reasonableness? Everybody gets a good laugh, which we approve of more Do we sensibly resist being deluded by the proposition of than we approve of the good cry. And to really assure that eternal life, or do we shyly stand speechless before the glory the wince is replaced by the grin in what we now call good of the gift? Is it literal? Is it a metaphor? Do we believe it? funerals, we have devised—for the first time in our species actually, and only in the last 50 or 60 years—commemora- ALICE McDERMOTT is a National Book Award-winning novelist and the tive events where the finger food is good, the talk is uplifting, author of Charming Billy, After This, and Someone. the music is life-affirming, the poems are bespoke and well recited, the stories are lovely, and everyone is welcome but Our Funeral Karaoke the dead guy. BY THOMAS LYNCH Have you noticed? The corpse is the one who has gone e have, as a culture and as a community of faith, missing the most. We call folks like me with a cell phone and sort of lost our eschatological nerve. The stories a gold card, and we disappear the dead from our liturgies of Wwe tell ourselves about what happens when we loss, because to have a corpse around is troublesome. Their die have lost their certainty and assurances. This is why you stillness is off-putting. And then there is the matter of odor. may have noticed that we have replaced the good funeral— We have a history of sciences and floral tributes to help with which used to be sort of a one-size-fits-all liturgical event that—candles at wakes, etc. during which we would say aloud the things we believe as But, in fact, we have lost our nerve in the realm of faith a culture, and thereby embolden the normally shaken faith when it comes to last things, final details. We now cremate, of the bereaved—with a celebration of life in which the life I think, somewhere on the order of 50 percent of our dead being celebrated is the one that belonged to the corpse. in this country, but whereas most of us have been to a grave- Because the narrative on which we used to depend to up- side, few of us have been to a retort. We are not as comfort- hold us through these times has gotten shaky and uncertain, able with the flame as we are with cremation. We like the now we use a narrative that probably fits best into the term notion of cremation. Actually, we like the notion of “when “funeral karaoke,” a Japanese term for “empty orchestra.” This I’m dead, just cremate me,” the operative word being “just”— is where Uncle Lenny stands up to tell you the facts of the the emphasis upon minimalization and straight order and life of his sister or niece or his departed spouse. And the industrial efficiency, which makes sense because oftentimes notion that Jesus died for our sins and earned for us eter- it happens in an industrial setting or an industrial park. nal life no longer being currency, we replace that with “Aunt But we don’t go watch, because even though the urae-

Following their talks at Fordham University, Alice McDermott of grief therapists who have been dispatched to the scene and Thomas Lynch engaged in a lively conversation. Here are to talk people out of whatever craziness the death occasions excerpts from their remarks. A longer transcript can be found for them. Ever since at www.americamagazine.org. [Elisabeth] Kübler- Ross, we let that Alice McDermott: I think you have written this, that we notion that we can have become comfortable about talking about everything, morph dying…that the most intimate details of our physical lives—it is right out grief can take the there—but when it comes to death, we back away. We are form of stages, so tight-lipped. We want to get it over with… that on Monday we I hear a younger generation, who maybe are not as are in denial and accustomed to the customs of death, saying, “No. The way on Tuesday we are we do it is much less morbid, and we get over it. Here you angry and by Friday OF FORDHAM UNIVERSITY PHOTO: LEO SOREL.COURTESY guys are, sitting around talking about death all the time.” we accepted this. What do we say to that generation about what gets left And all to the good, except that anybody who has ever been out, what gets lost in that rush to be comforted? I think it through that knows it is codswallop. It just is not the way it was just after the shooting out in Oregon…The Washington works. Post actually had an article about how people were moving The notion of closure is probably one of the great on. Kids hadn’t even been buried yet. “The town is healing.” stupidities that we foist on one another. It is not the way it ….How do you explain what gets lost? works… I have always said a good funeral is one in which by getting Thomas Lynch: Almost every time we have a horrendous the dead where they need to go, the living get where they event of that sort, one of the reports will be about the fleet need to be. If you just do the job, the rest will fall in place.

16 America March 14, 2016 uses (symbolic serpents) over the heads of the apostles on bishop gave him a good requiem Mass, then put him in a Pentecost were those of flame, we do not see flame as pu- box on a train bound east to Jackson, Mich., and Detroit. rifying and releasing. We see flame as punitive. I wonder He sent him collect, as bishops do. When he got there, the why. Dante spent a long time on this. I know that the priests poor corpse, he was met by agents of the Desnoyer Funeral and nuns of my youth did, too. It is true that the real pun- Home in Jackson, Mich., a business that I believe still is ishment was that we would not see God face to face, but it there. burned there. Fire we have mixed feelings about. For reasons I am not entirely sure of, the 10-year-old boy We had a photograph—possibly you had one in your in that picture on the wall was by now 12 years old, and home—an icon in our family home on both sides of the his father, the priest’s brother, took him on the day to make Atlantic all the days of my youth. It remains so. It was a pic- the arrangements for the mum plants and the requiems and ture of the first solemn high Mass of Thomas P. Lynch, a the grave diggers and the stipendiums. While the men were young priest who was ordained in 1934 out in New Mexico. talking these commemorations, my father—the 12-year-old He was sent back to his home parish in Jackson, Mich., to boy now—wandered through the old house of the Desnoyer say a Mass for his own people. The picture shows men in Funeral Home until he came to a room with a door ajar. straw bowlers, women in print dresses and nice hats and Looking inside, he saw two men in white shirts and gray- sensible shoes. These are immigrants or sons and daughters striped ties and wingtip shoes and striped pants carefully of immigrants from the boggy, soggy parishes of West Clare vesting the dead priest in his liturgical vestments. Then, and Mayo and Cork and elsewhere. One of their kind has in silence, as if on signals that they had worked out years been elevated to “big medicine” priesthood. in advance, they reached underneath the corpse and rolled The day after the picture was taken, he was sent back the dead body to themselves and then carefully sidestepped out West. As a survivor of the Spanish flu when he was a their way to the wall of the room where a box awaited the boy—which was correlated to his vocation, his calling—he dead priest’s body. was a chesty boy all the rest of his life, and so they thought It was to this moment in August of 1936 that my father the high, dry air of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains would would ever after trace his intention to become a funeral di- help him survive his priesthood long enough to pay back rector. “Why?” I would sometimes ask him. “Why didn’t you the bishop for his education. It did not work out that want to be a priest?” “Ah,” he said, “the priest was dead.” well. He spent most of his time with the Pueblo people in But his sense that he was called to this was unshakable Ranchos de Taos teaching them how to play baseball and all of his life. It must have been a calling sufficient for a cou- how to say the Confiteor. He eventually got sick and died of ple or three generations because, of his nine children, seven pneumonia. The Native American women took him down found their way into work between the quick and the dead, the mountains and along the basin of the Rio Grande into and of their 30-some children, more than a few—nieces and Santa Fe, where he was presented in the cathedral, and the nephews and sons and daughters—turned up as funeral di- rectors or funeral workers, too. The trouble with us as a generation is that we have gone for the convenience rather than for the heavy lift. We get away from the shovel-and-shoulder work. We have that done by someone like me. We have a fee. We do it quiet- ly. We do it in private. We never see it, while we spend our time with good fin- ger food and stories of golf, where heaven seems like a 19th hole, and if you did not take too many mulligans and you raked out the sand traps and kept an honest score, your trophies are laid up for you in someplace like a clubhouse. That will be enough for now.

THOMAS LYNCH is an undertaker, poet, essayist and author of The Good Funeral: Death, Grief and the Community of Care (with Thomas G. Long) and The Sin-Eater: A Breviary.

18 America March 14, 2016 A Downsized Dream Building solidarity at the margins BY DOUG DEMEO

GOOD CONVERSATION. Two men take a smoke break in Old Chinatown in Manhattan.

n 1992, I was a Jesuit novice living in Jamaica Plain, may or may not conjure an immediate sense of justice. What Boston, and as part of our daily routine we discussed kinship seems to elicit more deeply than a sense of solidarity, some of the essays from the series “Studies in Jesuit however, is a growing intimacy and understanding among Spirituality.” None stood out quite like the article by very different people, while realizing that in the face of dif- IDean Brackley, S.J., titled “Downward Mobility: Social ference, we tend to carry subconscious feelings of superiority Implications of St. Ignatius’s Two Standards,” published in or inferiority. In fact, many stories of kinship are described January 1988. Father Brackley—a New York Jesuit—was al- in the book by Greg Boyle, S.J., Tattoos on the Heart: The ways concerned with the poor, and following the killings of Power of Boundless Compassion. six Jesuit priests at the University of Central America in El Why is a thorough examination of downward or upward Salvador in 1989, he began an assignment as a replacement mobility important? If one considers the convergence of instructor in theology there. The change in scenery from the environmental and geopolitical crises destroying the basis relatively calm United States to a terrifying war zone in the for life itself—arable land and food, ready supplies of clean developing world must have given Father Brackley a lot more water or functioning global states—it may well be that the opportunity to consider his thesis on “downward mobility.” missing link for the survival of civilization is a kind of col- Of course, the idea of downward mobility stands in stark lective turn to downward mobility. Though beginnings of a contrast to the notion of upward mobility, itself an immense- materially lighter, clean-energy economy are well underway, ly popular idea, akin to the American Dream, and one that our planet has been demolished by the sheer weight of the has conditioned many a mind from an early age. It certainly industrial-extraction economies of the 20th and early 21st captured my imagination. century. At face value, downward mobility may seem farcical; but when coupled with movements of solidarity and kinship, the My Downward Mobility idea begins to emerge as something of a counterforce to up- In his encyclical “Charity in Truth” (quoted by Pope Francis ward mobility. The draw of solidarity evokes a keen sense of in “Laudato Si’”), Pope Benedict XVI prophesied against a justice, especially in relation to oppressed or forsaken peo- “‘superdevelopment’ of a wasteful and consumerist kind that ple. It is a prevailing theme in Pope Francis’ encyclical on in- forms an unacceptable contrast with the ongoing situations tegral ecology and one of the core principles of Catholic so- of dehumanizing deprivation.” Indeed, the World Bank has cial teaching. The experience of kinship is something else; it warned that unless humankind unifies around the challeng- es of climate change—caused by deforestation, mass pro- DOUG DEMEO is a theology teacher at Maryvale Preparatory School in duction and emissions—and creates a very different kind of

PHOTO: ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/ JJLOUIS Brooklandville, Md., and a fellow at the Greenfaith coalition. economy by 2030, some 100 million people or more will join

March 14, 2016 America 19 the ranks of the more than 700 million people who already may not necessarily stir key institutions toward greater ecol- live in extreme poverty. ogy and justice. My taste of downward mobility began in the late 1990s. I had just left life as a religious in Spokane, Wash., and in Kinship and Solidarity my relative poverty I became eligible for food stamps. Years I first heard about Father Greg Boyle and his ministry with later, I received unemployment compensation after losing gang members in the mid-1990s. As a campus minister, I full-time work. This helped pay the mortgage on my new was thrilled to hear him speak to our packed conference house in Trenton, N.J., but I was soon hit with life-saving center in 2009. Warm-hearted and funny, Father Greg is a surgery and a two-week hospital stay, without health insur- one-of-a-kind storyteller. Equally engaging, weaving stories ance. A year later, after I found work in teaching and moved with their own kind of relish, were two “homies,” as he calls to Maryland, my realtor and I were unable to sell my house, them, who accompanied him. Father Greg’s book, Tattoos whose value began to plummet. To keep up with rent and on the Heart, recounts dozens of incidents of unspeakable mortgage, I worked around the clock as a waiter. This af- anguish and surprising joy in some of the toughest areas fected my health and ability to teach at top level, so after of Los Angeles. With a graced rawness, Father Greg draws six months I quit my weekend job. After 10 months making the reader into each encounter as if it were speaking about payments on a vacant home, the your own loved ones and so un- market value now less than my veils the depths of equality in a remaining principal, I applied for beautiful word: kinship. a “deed in lieu” (of foreclosure). Coming to know and embrace Fortunately, it was granted. a kinship beyond that which When I left the Jesuits, I had comes naturally—among family no conscious desire or intention and friends—has been a learning to experience downward mobil- process for me, to be sure, but a ity. I had no plan to experiment series of conversations between with economic hardship the way 2011 and 2014 seemed to quick- Barbara Ehrenreich did, as she re- en my education. ported in Nickel and Dimed. I had Shortly after moving to no interest in eating only cheap SHOP TALK. Gregory Boyle, S.J., advises a youth Trenton, I joined a faith-shar- in the Homeboys Industries offices in Los Angeles. food, as Morgan Spurlock re- ing group at New Jersey State ported in his documentary Super Prison, just around the corner Size Me. Furthermore, while my understanding of success has from my house at the time. At our bimonthly meetings, my changed, I have always wanted “to be successful.” new friends helped me to see myself as not being any bet- Sometimes, though, life happens. I contracted achalasia, ter, or worse, than any of them, just one man among equals. a disease of the esophagus that my doctor discovered while Notwithstanding their wounds and struggles, they shone performing a routine upper endoscopy. While working in with a rare kind of joy and serenity, giving a commanding college campus ministry and enjoying some fun splashing witness to their deeply forgiving and liberating God. At one around with Honduran friends, I had accidentally swal- point, a few of the men took turns leading discussions of lowed a bit of river water. That is how I contracted a parasite Jesus’ parables, like the story of the good Samaritan or the that I later learned is a leading cause of achalasia. The fact prodigal son. In sharing snippets of their lives before sen- that my doctor mistakenly perforated my esophagus during tencing and since, they prompted altogether new meanings the endoscopy, prompting the need for immediate, life-sav- of kinship in the former parable and mercy in the latter. I ing surgery, did not make my life any easier. However, it now see the markings of infinite goodness in those who may turned out to be a blessing in disguise. My surgeon the next have to spend the rest of their lives in confinement. day was able to perform the long-term, muscle-cutting ma- As a Jesuit in training, and years later as a campus minister, neuver that is used to relieve conditions of achalasia. I was able to travel to Central America on several occasions, I cannot explain all the twists and turns of my years since for weeks and months at a time. My companions and I dis- leaving the Jesuits, but I can say that I have a clearer sense of covered varied reasons why so many Central Americans have the meaning of downward mobility, a notion that fascinated risked life and limb in their journeys to the United States. me in my mid-20s. Still, without an attendant openness to These include a strong desire and will for advances in safe- the values of kinship and solidarity—leading to the kind of ty, education or employment. In recent years, social media societal reordering that would steer us away from the apoca- have allowed me to reconnect with Honduran or Salvadoran lypse—downward mobility, for whatever its personal appeal, friends, a few of whom are now living in the United States. DELLINGER, THE TIDINGS CNS PHOTO/R.W.

20 America March 14, 2016 Their courage and humanity defy the odious label “illegals.” stop and listen to my Central American friends and consider If kinship is the feeling, what, then, can be said of the what it might be like. action—solidarity? For one thing, the work of solidarity is At the very least, downward mobility means sustained at- never fleeting or simplistic. Solidarity seeks lasting, effective tention to first things first, and the brilliance of Pope Francis’ relief from hardships brought on by the effects of climate encyclical is its approach to putting first things first—water, change and extreme poverty, like worsening terrorism or war. food, shelter and safety—in a systematic and transformative Compassionate sharing among individuals and communities way. We can build not simply a short-term solidarity that is always and everywhere needed. But just as impressive are brings relief to people who face the direst circumstances of expressions of solidarity at the level of systemic policymak- the global economic order in the age of disaster; we can also ing. Through economy-wide investments in renewable ener- build a real, long-lasting solidarity that is mutually empow- gy, comprehensive immigration reform and the expansion of ering. Such relations reward the deep sharing of land—“For fair trade (to name just a few), citizens of the world are urged the earth is the Lord’s and all therein” (Ps 24:1). to build a more humane and hopeful future. From the standpoint of the Gospels, downward mobil- Nonetheless, universal kinship and the accompanying ity (as with kinship and solidarity) is nothing new. Jesus’ need for political and economic solidarity may never come words are straightforward. “Seek first the kingdom of God” to pass if we do not open ourselves to the gift of downward (Mt 6:33). “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat mobility. Consider small samples of compassion. If I had not or drink.…” (Mt 6:25). “Whatever you have done for the been stricken by achalasia and lost 40 pounds and almost least of these.…” (Mt 25:40). And, “Follow me” (Mt 4:19). died, would I really care to know what it is like for people Notwithstanding how these touch the hearts of individuals, wrestling with some rare disease? If I had not lost my job, Jesus’ words ought to speak to nations and economies. health insurance and home, would I really want to know Especially working together, downward mobility, kinship what it is like for the millions of Americans in the same sit- and solidarity orient our decision-making as if we are one. uation? It is certainly possible, although earlier I never gave With haste, then, let us break open and activate these gifts, it the same attention as I do now. And while I have not lived thereby stemming the tide of needless suffering and death in on an island or in a tropical nation for the length of time re- the 21st century and awakening the kind of community that quired to know the existential terror of climate change, I can Jesus and the prophets envisioned. A

March 14, 2016 America 21 VATICAN DISPATCH Plane Speaking fter Pope Francis’ recent press border and deport 11 million undoc- conferences before arriving in a coun- conference during the plane umented migrants. Without naming try, with the result that often what he Atrip from Ciudad Juárez in Mr. Trump, Francis said: “A person said on the plane would dominate the Mexico to Rome, some commentators who thinks only about building walls, news on the first days of his visit there, in the United States, Italy and the wherever they may be, and not build- eclipsing his other messages. United Kingdom suggested that he ing bridges, is not Christian. This is Perhaps the most significant dif- should abandon this practice. not in the Gospel.” ference between Francis and his two One asserted that his words “are, It is worth mentioning that Francis predecessors is that he does not give at best, confusing”—for example, re- does not know the questions in ad- stale answers to questions. He feels garding the morality of contraception vance. The reporters on the plane free to offer a fresh look at issues of in the context of the Zika epidem- huddle in language groups to identify prudential judgment that were often ic—adding that Francis is “wrong to both the questions and the considered closed un- use interviews as a regular facet of his persons to ask them. The der St. John Paul II and public ministry.” Others claim he mis- names are given to Federico Benedict XVI; and, of spoke on Donald J. Trump. Lombardi, S.J., the Vatican Francis course, this disturbs What they fail to recognize is that spokesman, who calls on feels free to those who think some Francis is reaching a global audience, each in turn. When mem- questions (particular- far beyond the Catholic Church, in a bers of the media some- offer a fresh ly in the field of sexual way no pope in history has done. He is times spin or misrepresent look at issues morality) have been doing so in a totally free, credible way what the pope says, Father resolved once and for that shuns politically correct discourse Lombardi may have to is- of prudential all and there is nothing and comes across as a humble, normal sue subsequent clarifica- judgment. more to say. person, which adds to his credibility tions; but surely that is a Pope Francis is free with people of all faiths and none. small price to pay for this in another sense too, At times, he sparks discussion by extraordinary opportunity because, as he wrote in responding in a non-politically cor- to communicate the Gospel message “The Joy of the Gospel”(No. 16), he rect way to important questions. and the church’s teaching to the world. does “not believe that the papal mag- Remember his “Who am I to judge?” The tradition of press conferences isterium should be expected to offer comment regarding homosexuals on started by accident under St. John Paul a definitive or complete word on ev- the Rio–Rome flight? Or his remark II, when, on his first trip to Mexico in ery question which affects the church on the Colombo–Manila flight after 1979, an American journalist asked if and the world.” Indeed, he said, “it is the terrorist attacks in Paris, when he would visit the United States. That not advisable for the pope to take the he insisted that the right to freedom question was quickly followed by oth- place of local bishops in the discern- of expression does not entitle any- ers, and press conferences soon became ment of every issue that arises in their one to ridicule or offend another’s an integral part of papal trips. Like territory.” religion. Or think of his response on Francis, John Paul II did not know the Moreover, in “The Joy of the the Juárez–Rome flight regarding af- questions in advance, but he felt com- Gospel” (No. 49), he declared, “I pre- firmations like those made by Donald fortable fielding whatever came. fer a church that is bruised, hurting Trump that if he became president, Benedict XVI, however, was nev- and dirty because it has been out on he would build a wall on the Mexican er comfortable with this freewheeling the streets, rather than a church that relationship with reporters; and fol- is unhealthy from being confined and lowing a major gaffe on the flight to clinging to its own security.” GERARD O’CONNELL is America’s Rome Brazil in 2007, he asked to know the His press conferences reflect this correspondent. America’s Vatican coverage is sponsored in part by the Jesuit communities of questions in advance. Furthermore, fresh way of thinking. the United States. Twitter: @gerryrome. he made the mistake of holding press GERARD O’CONNELL

22 America March 14, 2016

FAITH IN FOCUS The Mystery of Sadness Coping with a sudden loss BY JEFFREY ESSMANN y niece was buried a few as a catechist. Heartbreak and history comfort one another, hold one another, weeks ago, a wonderful stumbled about the room, bumping cry. Myoung woman: 36, not sick, into each other, settling into odd juxta- And at the Our Father, as I stood suddenly gone. Sudden deaths, they positions. At one point I found myself hand-in-hand praying with my sister say, are the most traumatic—and cer- sitting near my niece’s coffin talking and her family, I suddenly felt every- tainly sudden deaths of the young. The with the nun I had in fourth grade, thing beneath the text and the ritual shock is nearly concussive. shift, everything slip When I first got the call and move into that that she had died, I was at pure, primal place work. Afterward I returned a funeral conjures, to my desk in a kind of where we are a stone- stupor, moving from task age clan burying a to task with a dull urgen- kinsman at the back cy, finding cool comfort in of the cave; where the reassurances of rou- we are the builders tine. Routine and grammar. of pyramids, temple I work as a proofreader; mourners, necroman- the structure of language cers; where we are the is my bread and butter, its heartbroken friends of rules and their exceptions a crucified man get- my fetish and delight. But ting him to a tomb be- the day my niece died, the fore the Sabbath. We day I would never see her are all of us in pain, all again, grammar was nearly stunned at the sudden salvific to me, a stable men- emptiness, all plunged tal framework I could hold into the mystery at onto while everything else the heart of sadness, inside me was suddenly all awestruck at the trembling. Grammar and strange life that pulses spelling mistakes would faintly within the fog carry me safely through the of loss. We have all day until 5 o’clock, until the of us been brought to train, until I could get home and cry. and suddenly time and circumstance holy ground, thrown to it, dazed, all of The visitation and funeral were at began to flutter and bat against one us brought to a place beyond words. the parish church where she had gone another like a moth at a window. Just to grade school and, years later, served before Mass started, I looked around Wordless Cries the room at a church filled with people In both Matthew and Mark, Jesus lets who loved my niece and thought, this out a wordless cry just before he dies, a JEFFREY ESSMANN’s work has appeared in is who she really was, is: this texture of scream into the abyss, the Word made The New York Times, The Washington Post, relationships, these people with whom flesh driven to human incoherence. I U.S. Catholic, Commonweal and numerous other magazines and literary journals. He lives she experienced connection and love, thought of that cry when I spoke with in New York. who now, for her sake, for love of her, my sister the day we found out Lauren BY LUCA SIGNORELLI, 1502. PHOTO: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS/WWW.BRIDGEMANART.COM OVER THE DEAD CHRIST,” “THE DEPOSION OR THE LAMENTATION

March 14, 2016 America 25 died. She could barely speak. She only speak of delivering babies who cried for this cup to pass. And then Mary got out a couple of things—a question, as soon as they were out of the womb. gave him her breast. I think, a phrase—but they sounded As soon as we sense that the world We cry out in incoherence and are disconnected, new and unpronounce- around us has suddenly gotten in- answered in mystery. At the end of the able in her grief. Language had dis- finitely larger, vast, terrifying; when we Mass, when they placed the white pall solved in feeling; words floated, empty. feel human life around us for the first over the coffin and the priest read the fi- They could never accurately describe time, all around us, in us, feel its chaos nal blessing, I could hear behind me the what she was going through. They of sensations, its overpowering pull, its choked chorus of people in tears, its sad could not possibly convey her pain. demand on us, we scream, we cry, we crescendos and dissolves. As the priest Only the gasps between the words howl. We are nothing but weakness read the part about the Resurrection, I could. Only the wordless cry. and hunger and fear, nothing but this looked over at my sister, lost in tears, For all the beautiful prayers ever squalling, this cry, this plea. devastated, and thought this was how written, it is arguable that the prayers As a human infant, Jesus would the women in the graveyard on Easter most pleasing to God are those that have known this wordless cry as well. morning must have cried, still know- cannot be expressed in words, the But within this human infant was also ing only the horror of their loss. The ones whose only poetry is human de- the living spark of the divine; and part sun was not up yet. They had not yet sire, prayed at times when life has be- of the infant consciousness, part of its reached the tomb. They did not know come so overpowering, so expansive, trauma, may also have been the Word that once they got there, once they so racked with mystery that the divine crying out against the flesh. The new- looked inside, once they heard their is glimmering between the seams. We born Christ may have had a primal in- cries bounce off the walls of the empty howl to God in the face of death, and stinct that he was born into death as tomb, that wordlessness was over, in- howl just as wildly in the face of life. well as into life, that the miracle of in- coherence banished. Not because the Our first wordless cry is at birth. carnation implied the miracle of de-in- Word had become flesh yet again. This Once the airways are suctioned out, carnation, and his wordless cry may time a greater miracle had happened, at the first inrush of air, the newborn have been a foretaste of the agony in the greatest: flesh had become pure begins to cry, though many mothers the garden, the first time he was to ask Word . A

26 America March 14, 2016 FROM OUR BLOGS Should Britain Stay or Should It Go? David Stewart, S.J. Pope Francis on Zika and Contraception, James F. Keenan, S.J. CATHOLIC BOOK CLUB China Ups the Ante in the South Kevin Spinale, S.J., leads a discussion of When China Sea, Steven Schwankert Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithii WHAT YOU’RE READING Jesus’ Teachings on Marriage and Aboard Plane Home From Mexico, RADIO Pope Francis Responds to Questions on Elias D. Mallon, S.A., talks about challenges to Donald Trump, Gerard O’Connell religious liberty around the world. The Pope at the Border in Juárez: A Prayer for Migrants, Kevin Clarke The Pope’s Border Policy POETRY Kevin Appleby Submissions now being accepted for the 2016 Foley A Lenten Mystery, James Martin, S.J. Poetry Award. Submit at submittable.americamedia Pope Francis in Remarkable Journey to .com. Mexico’s Margins, Kevin Clarke

“Contract the funerals yesterday: Justice Scalia and Harper Lee. Majesty and Humility. Non fiction and fiction. Bluster vs reticence.” Nancy and Thomas Chisholm, “Of Many Things”

Poems are being accepted for the 2016 Foley Poetry Award.

Each entrant is asked to submit only one unpublished poem on any topic. The poem should be 30 lines or fewer and not under consideration elsewhere. Poems will not be returned. Poems should be sent in by Submittable or postal mail. FOLEY Include contact information on the same page as the poem. Poems must be postmarked or sent in by Submittable between Jan. 1 and March 31, 2016. The winning poem will be published in the June 6-13, 2016, issue of America. Three POETRY runner-up poems will be published in subsequent issues. Cash prize: $1,000

To send in poems through Submittable, go to americamedia.submittable.com. CONTEST To submit poems by postal mail, send to: Foley Poetry Contest America Magazine 106 West 56th Street New York, NY 10019

March 14, 2016 America 27 Books & Culture

FILM | JOHN ANDERSON returns us to the first Good Friday. It is not so good for Clavius. Having just annihilated a band of Jewish reb- LIVES OF CHRIST els, he is immediately assigned the task Two films reinterpret the greatest story ever told. of keeping Jerusalem quiet for Pontius Pilate (a wonderfully corrupt Peter Firth), the Roman prefect. As Pilate tells his tribune, he has just had to cru- cify a troublesome Jew named Yeshua (Cliff Curtis), and the followers of this wretched “messiah” will likely be caus- ing him a more troublesome Passover than will the Sanhedrin. In his satirical novel “The Master and Margarita,” Mikhail Bulgakov provides a version of the confrontation between Pilate and Yeshua, one that cannot help but permanently reorder our image of that encounter. Yeshua is made a rather pathetic figure, Pilate a beleaguered civil servant. The entire episode is rendered pedestrian, a mat- ON THE HUNT. Joseph Fiennes as Clavius and Tom Felton as Lucius in “Risen.” ter resolved brutally and quickly, as per the rule of Tiberius Caesar. he lure of high-end histor- “inspired by Scripture and rooted Each reader will have his or her own ical fiction—Gore Vidal’s in history” as the opening title tells reaction to such a gritty, inglorious por- T“Narratives of Empire” series, us—imagines the life of the 7-year- trayal, but for this writer the effect was to cite one popular example, or even a old Jesus during and after his return to reorder presumptions, to put flesh movie like “Lincoln”—is the sharing to Judea following the Holy Family’s on the story, to make it less “myth” and of secrets: The author tells us things flight to Egypt. “Risen,” a far more rig- more connected to the human life Jesus we could not otherwise have known, orous movie, frankly, is about the risen led (the description of the characters, af- insights and revelations “kept” from Christ; the principal narrative begins ter all, is from the mouth of Bulgakov’s us by the limitations of the historical mid-crucifixion and continues through Satan character, so the “facts” are already record—the same historical record the ascension. in dispute). Likewise, “Risen,” for all its that provides the story with its plau- The conceit of “Risen,” which seems obviousness, makes the first Easter sto- sibility. The key to the success of these certain to provoke, tantalize and per- ry something with blood in its veins narratives is that we viewers and read- haps even revitalize a Christian view- (and often enough, on the screen: This ers want these stories to be true. Our er’s belief system, is the resurrection is not a film for kids). belief is enhanced by the mechanics of as seen through the eyes not just of The fleshiness of “Risen” is unmiti- imagination. a nonbeliever, but of one whose pro- gated, though at times you wish it were. In other words, what is needed is fessional duty is to crush the nascent Crucifixion is portrayed as the cruel, faith, a convergence of belief and fact. Christian cult of A.D. 33. That man, torturous form of execution it was. This is the key to two films about Jesus a Roman tribune named Clavius (“Do the Nazarean a kindness,” Pilate currently in circulation: The Young (Joseph Fiennes), is seen as the film tells Clavius, before dispatching him to Messiah and Risen. To say they book- opens walking out of the Judean des- Golgotha. “Break his legs.” The effect end the life of Christ would not be ert, arriving at an inn and telling the in- is to hasten the asphyxiation by which

CNS PHOTO/COLUMBIA PICTURES quite accurate. “The Young Messiah”— credulous innkeeper his story—which crucifixion killed. Clavius chooses in-

28 America March 14, 2016 MOTHER AND CHILD. Sara Lazzaro as Mary and Adam Greaves-Neal as Jesus in “The Young Messiah” PHOTO: FOCUS FEATURES/ PHILIPPE ANTONELLO PHOTO: FOCUS FEATURES/ stead to have a centurion stick a spear Gibson did in “The Passion of the able gifts (he’ll be seen soon giving a in Jesus’ side). The post-mortem pro- Christ,” because, again, the listener’s revelatory performance in “The Dark cedure is almost as gruesome. As done imagination is in play. (One recalls the Horse”) triumph over what has been in “Risen,” the executed were thrown description of hell in A Portrait of the a problem for filmmakers since the into an open pit, doused with lime Artist as a Young Man and shudders.) Edison Manufacturing Co. filmed and left to rot—which makes for some Bartholomew seems visibly shaken, “The Passion Play of Oberammergau” disgusting moments when the powers then gleefully offers himself again. It is in 1898: How does one portray the that be try to fish out and present a a very good moment. divine? Some filmmakers have balked public corpse following Jesus’ disap- It is also something of a refresh- at the very idea, employing mere sug- pearance from the tomb of Joseph of ment after so much of Fiennes’s pon- gestion, a shielded face, a hand reach- Arimathea (Antonio Gil). derous performance, although one ing across the frame. Curtis, who “Risen” is not without humor. supposes there is not a lot else he can imbues Yeshua with a palpable, elo- While hunting for Jesus’ body and do with the material. The film, writ- quent kindness, vaults the perceptual the apostles he thinks made off with ten by the director, Kevin Reynolds, impediments that usually accompany it, Clavius asks a roomful of Roman and the fledgling Paul Aiello, provides the casting of Jesus. One understands soldiers, “Who knows the woman quite a bit of humor, but little of it is instantly why Clavius—the harsh, the Mary Magdalene?” Half the men from Fiennes. His character is rem- violent, the unsentimental—virtually bashfully raise their hands. (The joke iniscent of Richard Burton’s in that swoons in his presence. is based on the false tradition that old chestnut “The Robe”: the soldier Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.) devoted to Rome until his encounter Another triumph of casting is the The apostle Bartholomew (a wonder- with the Christ and the evidence of his presence of young Adam Greaves- ful Stephen Hagan) is dragged in gid- own eyes. He has seen Yeshua on the Neal in The Young Messiah. He is a dy with joy and questioned about the cross, so he knows him when he walks beautiful child, but not cloyingly so. In risen Christ. into a room full of apostles, swarming a role so ripe for second-guessing, he is Offering to be crucified himself, around their risen Jesus. It is fitting, a joy to watch. Bartholomew is treated to Clavius’s and no accident, that Clavius sees the The movie is less elevating. The excruciatingly detailed, vivid and con- Messiah at the same moment that the Iranian director Cyrus Nowrasteh, descending description of what cru- previously doubting Thomas walks whose “The Stoning of Soraya M.” cifixion entailed and how it worked, into the room and probes the wounds. in 2008 was a triumph for its star a sequence that in its own way is far Reynolds’s use of Cliff Curtis as Shohreh Aghdashloo, resorts to a more disturbing than anything Mel Yeshua and Curtis’s own consider- great deal of gauzy, focus-free filming

March 14, 2016 America 29 in striving for an elevated state of spir- cle Cleopas (Christian McKay) while road to Emmaus in Lk 24:13–32 and ituality and a stutter effect intended to they are bathing in a river. It is kind who is alluded to in “Risen”) and James provide liveliness in times of visual sta- of a mashup, visually speaking, and an (Finn Ireland), the resentful brother sis. It is unnecessary. Much of the mu- intriguing aspect of Nowrasteh’s style: of Jesus—adopted, by the way, though sic, too, is overwrought (as is the score The scene suggests baptism, foreshad- that is not the reason for his churlish- to “Risen,” come to think of it), along ows the miracles of Jesus’ public career ness. Like most families, they have var- with some of the acting. On the oth- and showcases his mercy. The director ied opinions. Should the boy be told er hand, in cherry-picking Christian does this elsewhere, too. The Demon his story, be allowed to use his pow- apocrypha, the Gnostic gospels and (Rory Keenan), a.k.a. Satan, who dogs ers—as he does when he raises first the few lines Luke has given us about Jesus throughout the film and does a bird and then a boy from the dead? the Christ Child—not to mention all he can to foster fear and loathing Or be shielded until some future time? the Anne Rice novel on which it is al- among the witnesses to his miracles, “He’s just a child,” says Joseph, to which legedly based, Christ the Lord: Out of kills a running child early on by throw- Cleopas sagely answers, “He’s not.” Egypt—“The Young Messiah” is a film ing in his path—what else?—an apple. There is some tweaking even of of transcendent moments, if not sus- The family, which is traveling back the narrative as we know it from the tained engagement. to Judea after seven years in Egypt, all Gospels. The hunt for Jesus instigat- One of those moments comes when know the story of Mary’s virgin birth ed by Herod the Great, which led to Jesus, resisting his parents’ wishes of Jesus. They include Cleopas, Joseph’s the massacre of the innocents, is per- that he keep his patrimony and his brother (presumably the same St. petuated by his son Herod (Jonathan gifts concealed, cures his ailing un- Cleopas who encountered Jesus on the Bailey), presumably Herod Antipas, though the dates do not seem quite to add up. Neither does Herod’s re- The Wind of God… lationship with the Roman centurion Severus (Sean Bean), who has been given the mission of finding and kill- …moved over the face of the waters. And in reading this, ing the boy whose birth unleashed so much lethal paranoia seven years be- the awareness that, more than once, fore. Herod, a puppet of Rome, treats God has turned my head in his direction, Severus like a temp worker, though yet I haven’t seen the gesture for what it is. this seems unlikely. What does ring very true is the portrayal of Mary and Joseph (Sara Lazzaro, Vincent Walsh) The world charges and is charged with a white-hot flame. as nervous, worried, overprotective I might turn away, but each morning my head is turned for me parents of a divinely inspired child who is being plagued by the devil. toward a crow’s flight, squirrel passage, or a person Literally. with whom I share an ever-present reaching toward. Is there some human, narra- tive-craving genome that demands I let myself be turned sometimes. Sometimes stories, plot-driven explanations of our I get into my car and drive away. beliefs and our needs and ourselves? It would seem so. We know so little about Jesus the boy that something Today I picture God’s hand cupped atop my head— like “The Young Messiah” addresses a quiet turning and then receding. a desire we might not even realize we had while filling a very Christian im- We are ‘fine’ with each other. This god has all the time in the world. perative. Jesus, after all, told stories, too. And those stories live on and help JENNIFER WALLACE us know him better.

JENNIFER WALLACE is a poetry editor at The Cortland Review and a founding editor of JOHN ANDERSON is a film critic for Variety Toadlily Press. Her book of poems and photographs, It Can be Solved by Walking, was pub- and The Wall Street Journal and a regular lished by CityLit Press in 2012. Her chapbook, The Want Fire, is published by Passager Books. contributor to the Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times.

30 America March 14, 2016 OF OTHER THINGS | DANIEL P. HORAN explain themselves. Because of white privilege, people who look like me never IT’S BEEN A PRIVILEGE have to confront our nation’s history of systemic racism, while the histories and hose America does “White Privilege and Male Privilege.” bodies of black people are erased and Donald J. Trump want Ms. McIntosh lists dozens of daily ef- ignored. W to “make great again”? fects of white privilege as she experi- I confess I have been overwhelmed at Confronted as I have been so regularly enced them, including: times and frequently unsure of what to by news coverage of the part-spectacle, “I can go shopping alone most of the do in response to this knowledge. Like part-genuine presidential campaign, time, pretty well assured that I will not poverty, sexism, environmental degra- I have had many occasions to puzzle be followed or harassed.” dation and other structural evils, com- over this slogan, “Make America Great “I can turn on the television or open bating white privilege seems quixotic Again!” And I cannot shake the dis- to the front page of the paper and see if not impossible. But its persistence turbing recognition of the white privi- people of my race depends very much on lege that undergirds such a statement’s widely represented.” the silence and will- internal logic and narrowly focused ap- “I am never asked to People who ful ignorance of those peal. speak for all the people look like me who benefit from its At what point in the 240-year-old of my racial group.” reality. history of the United States was it so “When I am told never have It is not enough for great for black people that we would about our national white people merely to want to return to that “greatness” again? heritage or about ‘civ- to confront acknowledge the real- A similar question could be asked about ilization,’ I am shown our nation’s ity of white privilege, the “Americas” of women more general- that people of my color but it is the necessary ly, religious minorities, indigenous peo- made it what it is.” history of starting point. As M. ples, Latino/a people, gays and lesbians, Reading these and Shawn Copeland, the and the physically, mentally or emotion- other examples, I racism. Rev. Bryan Massingale, ally disabled, among others. But here I came to recognize the James Cone and other want to focus my attention on the fact many previously un- black theologians have of white privilege and draw attention acknowledged benefits reminded the church to a pervasive reality underlying Mr. in my own daily life. and academy over the Trump’s slogan, one that does not re- Subsequently I have years, until white min- ceive the attention it must, at least not not been able to un-see isters and theologians from many white Christians. the white privilege that seriously acknowledge As a white male, especially one who pervades my being- and address white also benefits from an unsought clerical in-the-world. When I am on planes or privilege and racism, not much is going privilege in the church, it is my respon- buses, in restaurants or stores, or inter- to change. Furthermore, as the white sibility to raise this subject personally acting with acquaintances or strangers, I Trappist monk, Thomas Merton, wrote and publicly and to acknowledge that I see the manifold ways structural racism in his essay “Letters to a White Liberal” benefit from the structural sin of white marks all bodies in relationship and the in 1964, until white people are willing privilege in a society (and, as some theo- disturbing ways some are advantaged to sacrifice their privilege, all their ex- logians have rightly argued, in a church) while others are disadvantaged. pressed concern about racism is effec- that is in deep collective denial about its White privilege affords people who tively worthless. existence. look like me a nearly universal bene- It is the brilliant and unsettling work The nature of my unwitting complic- fit of the doubt while simultaneously of black and antiracist theologians, as ity with American white privilege and casting a shadow of suspicion and in- well as that of journalists like Ta-Nehisi many of the ways I directly benefit from credulity on the motives, reasoning and Coates and poets like Claudia Rankine, the color of my skin came into stark experiences of black and brown people. that continues to inform my critical relief when I first encountered Peggy White privilege means that people who awareness of racial injustice that not McIntosh’s now-classic 1988 essay, look like me can go about the world only exists but also benefits me. Maybe with a sense of entitlement and belong- if white privilege were more widely DANIEL P. HORAN, O.F.M., is a Franciscan ing, whereas people of color are often recognized, America could indeed be friar and author. Twitter: @DanHoranOFM. considered outsiders, aliens and must great someday.

March 14, 2016 America 31 BOOKS | PATRICK A. O’DONNELL Trayvon Martin must terrify you in a way he could never terrify me.” STILL DREAMING Despite their different “worlds,” Coates insists that he, Samori and all black people are engaged in “the beau- mechanisms that ensure that the BETWEEN THE WORLD tiful struggle” (the title of Coates’s Dream fulfills its principal function: AND ME 2008 autobiography). Yet despite to elevate the Dreamers—“those who By Ta-Nehisi Coates whatever aesthetic beauty the struggle believe themselves white”—over black Spiegel and Grau. 176p $24 offers, it comes at a high cost. What bodies in a way that masks this dom- those in the struggle know is that black ination from the Dreamers themselves In 1965, James Baldwin and William people in the United States are and but renders it all too obvious to those F. Buckley Jr. participated in a pub- always have been threatened with “the in “the struggle.” lic debate at Cambridge University. loss of their bodies.” From the horrors Under discussion was the question of chattel slavery (“the flaying of backs; of whether “the American Dream has the chaining of limbs; the strangling been achieved at the expense of the of dissidents; the destruction of fam- American Negro.” What became clear ilies; the rape of mothers; the sale of during the debate is that Baldwin children”) to the “plunder” of black life, and Buckley largely agreed upon the liberty and capital embodied in urban facts about the status of blacks in redlining and “the sprawling carceral America. Both parties agreed that state, the random detention of black black people had achieved some mod- people, the torture of suspects,” those est social and material advances since in the struggle know that the Dream is Reconstruction, but that, despite these not for them. gains, they were still subject to institu- They are the surplus that the Dream tionalized discrimination, segregation cannot help but plunder, and the very and both officially sanctioned and vigi- norms of the Dream even demand this lante forms of white terror. plunder. As Coates puts it in one of What the two men were really de- the book’s most devastating lines, “In bating was the significance of these America, it is traditional to destroy the facts. Did they suggest that the very black body—it is heritage.” promise embodied by the Dream was Coates’s notion of “violence” is fun- premised upon the exploitation of damentally a visceral, materialistic one. black lives, black labor and black bod- Whatever more metaphorical forms of ies? For Baldwin, but not for Buckley, Between the World and Me is writ- “violence” circulate within the ideolog- the answer was yes. ten from the perspective of one possi- ical economy of the Dream must ulti- A cursory glance at contemporary ble “black identity,” the perspective of mately be meted out within the brute discussions of race in America shows one particular black, male, heterosexu- economy of flesh, blood and bone. The that the debate is far from settled. al atheist. The narrative spans Coates’s social debts incurred by anti-black Baldwin and Buckley both have their upbringing in one of the most impov- racism, for instance, must be paid for modern proponents. In many ways, erished and violent neighborhoods of by black people at the level of “viscer- Ta-Nehisi Coates’s painful and deeply Baltimore, his becoming “conscious” al experience,” which “dislodges brains, truthful Between the World and Me is at “The Mecca” of Howard University blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts an extended articulation and update and, finally, his ongoing attempt to organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth.” of Baldwin’s conviction that the dom- articulate the depth of his fears and This is a powerful and grounding ination of blacks is endemic to the hopes for Samori, born into a rela- social vision. While more “academic” American Dream, that “the Dream” tively privileged existence, in which he approaches to racism can quickly al- sustains itself insofar as it rests “on need not fear the violence of the drug low their theories to lose touch with our backs, the bedding made from our corner but the police officer, the white the details of the everyday lives that bodies,” as Coates writes. Written as a crowd and the skittish gun-toting citi- those theories are ultimately about, letter to his 14-year-old son, Samori, zen: “There is no real distance between Coates insists that racism always Coates’s text is a rich analysis of the you and Trayvon Martin, and thus comes to collect its debt of flesh and

32 America March 14, 2016 blood—in Michael Brown’s shooting, Eric Garner’s strangling, the murder of poor, young black men by other poor, young black men, the rape of black prisoners or the grief of mothers, sis- ters and wives. The Dream maintains itself through obscuring the violence upon which its existence depends, ush- ers it into urban ghettos and sinking schools, all while stridently maintain- ing its innocence, absolving itself from responsibility for the violence that it simultaneously feeds upon and prop- agates. Coates is adamant that the prob- lems engendered by the Dream cannot be addressed by appeal to religion—“I rejected magic in all its forms.” “I have no praise anthems, nor old Negro spir- ituals. The spirit and soul are the body and brain, which are destructible…and the soul did not escape. The spirit did not fly away on gospel wings.” Despite this unsentimental atheism, Coates betrays a grand, almost Wagnerian fascination with “the struggle” against everything that makes the Dream pos- sible, even when the pervasiveness of the Dream makes hope impossible. One cannot help but be reminded of the very Catholic precept that suf- fering itself is redemptive, when Coates claims that “the struggle, in and of it- self, has meaning.” He assures his son that “your very vulnerability brings you closer to the meaning of life, just as for others, the quest to believe themselves white divides them from it.” For Coates, this vulnerability is something that black people must cherish. In contrast to the Dreamers, whose “name has no real meaning divorced from the ma- chinery of criminal power,” the struggle breeds “a kind of understanding that illuminates the Galaxy in all its truest colors” among the strugglers. Even the contentless Dreamers know it and are envious of it—after all, even for them, “it is Billie they reach for in sadness, and Mobb Deep is what they holler in boldness, and Isley they hum in love, and Dre they yell in revelry, and Aretha

March 14, 2016 America 33 is the last sound they hear before dy- merely academic interest. If racism isn’t the past, as something that has a few ing.” just evil, but evil and inevitable, one kinks to be worked out, but is large- There are moments when Coates’s might think that resistance (“the strug- ly solved. Even when an average news treatment of the nature of racism is not gle”) has merely aesthetic value at best, week is filled with high-profile cases of fully satisfying. For instance, he speaks in the same way Ahab’s mythic tangle police brutality against blacks and pub- of racism not as a moral problem born with the White Whale is beautiful, lic bigotry against black protesters in of human failings, but as a necessary law powerful and devastating but ultimate- disadvantaged, urban communities or of a properly functioning natural order: ly doomed. But shouldn’t the struggle on college campuses, we are frequently change the world? Shouldn’t it discredit advised to treat these as unfortunate My mother knew that the gal- the Dream? Coates’s own book is it- abnormalities, as exceptions rather than axy itself could kill me…and no self a powerful activist stand, but if he the rule. This is deeply misleading; even one would be brought to account is claiming that racism is one of “our when it is not obvious, racism (and for this destruction because my world’s physical laws,” anti-racists might more particularly, anti-blackness) lives death would not be the fault of be better served doing as he does, not as in the very cracks and fissures of our so- any human, but the fault of some he preaches. cial structure, and it always has. Books unfortunate but immutable fact Nevertheless, it would be a shame to like Between the World and Me pry at of “race” imposed upon an inno- let these discrepancies obscure the im- these fissures and confront us with a cent country by the inscrutable portance and value of Between the World troubling but important truth: All of us judgment of invisible gods. The and Me. Sixty years after Baldwin and keep dreaming at our peril. earthquake cannot be subpoe- Buckley’s meeting at Cambridge, there naed. The typhoon will not bend is still a tendency in the national me- PATRICK A. O’DONNELL is a doctoral candi- under indictment. They sent the dia to speak of racism as a specter of date in philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. killer of [Howard classmate] Prince Jones back to his work [as a police officer] because he was ROBERT E. SCULLY not a killer at all. He was a force of nature, the helpless agent of TWO FAMILIES, MANY WARS our world’s physical laws. AGENTS OF EMPIRE in European and Mediterranean stud- In these cases, it is unclear whether Knights, Corsairs, Jesuits & ies by focusing his lens, with increas- Coates is describing a particular black Spies in the Sixteenth-Century ing precision, on Eastern Europe, the first-person perspective on what racism Mediterranean World Balkans and “Venetian Albania.” This feels like or whether, objectively, racism By Noel Malcolm region, between East and West, Islam really is a permanent force of nature, as Oxford University Press. 640p $34.95 and Christianity and the Ottoman and impossible to resist as a tornado, hur- Habsburg Empires, witnessed shifting ricane or other natural disaster. If we This deeply researched and wide-rang- religious, political and economic ter- ought to understand him in the for- ing study advances our knowledge of rains in the dynamic but troubled 16th mer sense, we ought to accept Coates’s early modern history in diverse and century. claims at face value—surely, if racism yet complementary ways. On the one This scholarly venture began with seems like a crushingly inevitable force hand, Noel Malcolm makes some im- Malcolm’s discovery of a contemporary to Coates, other African-Americans portant contributions with regard to treatise by Antonio Bruni, a prominent and non-black people of color, then no several recent scholarly trends, includ- member of a well-connected Albanian one, especially if he or she is white, has ing studies of borderlands and frontiers Catholic family. Inspired by that initial any business saying that it does not. But between diverse cultures, religions and find, followed by extensive research in if we understand this claim as an analy- empires. These encounters typically myriad archives and libraries, Malcolm sis of what anti-black racism actually is, included both collaboration and con- has produced a detailed study of the Coates might very well be wrong about frontation, whether on the individ- eastern Mediterranean world, built the supposedly inevitable nature of ual or collective level, in these often around a collective biography of the racism (several black activist traditions fluid frontier zones, including much interrelated Bruni and Bruti families. would argue that he is). of the early modern Mediterranean Several of these individuals had par- Moreover, if Coates is wrong about world. On the other hand, Malcolm ticularly eventful and influential lives. this, the falsity of the claim is not of makes some significant new inroads Giovanni Bruni became the archbishop

34 America March 14, 2016 of Bar, a city near the Albanian coast was locked in a long-term struggle with These conflicts within both the that was part of the Venetian commer- Persia, resulting in intermittent, though Christian and Islamic worlds help to cial and maritime empire. Archbishop often long and destructive, wars be- explain why, as Malcolm points out, Bruni was a friend of Cardinal Carlo tween these Muslim adversaries. there were alliances that not only tran- Borromeo and attended the Council of Malcolm does a good job demon- scended but seemed to betray religious Trent. Yet, as a chilling example of how strating that while the intensive loyalties. France, for example, justi- far even the mighty could fall, he was Ottoman-Habsburg rivalry in the fied its Ottoman alliance as a neces- captured in a war between Balkans and eastern sary reaction to the perceived threat of the Catholic Holy League Mediterranean has re- Habsburg encirclement. The Venetians and the Ottomans, made ceived a great deal of and the Ottomans, while they some- a galley slave and killed (deserved) attention, times fought each other, also continued in the epic naval battle of the Ottoman wars to trade back and forth out of both eco- Lepanto in 1571 (proba- with Persia have not nomic necessity and political calcula- bly by Christian soldiers received comparable tion. The West even made overtures to in a tragic case of mistak- coverage, at least in the the Persians so as to tie down Ottoman en identity). Giovanni’s West. While this ne- resources in the East. brother, Gasparo, joined glect is palpably true, In addition to the big picture of the Knights of Malta, a and while the author power politics and religious struggles, hybrid religious order does discuss some of Malcolm also incorporates social histo- whose members were also the Habsburgs’ strug- ry, including the fate of captives, many crusaders. Quite ironically, gles elsewhere, he argu- thousands of them over time, who were Gasparo Bruni went on to ably underestimates swept up in the land and sea battles that serve as captain of the papal that side of a complex raged across much of the Mediterranean flagship at Lepanto—probably close to equation. One or both branches of the world. Some captives, particularly the where his brother met his tragic end. Habsburg family, for example, fought more prominent and wealthy, were Part of the attraction of Agents of major wars with France (until 1559), highly valued, in part for the informa- Empire is that the author interweaves the engaged in internecine struggles with tion they might provide but typically lives of the extended Bruni family with Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire even more for the ransom that others the larger narrative of the sometimes and elsewhere and had to expend con- were willing to pay for their safe return. clashing, sometimes cooperating greater siderable resources defending and gov- Many captives, however, were enslaved and lesser 16th-century Mediterranean erning a vast overseas empire, especially and consigned to forced labor, often as powers. To understand how complex in the Americas. galley slaves. Rowers were a vital com- a mix this could be, it is essential that one not draw a simplistic black and white divide between the Christian and Islamic worlds. Each side had its own divisions as well as connections to the other side, including some rather surprising ones. Within Christendom, the long-standing division between the Orthodox and Catholics was ex- acerbated by the Reformation and the resultant split in the West between Catholics and Protestants. Cutting across those religious fault lines were political ones, in particular between the Habsburgs (the Spanish and Austrian Habsburg Empires) and those who feared Habsburg preponderance, in- cluding France, Venice, England and even, at times, the Papal States. In the Islamic world, the Ottoman Empire

March 14, 2016 America 35 ponent of premodern fleets. Some of to the establishment of various so-called and thus reinforce the otherwise ten- the rowers were free men (either paid uniate churches, which kept their own uous idea that the religion of an en- or conscripts), while many others were rites but acknowledged papal primacy. tire nation can be aptly and succinctly either convicts or slaves. Intriguingly, We also see Jesuits serving as military described.” In his view, the polling in- Malcolm draws a connection between chaplains and engaging in other minis- dustry has deeply influenced—and at slave-freeing or ransoming and possi- tries that came to the fore in the context times distorted—how religion is un- ble espionage and sabotage. In general, of the Tridentine church. As the author derstood and reinforced. practices relating to the treatment of states: “The Counter-Reformation, tak- Wuthnow cut his teeth as a grad- captives and slaves, as well as ransom- en in its broadest sense, was possibly the uate student under Charles Glock of ing, were similar across the Christian/ most important development in this pe- Berkeley’s Social Survey Center but Muslim divide. riod of European history. Thanks to the also worked closely (as I did with both) The Jesuits merit mention in the patient work of the Jesuits and others, with Robert Bellah, who stressed a subtitle of the book because they make the culture and religious life of Catholic more qualitative sociology based on intermittent but significant appearanc- Europe were gradually but profound- interviews and social networking. es, especially in the latter half of the ly transformed.” Even more broadly, Bellah’s more humanistic style of so- narrative. Their groundbreaking role in Malcolm gives us a convincing account ciology claimed that religion’s symbols, education is highlighted, and they num- of the numerous transformations that meanings and rituals are hardly a sub- bered among their students in Rome continued to reshape the complex ject matter that can be readily mea- none other than Antonio Bruni. The 16th-century Mediterranean world. sured with forced survey questions. Society also sponsored a number of Polls often miss nuances, diversity and missions in Central and Eastern Europe, ROBERT E. SCULLY, S.J., is professor of history subtle changes in religion. The key ar- including among the Orthodox, leading and law at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, N.Y. gument for thinking about American religion through polls, however, is that national data is better than mere local JOHN A. COLEMAN data. Numbers do count. Wuthnow carefully reviews the use MEASURES OF FAITH of survey data by professional sociolo- gists and by professional polling com- INVENTING AMERICAN Americans claim to believe in God tell panies (like Gallup, Roper and Pew). RELIGION us little about what it is people actu- Sociological studies tend to have larg- Polls, Surveys, and The Tenuous ally believe about God and how they er response rates than those found in Quest for the Nation’s Faith experience God. polls by professional polling compa- By Robert Wuthnow As the author notes, it is almost im- nies. They generally carefully report Oxford University Press. 247p $29.95 possible to think about the degree of possible American religion sampling error and Robert Wuthnow, arguably the dean without polling data. statistical significance. of sociologists of religion, presents in Yet, he argues: “polls They probe for causal his numerous books a brilliant amal- are ill suited to capture connections and deeper gam of quantitative and qualitative the most meaningful religious orientations. information based on interviews and aspects of our person- Frequently they in- archival materials. He also has worked al lives, let alone about clude, along with their with the Gallup Organization and the the depth, superficiality survey data, field obser- Pew Foundation and has served on the and complicated rela- vations and qualitative board of the General Social Survey. tions we may have with interviews. Wuthnow He seems dubious about the phrase religious traditions and reviews early studies “American religion”—hence his title practices. They rarely of congregations or lo- suggesting it is something invented— probe in depth the ex- cal community surveys when based only on polling data that periences underlying oriented toward prac- does not encapsulate local, personal religious beliefs or the tical church outreach and familial identities, social networks narratives through which those expe- and ministry. Often, however, these and the variety of religious respons- riences become personally meaning- early surveys depended too much on a es. Polls telling us that 90 percent of ful. The intent rather is to generalize church-sponsored organization, which

36 America March 14, 2016 could object to or undermine the find- percent). In part, depending on land- of questions). Forced-choice questions ings. The Rev. Andrew Greeley’s 1972 line phones, they miss many respon- leave little nuance for deeper-rooted national study, for example, done at the dents who now use only cell phones. meanings. Gallup argued that peo- request of the U.S. bishops, displeased Large majorities are skeptical about ple almost always give thoughtful an- some Catholic leaders by showing polls. Racial and religious minori- swers. Yet some data show that, over the extent of parishioners’ dissatisfac- ties are deeply under-represented. time, when re-interviewed, people give tion with church policies, especially Wuthnow shows, for example, relying widely divergent answers to whether on birth control. Professional polling on a ground-breaking 1993 article by they are religious or not. In anoth- companies rather often neglect to re- C. Kirk Hadaway, Penny Long Marler er survey, Wuthnow notes that early, port their response rates (increasingly and Mark Chaves (“What the Polls easy to reach, white respondents were as low as 9 percent), sampling error Don’t Show: A Closer Look at Church higher church goers than those hard or even the whole battery or order in Attendance”), that Gallup data was to reach. The opposite was the case which they questioned people. misleading when compared with that for African-Americans, which falsely In an earlier period, thoughtful from The General Social Survey, which skewed reporting of the actual church- journalists like Kenneth Woodward involved in-person (not by telephone) going practice of African-Americans. at Newsweek, Kenneth Briggs at The contact, a high response rate. People, Wuthnow claims that “social sci- New York Times and John Dart at The in fact, over-reported to Gallup their entists will find it necessary to teach Los Angeles Times, in reporting poll- church attendance. students to be wary of polls and to ing results, equally questioned them Wuthnow suggests we need to think about American religion in other and their accuracy or put the data in question, when reading any poll, the ways.” Since his book appeared, I have a larger context. Newspapers have numbers interviewed; the response noticed NPR programs and newspa- dropped religion commentators, and rate (it is not clear why government per articles taking up his argument television, Wuthnow claims, “is inept surveys have response rates of some 60 about being a bit skeptical of taking at reporting about religion,” provid- to 70 percent compared with 9 percent our view of religion ( is it declining ? ing little informed commentary to put for Pew surveys); sampling error; the How is it changing ? ) mainly or exclu- numbers in context. number of times the pollster tried to sively from polls. Professional polling organizations reach each respondent; the framing of find that respondents are reluctant to any question (its opening statement, JOHN A. COLEMAN, S.J., is associate pastor take part in their surveys. Their re- its sequence and relation to other ques- of St. Ignatius Church at the University of San sponse rates are quite small (often 9 tions asked right before it; the number Francisco.

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March 14, 2016 America 37 THE WORD

ed, knowing that hostility and rejection Dying as He Lived would come not just from religious PALM SUNDAY (C), MARCH 20, 2016 elites but from the same crowds that cheered him into the city, and even from Readings: Lk 19:28–40; Is 50:4–7; Ps 22:8–24; Phil 2:6–11; Lk 22:14–23:56 some among his apostles, his closest “He saved others; let him save himself” (Lk 23:35) friends. Still, he rode with cheers rain- ing down on him to what he knew was alm Sunday is a festive event litical elites, and this royal entry into his approaching death. in which the church commem- Jerusalem at the time of Passover must Why should it even have been this Porates and re-enacts Christ’s have stoked further anger among them. way? Msgr. John P. Meier writes that entry into Jerusalem, a symbol of his In Luke’s account, some Pharisees ask “as a person lives, so that person dies.... kingship and victorious celebration. Jesus to tell his disciples “to stop.” More Jesus’ message and praxis consisted of It is the beginning of the culmination than stopping the celebration, they radical love for God and neigh- of Jesus’ life’s work, both in the sense must have wanted to stop them bor, of humble service and of its fulfillment and its end. It is from celebrating Jesus’ ar- sacrifice for others, even also, as Jesus knew when he rode into rival as the fulfillment of for enemies. This mes- Jerusalem, the entry into his death. As messianic hopes. sage was based on total he approached Jerusalem, death ap- This celebration of confidence in and surren- proached him. the crowds must have der to the God who was Even as crowds acclaimed his entry created tension for coming in his kingdom as on a colt, aware of and excited by this Jesus himself, who ac- Father. Jesus’ acts of heal- act of prophetic fulfillment, Jesus knew cording to all of the ing, exorcising, pursuing the he was riding to his death. Hearts and Synoptic Gospels creat- lost sheep, eating with sinners, voices soared as Jesus rode into the ed the conditions that al- city, with people placing cloaks on lowed the royal entry to take place PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE the ground and shaking their palm by having his disciples find the Imagine yourself in the crowd on Palm branches to create a boisterous sound animal on which he would enter Sunday, cheering Jesus on as he enters Jerusalem. What kind of king are you of triumph. “The whole multitude of Jerusalem. He knew that the joy of expecting? Are you ready to follow him the disciples began to praise God joy- his disciples would turn to sorrow, anywhere? Are you prepared for Jesus’ fully with a loud voice for all the deeds even the joy of his closest disci- death? of power that they had seen, saying, ples, whom he had taught privately DUNNE TAD ART: ‘Blessed is the king who comes in the about what was to come but who declaring sins forgiven, teaching the name of the Lord!’” had difficulty grasping the need for crowds and disputing with opponents But while this was a triumphal en- the Messiah to suffer and die. Yet Jesus were all concrete expressions of his ser- try, the man for others alone compre- needed them to experience the truth of vice of love. Jesus was indeed the ‘man hended the true import of his entry his joyous kingship before experienc- for others’ whose whole life interprets and why this victorious moment was ing his suffering and death. his death—and vice versa” (New Jerome a preparation for his death. It was a For it was only in their own painful Biblical Commentary, 1326). triumph still to be comprehended rumination on Jesus’ death and their The one who came offering life was by those who followed after him and subsequent experience of the risen Jesus faced with rejection; and his expiatory those who sang him into the city. that they would fully understand the death on behalf of others, on behalf of There was pre-existing hostility nature of the Messiah, the savior of all. Israel and the world, was a response to to Jesus among the religious and po- Jesus alone rode with the weight of that those who had refused the mercy of knowledge and the weight of that suf- God’s son. Jesus’ approaching death, a JOHN W. MARTENS is a professor of theology fering as he approached his death. self-emptying of love, was in keeping at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn. Why should it even have been this with the whole of his life. It was not out Twitter: @BibleJunkies. way? Jesus’ death was an act of pure of character, but precisely the summa- grace meant for the sins of Israel and tion of Jesus’ love for humanity. the whole world. This death he accept- JOHN W. MARTENS

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