For All Saints Day

"After this, our Lord reminded me of the longing I had for him, and I saw that nothing kept me from him but sin, and I saw that this is so with all of us. And I thought that if sin had never existed, we should all have been pure and like himself, as God made us; and so I had often wondered before now in my folly why, in his great foreseeing wisdom, God had not prevented the beginning of sin; for then, I thought, all would have been well. I ought certainly to have abandoned these thoughts, but nevertheless I grieved and sorrowed over the question with no reason or judgment. But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that I needed to know, answered with this assurance: 'Sin is befitting, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.'

"With this bare word 'sin' our Lord brought to my mind the whole extent of all that is not good, adn the shameful scorn adn the utter humiliation that he bore for us in this life, and his dying, and all the pains and suffering of all his creatures, both in body and in spirit--for we are all to some extent brought to nothing and shall be brought to nothing as our master Jesus was, until we are finally purged: that is to say until our mortal flesh is brought completely to nothing, and all those of our inward feelings which are not truly good....

"But I did not see sin; for I believe it has no sort of substance nor portion of being, nor could it be recognized were it not for the suffering which it causes. And this suffering seems to me to be something transient, for it purges us and makes us know ourselves and pray for mercy; for the Passion of our Lord supports us against all this, and this is his blessed will. And because of the tender love which our good Lord feels for all who shall be saved, he supports us willingly and sweetly, meaning this: 'It is true that sin is the cause of all this suffering, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.' These words were said very tenderly, with no suggestion that I or anyone who will be saved was being blamed. It would therefore be very strange to blame or wonder at God because of my sin, since he does not blame me for sinning.

"And thus our good Lord answered all the questions and doubts I could put forward, saying most comfortingly, 'I may make all things well. I can make all things well and I will make all things well and I shall make all things well; and you shall see for yourself that all manner of things shall be well.

"And I wondered greatly as this revelation, and considered our faith, wondering as follows: our faith is grounded in God's word, and it is part of our faith that we should believe that God's word will be kept in all things; and one point of our faith is that many shall be damned--like the angels who fell out of heaven from pride, who are now fiends, and men on earth who die outside the faith of Holy Church, that is, those who are heathens, and also any man who has received Christianity and lives an unChristian life and so dies excluded from the love of God. Holy Church teaches me to belive that all these shall be condemned everlastingly to hell. And given all this, I thought it impossible that all manner of things should be well, as our Lord revealed at this time. And I received no other answer in showing from our Lord God but this: 'What is impossible to you is not impossible to me. I shall keep my word in all thing and I shall make all things well.'

"...the more anxious we are to discover [God's] secret knowledge about this or anything else, the further we shall be from knowing it...."

From chapters 27, 29, 32, and 33, Reflections of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich.

When You Don't Know The Subject, You Can Conclude Anything About It

The New Yorker attempts to review American ecclesiastical history:

The historic European Protestant traditions that were the forebears of the American church placed great emphasis on learning and on doctrine, but the result was a faith that tended to be aristocratic and élitist. Revivalism democratized Christianity. It elevated a new class of spiritual leaders—people who could hold a crowd in their thrall. They preached that salvation was open to all and exhorted congregants to forge their own moral destinies. Sutton argues that the effect of this movement was a distinctly American faith, one in which “the ideals of political democracy and religious democracy went hand in hand.”

Well, yeah. Maybe .But the Church of Rome started out far more democratically, too. Augustine converted to Christianity, and later was pressed into service as a bishop by the people. There were no “ideals of political democracy and religious democracy” in Europe, and especially in the Roman Empire, except among the first century Christians (Paul’s house churches put family and their slaves on equal grounds, at least for worship; and Luke describes early believers gathering together (apart from Paul’s influence), and holding everything in common, make and female. As Paul told the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Radical stuff even today. The Roman church took on the character of feudal Europe after Constantine, which is why the Desert Fathers fled to the desert: Christianity was becoming too worldly, i.e., too much like the world.  And feudal Europe owed a lot to the Roman Empire. French, Spanish and Italian are variants of Latin. Piccadilly Circus is from the Latin word for “circle.” The British admired the Romans so much they treated Latin as a “better” language than their own for over 100 years, because Willie the Shake had “little Latin and less Greek.” Bishops became “princes of the church” in order to stand equal to the feudal nobles, and the Bishop of Rome for some time held power over the monarchs of Europe, a power that began seriously ebbing with Henry VIII, a power Rome fought with Elizabeth I to recover. The church was very much of the world at that point. (Henry taking all their property in England to dole out to his dukes and earls and barons like the feudal lord he was didn’t help matters with Rome very much.)

Monks founded the great universities of Europe to keep literacy alive so the religious could read the scriptures and the works of the church fathers. Literacy was not widespread until about the time of Gutenberg (who needed it until then?), so education was, of course, connected to the church. The European churches that were not just the Anglican Church brought those traditions with them. In the 19th century German settlers in St. Louis, a city already dominated by the Roman Church (I spent a weekend in a retreat in a former Catholic seminary, built to house priests-in-training. The hallways were so wide I joked I could drive my MG Midget down them, and turn it around at either end. It was a much bigger facility than the seminary I would attend for four years.). Those settlers built a seminary, an orphanage, a hospital, and a mental health facility, all within a few years of their arrival. And all are still operating, over 100 years later. The break with that tradition is very American, but hardly a defining feature of American Baptists. One of my oldest friends grew up in the Baptist church and attended a Baptist seminary. I still remember his father talking about Baptist preachers he knew with doctorates. He spoke as if he expected his son to ascend to such lofty heights. Most of the pastors I know at the largest Baptist churches are referred to as “Doctor” (never “Reverend.” Too Catholic.)

Sorry to digress so long, and get so far from my point. The point is simply that the American church is distinct from the European model in some ways; but those differences stem from historical circumstances. Too many Americans assume they grow from “corrections” we made as “free men” (which never means quite the same as “free people”). For example, some denominations accept women as pastors, priests, or part of the church judicatory (bishops; Conference Ministers; titles vary). Others resolutely refuse to. Some accept LGBTQ+ as members and clergy. Some refuse to accept them into the latter category, some refuse to accept them at all. Why? Culture, primarily. The members start with culture, and then interpret scripture, traditions, teachings, as it suits them.

Same as it ever was.

But considering how many denominations in American Christianity are rooted in European culture (starting with the divide between Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant churches), and how many denominations in America are rebranded European denominations, starting with the Methodist Episcopal Church. John Wesley was an Episcopal priest, and the church still has bishops (an episcopate). The Lutheran church has bishops, too, though the ELCA is a merger of Lutherans and German Evangelicals, the latter itself a forced merger out of Prussia of the Lutheran and Reformed denominations in that country. The even more uniquely American Lutherans are the Missouri Synod, who broke from the rest of the Lutherans in America over questions of purity, and the Wisconsin Synod, who broke with the Lutherans and the MO Synod over the same questions.

That’s probably a more American distinction in churches, as they fight within themselves, and merge with other churches to survive (creating the ELCA or the United Methodists (a merger with the United Brethren), or even my church, the UCC.

I’ll stop now, but that’s the point. There is no one distinct American church, and dividing it on who has a theological education in the pulpit, and who doesn’t, is a mug’s game. Congregational churches were once (circa 17th century) divided between the men on the side with the pulpit, and the women and children on the other, every Sunday morning (I pastored a German Evangelical church (originally) where some members were old enough to remember the same divisions there, earlier in the 20th century). The men listened intently to the sermon, and later corrected the pastor on anything they considered apostasy, or error.  The first universities in America were founded by Congregationalists. You’ve probably heard of them.

It’s true there was (is still?) a Cumberland Presbyterian denomination, which didn’t require its pastors to be trained by a seminary, a distinction from other Presbyterian churches (or was before the merger of the “north” and “south” denominations, split by the civil war and not rejoining for 100 years or so afterwards.) The merger prompted a splinter group, the “Continuing Presbyterian Church (the north was too liberal; I don’t know why. This was long before “gay” meant anything but “happy,” so that wasn’t it.), and now I know of at least one “Evangelical Presbyterian Church. And they didn’t merge with an old German Lutheran/Reformed denomination. What education level they require of their pastors, if any, I don’t know. The Cumberland branch started because Presbyterians were heading west through the Gap and needed pastors. But if pastors weren’t following, they were going to raise up their own. Distinct American egalitarianism? Or hard necessity? Two conditions that often appear alike, and I’ve found circumstances drive decision making far more than ideals do. At least in the final analysis.

Mark Noll, a historian of religion, argues that revivalism in America brought vitality to the church but left it intellectually impoverished—a “scandal of the evangelical mind.” Nevertheless, the revivalists got their results. Religious adherence surged in the nineteenth century; by the twentieth, the majority of Americans belonged to a church.

When in the 20th century? In 1906 only 41% of Americans claimed church membership. 

As you can see from the chart, that number rose slowly until the 1940's.  Church membership exploded in the years after WWII, which is why the Boomers think everyone in America always went to church. The boom in churches was hardly because of revivalism or people passing out in worship. Middle America was not getting dressed up on Sunday to have ecstatic experiences. This was the age of Peter Marshall and Norman Vincent Peale; the age when TIME magazine declared Reinhold Niebuhr America’s theologian, and people knew what they meant. It was also the time, as Harvey Cox was pointing out at Harvard Divinity School, of the genesis of the Pentecostal movement, the “holy rollers” returned from the Second Great Awakening. Professor Cox, a Baptist himself, would argue that of such would be the future of Christianity in America. Except for a few TV preachers in the ‘70’s, though, who disappeared in scandal and sinking ratings, Pentecostals never really overcame their working class roots. This is America: we still prefer a distinction between labor and man, between first class and steerage. Even if we can’t afford first class ourselves.

I can tell you as a pastor at the end of the 20th century that most church rolls listed members who hadn’t been near the building in decades; if they were still alive. Claiming church membership from the mid-forties on had as much to do with business connections and social status as anything else. When I was younger and just out of law school, my father approved of me returning to a church because I’d make business contacts there, as he had done at my age. He was being practical, not baldly mercantile. Church had many purposes at the time. It has fewer of them now.

There were “revivals” in the Baptist churches where I grew up; usually week long events that didn’t involve glossalalia or passing out in divine ecstasy (the parts of that which don’t show up in Acts make their appearance in the lives of the saints, so, again, not peculiarly American, nor Protestant). I went with my Baptist friend (it was his church), and took notes like an anthropologist in New Guinea. The most emotional part was the altar call. I went to a Billy Graham revival in a stadium with a church group, for reasons I can’t remember, but mostly curiosity. It was the closest I came to feeling drawn to the altar during the call. But I wasn’t ecstatic, and I didn’t go.

The New Yorker article jumps to a quick summary of the birth and rise of fundamentalism, without noticing, as Martin Marty did decades back, that it is an international phenomenon largely in reaction against modernity and “the other.” That lacunae is important, because, well, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself:

It’s inarguable, however, that Donald Trump’s ascendance has nourished a darker, more volatile version of the phenomenon. Tapping into the lineage of white evangelicalism, with its charismatic leaders, anti-intellectualism, and political militancy, the maga movement has placed a nostalgia for a Christian past at the center of a grievance-based politics.

Barton’s pseudo-scholarship furnished Christian nationalists with valuable ammunition, but the movement needed foot soldiers. In 2012, an eighteen-year-old named Charlie Kirk founded Turning Point USA, a nonprofit organization meant to promote fiscal conservatism among young people. Kirk had been a Christian since childhood, but he was initially circumspect about his faith, arguing that religious conservatives had erred by imposing their beliefs “through government policy.” In 2019, however, Kirk met Rob McCoy, a pastor who challenged Kirk to more aggressively bring his Christian world view into the public arena. The following year, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Kirk lauded President Trump for understanding “the seven mountains of cultural influence”—an evangelical vision, dating to the nineteen-seventies, that calls on believers to influence the realms of family, religion, education, media, entertainment, business, and government. Kirk embraced the idea himself, building a media empire and organizing a grassroots army to turn out Trump voters during the 2024 election. Last year, after a gunman shot and killed Kirk at a campus event in Utah, his wife, Erika, a former Miss Arizona who started her own ministry organization and a faith-based clothing company, vowed to carry on her husband’s legacy, “fighting the good fight for our country.”

We can ignore the “pseudo-scholarship” discussion for our purposes. What’s missing in this brief history of the rise of fundamentalism as "the unequivocal winner in America’s religious economy,” is the base reason for that rise. It wasn’t evolution in the ‘20’s (presented as the cause of fundamentalism in the first place. It actually had more to do with theology than Darwin) that made people accept it in the last decades of the 20th century; it was racism. The civil rights movement of the ‘60’s didn’t, as Dr. King stated, bring American churches to embrace desegregation. Church in America (except, ironically, among some Pentecostal churches when Cox was writing about them), was, and still is, the most segregated hour in America. King publicly lamented the refusal of white Christian churches to support his movement. There’s a reason white people still quote King’s Washington speech, but don’t know his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” And it’s the same reason they don’t remember why King was in D.C. to give that speech. Racism and classism go hand in hand in America. And it was racism that drove people out of “liberal” churches far more than it was the “embrace” of Darwin or science, at all. Pastors who could preach about evolution, didn’t dare preach about race in America. They still can’t.

Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump are both bluntly racist in ways Jesse Helms and George Wallace never were; and yet that goes unmentioned in the New Yorker article. We still can’t have an honest discussion about race, because it’s so polarizing all discussion ceases. It’s still the elephant in the American room we can’t admit is there. Ironically, the article mentions Jerry Falwell as an architect of the rise to cultural dominance of fundamentalism, without commenting on what a known racist he was.  Can’t clutter the discussion with such inconvenient truths.

Although only about two-thirds of Americans now identify as Christians—compared with just under ninety per cent in the nineteen-nineties—a recent Pew Research Center survey concluded that the erosion in belief has likely levelled off. New data from Gallup show a surge of religiosity among young men. It seems possible that Christianity is once again on the upswing in America.

If James Talarico is a harbinger, it’s probably of a more “liberal” Xianity, or at least one more counter to the religious culture fundamentalism created.  That goes a long way to explaining Dan Patrick’s concern, which I think leaves the mere political and jumps into the theological.

The sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney Stark have argued that, historically, the most popular religious bodies tend to exert a countervailing force on the culture at large. They demand sacrifice from their adherents but also promise temporal and eternal rewards. Expecting churches that preach a distant, unresponsive God to be attractive to new believers is akin, Finke and Stark write, to believing that soccer fans would buy tickets to matches with “players who, for lack of a ball, just stand around.” In this way, they explain the extraordinary rise of evangelicalism.

Well, that’s certainly borne out by history, although the RC isn’t going anywhere, and it would appear “liberal” church ideas might yet have their day. Certainly the Church of Meaning and Belonging starts out as the Church of Sacrifice for Meaning and Belonging, but honestly, it can’t stay that way for long. Ask Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Or any sociologist of religion; or any ecclesiastical historian.

Part of the problem with this discussion is that fundamentalism has defined the popular notion of Christianity, but it has hardly supplanted other Christian churches.  Fundamentalism was largely popular from the 80's until the 2020's because it was espoused by TV evangelists first, and so became the image of Christianity in America (if it's on TeeVee, it must be true!).  And then journalists picked it up as normative, supplanting more traditional Protestantism and Catholicism.  But the ascent of Pope Francis and then Pope Leo shows something else is happening in the Roman church (which never, despite Opus Dei, accepted fundamentalism as a replacement for tradition).  And while some churches broke away from traditional "mainline" churches over "liberal" teachings (like accepting LGBTQ+, etc.), most of those churches found life no better outside the denomination than in it.  I've also seen many congregations close because no one was left there but the elderly.  The popular explanation for that, echoed in the New Yorker article, is that those congregations were too "liberal," i.e., not fundamentalist enough.  The realiy is something else entirely.  I pastored two congregations where I, in middle age, was one of the youngest people in the church.  And I was too young and "liberal," in the sense of different from the majority, for those congregations.  Both wanted to "grow," but both understood that to be necessary merely to survive.  They wanted, in other words, to be social clubs and hire a new director who would recruit new members.  But they didn't want to accept new members, especially younger members.  They wanted everything to stay the way it was, but new people to come and fill their coffers and make them feel a bit less alone and alienated.  But they were alone, and alientating, because they wanted to keep control of the ship (not an errant metaphor,  The nave of the church is the hold of a ship, the timbers of the roof (in most Protestant architecture, anyway, the beams of the ship upturned.  I did a whole sermon on this in one of my churches.)  In the church I grew up in, my parents' generation ran things, and there were a few "old people," in their '60's, maybe one or two in their early '70's.  Those people left the church operations to the "younger people," like my parents.  I was encouraged to be responsible for church governance when I was confirmed, so the church would pass to the next generation.  That encouragement faded at some point, as my generation stopped going to church, and returned only to raise their children there.  But by then, the "old guard" had settled in, and nothing was allowed to change without their agreement.  It could be small things, like how the church was decorated for Xmas; or big things, like what hymns should be sung every Sunday morning.  I had one church member insist to me that returning the denomination name on the sign to the one that no longer existed, but had in the 1950's, would bring people flooding back to the sanctuary.  No one but her remembered that denomination, and since it was "E&R," Evangelical and Reformed, it would have been very confusing in the present age.  Outsiders would have expected a very different church from the one they would find there.  The elderly members wondered why no new members joined, why young people stayed away; but they didn't want to know what the reason was.

Those congregations have "died."  Not because the elderly passed on, but because the congregation shrank so much, it couldn't stay open.  I knew people my age and younger who wouldn't come to "my" church because no one else there was younger than their parents.  The few who were, were not really welcomed in, and had no children for their children to associate with, as I did when I was young.

Demographics is killing the church much faster than theology.  My grandfather's died at 68.  My father lived to be 90.  People who knew they'd be dead before 70 tended to let go of the world, and leave it to others.  People who live longer and healthier, tend to think they should still be both active and "in charge," and there the real problem lies.  Would they attend a church with James Talarico as their pastor (he's a seminary student at Ausin Presbyterian Seminary)?  Probably not.  Would their grandchildren?  Maybe.

The issues, you see, are more granular and particular than they appear to be from 30,000 feet.  Is Xian fundamentalism still culturally powerful?  You might as well ask if Islamic fundamentalism is (I told you it was an international matter).  Was the latter ever the whole of Islam?  Was it ever the whole of Christianity?

Where you start determines where you end up.  Especially if you don't pay attention to the people you're talking about; or over.

“The infirm glory of the positive hour” — T.S. Eliot

I’m reading one of Kurt Vonnegut’s last books (I’m too lazy to do the full bibliography, so further affiant sayeth nought), A Man Without A Country. In it Vonnegut declares himself a humanist, by which among other things he means:

…if  Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being.

I’d just as soon be a rattlesnake.

Despite this caveat, Vonnegut confesses that he’s given up on the human race. He had, he wrote, no hope for them anymore. I used to feel that way, or thought I did. (That attitude amused my wife when we were dating, through high school and college. She knew me better than that. She has always been the wiser of the two of us.) I now see, confronting Vonnegut in my ‘70’s rather than the 1970’s (when I read just about everything he wrote), that I don’t agree with him at all. And it’s fundamentally because I consider myself a Christian, rather than a humanist (although I’m more a Christian existentialist, and I know Sartre said existentialism is a humanism. So I’m not so much at odds with Vonnegut, as simply mildly disagreeing with him.)

I don’t mean I profess the charlatan Xianity of the preachers who praise Trump. I mean the Christianity of Julian of Norwich:

With this bare word 'sin" our Lord brought to my mind the whole extent of all that is not good, and the shameful scorn and the utter humiliation that he bore for us in this life, and his dying, and all the pains and sufferings of his creatures, both in body and spirit--for we are all to some extent brought to nothing and shall be brought to nothing as our master Jesus was, until we are fully purged: that is to say until our mortal flesh is brought completely to nothing, and all those of our inward feelings which are not truly good. Have me insight into these things, along with all pains that ever were and ever shall be; and compared with these I realize that Christ's Passion was the greatest pain and went beyond them all. And all this was shown in a flash, an quickly changed into comfort; for our good Lord did not want the soul to be afraid at this ugly sight.

....And because of the tender love which our Lord feels for all who shall be saved, he supports us willingly and sweetly, meaning this: 'It is true that sin is the cause of all this suffering, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.'

and the martyrs of El Salvador and of Saint Oscar Romero, of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and St. Francis of Assisi, of the Beatitudes of Luke (Vonnegut champions the Beatitudes of Matthew, and in the RSV, but I stand on the even more radical Lukan version,  in the Scholar’s Version translation). These Beatitudes:

"Congratulations, you poor! God's domain belongs to you!

“Congratulations, you hungry! You will have a feast.

“Congratulations, you who weep now! You will laugh.”

“Damn you rich! You already have your consolation!

“Damn you who are well-fed now! You will know hunger.

“Damn you who laugh now! You will learn to weep and grieve.”

Luke 6:20-26, SV (Interestingly, when I googled to get the scripture numbers, the first item for “Luke beatitudes” that came up directed me to only verses 20-23; the blessings, but not the curses. Jesus continues to make us uncomfortable, I guess.)

I don’t mean to condemn humanism, but Vonnegut’s is a paltry and selfish vision, especially up against the vision of Julian; or even the Beatitudes he professes to find so important. Vonnegut aligns himself with Einstein and Mark Twain, both of whom, he claims, gave up on humanity at the end of their lives, too . Neither were notably religious men (Einstein was Jewish; I don’t know if Twain claimed to be Xian, or how he felt about it). It’s not that being religious or Xian is a “Get Out Of Despair Jail Free” card.  Nor is it a false, or fantasy, consolation. But while I read Vonnegut when I was young and impressionable, and while I saw the absolute worst in people directed at me just because of the role I assumed (and I don’t mean being a lawyer. Judges, clients, other lawyers, were saints and Sunday School teachers compared to the people who turned against me in the churches, the ones I pastored and the one I attended after losing my second church). While, as I say, I saw that vitriol directed at me for the entire (short, but too long) period I was daily among professing Christians who knew me solely because of that confession, I still came out the other side (years later, granted) convinced that Julian’s vision was right. And that there is a moral arc of the universe, and it does bend toward justice. I am as secure in it as I am in my love for my wife and my daughter (and that they love me, which I can only understand as love being a kind of divine madness.

I don’t despair, in other words. I cannot despair. I’ve seen too much and learned too much to believe it’s all going to smash now because I’m here to see it. I read the accounts of settlers in the 19th century on horseback in the dark in wilderness where I now ride on well lit roads to stores, or use this phone in my hands to have the world’s goods delivered to my door, and I think what they faced, and they didn’t despair. I think of what the Native Americans and African Americans and any non-white people in this country went through, still go through, and I don’t see a bitter end, I see a struggle that has to be championed, a fight that will succeed if we don’t yield. And so few of us want to yield. As Auden wrote in World War II, “Maps can point to places/where life is evil now.” These places were in America in the ‘60’s, and they are here again now. Auden meant evil being done by governments, intentionally. So yes, here, now. Those maps are also places where more people are resisting, fighting back; more of us, many, many more of us, are repulsed by the evil; and that why I don’t despair. Vonnegut worried, almost 25 years ago, that we were making the planet unlivable. I grew up on that fear. It started as the environmental movement in the ‘70’s, a full 50 years before Vonnegut wrote his conviction that there was no hope. The movement that in short order convinced Congress to create the EPA, and passed the Clean Water Act. Trump wants to abolish all that, but he can’t erase it, and the pushback to stop polluting the planet and make it more livable will go on. Hell,  I remember when we set a river on fire. “The Lord can make you tumble/The Lord can make you turn./The Lord can make overflow./The Lord can’t make you burn.” 🔥—Randy Newman

In the ‘70’s the message was despair: there was no hope, and we were done for. Do you remember the simplest things? The scene in “Mad Men” where the Drapers go on a picnic, and finished shake off their blanket and leave their trash to blow across the grass? That was normal in the early ‘60’s. It isn’t normal now. A great deal that was normal, still isn’t normal now. And what seems abnormally normal, is not going to last, is already fading even as it arouses opposition to eradicate it, to not allow it to be the norm again.

Little things are important, especially in the view that all the big things are lost and falling to ruin. In Matthew’s parable of the sheep and the goats, he tells the sheep how they fed him when he was hungry, clothed him when he was naked, visited when he was sick or in jail. “Lord,” they very reasonably ask, “when did we see you?” Whenever you did that for anyone, Jesus replies, you did it for me. Whenever. For anyone. What does the Lord require of you? Only that much. When Jesus later tells his disciples, also in Matthew, to make disciples of all people, it’s in the context of Isaiah’s holy mountain. Teaching people to be like the sheep will create the holy mountain where everyone wants to live, because life is so good there, and the reason why so simple, so easy to follow.

So: do we despair because the world has not figured it all out yet? This nation was born in racism. When Jefferson said “All men are created equal,” he clearly meant some men (humans) and not others. We finally stopped portraying the Natives as “savages” (Jefferson’s term, in the Declaration) in our entertainment late in the 20th century. It took longer to stop portraying black males that way (consider the example of our current president only 30 years ago). We’re moving far too slowly for justice; but we’re moving that way nonetheless. Do we despair because we aren’t there yet?

Well, you can, but I’m not going to.

I can’t give up, and I can’t explain why in any other terms except that I believe. Not in fairies at the bottom of the garden, or in the better angels of our nature. I believe in the strength and endurance of human love and goodness; and I believe there is a moral arc to the universe. And after 70 years, I find those beliefs unshakable, because I also believe in the confession of the first chapter of Genesis: that creation is good, and that that means “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

I can’t make you believe that. I can’t talk you into my belief. I can only stand by it and offer it as my contribution to the conversation. In Candide, Voltaire concludes that we must all tend to our own garden. He means we can’t live the life of others, and we can’t make them live life as we see fit. Dorothy Day, by the way, would agree. And I think Walker Percy and Thomas Merton would agree, too. As well as the Desert Fathers. You can find my references to them in the search function of this blog. Of course, just by writing that novel, Voltaire was trying to interfere in our lives; or at least just give us some advice. Much as Jonathan Swift did in Gulliver’s Travels and “A Modest Proposal.” Advice is not really interference, though; it’s not telling you what to do like so many “THOU SHALT NOTS!” It’s more about pointing out the ultimate reality of the situation, because the destitute will have their condition alleviated; and the rich have already had their reward. Too bad they didn’t do more for the destitute when they could have, because the moral arc of the universe does indeed bend toward justice.

Of that I am as sure as I am sure I am virtually at your elbow, as you read.

There Was A Time…

 …when monarchs washed the feet of the poor during Holy Week, as a recognition of the Christian duty to be servant of all, even the least regarded, even the marginalized.

Granted, the Church (universal as well as Catholic), has not always held that standard high, or emphasized the teaching that what we do for the least of these, we do for the Creator. I’ll take a sidebar here to say that was the basis and guiding star of liberation theology. JP II rejected that school of theology as being too close to communism; or too supportive of it. I’m not a scholar of that history, and don’t mean to critique the RC. America under Reagan did enough to destroy the practice and teachings of liberation theology. I don’t need to damn the Catholic Church.

Now comes Pope Leo, returning the Church to very old practices and teachings:

Pope Leo XIV has named prelate Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, a former undocumented immigrant, as bishop for deep red West Virginia — a move The Washington Post suggests is designed to send a direct message to Donald Trump about the church's stance on immigration.

Menjivar-Ayala, 55, migrated to the United States in 1990 and made history in 2023 when he became the first Salvadoran bishop in the country. Currently serving as auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Washington, he is believed to be one of the first U.S. bishops born in Central America.

According to the report, the bishop has been vocal in his criticism of Trump's treatment of immigrants, publicly calling on Catholics to speak out against the administration's immigration crackdowns.

The appointment appears to be part of a broader pattern by Pope Leo XIV to elevate U.S. clergy who are willing to challenge Trump administration policies. On the same day, Leo named Rev. Robert Boxie III, 46, as auxiliary bishop of Washington.

Boxie, who serves as chaplain at Howard University, has spoken extensively about racial progress and warned that Trump's attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts represent a dangerous "regression" in the nation's journey toward racial equality.

"It's really frustrating — especially this moment that we're living in. The attacks on 'DEI' — I don't even know what that means anymore. It's a term that's been hijacked. It means a lot of things to a lot of different people," Boxie told the Catholic news agency OSV.

The timing of Boxie's appointment comes just days after the Supreme Court significantly weakened the Voting Rights Act — a decision that has intensified concerns about racial progress in America.

Since becoming pope last May, Leo XIV and his highest-ranking U.S. allies have become increasingly direct in confronting the Trump administration on multiple fronts, including immigration policy, diversity initiatives, and the administration's war in Iran.

What the Pope is doing depends on who’s seeing it, because the question is a matter of interpretation. Actually, what he’s doing is clear; the question is: why?

First, the new Bishop to Virginia is also the first Salvadoran bishop in America. Leo is the first American Pope. Francis was also from the “New World,” meaning not Europe. Leo, like Francis, is trying to make the Church, universal. He may have a preference for American prelates in pursuit of that goal.

Or maybe it’s all about fucking with Trump.

Harry Truman famously said: “I didn’t give ‘em hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.” It’s more likely the Pope is not thinking about how next to needle Trump, and only thinking about leading the Catholic Church. It’s not that Leo is single-mindedly opposed to Trump, but that Trump is so openly opposed to the teachings of Christianity. (I’m not going to sidebar on Franklin Graham and Paula White. All I’ll say is that I consider them whited sepulchers, at best.) Trump’s administration is practically the anti-Christ in its actions toward the poor, the marginalized, the alien, among us. America has never been too kindly towards those groups, but Trump makes it the reason for his administration, not the side effect. For example, a few headlines just regarding Texas:

Amid a decline in international migration, Laredo’s population growth came to a near halt between July 2024 and July 2025. The city's economic growth has also taken a dip, falling short of expectations.https://t.co/AgYdMctB9J

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) April 30, 2026

The Trump administration on Wednesday immediately detained a South Texas man it had deported to Honduras earlier this year before agreeing that he could return after his lawyer argued that he had permission to be in the country through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or…

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) April 30, 2026

A week ago, @ujohnnyg and I reported on a 25yo man who says he’s a U.S. citizen but was deported after police in Central Texas called ICE, who didn't believe him bc he couldn't provide proof of citizenship during a traffic stop.

He remains in Mexico.https://t.co/64PfLhIRio

— Alejandro Serrano (@serrano_alej) April 30, 2026

Immigrants with DACA were protected from deportation, but since Trump’s return, the government has arrested nearly 300 DACA recipients, including 75 in Texas. https://t.co/5HRCbYji7I

— Texas Tribune (@TexasTribune) April 28, 2026

Given that, the Pope renewing the call of the Church to care for the least among us, and for the alien, inevitably sounds political. But that’s because of our politics; not the teachings of Christ.

Although those teachings are what got him killed in the first place. The more things change….

Candlemas 2026

Νϋν άπολύεις τον δοϋλον σου, δέσποτα,
κατά τό πήμά έν είρήνη
οτι είδον οί όφθαλμοί μου τό σωτήριόν σου
ό ήτοίμασας κατά πρόσωπον πάντων τώυ λαϖν
φϖς είς άποκάλυψιν έθνϖν
καί δόξα νλαοϋ σου ‘Ισραήλ

Ceremony upon Candlemas Eve--Robert Herrick

Down with the rosemary, and so
Down with the bays and mistletoe;
Down with the holly, ivy, all
Wherewith ye dressed the Christmas hall;
That so the superstitious find
No one least branch left behind;
For look, how many leaves there be
Neglected there, maids, trust to me,
So many goblins you shall see.

If you didn't burn your greens by now, the goblins are gonna git ye!

At Candlemas--Charles Causley

'If Candlemas be fine and clear
There'll be two winters in that year';

But all the day the drumming sun
Brazened it out that spring had come,

And the tall elder on the scene
Unfolded the first leaves of green.

But when another morning came
With frost, as Candlemas with flame,
The sky was steel, there was no sun,
The elder leaves were dead and gone.

Out of a cold and crusted eye
The stiff pond stared up at the sky,

And on the scarcely breathing earth
A killing wind fell from the north,

But still within the elder tree
The strong sap rose, though none could see.

And here I thought that kind of early February was peculiar to Texas.

The Gospel according to St. Luke, Chapter 2

22 And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord;

23 (As it is written in the law of the LORD, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord;)

24 And to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.

25 And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him.

26 And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

27 And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law,

28 Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said,

29 Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:

30 For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,

31 Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;

32 A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

33 And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him.

34 And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against;

35 (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.

36 And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity;

37 And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day.

38 And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem.

39 And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth.

40 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.

The date for Candlemas does not come from "pagan" Irish holidays, but from Mosaic law (Leviticus 12:2-8). As New Advent notes, the earliest attestation to any observation of the day is in the Jerusalem church, where the event was observed on February 14th, meaning Christ's birthday was, as at least one version of The Cherry Tree Carol has it, on Epiphany, not December 25th. (Interestingly, that carol has roots in Pseudo-Matthew, where it's a palm tree, not a cherry tree (of course), something I didn't know, but suspected. Chapter 20, if you're wondering. Interesting how these "apocryphal" stories persist, isn't it?)

Anyway, the folklore connected with this day is that now, finally, Christmas is over, because the last public act of Christ the child is conducted.   The Christmas celebration ends with the άποκάλυψιν ("apocalypsin"), the apocalypse, again. What Simeon sings is that this child, presented at the Temple, will be a revelation, an "apocalypse," to the έθνϖν ("ethnown"), the Gentiles. Let that roll around with all the associations of violent ending you want to. Gentiles are people like Luke. People like most of us. Lord, now let us depart in peace.

 

Second Wednesday of Advent: Thomas Merton

The Advent mystery is the beginning of the end of all in us that is not yet Christ.

--Thomas Merton

Something from a then-frequent reader:

Almost from the time of his entry in 1941 into the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance (the Trappists) at the Monastery of Gethsemani, in Kentucky, Merton was obsessed with retreat from "the World," and from about 1952 onward he pressed for permission, heretofore unknown in the Order, to become a hermit with only limited contact with the monastic community; instead, in 1955 he was appointed Master of Novices, a position he held for the next nine years.

Merton, who has been described as "never having a thought he didn't write down," tended during this time to use the texts of his regular sessions within the novitiate as the basis for his later literary output, and it’s important to note that the temper of both his Introduction to as well as his selection from the writings of the Desert Fathers very probably had their basis in his sessions with his novices.

Wisdom of the Desert was published in 1960; in December of that year he was finally granted limited permission to reside in a small building on the monastery grounds, but was still required to sleep in the monastery and to participate in the activities of the community, including remaining Master of Novices. It wasn’t until 1964, just four years before his untimely death, that he was relieved of his position as novice master and permitted to remain exclusively in his hermitage.

From the fall of 1966 until early 1968, he had a remarkable exchange of correspondence (At Home in the World: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Rosemary Radford Reuther, Orbis Books, Maryknoll, N.Y. 1995). Reuther is a Catholic feminist theologian, then with a freshly minted Ph.D. In this exchange he attempted (in my view, ultimately unsuccessfully) to defend monastic solitude – the retreat from “the World” - as a necessary and viable alternative to active response to the challenges of contemporary secular society.

In her Introduction, written almost 30 years after the letters, Reuther says,

What I was looking for in initiating this conversation was neither a confessor, nor to be his confessor, but a genuine Catholic intellectual peer, one who would treat me as a peer, and with whom I could be ruthlessly honest about my own questions of intellectual and existential integrity. I was trying to test in this correspondence what was the crucial issue, for me, at that time: whether it was, in fact, actually possible to be a Roman Catholic and a person of integrity…. Could Catholics speak the truth and be Catholics? That Christians err, and even create monstrous idolatries, was in itself not scandalous to me. That would be only human. What was scandalous and insupportable was to be unable to admit error, to be incapable of repentance because you cannot entertain the possibility that you might be wrong. Worse still, to make such incapacity for self-questioning a dogma! That for me was the crux of the Catholic dilemma. [pp. xvi ff.]

Merton’s early response was to say,

“I do wonder at times if the Church is real at all. I believe it, you know. But I wonder if I am nuts to do so. Am I part of a great big hoax? I don’t explain myself as well as I would like to: there is a real sense of and confidence in an underlying reality, the presence of Christ in the world which I don’t doubt for an instant. But is that presence where we are all saying it is? We are all pointing (in various directions), and my dreadful feeling is that we are all pointing wrong. Could you point someplace for me, maybe? Thanks, and I am sorry to bother you. I have to write a book on monasticism, and I wonder if I can make it relevant – or may any sense with it at all. (I have no problem with my vocation.)[pp.17-18]

Never one to shirk a challenge, Reuther replied,
"You say you have no trouble with your vocation, but, if that is really true, maybe you should be having some trouble with your vocation. I love the monastic life dearly (I am a Third Order Benedictine) but today it is no longer the eschatological sign and witness in the church. For those who wish to be at the “kingdom” frontier of history, it is the steaming ghetto of the big city, not the countryside that is the place of the radical overcoming of this world, the place where one renews creation, disposes of oneself and does hand to hand combat with the demons. I don’t see how anyone who is tuck in the old moribund (once eschatological) structures and is at the same time alive to the times cannot be having some trouble with his vocation. But perhaps for you more important: more reading and thinking about Word and Church will not help. I think you will have to find some new way of having Word and Church happening for you….” [p.20]

Merton spends the rest of his time in this correspondence trying to explain his attitude toward his own solitude, and Reuther keeps shooting down his arguments. Finally, as the conversation begins to wind down, he writes,

"I don’t think I am rationalizing or evading when I say I think I owe it to you to pursue my own way and stand on my own in this sort of marginal and lost position I have. I am sometimes terribly hit by its meaning which is something I just cannot explain, because it is something you are not supposed to explain and must get along without explaining.” [p.62]

A rapprochement of sorts is reached in a concluding exchange. In December, 1967 Reuther writes,

"Dear Brother: You are really a shocking and dissolute fellow. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that the one thing a good son of the church never, never does, especially in ecclesiastical assemblies, is to state the bald and unregenerate truth? Surely someone must must have pointed this elementary fact out to you sometime during your novitiate.

She then quotes a fragment of a friend’s poem, applicable, she says, to Merton:

I suppose that with such views I shall be
left quite alone
To mumble plain truths like a dog
mumbling a bone… [pp.94-95]

Merton responds, 'Dear Rosemary: Ah, yes, I have become very wicked. This is due in great part to my hanging around with these women theologians. What a downfall. Let others be warned in time. Young priests can never be too careful. Tsk. Tsk.' [p. 96]

On December 10, 1968, at a conference of Asian monastic orders in Bombay, Merton finished his morning presentation with these words:

'I will conclude on that note. I believe the plan is to have all the questions for this morning’s lectures this evening at the panel. So I will disappear.'

"So he went to his room, and while taking a shower, was accidentally electrocuted."

December 10 marks the day of Merton's death. 

MERTON'S most important experience in his whole Asian trip came at Polonnaruwa. He went to visit the giant Buddhas and took a series of superb photographs of them.

I am able to approach the Buddhas barefoot and undisturbed, my feet in wet grass, wet sand. The silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing, the peace not of emotional refutation. . . that has seen through every question without trying to discredit anyone or anything-without refutation-without establishing some other argument. For the doctrinaire, the mind that needs well-established positions, such peace, such silence, can be frightening. I was knocked over with a rush of relief and thankfulness at the obvious clarity of the figures. . . . Looking at these figures I was suddenly, almost forcibly, jerked clean out of the habitual, half-tied vision of things, and an inner clearness, clarity, as if exploding from the rocks themselves, became evident and obvious. . . . I don't know when in my life I have ever had such a sense of beauty and spiritual validity running together in one aesthetic illumination. Surely, with Mahabalipuram and Polonnaruwa my Asian pilgrimage has come clear and purified itself. I mean, I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for. I don't know what else remains but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise.

That was on December 4. . . . [On December 10, after addressing the conference in Bangkok,] Merton had lunch and did disappear to his room, commenting to a colleague on the way about how much he was looking forward to having a siesta. In a long letter later written by the delegates at the Conference to Dom Flavian what then occurred was expressed in the following words: "Not long after he retired a shout was heard by others in his cottage, but after a preliminary check they thought'they must have imagined the cry.

"He was found at the end of the meridian (afternoon rest) and when found was lying on the floor. He was on his back with the electric fan lying across his chest. The fan was still switched on, and there was a deep burn and some cuts on his right side and arm. The back of his head was also bleeding slightly."

Perhaps any death brings with it both a sense of surprise and a sense of its inevitability. There are always those, and there were many after Merton's death, who feel that it somehow "had to be like that." Merton had, from time to time, both spoken and written comments that suggested that his death might come early. Some of his friends commented on the extraordinary, almost Zen-like way that death had come to him. Fewer people than one might expect noted that he died on the same day as the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth, and it was a measure of the ecumenism in Louisville, which Merton had been instrumental in promoting, that Catholics and Protestants there united in a joint memorial service for both of them.

Many years before Naomi Burton had made the suggestion, humorously, that Merton was accident-prone. "I couldn't help noticing that it's your visitors who get locked out of the church, and your server who forgets things, and your vestments that get caught in the folding chair. . . . I find your incredible adventures with nature and with publishing extremely endearing." Perhaps Merton was accident-prone; perhaps, like many intellectuals, he tended to get lost in his thinking, and absentmindedly forgot about the dangers of touching electrical equipment with wet hands; perhaps the fan was merely faulty. Perhaps, however, he had finished his life six days before at Polonnaruwa and was called to the God he had loved and served so well.

--Monica Furlong

The sermon I gave [at the conference on monasticism the morning after Merton's death] was a moment of talkinga bout Merton's search for God.  When a monk enters a monastery, what is asked of him is "Are you truly seeking God?"  The question isn't "Have you found God?"  The question is "Is he seeking God?  Is his motivation highly involved in that search of who and what God is in relationship to us?"  It's not philosophical--its' existential.  And Merton, to me, was a great searcher.  He was constantly unhappy, as all great searchers are.  He was constantly ill at ease, he was constantly restless, as all searchers are--because that's part of the search.  And in that sense he was the perfect monk.  Contemplation isn't satisfaction--it's search.

--Rembert Weakland

That reference to being barefoot, above, is not incidental. Merton was a Cistercian. The order is “discalced.” Shoeless. Merton penned an encomium on the pleasure of going to worship barefoot, walking and standing on a cold stone floor. He found is hard to imagine having the same experience of the Almighty (which is what worship should be), without being barefoot.

I paid a brief visit to Abbey Gethsemani over 40 years ago, now.  When I'm seeking a quiet place in memory for meditation and prayer, I conjure up the grounds there.  Something about the enforced silence of the monks profoundly suffuses the place.  There was also the recognition that my wife and my friend's wife (all friends from high school) couldn't go in with us (her husband and I).  So I was separated, divided , present in two worlds. I felt a persistent tug between the monastic life and the life of the world in that short visit.  I've felt it ever since.

Charm with your stainlessness these winter nights,
Skies, and be perfect!
Fly vivider in the fiery dark, you quiet meteors,
And disappear.
You moon, be slow to go down,
This is your fill!

The four white roads make off in silence
Towards the four parts of the starry universe.
Time falls like manna at the corners of the wintry earth.
We have become more humble than the rocks,
More wakeful than the patient hills.

Charm with your stainlessness these nights in Advent, holy spheres,
While minds, as meek as beasts,
Stay close at home in the sweet hay;
And intellects are quieter than the flocks that feed by starlight.

Oh pour your darkness and your brightness over all our solemn valleys,
Your skies:  and travel like the gentle Virgin,
Towards the planets' stately setting,

O white moon full as quiet as Bethlehem!

--Thomas Merton

Advent Impends 2025

Advent starts on a Sunday. Every year. Christmas may not be a moveable feast* (unlike Easter, which is always the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon, which, in turn, is the full moon after the ecclesiastical spring equinox. Got it? Now go figure it out for yourself.), but the first Sunday of Advent always falls on the fourth Sunday before Christmas Day. So Advent starts in late November, or early December, depending on when December 25th comes in the week. It has nothing to do with the shopping days until Christmas, and everything to do with preparation for Christmas. Spiritual preparation; for the coming of the Christchild. A spiritual celebration, of course, but then the spirit, like the body, also needs refreshing.

We’re a Northern European culture, by and large. “Northern” is an advised term, but if you look at a map, southern France is about on parallel with Maine. Spain, “that fragment nipped off hot/Africa,” is parallel to New England, for the most part. For a Texan, that’s a long way north. Maine is our northernmost contiguous continental point, but much of Europe is north of Maine. The point is not about climate, it’s about seasons, and sunlight.

The place with the truest seasons I ever lived in was St. Louis, Missouri. 4 distinct seasons, each about 3 months long. Here on the Gulf Coast, Fall comes in November, when hurricane season ends and you can expect highs below 80. Finally. That slides into winter, when you can expect highs below 70, until spring starts up in February or, if you’re lucky, March. This is driven, primarily, by daylight. Shorter days mean cooler days, because the sun isn’t up long enough for the heat to truly build.

It’s proximity to Canada, too. The joke in Texas is that there’s nothing between Texas and Canada but a strand of barbed wire. Canada is where the blue northers come from, and on this continent the mountain ranges run north/south, on the eastern and western sides. The plains in the middle leave nothing between Texas and the great white north except distance, and I’ve stepped across the boundary line of a blue norther as far south as Austin. It was like stepping through a freezer door, and no turning back. It would be warmer soon enough, but that’s Texas: even in the winter, no condition lasts long. I lived a year in Chicago, and it took me a year in Texas after to thaw out. Still, such cold as gets here comes largely because of the lesser sunlight of the season.

Which is lesser still in Denver and Chicago in winter (two cities I’m familiar with), because the days are much shorter there (especially Chicago) than they are in Texas. Sunlight and darkness are the features of winter that emphasize the cold. 🥶 

Our holidays in America, even in Southern California, even along all the Gulf Coast and southwest, emphasize Northern European experiences. Hallowe’en was a much shorter day and longer night in Chicago than it ever was in my childhood; but the holiday of my childhood was Hallowe’en as I knew it, and that’s all that mattered (don’t get me started on what DST has done to that). Christmas may have celebrated the shortest day of the year, meaning the gradual return of daylight (and yet it never falls on the solstice…🤔), but that’s more the business of northern cultures where winter meant long days of dark. (I’m not overlooking Alaska, which shares proximity to the Arctic Circle with the Nordic countries.) In much of America, winter just means a respite from the heat. And yet our biggest holidays, the ones we look most forward to, are in the winter. No one wants to trick or treat in the glimmering, long evenings of June, before, or even right after, the equinox. No one wants to go to bed early when the sun won’t be down until almost 9, to wait for Santa Claus in his…sleigh? In summer? An empty hay wagon might be more appropriate.

For better or worse, our biggest holidays, our most anticipated holidays, are Northern European ones, and we keep that as our tradition. (I know I’m eliding New Year’s, but that’s a vestigial memory of the 12 Days of Christmas, and it usually marks the end of the Christmas holidays, which once upon a time ran to Jan. 6, and concluded properly with Epiphany. And we’re all the poorer for the loss.) The question of the solstice and Xmas was a live wire a few years ago: “Where did these holidays (less so the customs) come from?” That prompted a lot of armchair, and ignorant, anthropology, something similar to the “scholarship” J.R.R. Tolkien demolished. Or would have, had he published his lecture notes on “Beowulf” during his lifetime. But, alas, he was not a Frenchman in the late 20th-early 21st century, when publishing lecture notes as books became fashionable. That task was left to his third son, in the second decade of this century. Which is to say, 100 years after his father lectured from those notes. 

I was taught (I think you’ll still find it used in Seamus Heaney’s translation) that the kenning (metaphor, of a sort; this really isn’t a lecture on Old English poetry) for the sea traveled by the Vikings (Beowulf and Hrothgar, etc. Basically.) was properly translated as “whale road.” Not at all, says Tolkien, because the word translated as “road” in the manuscript sounds like a precursor to our modern word, but it’s no such thing at all. Take my word for it; Tolkien explains it thoroughly, and he knew his stuff. The OE term is closer to “place,” and not at all what “road” connotes to us. Likewise the word translated as “whale” denotes rather a fish the size of a porpoise (which, I know, is a mammal. Calm down.) There is a separate word in OE for “whale” which, ironically, sounds like our modern word. But that’s not the word in the kenning, which actually describes (in whole) the area where the dolphins/porpoises play. The point of the kenning being activity rather than static description. Tolkien’s translation breathes life into what is a stale and passive metaphor, by contrast. Not the road where the whales trundle, but the place where the dolphins sport. 🐬 Their playground, you might say.

Without adequate knowledge, IOW, you can conjecture all manner of error. Like what Xmas Day had to do with the solstice (bugger all). No, the connection between Christmas and America has more to with Europe than anything. We still want to celebrate with food and light and music and noise when the days grow shorter and the nights colder, forcing us indoors and more than ever seeking human company. Just like our ancestor cultures taught us to.

Advent is that kind of preparation. Preparation for the days of Christmas, even if the days are just the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day. Even if we don’t have a holiday from work for that week (or from school; I took, and taught, many a course that resumed again on the 26th and wasn’t through until the 2nd). There’s still a sense of time suspended until January 2nd, and a great deal of preparation for the 25th day of the 12th month. Perhaps the wrong kind of preparation.

You expect me to say the “right” kind of preparation for Xmas is spiritual. I won’t say that, because it isn’t true. How you keep Christmas, or how you leave it alone, is up to you, and no matter to me. I’m just trying to provide a guide to a spiritual preparation for the season, if I can. I have no particular expertise. I have an interest, and nothing more. But there are the shopping days between (American) Thanksgiving and December 25th; and there is Advent. One is of the world; the other is of the church (more specifically the Roman Catholic Church, but we’ll emphasize the “catholic” here, since I’m not RC and don’t presume, or pretend, to present an RC point of view, or to even be worthy of a nihil obstat.). I like presenting alternative thoughts when I can.

Makes for more interesting conversations. And we could certainly learn from the dolphins to enjoy ourselves more.

Every year I mean to focus on Advent, and ignore politics. Every year I both fail, and fall back on what I’ve done before. No shame in the latter; who wants December with no familiar sights and sounds and smells? But another attempt at a newer approach couldn’t hurt.

I’ve traditionally done this by posting the lectionary readings for each Sunday of Advent and dealing with them much as I would in a sermon. This year, I’m going to post the scriptures for each Sunday, as usual, but then offer meditations through the week on each selection. Several short, instead of four long and tortured, essays. I want to focus on preparation, rather than Sundays. This will give me a better opportunity to be more deliberate about that. I hope.

There is, if you're interested, another aspect to Advent (I like to keep my options open):

What happened to marriage and family that it should have become a travail and a sadness?...God may be good, family and marriage and children and home may be good, grandma and grandpa may act wise, the Thanksgiving table may be groaning with God's goodness and bounty, all the folks healthy and happy, but something is missing...What is missing? Where did it go? I won't have it! I won't have it! Why this sadness here? Don't stand for it! Get up! Leave! Let the boat people sit down! Go live in a cave until you've found the thief who is robbing you. But at least protest! Stop, thief! What is missing? God? Find him!

--Walker Percy

"Excita, quaesumus Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni."

 Summon all your strength, O Lord, and come." 

 --Roman Liturgy 

 "'Adventus' is the exact Christian Latin equivalent of the Greek "parousia."--H.A. Reinhold

Advent is when we finally pay attention to the eschaton, to the end of all things. It is as Eliot said: “In our end is our beginning.” We’ll have time to consider that, too. Advent is even revolutionary; or should be. It’s the time when we should prepare for the Christchild by saying: “Fuck this shit.” Clear the board. Start anew. Knock the powerful off their thrones, raise the lowly up. Advent should be a revolutionary act. But try making a tradition out of that! 

🎅

*In fact, I think the fact it is on a date, and not a day of the week, is why its popularity endures. It’s a holiday from ordinary life no matter what year it is (and when it falls on the weekend, it’s almost less glamorous. I mean, what fun is it when Xmas Eve is on Saturday, and Christmas Day is on Sunday?)

Sisters Of Charity

Several of us watched Cardinal Dolan’s recent FOX interview, where he referred to Charlie Kirk as “a modern-day St. Paul.” The Cardinal praised Mr. Kirk’s conviction and willingness to speak about the Lord and for being a model for young people looking for meaning in their lives.

We grieve every loss of life and unequivocally condemn the killing of Mr. Kirk.

What Cardinal Dolan may not have known is that many of Mr. Kirk’s words were marked by racist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-immigrant rhetoric, by violent pro-gun advocacy, and by the promotion of Christian nationalism. These prejudicial words do not reflect the qualities of a saint. To compare Mr. Kirk to St. Paul risks confusing the true witness of the Gospel and giving undue sanction to words and actions that hurt the very people Jesus calls us to love.

Just last week, Cardinal Dolan joined us in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the canonization of our Foundress, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. Elizabeth’s legacy is not one of exclusion or hatred, but of radical welcome, tireless service, and unwavering love of neighbor. Many of Mr. Kirk’s words stand in stark contrast to the charity and compassion that defined those of Elizabeth Seton.

For generations, the Sisters of Charity of New York have cared for immigrant families arriving with nothing but hope. While our direct service has changed, our commitment to those families endures. They deserve true examples of discipleship, not false prophets.

In this moment, we reaffirm our mission: to walk with all people who are poor and marginalized, to welcome immigrants and refugees, to defend the dignity of LGBTQ+ persons, and to labor for peace in a world saturated with violence. These are the marks of authentic discipleship. These are the qualities of saints.

We urge our Church leadership, including Cardinal Dolan, to lift up witnesses whose lives truly reflect the Gospel of Jesus Christ – lives of humility, justice, compassion, and peace.

We will continue to pray for Mr. Kirk, his family and for all who mourn his loss.

Leadership Team, Sisters of Charity of New York

Sr. Donna Dodge, Sr. Margaret O’Brien, Sr. Mary Mc Cormick, Sr. Mary Ann Daly, Sr. Sheila Brosnan, Sr. Margaret Egan 9/24/2025

The Constitution Doesn’t See Color.

It only sees white.

The tl;dr version, by Popehat.

Supreme Court Rules 6-3 That Fundamental Interests Of United States Of America Would Be Irreparably Harmed If It Race-Based Harassment And Detention By Masked Thugs Were Even Temporarily Halted

And they don’t have to explain that because: Supreme Court, bitches! Suck it!

Do you remember the movie where Cheech Marin was an Angeleno swept up in an immigration raid and dumped in Mexico? But he was an American citizen?  Sounds familiar?  It will from here on:

In this case, however, the District Court enjoined U. S. immigration officers from making investigative stops in the Los Angeles area when the stops are based on the following factors or combination of factors: (i) presence at particular locations such as bus stops, car washes, day laborer pickup sites, agricultural sites, and the like; (ii) the type of work one does; (iii) speaking Spanish or speaking English with an accent; and (iv) apparent race or ethnicity.1

That footnote shouldn't be overlooked:

 The Los Angeles area at issue here is the Central District of California, which includes the counties of Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino.

That's a lot of ground to declare a 4th Amendment free zone.  Kavanaugh is fine with that because:

The Government estimates that at least 15 million people are in the United States illegally. Many millions illegally entered (or illegally overstayed) just in the last few years.

Illegal immigration is especially pronounced in the Los Angeles area, among other locales in the United States. About 10 percent of the people in the Los Angeles region are illegally in the United States—meaning about 2 million illegal immigrants out of a total population of 20 million.

I am leaving out neither a footnote nor a citation to support those fact claims.  If you think he's pulling numbers out of thin air, you are not challenged in doing so.

Kavanaugh writes his analysis of the 4th Amendment issues in high minded Supreme Court legalese, but the conclusion can be summed up in one phrase:  if you're brown, you're suspicious until proven innocent.

To stop an individual for brief questioning about immigration status, the Government must have reasonable suspicion that the individual is illegally present in theUnited States. See Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S., at 880–882; Arvizu, 534 U. S., at 273; United States v. Sokolow, 490 U. S. 1, 7 (1989). Reasonable suspicion is a lesser requirement than probable cause and “considerably short” of the preponderance of the evidence standard. Arvizu, 534 U. S., at 274. Whether an officer has reasonable suspicion depends on the totality of the circumstances. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S., at 885, n. 10; Arvizu, 534 U. S., at 273. Here, those circumstances include: that there is an extremely high number and percentage of illegal immigrants in the Los Angeles area; that those individuals tend to gather in certain locations to seek daily work; that those individuals often work in certain kinds of jobs, such as day labor, landscaping, agriculture, and construction, that do not require paperwork and are therefore especially attractive to illegal immigrants; and that many of those illegally in the Los Angeles area come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English. Cf. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S., at 884–885 (listing “[a]ny number of factors” that contribute to reasonable suspicion of illegal presence). To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion; under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a “relevant factor” when considered along with other salient factors. Id., at 887.

Yes, it can be; but is that what's going on here?  The dissent cites the record, showing it is not.  Kavanaugh can't be bothered with the facts of the case.  He's far too interested on lofty high court notions of Law to bother himself with mere facts. (The lawyers will understand my sarcasm.  It was drilled into my head in three years of law school:  change the facts, change the outcome.  What Kavanaugh is doing is ignoring the facts, and creating his preferred outcome.  Funny none of the other justices want to commit the reasoning for their preferred outcome to scrutiny.  Or, for that matter, guidance to the lower courts.)

Under this Court’s precedents, not to mention common sense, those circumstances taken together can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal presence in the United States. Importantly, reasonable suspicion means only that immigration officers may briefly stop the individual and inquire about immigration status. If the person is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter. Only if the person is illegally in the United States may the stop lead to further immigration proceedings.

Which, again, as the dissent points out, is not what happened, per the record from the trial court, again and again.

Is this where I point out that Mexicans, in particular, have been in the Southwest, including California, including Texas, since before the government of the United States had authority over those regions? And as the dissent points out, "brief questioning" is the rare case in the interactions of ICE agents and even U.S. citizens.

The assumption of regularity is alive and well inside the bubble of the Supreme Court.  Or just the assumption that brown people have it coming, and if they can't prove their legitimacy, they can be presumed illegitimate, and treated accordingly. Time was, the justices had to ride the circuits so they’d be in touch with the law as practiced in trial courts. Time to consider a new rule like that. The Court is clearly too far removed from reality.

The discussion of “reasonable suspicion” in the opinions stirs the ashes of memory of first year criminal law. Basically, it’s a low barrier, but not a non-existent one. If the word goes out to look for a six foot black male in a hoodie, that’s not permission to stop, detain (even for the length of the question), and interrogate any and every black male to remove them from suspicion. Or, rather, it shouldn’t be. But Kavanaugh says, if you live in a city with a purportedly high number of “illegal immigrants” (his term, and not a legal term of art), and “look” Latino (like Patti Jinich? Or Sofia Vegara?), speak Spanish (like my niece, who studied it in school?), or English with an accent (back to Ms. Jinich), and are in the parking lot of a Home Depot (“they” hang out there looking for work, you know. I am barely paraphrasing Kavanaugh’s concurrence), that is enough to demand your papers and detain you.

“Detention” is a legal term of art. A policeman may stop you and ask your name, but beyond that his order to stand still and answer questions becomes a 4th Amendment violation unless he has reasonable suspicion to detain you. Speaking with an accent in a Home Depot parking lot wearing brown skin is not supposed to meet that minimum requirement.

Basically, the Court (via the shadow docket; only Kavanaugh and Sotomayor wrote opinions) now says the 4th amendment only applies to white people.

Sotomayor confronts Kavanaugh with the record from the trial court that he conveniently ignores. Why worry about the facts of the case when you can pontificate on the abstractions of the law from your ivory tower? Kavanaugh waives away the damage of unlawful detention as de minimus, especially where non-white citizens are concerned (after all, ICE is never going to stop him in a parking lot).  Like, say, this:

In early June, the Government launched “Operation At Large” in Los Angeles, deploying roving patrols of armed and masked immigration agents to local car washes, Home Depots, tow yards, bus stops, farms, recycling centers, churches, and parks. Over the course of the next month, the Government made nearly 2,800 immigration-related arrests and detained many more.

For instance, on June 9, immigration agents arrived at a tow yard in Montebello “carrying handguns” and “military-style rifle[s].” ECF Doc. 45–9, p. 6.1 Jason Gavidia, a Latino U. S. citizen, was working on his car in the tow yard that day. A masked agent ordered Gavidia to “‘[s]top right there’” and began asking him questions. Ibid. Agents then asked Gavidia whether he is “American at least three times”; three times, Gavidia affirmed that he is. Ibid. Unsatisfied, the agents asked Gavidia for the name of the hospital in which he was born, and when Gavidia could not immediately recall, the agents racked a rifle, took Gavidia’s phone, “pushed [him] up against the metal gated fence, put [his] hands behind [his] back, and twisted [his] arm.” Id., at 6–7. Agents released Gavidia only after he offered up his REAL ID. That ID was never returned to him.

Less than 10 miles away in Whittier, immigration agents raided a car wash managed by U. S. citizen Jorge Viramontes. In the nine days between June 9 and 19, agents returned four times, each instance in the middle of the workday. On one occasion, an agent questioned Viramontes, asking if he is a citizen and requesting that he show his ID. Viramontes replied that he is a dual U. S. and Mexican citizen and supplied his California driver’s license. The agent said the ID was insufficient, “grabbed [his] arm, escorted him to a vehicle, and drove him to a “warehouse area” for further questioning. ECF Doc. 45–4, p. 6. Agents detained Viramontes for 20 minutes while they made calls to verify his U. S. citizenship and examined his Mexican ID before eventually driving him back to work.

Other Operation At Large encounters have included even more force and even fewer questions. For example, agents pulled up in four unmarked cars to a bus stop in Pasadena; “the doors opened and men in masks with guns started running at” three Latino men who were having their morning coffee, waiting to be picked up for work. ECF Doc. 45–1, p. 5. In Glendale, nearly a dozen masked agents with guns “jumped out of . . . cars” at a Home Depot, and began “chasing” and “tackl[ing]” Latino day laborers without “identify[ing] themselves as ICE or police, ask[ing] questions, or say[ing] anything else.” ECF Doc. 45–6, pp. 5–6. In downtown Los Angeles, agents “jumped out of a van, rushed up to [a tamale vendor], surrounded him, and handled him violently,” all “[w]ithout asking . . . any questions.” ECF Doc. 38–9, p. 7; see also, e.g., ECF Doc. 45–14, p. 5 (masked agents with guns “ran out of the vehicles and rushed towards the workers” at a car wash); ECF Doc. 45–11, pp. 5–6 (three masked agents wearing bullet-proof vests got out of a car with “rifles” at a Home Depot and tear-gassed the crowd).

The operation has sparked “panic and fear” across Los Angeles and its surrounding areas. ECF Doc. 45–8, p. 10. Some have likened the detentions to “kidnapping[s].” ECF Doc. 45–2, p. 5; ECF Doc. 45–3, p. 5; ECF Doc. 45–7, p. 7. One Latino U. S. citizen “feel[s] like [he] need[s] to carry [his] passport for protection, in case federal agents stop [him] again.” ECF Doc. 45–21, p. 5. Another Latino U. S. citizen similarly “worries that as a visibly Latino man, he could be detained” if he does not carry his passport, but “decided against [doing so] because he believes that as an American, he should not have to live like that in his own country.” ECF Doc. 38–9, at 6. Many are “struggl[ing] to make ends meet” because they are “afraid to go to work.” ECF Doc. 45–8, at 15; see ECF Doc. 45–13, p. 8. Others are “reluctant to attend school meetings” and “pick their children up from school” for fear of being detained. ECF Doc. 45–8, at 12.

Kavanaugh is full of shit.

To put this into context, the judicial warrant for the search at the Hyundai plant named just four people.

Relying on that warrant, ICE detained nearly 500 people. DHS admitted that included U.S. citizens, permanent residents, and people lawfully here on visas.

But it's clear he's writing a concurrence (which no other justice joined) to give the lower courts the guidance he complained they weren't following, and they complained the Court wasn't giving. Do any other justices agree with Justice Kavanaugh?  Not enough to so blatantly run roughshod over the 4th Amendment as he does; but enough to be in the majority on the court's conclusion.  Behold the convenience of the shadow docket, which allows even the Justices to wear masks.

This is not how the 4th amendment is supposed to work.  "The operation has sparked ‘panic and fear’ across Los Angeles and its surrounding areas"? That is precisely what the 4th Amendment is supposed to prevent: panic and fear generated by the government.  Go back and read Shakespeare:  he is a critical observer of the nature of power, especially when wielded by government.  But he is careful never to impugn the sovereign.  Tower Bridge was festooned with the rotting heads of those who displeased "Good Queen Bess" and disappeared into the Tower, only to reappear much later as a head decorating the bridge.  Panic and fear marks the failure of governance in America, and we despise it in our history for the way it treated African slaves, and natives on their own land, and even Japanese Americans in California and elsewhere.  And here is the Supreme Court saying, well, a little panic and fear is okay, so long as the people affected don't speak clear English and don't look as white as Justice Kavanaugh and happen to be in church; or a parking lot; or a park.  And after all, how do we know they aren't "illegal" until they satisfy the whims of an anonymous ICE agent with a gun?

The rest of the majority didn't concur with Justice Kavanaugh's opinion, but that distinction is wholly academic here.  They signed off on the results, whatever their excuses are for supporting them. 

Although they never mention it in their opinion (how could they? They didn't submit one!  "We're the Supreme Court, bitches!"), the Sinister Six are too busy taking turns beating the 4th Amendment with a ball peen hammer to answer further.

SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in a college applicant's file is blatantly unconstitutional

ALSO SCOTUS: considering race as one factor in targeting people to detain and deport is cool cool cool

— Steven Mazie (@stevenmazie) September 8, 2025

“No Damn Cat, And No Damn Cradle!”

 Professor Vladeck, in analyzing the Court’s recent (and not final) holding in Trump v Wilcox sets up the analysis with this observation:

Justice Scalia once wrote that “It is in fact comforting to witness the reality that he who lives by the ipse dixit dies by the ipse dixit.”

Now, I find far too often that people rely on the psychological term “projection,” which they think they know what it means. Like “word salad,” I think the term is more precise than common usage has it, so I tend to prefer “every accusation is a confession,” or even better, that you’re seeing the reflection of the beam in your eye.

I’m not a fan of Scalia, IOW, and I think his “originalism,” rather like Wendell Holmes attempt at jurisprudence, has died with him. I could always see, from my perspective out of literary criticism, that Scalia’s originalism was just his preference read selectively into law when it suited his purposes, usually in dissent where he was less likely to be responsible for the consequences. Something the Roberts court took to heart as they regally and regularly disavow any responsibility for the consequences of their rulings (Trump v U.S. being the exemplar of their efforts. The POTUS is immune, but for what actions, exactly? The Court will  decide that on a case by case basis, if ever another former President is charged with committing a crime while in office. Something that has only happened once in the nation’s history. Which is still more times than a President has been removed from office by Constitutional process. The odds of that issue returning to the Roberts court for further examination, even with Trump redux, are between zip and none.) All Scalia ever offered with his occasional forays into “originalism” was precisely the ipse dixit of what he wanted the law to be in that case.

Which is why he seldom employed it when he was writing a majority opinion. He lived by the ipse dixit when it suited him, because he was damned sure not going to die by it.

Literary criticism is inevitably personal opinion. I like the poetry of W.H.Auden,; but Robinson Jeffers (no relation. I’ve already had an English professor ask me that), didn’t. “We never step twice into the same Auden,” he wrote; and attributed the line to Heraclitus, to underline his meaning. It was not, IOW, a compliment; nor a complimentary essay reviewing Auden’s work. He had his points, but they started with the fact he just didn’t like Auden’s poetry. Of course, Auden is the more highly regarded poet than Jeffers, now, and more widely remembered. (You heard Auden in “Four Weddings and a Funeral.” If you’ve ever read Jeffers, it’s probably “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner,” and even then you miss something if you don’t have the poet’s historical footnote.) Even Auden’s literary criticism is better noticed than Jeffers’ is. Some of that can be attributed to preference; but most of it is down to literary criticism; what people can say, in more or less objective ways, about the work of Auden. How they can construct arguments for the value of what is there.

Philosophy is approached the same way. People might care that Jacques Derrida was an Algerian Jew living in France, or that Kant was a quiet scholar in Germany with daily habits so precise you could set your watch by them. When I started reading Kierkegaard, the scholarship of Walter Lowrie, his English translator, focused on the love affair with Regina Olsen that S.K. broke off in order to…pursue something. Frankly the analysis was so tangled in Romanticism and English Cavalier poets (“I could not love thee, dear, so much, loved I not…” something… “more.”) I was never clear what Lowrie thought SK was thinking, but the latter left copious journals so I figured Lowrie knew more about Soren’s inner life than I did, and I just accepted that the affair with Regina was somehow, metaphorically or metaphorically, the key to Fear and Trembling.

But it wasn’t. It never was. Eventually biographical facts fade, and you’re left with the work itself. Nobody goes to a Shakespeare play and waits breathlessly for the lecture on life in Elizabethan England beforehand. Contemporary Kierkegaardian scholarship pays more attention to Luther’s influence than Regina’s, and really more to Hegel’s than Luther’s (I think the importance of Augustine is undervalued, but that’s entirely another matter.) It also reads what S.K. wrote, for itself; and places it in the context of Western thought, not only historically (mid-19th century Denmark), but in context of the commentary from contemporary thinkers (Derrida’s The Gift of Death is a brilliant example; an analysis of Fear and Trembling that starts with an essay on the work by another writer, which Derrida uses to make his own analysis of Kierkegaard’s thought.)

The point being, no one has a firsthand opinion of philosophy; or of poetry. We are all like the eunuch (no! Not that way!) in Acts, reading the scriptures but not understanding until someone explains it to us. All of us think we can “appreciate” representational art, because we know it should look like something. Landscape should have foreground and background, and buildings or trees, or just mountains, and we should know them at first glance. 

 But if the crowds for the Impressionist exhibits at the museum are any indication, we have no trouble seeing lilies in Monet’s paintings, or trees, wheat, and crows in Van Gogh (yeah, I know, post-Impressionism, but stick with me). And with just a little study of Picasso you can see the genius of what he and Braque were up to.

And if Marcel Duchamp doesn’t give you the joy, I can’t help you further.

It is criticism that gives us insight and understanding and the ability to appreciate representational, and non-representational, art. And I’m not even touching on music. What does music represent at all? And you can certainly make arguments for music you like, v. music you don’t like. But can you do it without just appealing to what appeals to you? You can make arguments that the Beatles weren’t that great. Frankly there’s a great deal of “wisdom of the crowd” doing the ipse dixit argument against you, there. If you aren’t willing to examine that, there really can’t be a conversation.

Which brings us back to Scalia, because, like many clever things he said, few of them are all that clever when you review them. Who really “lives by the ipse dixit,” except dogmatic people? And dogmatic people have already lost the argument, because they refuse to ever engage in it. So all Scalia’s really saying is that “dogmatic people are dogmatic.” Which is a not particularly insightful tautology. Which is Scalia’s thought in a nutshell. When he wanted to be serious and responsible (as in, writing a majority opinion he would be responsible for), he was predictable, and often a little dull. He was a perfectly serviceable, middle of the road, conservative jurist.

 

When he was writing a dissent, or a minority opinion, he could suddenly play the Flaming Originalist, claiming to divine what the “Founding Fathers” meant (a group of men who usually settled for the language finally used for very disparate reasons,  hoping future generations would either read the words the same way they did, or have the wisdom to rewrite to mean something of the same to that generation. Thus are we still saddled with the four clauses of the Apocalypse in the 2nd Amendment. Clauses no two people can agree on as to what they mean, and which ambiguity raises them to the level of Holy Writ which Thou Shalt Not Re-Write.  Scalia’s interpretation of them is among the worst.).

And I can make an argument on that, based on grammatical and syntactical analysis, as well as history and law. But Scalia’s “originalism” was based almost entirely on “I like it this way, and the ‘Founding Fathers’ were all in agreement with me! Because, see, I’m a very smart guy, so when I say ‘ipse dixit,’ you can rely on my soundness.”

There are schools of literary criticism that look at the historical context of the writing and even the biography of the author for insight into what the author intended (rather than just personal opinion of whether or not you like it. And “like,” or “like like.”) But most modern criticism sees the trap of solipsism in trying to divine the author’s “meaning,” and even abjures that goal altogether as a false one. Modern criticism sees the finished work as a text, separate and apart from its author as children are from their parents. Certainly children are a product of their families (as niece Mary argues Uncle Donald is of his), but what Fred Trump intended is lost to time, and Donald is responsible for who he is. So, too, the “text” stands apart from the author, and “means,” or not, what the reader discerns there.

When I was in seminary I gave a sermon at a church (not the one where I spent two years as the student pastor, where the Holy Spirit entered and left me based on my proximity to the steeple). I knew what I meant in the sermon, and I thought I said it pretty plainly. “Let he who has ears listen.”

A mother came up to afterwards to thank me. She and her adolescent son had been discussing matters spiritual and metaphysical for some time before my sermon (no, she didn’t put it that way) and my sermon had helped her son understand something about Chistology he had been struggling with. Thanks be to God!, as we learned to say, because that lesson wasn’t what I had meant at all!

It was an enduring object lesson in reader-response criticism. And in humility.

Now, if I’m not in control of how my words are heard (and I could tell you the story of a congregational meeting where the knives had already been sharpened because the meaning of what I said was immediately turned against me; that’s when you know it’s time to go) and understood, who is Scalia to claim, sotto voce, some mystic bond with the “Founding Fathers” to know just what they meant in their text? A reading that just happens to agree with what he wants it to mean?

His “originalism” is an argument that doesn’t hold up to the first scrutiny.🧐 

N.B. Professor Vladeck is right, the majority reasoning is as thin as Scalia’s originalism (in my analysis).  In sum:

And if the unitary executive theory is subject to exceptions for contexts in which the practical consequences of eliminating an agency’s independence would be too extreme, then it’s not much of a theory. Rather, it’s just a balancing test—for those agencies that are “too important” to be subject to direct, partisan political control and those that aren’t. Conceding that point would suggest that agency independence is not presumptively unconstitutional; and that one must do more than just wave their hands at the “unitary executive theory” to explain why dozens of statutes Congress has enacted over more than a century protecting different agencies and officers from direct presidential control are unconstitutional.

And then he puts his finger directly on the problem:

Ultimately, theories with bespoke exceptions aren’t theories; they’re just preferences. And as much as that conclusion bothers me less than those who purportedly claim adherence to such theories, it also requires the justices to do more work—and to explain why, especially at this moment in American history, we should prefer a constitutional understanding under which a single person is given so much control over every facet of governance. One might think that our recent experience would push us to strike that balance differently—at least once we accept that it is a balance that courts are (and always have been) striking.

Great (and mediocre; your host is a humble host) minds occasionally think alike.