Sursum Corda
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Topical musings from a Catholic perspective

Tuesday, March 04, 2003
HAVE A GOOD LENT: I'm outta here. See you all after Easter. Roll that test pattern...

posted by Peter Nixon 4:41 PM
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ASH WEDNESDAY: Just a reminder that Pope John Paul II has called for Catholics to fast and pray for peace on Ash Wednesday.

posted by Peter Nixon 4:40 PM
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PRAYER REQUEST: My Godfather Ken is seriously ill with cancer. He has exhausted conventional therapies and this week he begins a round of experimental therapy at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Hanover, New Hampshire. If you could spare a prayer for him, I would be greatly appreciative.

posted by Peter Nixon 2:34 PM
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A PRAYER: I came across this page which has excerpts from Markings, the spiritual journal of Dag Hammarskjöld, the first Secretary-General of the United Nations. The page contains a prayer that I particularly like:

Give me a pure heart that I may see Thee.

A humble heart that I may hear Thee,

A heart of love that I may serve Thee,

A heart of faith that I may abide in Thee.

posted by Peter Nixon 2:22 PM
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THE RIGHT WAY: Michael Walzer takes a serious look at what would be required to contain Iraq if we are not willing to go to war--sanctions, no-fly zones, permanent inspections--and notes that to be effective these means will require strong international institutions. While the Bush Administration can be criticized for pursuing policies that have undermined those institutions, they are not the only culprits. Our European allies--particularly France and Russia--must also be faulted for their own policies that led to the collapse of the containment regime in the late 1990s:

It would have been much better if the US threat had not been necessary —if the threat had come, say, from France and Russia, Iraq's chief trading partners, whose unwillingness to confront Saddam and give some muscle to the UN project was an important cause of the collapse of inspections in the 1990s. This is what internationalism requires: that other states, besides the US, take responsibility for the global rule of law and that they be prepared to act, politically and militarily, with that end in view. American internationalists—there are a good number of us though not enough—need to criticize the Bush administration's unilateralist impulses and its refusal to cooperate with other states on a whole range of issues from global warming to the International Criminal Court.

But multilateralism requires help from outside the US. It would be easier to make our case if it were clear that there were other agents in international society capable of acting independently and, if necessary, forcefully, and ready to answer for what they do, in places like Bosnia, or Rwanda, or Iraq. When we campaign against a second Gulf War, we should also be campaigning for that kind of multilateral responsibility. And this means that we have demands to make not only on Bush and Co. but also on the leaders of France and Germany, Russia and China, who, although they have recently been supporting continued and expanded inspections, have also been ready, at different times in the past, to appease Saddam. If this preventable war is fought, all of them will share responsibility with the US. When the war is over, they should all be held to account.


posted by Peter Nixon 11:30 AM
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Monday, March 03, 2003
ISOLATED: Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo prints some excerpts from former National Security Director Zbignew Brzezinksi's apperance on CNN last night. Although he worked in the Carter Administration, he has a reputation as a hawk (Brzezinski, a Polish emigre, was once overheard in the late 1970s discussing targeting nuclear weapons at the "Russians" rather than the "Soviets." No one who knew him thought this was a slip). In any case, here is part of ZB's take on the increasing diplomatic isolation of the United States as it prepares to take on Iraq:

I think we have to ask ourselves, how have we conducted ourselves? We have in effect said to [our allies], "Line up." We have treated them as if they were the Warsaw Pact. The United States issued orders, and they have to follow.

Now, let me give you one striking example. The president since 9/11 has uttered the phrase "He who is not with us is against us" -- mind you, "He who is not with us is against us," anyone who disagrees with us is against us -- no less than 99 times. We have a concept of the alliance, inherent in this kind of conduct, which involves giving orders and others falling in line.

The issue of Iraq is a complicated issue. It's related to the whole question of proliferation and global stability. Ultimately, it points even to the issue of North Korea, that we haven't talked about at all. And how we conduct this problem, how we deal with it is essential to the effective exercise of America's global leadership. We are literally undercutting it right now. We have never been as isolated globally, literally never, since 1945.
I was paging through Ken Pollack's book again this weekend and something occurred to me. Pollack's work remains strong and he has raised some important questions that opponents of the war have not answered very well. But in the end, Pollack is an area specialist, not a broad strategic thinker. Pollack's book does a good job laying out the options for confronting Iraq, but he is less successful in placing those options in the context of the larger strategic vision that taking on Iraq is meant to serve. It is quite possible that the United States could "win" this war and lose the broader political struggle in which we are engaged. Something to think about.

posted by Peter Nixon 1:30 PM
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FORTY DAYS: In his article on Lent in this month’s U.S. Catholic, Father Robert Barron suggested that we “identify the diversion that most distracts you and take some practical steps to rid yourself of it or at least reduce it.”

Three guesses what this is for me. That’s right. So I’m giving up blogging for Lent. No posting (including comment posting on other people’s blogs) from Ash Wednesday until Holy Thursday. This may be the most penitential Lent I’ve had in years…

posted by Peter Nixon 9:22 AM
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TOTAL DEPRAVITY? Since Lent begins in two days, I thought I would blog some grim thoughts about human nature to get us all off to a good start! As always, I provide the usual caveats about this being more of a meditation or reflection than an attempt at serious theology.

A few weeks ago, I
blogged some comments on an essay by Stanley Hauerwas entitled “Discipleship as Craft.” As is his wont, Hauerwas makes a number of strong assertions in the essay, one of which is that “goodness” or moral behavior is not innate; it has to be taught. A friend of mine wrote me to say, in essence, that Hauerwas was wrong, that the instinct for goodness lies deep within us.

My friend’s position is probably a bit closer to the traditional Catholic position, i.e. that “grace builds on nature,” while Hauerwas’ view is a bit closer to the traditional Protestant (or, if you prefer, Augustinian) view that stresses the “depravity of man.” For most of my life, I would have placed myself fairly comfortably in the first camp, but in recent years I have been drifting toward the second. While not willing to abandon entirely the idea that grace builds on nature, I have come to the conclusion that grace is building on a fairly low foundation.

One reason for this has been my experiences as a parent. It may well be true that we have an instinct for goodness, but that instinct has to be compete with a lot of other instincts that are often at least as powerful if not more powerful. Even if you are a reasonably good parent, your children exhibit an incredible amount of anti-social behavior in those early years: selfishness, a tendency to resort to violence when frustrated, etc. They really do have to be taught—and it is a lesson that you have to teach them over and over—that they are not the center of the universe. Parents, of course, can testify to the fact that it is not until you have children that you truly realize how selfish you really are (e.g. pretending you are asleep so your spouse has to get up and comfort your crying child).

Until her children were born, my sister spent many years as a teacher, primarily in special education and teaching kids from Kindergarten to Sixth Grade. One of the things she told me once was that if a child doesn’t form a conscience by the age of three, it becomes considerably more difficult thereafter. Having raised one child past that point and another close to it, I can readily believe this. Even if a parent does everything “right,” a tendency toward selfishness remains a powerful instinct that we struggle with for the rest of our days.

Another reason I became more skeptical of the inherent goodness of mankind was a year I spent informally studying some of the major genocides of the 20th century: the Shoah, Rwanda, Yugoslavia, etc. The social corollary of the personal instinct toward selfishness is the instinct toward tribalism. By this I mean the tendency to have one set of moral laws for the “in group,” and another for everyone else. We tend to resist this idea, and argue that there is a natural “brotherhood of man” that unites us despite our differences of language, culture, etc. and that this instinct toward brotherhood is somehow more fundamental than our more atavistic instincts.

I am no longer as sure of this as I once was. It seems to me that the evidence of human history points in another direction. It may be that Tony Soprano rather than Francis of Assisi, represents the natural end-point of human evolution. As much as we mouth the values of universality and the brotherhood of man, under stress we tend to revert to the morality of the tribe. We don’t even need to look at Rwanda to learn this truth. We can see it in the way that middle-class homeowners respond to the idea of having a community mental health center built in their neighborhood.

As I noted in my musings on the atonement awhile back, it is when you take this view of human nature that Jesus’ preaching of the Kingdom of God seems to confound, rather than confirm our expectations. Jesus isn’t like the politician who looks where the crowd is headed and gets out in front so he can look like he’s leading the way. Jesus’ message can’t be summed up as “do what you are already doing, just do it a little better.” It’s really a radical shift for us to think as Jesus wants us to: to pray for our enemies and those who persecute us, to forgive endlessly, to die to self.

If you believe that human beings, left to their own devices, will pretty much move in the right direction, then the Christian narrative of salvation makes little sense. We don’t need to be saved; we just need to move a little faster. If, on the other hand, one concludes that human beings, left to their own devices, will cheerfully run themselves off a cliff like lemmings, then more drastic steps are clearly required. Jesus wanted to keep us from the edge of the cliff, even if it cost him his life. He still does.

posted by Peter Nixon 9:19 AM
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HEALING: This happened yesterday at Saint Ignatius Church in Antioch, California, which is just a few miles down the road from me:

Amid hugs, tears and applause, former altar boy Robert Thatcher was embraced Sunday by the congregation whose first pastor he accuses of molesting him more than 20 years ago.

Thatcher, 32, accompanied by his lawyer, David Drivon, had come to the parking lot of St. Ignatius Catholic Church to hold a press conference and "to reach out to other victims of abuse." He was joined there by members of SNAP -- Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests -- who handed out leaflets seeking help to reach out to other victims of accused former priest Robert Ponciroli.

Thatcher then attended the 10 a.m. Mass and took communion for what he said was the first time in 16 years.

As the Mass was about to end, the pastor, Father Geoffrey Baraan, turned to Thatcher, who was standing at the back of the sanctuary, and said, "I'd like to welcome you back again," as the 600-odd worshipers in the packed church broke into applause. Baraan later put his arm around Thatcher and the two men walked together out of the church.
You can read the entire article by clicking
here.

posted by Peter Nixon 9:08 AM
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