The Ideal Woman in Proverbs

 

Her husband, entrusting his heart to her,

    has an unfailing prize.

She brings him good, and not evil,

    all the days of her life.

She rises while it is still night,

    and distributes food to her household,

    (Proverbs 31:11-15)

This was the Scripture reading for Sunday, November 19, 2023; it was

 announced as the Word of God.  It seems that God is a ‘patriarchal

 monarch.’ 

 

My Aunt Helen did all that.

 

She had a husband and two children.

I still remember her Thanksgiving dinners, but, most of all, I remember her as a baseball player.  She was the best.  I can see her now, racing in to catch a short fly ball.  As a hitter, she had the form of Joe DiMaggio.  

She was the working matriarch of the family.  I remember her, despite her rather slight build, shoveling coal to keep a 4-apartment building warm.

As matriarch, she directed the family with understanding and humor.  

All respected Aunt Helen and her wisdom.

The Working Catholic: Social Doctrine #16, Imagination by Bill Droel

 

Catholics are, if you will, vaccinated with an analogical imagination. We assume that God’s creation, especially people, are made in God’s image and that therefore God is like creation in some way. Now, the vaccine does not last with all Catholics. It quickly wears off on a Catholic in an environment devoid of enchantment. And, some non-Catholics certainly have the analogical imagination.

Gay Talese, baptized Gaetano, (now in his mid-80s) is the son of Italian immigrants. He reported on sports for his high school paper, then wrote for his college paper, for an army newspaper and also filed stories for small newspapers. In the early 1950s he landed a job as a copyboy for the N.Y. Times, eventually getting a sports-themed column there. Magazine profiles, essays and more followed.

Stories and photographs of so-called newsmakers appear every day, says Talese in his memoir, Bartleby and Me (Harper Collins, 2023). However, he believes that the stories of ordinary people are worth attention. Here, in his words, are some of the “non-newsworthy people” he wrote about: “doormen, bootblacks, dog walkers, scissor grinders, the late-night tile cleaners in the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the clerks sitting in subway booths, the pushboys in the Garment Center, the carriage drivers in Central Park” and the like.  

That’s the Catholic social outlook. The ordinariness of each common person contains a spark of the extraordinary. Each person has dignity no matter one’s job, one’s wealth, or the size of one’s dwelling. Dignity, says Catholicism, is not given by one’s boss or by one’s fans or one’s friends at the country club or at the tavern. Dignity is not an achievement. It is innate, a gift from the Creator.

Those with a Catholic sensibility walk around with a disposition toward the divine. No, they don’t expect a miraculous apparition at the grocery. But maybe they initiate a friendly chat with a widower there. No, they don’t interrupt their normal routine for a mystical occurrence in the afternoon. But they pause each evening to reflect on the meaning that was lurking within and around the daily comings-and-goings.

God resides with each person, especially those who are overlooked. Should a forum allow for eliciting it, each person’s story reveals a piece of God’s grace to those who have ears to hear or have eyes to read. God revealed God’s mercy and love to shepherds, fishermen, tax collectors, widows, a thief, and pious benefactors and the curious. God is somewhere in the story of doormen, bootblacks, dog walkers, scissor grinders, tile cleaners, Uber drivers, mothers and curious young men.

If God is with each person, the Catholic imagination says that God is offended by oppression. This is why a Catholic imagination puts people on alert for opportunities to advance justice and peace. Normally, justice and peace come in small increments. There is the decision at the managers’ meeting to institute better training for new hires and to penalize any veteran employee who hazes a new hire. Improvement might mean bypassing Starbucks until the company respectfully deals with its legally organized employees. Improvement might be calling three or four neighbors to attend a community meeting. It might be the staff and leaders at a private school or a church who pledge to immediately involve the police in any instance of child endangerment.

A Catholic imagination or Catholic social outlook (to which anyone is welcome) begins and ends with the belief that each and every person has equal, God-given dignity (imago Dei) and that all creation deserves proper reverence.

Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a free newsletter on faith and work.

 

 

Grass-roots successes October 24, 2023 By David Leonhardt

Many Americans have come to see the political system as rigged. They worry that grass-roots political movements are powerless to overcome entrenched interests, whether those interests are self-serving politicians, large employers or dominant social media platforms. And I understand why this cynicism exists.

For most Americans, progress has slowed to a crawl in recent decades. Income and wealth inequality have both soared. The top 1 percent have pulled away from everyone else, while working-class Americans often struggle to afford the best health care and homes in good school districts.

The clearest sign of our problems is this statistic: In 1980, the U.S. had a typical life expectancy for an affluent country. Today, we have the lowest such life expectancy, worse than those of Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Japan or South Korea, as well as some less rich countries, like China or Chile. The main reason is the stagnation of life expectancy for working-class people.

Source: World Bank | By The New York Times

For nearly a half-century, our economy has failed to deliver on the basic promise of the American dream — that living standards meaningfully improve over time for most citizens.

These themes will probably sound familiar to regular readers of this newsletter. The Morning often covers them because I believe that they shape so many parts of American life, including our polarized politics and angry national dialogue. I have just written a book — my first, called “Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream” — that tries to explain how we got here.

(For the New York Times Audio app, I read part of the introduction, including my own family’s story.)

In today’s newsletter, I want to tell you why I nonetheless emerged from writing the book with hope about the country’s future: In short, the American political system helped create today’s problems, and only the American political system can solve them.

When inequality fell

For all the cynicism about politics today, it is worth remembering how often grass-roots political movements in the U.S. have managed to succeed. In the 1920s and 1930s, the country had a highly unequal economy and a Supreme Court that threw out most policies to reduce inequality. But activists — like A. Philip Randolph, a preacher’s son from Jacksonville, Fla., who took on a powerful railroad company — didn’t respond by giving up on the system as hopelessly rigged.

They instead used the tools of democracy to create mass prosperity. They spent decades building a labor movement that, despite many short-term defeats, ultimately changed public opinion, won elections and remade federal policy to put workers and corporations on a more equal footing. The rise of the labor movement from the 1930s through the 1950s led to incomes rising even more rapidly for the poor and middle class than for the rich, and to the white-Black wage gap shrinking.

One big lesson I took from my research was the unparalleled role of labor unions in combating inequality (a role that more Americans seem to have recognized recently).

There are plenty of other examples of grass-roots movements remaking American life. The civil-rights and women’s movements of the 1960s also overcame long odds, as did the disability-rights movement of the 1970s and the marriage-equality movement of the 2000s.

Other examples come from the political right. In the 1950s and 1960s, a group of conservatives, including Milton Friedman and Robert Bork, began trying to sell the country on the virtues of a low-tax, light-regulation economy. For years, they struggled to do so and were frustrated by their failures. Friedman kept a list of newspapers and magazines that did not even review his first major book.

But the conservatives kept trying — and the oil crisis that began 50 years ago last week eventually helped them succeed. A politician who embraced their ideas, Ronald Reagan, won the presidency and moved the U.S. closer to the laissez-faire ideal than almost any other country.

The conservatives who sold this vision promised it would lead to a new prosperity for all. They were wrong about that, of course. Since 1980, the U.S. has become a grim outlier on many indicators of human well-being. But the conservatives were right that overhauling the country’s economic policy was possible.

This history does not suggest that the political system is hopelessly broken. It instead suggests that the U.S. doesn’t have a broadly prosperous economy largely because the country has no mass movement organized around the goal of lifting living standards for the middle class and the poor. If such a movement existed, it might well succeed. It has before.

The central lesson I took from immersing myself in the past century of the American economy is that it can change, sometimes much more quickly than people expect. When it has changed in a major way, it often has been because Americans have used the political system to change it. The future can be different from the past.

A SOLUTION FOR POVERTY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

They have made it a mournful waste,                                                                                               desolate it lies before me,                                                                                                                 desolate, all the land                                                                                                                                     because no one takes it to heart.  (Jeremiah 12:11)

The industrial revolution has provided great wealth for the world, but poverty prevails and the world is being destroyed by the production of artificial wealth. Can the apocalyptic threats of poverty and climate change be transformed?

World War II seems to present capitalism as the answer.  Fascism and communism were obvious failures.  The Capitalist answer to poverty is development.(desarrollo)  Gustavo Gutierrez predicted that Capitalism wouldn’t work in his 1973 book, “A Theology of Liberation.”  Adam Smith’s liberalism with the ‘invisible hand’ didn’t work; nor did Milton Friedman’s neo-liberalism which was a disaster.  “They [social scientists] have reached the conclusion that the dynamics of world economics leads simultaneously to the creation of greater wealth for the few and greater poverty for the many.”  (A Theology of Liberation, p. 25)

Massive migration across the United States’ southern border is an example of how development (desarrollo) doesn’t work to combat poverty.  Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said recently,  “The people don’t abandon their towns because they want to, but rather out of necessity.” 

“U.N. report finds world isn’t curbing global warming.” (USA Today Network, “Way Off Track,” September 9, 2023, p. 1NN)  Poverty and destruction of the earth are related.  The poor are suffering the most in the move toward global destruction causing climate change.  Solutions abound and there is no one answer, but what is the criteria?  How do we decide on an immediate action that is individual and political?  What do we do - options, political and personal options, are available.  What is the criteria for choice?

Are we listening to our children?

Gustavo Gutierrez was influential in the historic meeting of Latin American bishops in Medellin, producing the Medellin document of 1968. They agreed with Gutierrez that solutions must be judged in so far as they move the poor from poverty.  This is referred to as the “preferential option for the Poor.”  Theologian Matthew Fox suggests a preferential (non-violent) option for the children. This is a universally accepted criterion.  Who can object to loving children?

        

Bas-relief in Saint Benedict the Moor Catholic Church, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

The current horror in Israel and Palestine reminds us of “A voice was heard in Ramah, sobbing and loud lamentation; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more.” (Matthew 12:18)

Jesus in the Temple with the Elders - Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI

Are we looking for what Jeremiah predicts or will we take the moral imperative of action?

I looked at the earth, and it was waste and void; at the heavens, and their light had gone out!

I looked at the mountains, and they were trembling, and all the hills were crumbling!

I looked and behold, there was no man; even the birds of the air had flown away!

I looked and behold, the garden land was a dessert, with all its cities destroyed before the Lord, before his blazing wrath.    (Jeremiah 4:23-26)

                                                                                                                                                              

The Working Catholic: UAW Strike by Bill Droel

  

Autoworkers are not only seeking higher pay, writes Binyamin Appelbaum in N.Y. Times (10/2/23). “They are also, audaciously, demanding the end of the standard 40-hour workweek.” This is not the first-time employees have sought fewer hours. In fact, our feast of St. Joseph the Worker/International Workers Day (May First) was inspired by an 1886 Chicago protest for shorter hours. The Federation of Trades and Labor held a May rally in our Haymarket area (now a trendy restaurant spot). Late in the evening someone threw dynamite. Eight workers were rounded up, including a lay minister, a printer and others. Seven were convicted; four were hanged. The incident gave rise to an annual, worldwide day for worker dignity. Chicago Haymarket - Struggle for the 8-hour Day Mondelez Bakery, commonly called Nabisco, has a large facility in my neighborhood. Two years ago members of Bakery, Confectionary Union were on the sidewalk or in a lot across the street, striking over pay and retirement plans. As pressing, however, was their concern about shift length and overtime. Like other companies, Mondelez addressed the side effects of Covid-19 by asking or requiring overtime. This remedy became counterproductive because it created stress among the employees and added to operating expenses. Covid-19 likewise brings attention to the topic of onsite vs. remote working hours. It also prompts experiments around the number of hours on the job per week.  The popular crowd-funding platform Kickstarter, to mention one example, is experimenting with four days per week on the job. Pay remains the same. This is not a gimmick, says Kickstarter’s CEO Aziz Hasan. Other experiments in Sweden and Great Britain have favorable outcomes so far. An experiment in Iceland among several companies and backed by unions and civic groups was a success. The employees clocked 36-hours over four weekdays. Productivity remained the same. Sick days decreased. Customers noted better quality of service. Now, 86% of Iceland employees are allowed a four-day week, reports Wall St. Journal (7/31/21).         This past January Rep. Mark Takano of California (www.takano.house.gov) introduced legislation for a nation-wide 36-hour workweek. Even during our so-called labor shortage, Takano’s proposal should get consideration, concludes Appelbaum. It “would be better for our health, better for our families and better for the employers, who would reap the benefits of a more motivated and better rested workforce.” From a Catholic perspective a 36-hour workweek has a prior requirement: the principle of a family wage. That is, one worker per household with one job should be paid enough to reasonably support the family. (A family may include other workers, but that income is extra, not a dire necessity.) Presuming a family wage is established, an employer will pay a 36-hour per week employee at the former 40-hour rate. (Some employees who can afford to do so might negotiate pro-rated pay for 36-hours, but not from a distorted sense of vocation.)  Second, Catholicism says that a shorter workweek is betrayed if it really means less time in the office while bringing more work home. This caution particularly applies to salaried employees. Further, hours gained by less time on the clock cannot be spent on unnecessary consumption or excess time using screens. In other words, a change in culture must accompany any change in work hours. A whole/holy life involves employment, but also true leisure.  It means leaving behind our culture of total labor. The true purpose of time off is to establish “the right and claims of leisure in the face of the claims of total labor,” writes Josef Pieper (1904-1997) in Leisure: the Basis of Culture (Ignatius Press, 1952). Our culture currently needs “the illusion of a life fulfilled.” But instead of genuine time off, it puts forth false leisure with “cultural tricks and traps and jokes.” True leisure, Pieper concludes, is festivity or celebration. It is the point at which “effortlessness, calm and relaxation” come together. “Have leisure and know that I am God.” –Psalm 46:11          Whatever the outcome of the autoworkers job action, their proposal for a shorter workweek should not be dismissed. Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a newsletter on faith and work.

The Danger of the "Introspective Conscience," a Matthew Fox Daily Meditation (September 7, 2023)

Saint Augustine, Father of Introspective Theology

Frederick Turner, in his important study of the history of the Americas from the point of view of Native Americans, Beyond Geography, points out that ours is an “introspective” and therefore dangerous civilization. 

By “introspective” he means overly focused on ourselves and living without cosmos, without myth, without ritual worthy of the name. 

No wonder we find ourselves cosmically sad, cosmically lonely, cosmically destructive in our militarist vision of creating weapons to rain death on the rest of creation.  And busy destroying Mother Earth as we know her.  With a whole political party content with denying climate change.

Inner journeys are essential to get to our true selves.  But an exclusively inward one can look only at oneself or one’s culture and ignore the rest of the world.  There lies the death of cosmic spirituality and with it the death of Mother Earth.  The world does not need more inward journeys; but there are no limits to the inner journeys we can and ought to make.

Where does this inward compulsion come from?  Biblical scholar Krister Stendahl recognizes St. Augustine as the instigator of the “introspective conscience” of the West and feels the reading of the Bible has been distorted in the process.

Augustine was a genius in writing what was probably the first autobiography of the West, but he remains oblivious of the sense of theosis, the divinizing of the cosmos, that Eastern Christianity put forward as the very meaning of salvation.  Russian Orthodox theologian Nicolas Berdyaev writes:

The central idea of the Eastern fathers was that of theosis, the divinization of all creatures, the transfiguration of the world, the idea of the cosmos, and not the idea of personal salvation.

How different would history have been if Europeans landing on the shores of Turtle Island had held that understanding of religion?  

Is it a Matter of Innate Trust?

 

It seems to be an impossible task.  People and institutions are attempting to address and solve the problem of Climate Change.  But it seems we are going nowhere.  “U.N. report finds world isn’t curbing global warming.” (USA Today Network, “Way Off Track,” September 9, 2023, p. 1NN) 

Years ago we were visiting our family in San Francisco and on a Sunday morning, we woke up to the news of the Tsunami that hit Japan.  (March 11, 2011)  We went to Mass that morning expecting to hear about the plight of the people in Japan and the need for help.  The homilist said nothing.  After Mass I asked the Superior of the religious order that serves the church why nothing was said about the Tsunami.  He explained that the homilist was older and probably wasn’t aware of what had happened, but he himself did call their community’s house in Japan and learned that the priests were all ok.  I was stunned. 

On Monday our grade school age grandson whose father is of Japanese descent, reported that his teacher asked the class about the Tsunami.  Are you afraid, she asked?  I questioned our grandson, were you afraid?  No, he said.  If it happens here, the water is only going to come up to my knees, but I am worried about the people in Japan. 

Was our grandson telling us what Julian of Norwich said in the 14^th Century?  Despite war, plague, and persecution, Julian said, ‘All is well and will be well.’

Is this the answer to our anxiety about Climate Change?