What's Tony Thinking

At the Weekend: Pope Sends Vance Back to Catechism

This week Pope Francis sent a letter to U.S. Catholic Bishops addressing the policies of mass deportation of the current administration. He begins with the Exodus story of a people who were migrants and aliens, going on to note that Jesus too was a refugee whose family fled their homeland when his life was threatened. Here’s Francis:

“I have followed closely the major crisis that is taking place in the United States with the initiation of a program of mass deportations. The rightly formed conscience cannot fail to make a critical judgment and express its disagreement with any measure that tacitly or explicitly identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality. (emphasis added) (Note: not having legal status is a civil, not a criminal offense, an important distinction which the Pope makes, but the Trump administration isn’t making.)

“At the same time, one must recognize the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival. That said, the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.”

Francis also addressed J.D. Vance’s (mis)use of the doctrine of Ordo Amoris. “Christian love,” wrote the pontiff, “is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation.”

We don’t know enough to be pessimists. At the Mockingbird newsletter Oliver Burkeman tap the brakes on catastrophizing.

“In his occasional newsletter The Imperfectionist, Oliver Burkeman made some incisive observations. First, that the worst-case scenario (whether government collapse, the end of civilization, or something else) is not necessarily going to play out. He warns against following online catastrophizers for the simple reason that no one can predict the future.

“‘Accepting this truth is liable to make you feel intensely vulnerable — whereas if you convince yourself the worst is inevitable, at least you get to feel a sort of bleak security about what’s coming. But if we can recognize that ‘change and uncertainty are basic principles,’ as the futurist and environmentalist Hazel Henderson put it, ‘we can greet the future… with the understanding that we do not know enough to be pessimistic.’”

“Change and uncertainty are basic principles” seem preferable to the “bleak comfort” of “the end is coming.”

Brooks Busting Out. David Brooks has been busting out of the customary 650 – 750 word cap on Op-Ed columns with longer form pieces, often ones that are spiritual in nature. This week’s is titled, “A Surprising Route to the Best Life Possible.”

Much of the piece is about what Brooks terms “moments of ignition,” when something seizes and calls to a person such that they give themselves to it without reservation. These “moments of ignition” involve some sort of enchantment. Brooks comes up with a wonderful quote from the largely neglected poet Hugo Von Hofmannstahl.“Where is your Self to be found?” the Austrian poet asked. “Always in the deepest enchantment you have experienced.”

But to move from enchantment to mastery of a craft or calling that has enchanted you requires something, a great deal, from a person. The real secret sauce is effort, which accepts “voluntary pain” in love. It’s not just the “grit your teeth and work harder” type effort. It is effort born of love for that which has cast its spell.

“I’ve taken us on this journey,” writes Brooks toward the end of his long piece, “because I wanted to understand why people choose voluntary pain. But I’ve also taken us on this journey for a deeper reason, because of a growing sense that this kind of arduous life is the best life to live.” This ties back to some of my recent writing on sacrifice. The “best life possible” entails sacrifice(s) made in love.

Which takes us to the video of this week’s podcast on the sacrifice of Christ. You can watch/ listen as Josh  and I work through the chapter on “Blood Sacrifice” from Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion. 

Grace and peace be with you all, my friends. T