BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND

          Fifty years ago, in 1962, Bob Dylan penned this iconic song in a New York coffee shop – in 10 minutes, he said.  It quickly became a sensation as a protest song against the war in Vietnam and part of the repertoire of the budding Civil Rights movement. Peter, Paul, and Mary; Joan Baez; and Dylan himself, among others, recorded it.  To this day, most of us at a certain age still remember the lyrics and will sing it nostalgically at the slightest provocation.

         The irony is that no one knows what “blowin’ in the wind” means for sure.  Even Dylan himself leaves the meaning open to interpretation – which essentially seems to come down to two choices:  Like the wind, which is all around us, the answer is right in front of us.  All we have to do is reach out and grab it.  The other option is:  If something is blowing in the wind, it remains elusive and maybe even out of reach.

         That song haunted me all week as I, along with most Americans, once again tried to get our heads and hearts around the another gun-related tragedy. Fueled by our grief and outrage, we once again proclaimed ourselves ready to do something about it.  This time for sure.  We signed petitions circulating on the Internet, and we called or wrote the White House and our representatives on Capitol Hill.

         But are we really ready to do something “meaningful?”

         I would love to think so, but I remain deeply skeptical.  Like Charlie Brown, I keep hoping Lucy will hold the football like she’s supposed to, but we know how that story goes.  We’ve been here before – four times in just the last four years alone, as the President noted in his moving remarks at Newtown.

         And time is against us.  Christmas is just a week away and with members of Congress having to deal with the fiscal cliff before they head home for the holidays, there is no time on the legislative calendar for meaningful action now.  The Members won’t return until sometime in January.  Meantime, there is Christmas, New Years, NCAA bowl games, the NFL playoffs and endless other distractions.  In the interim, the tragedy at Newtown will move to the back pages of the newspapers and recede in the national consciousness.  Our national memory and our ability to keep focus are scarily short.

         To that point, earlier this week, in an Op-Ed in the Washington Post Joe Califano, former Presidential aide and Cabinet member under President Johnson, wrote that President Johnson wanted to take “meaningful” action on gun control following the assassination of Robert Kennedy.  The President figured that in the wake of President Kennedy’s and Martin Luther King’s assassinations, and now Senator Kennedy’s, the time was ripe for legislative action.  But, he told Califano, we have a roughly 10-day window.  We must do it quickly, within ten days, the President reasoned, before the NRA has a chance to regroup.

         Notice that the National Rifle Association (NRA) remains silent on this latest issue?  They can read the Tea Leaves far better than I can, and they know time is in their favor.  They know that by the time members of Congress return, the issue will not be as red-hot as it is now. Besides, they also know that a Congress that cannot stand up to Grover Norquist has no chance of confronting the NRA, which is Grover Norquist on steroids.

         Do I hope I am wrong?  You can’t believe how fervently I cling to that fragile hope. 

         Meantime, I fervently hope that you all have a wonderful holiday with families and friends.  And, for those of you who keep reading my musings year after year, I admire your steadfastness, patience, and forbearance.  I am also flattered and most grateful.

         Happy New Year to you all.

Gerald E. Lavey

                                  HIDDEN SEEDS OF HOPE

               It’s challenging to see seeds of hope in the thuggish behavior of Vatican enforcers and some of U.S. Catholic bishops.  But the more outrageous their behavior, the more it underscores how far removed they are from what most of us understand as authentic Christianity and Catholicism.  And the more it gives Catholics the freedom to follow their consciences and decide for themselves what constitutes authentic Catholic teaching.

         The latest incident that sparked this posting is the way the Vatican came down on 92-year old Jesuit priest, Fr. William Brennan, S.J., for supporting the ordination of women.  As reported by the “The National Catholic Report,” Brennan, “a retired parish priest and former missionary to Belize, participated in a liturgy Nov. 17 with Janice Sevre-Duszynska, a woman ordained in the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests movement.”  This constitutes a “grievous and unpardonable offense,” according to the Vatican.

Ninety-two year old Fr. Brennan is in an assisted-living facility in Milwaukee. Still, the Vatican saw fit to impose the following harsh measures for his “grievous and unpardonable offense:”

•        Suspension of priestly faculties, prohibiting him from performing any priestly duties in public;

•        Refraining from contact with media, "through phone, email, or any other means";

•        Not appearing as a Jesuit at any "public gatherings, protests or rallies";

•        Not leaving the Milwaukee area "for any reason" without his superior's permission. 

This Vatican action comes on the heels of the its equally harsh action taken against Maryknoll priest, Fr. Ray Bourgeois, a priest for 45-years, who also publicly supports the ordination of women.  Like Fr. Brennan, he attended and participated in Catholic liturgies with an ordained woman.  As a result, Father Bourgeois is no longer allowed to perform priestly functions and has been removed from the Maryknoll Order.  He is now a layman. 

But, of course, we have not heard the last of Ray Bourgeois or Jesuit Bill Brennan.  Most Catholics had never heard of either one up to this point.  But, they have now -- and they will hear more in the coming months.  Both will become heroes and poster children as victims of cruel, unfair, abuse by higher authorities.  In fact, the Vatican has given the cause of women’s ordination a push that the most prominent Public Relations firm couldn’t in its wildest imagination have hoped to achieve. 

Like Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and other fading dictators have slowly learned, you doesn’t gain approval points by bombing your own people.  It just speeds the day when your hold on power will come to an end.  That’s a lesson the Vatican has still not learned.        

As a lifelong Catholic, I find this sad, but at the same time I see rays of hope.  There is no way a Church of any moral credibility can continue to be a witness to the Gospel message while denying women full participation in the life of the Church.  That’s a given and it’s just a matter of time before women will become priests and bishops.  Not in my lifetime, to be sure, but it will happen. 

In that hope, I take comfort in these lines written by longtime friend, Fr. Dave G. Schultenover, S.J., Editor-in-Chief of the quarterly publication “Theological Studies.”  This excerpt is taken from his column in the December 2011 issue in which he laments the unfulfilled bright promise of Vatican II held out to us 50 years ago:

 

“Approached in deep faith, hope, and love, the pain of the present situation can be seen as the labor pains accompanying the Church that is still being born out of Vatican II… It will take the Church many generations to appropriate the graces of Vatican II in a practical, faithful way.  In the process, we can rejoice that we lament.  Lamentation indicates that we love the Church, that we mourn its losses and failures, but that enduring grief faces the future with undiminished hope.”

 

Gerald E. Lavey

IN SEARCH OF PERSPECTIVE AND BALANCE

During the bitterly contested Presidential campaign, I surprised myself -- a self-confessed rabid partisan -- at how unusually hot my political passions ran.  To the point that I couldn’t sleep some nights for worrying about the outcome.  Now that the election is over, and my passions have subsided a notch or two, I am searching for a better, more balanced understanding of those on the other end of the political spectrum.

To this end, long-time friend Mike McKeown has recommended a book titled AMERICAN NATIONS: A History of the Eleven Regional Cultures of North America. According to a summary, its author Colin Woodward claims that “North America is actually made up of eleven nations, each with its own historical roots dating back centuries…. And each region continues to uphold its distinguishing ideals today.”  The book is sitting here before just waiting to be read.

Meantime, these quotes from a recent Washington Post opinion piece (“The America that Ben Franklin Saw”) by Walter Isaacson provided me some badly needed interim perspective.  I plan to read them over and over.  I share them with you because they also seem especially appropriate for the coming holiday noted for promoting feeling of peace on earth, good will towards all our fellow men and women.

“One of the glories of America is that there are two strands in its national character,” writes Isaacson.  “One is that of the liberty-loving individualist who flies a flag proclaiming, ‘Don’t tread on me.’  The other is that of the civic-minded citizen who sees our nation’s progress as a common endeavor.

“Tocqueville wrote that these strands were often in conflict, as they seemed to be in many of this year’s elections. But Franklin realized that these strands were interwoven and related, part of the warp and woof of the tightly knit American fabric.”

          “Over the years, America has been pretty good at regaining its balance,” Isaacson writes.  “After election seasons such as the one past… it’s therapeutic to gaze back through history’s haze and catch the eye of Franklin, the Founding Father who winks at us. The twinkle behind his bifocals reassures us that things will turn out all right….”

In that same spirit of hopefulness characteristic of the season, these words from Margaret J. Wheatley’s TURNING TO ONE ANOTHER.  Wheatley is one of those authors I often turn to when I need a bracing dose of wisdom.  Her work, LEADERSHIP AND THE NEW SCIENCE, was one of the best books I ever read on leadership and TURNING TO ONE ANOTHER one of the best on communications.

Wheatley writes:  “In this turbulent time, we crave connection; we long for peace; we want the means to walk through the chaos intact.  We are seeking things that are only available through an experience of sacred.  We can’t experience sacred in isolation.  It is always an experience of connecting.  The connection moves us outside ourselves into something greater.  [These sacred experiences] give us what we need to live in this strange yet wondrous time….

“Sacred experiences always offer gentle reassurance that everything is all right, just as it is…. The peace we seek is found in experiencing ourselves as part of something bigger and wiser than our little, crazed self.  The community we belong to is all of life…  We invite these [sacred] moments when we open to life and to each other.  In those grace-filled moments of greeting, we know we’re part of all this, and it’s all right.”

Gerald E. Lavey