Sometimes the Catholic Church can be a real pill

“All worldly things are placed under the dominion and power of the church.”  Unum Sanctum (Giles of Rome, 1302)

It seems we haven’t come very far these past 710 years. 

Once upon a time Popes crowned Emperors.  Once upon a time, Bishops ruled territories, collected taxes, made laws, executed civic justice in the name of the God whose vestments they festooned.  Once upon a time the political served the behest of the clerical, the corruption of worldly power infesting Prince and Pope equally, indistinguishably.  Once upon a time both church and government failed because neither knew their place. 

But once upon a time (as I read history) a German monk and his reforming colleagues broke the shackles of a world imprisoned by the theocracy of the totalitarian church, separating the spiritual from the political, empowering each to own individual, unique, distinct place and purpose.  We consider this newly birthed understanding an enlightenment, for it brought in the modern age, made possible modern democracy and modern government and modern people.   

Today we describe the Islamist tendencies and Jihadist atrocities of our Muslim brethren as a barbarism that we long ago abandoned, a knee-jerk rejection of a society that cannot be rejected, a less-than-quaint antiquity of a desire to subdue people with religious tyranny that we have long since learned is wrong and cannot function.  We think it wrong in their aspiration and practice. 

So why should it be ok in ours?

The unmistakable subtext at work in the description of insurance coverage for contraception as an assault on religion exudes the musty odor of a longing for those good ‘ole medieval days when  Pope spoke and Emperor did, when the church’s word was the world’s law, binding, unquestioned good.  Dominionism, even for those who deny the nomenclature, is bubbling up in 2012 in a strange alignment of protestant and catholic believers who decry the strangulation of personal liberty at the hand of government but favor of the denial of freedom at the hand of the church. 

Forget for one moment the creation destroying and justice annihilating implications of the church’s denial of contraception or the theologically pregnant equation of fertility with justification.  Overlook Catholic institutions that already provide insurance plans to their employees, Catholic or otherwise, which include contraception. Disregard that almost all Catholics in this country in fact use contraception. Accept the right of the Roman Catholic or any other church to dictate their religious belief to their followers in whatever way they choose with whatever means are at their disposal. 

Remember, instead, that the Catholic church, like the Lutheran Church or the Evangelical Church or the Mormon church is in this time and place a church, surely and merely a spiritual body residing in the midst of a very non-spiritual kingdom, where we are all called by the God who created both church and government to function as creatures of this world, who calls us to submit ourselves to the law of this kingdom even as we live by the grace won for us in Christ’s. 

“For anyone who desires to reside in a city is bound to know and observe the laws under whose protection he lives, no matter whether he is a believer or, at heart, a scoundrel or knave.”  (Martin Luther, Introduction to the Small Catechism)

Asking the church to respect the laws of the land in which it resides and works is not waging war on the church.  Not letting the church dictate what laws it will follow or what laws it will not is not waging war on religion.  No, pretending to be victimized by the big bad government is just a clever, but disingenuous way to hide the age-old desire of the church to rule over it.  No one is asking believers, Catholic or otherwise, to practice contraception if they find it against their faith.  But it is right, necessary and good to ask the institution of the church, a citizen of the world, to know its place and let the government govern. 

“Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars,” said Jesus. 

 
Keep your faith.  Practice it well.  But let the church be the church.  And let the government do its job. 

A Hard Word to a Cold World

They were lined up waiting for us. 

Politely, to be sure, patiently even.  Standing in the cold (and thank heavens it wasn’t a truly cold night as a January night should have been) with minimal coats and few, if any, hats or gloves.  Waiting for the arrival of a spoonful of warm, if not particularly tasteful food, a few slices of bread and a couple of ounces of juice. 

They were lined up waiting for not much.  But it was all they had to wait for.

The real face of American poverty, standing in a deserted parking lot on a cold dark evening is a stark reminder that we are not all living in the same country.  For many, for too many, for far too many of our neighbors and fellow citizens, poverty is not a statistical anomaly or a poor economic outcome, it is a daily disaster, a personal struggle for survival, an unsecured free fall.  For those few folks on that one January evening, waiting for a bite to eat before they shuffled back to their substandard housing or the car they lived in or the steam grate they slept over, it’s something to be actually worried about.

Mitt Romney, candidate to lead all of the people of this nation and be caretaker for its soul, did not, as many commentators, make a political gaffe this week.  He promulgated our great national lie; that poverty is just a minor inconvenience that affects a small portion of the population who are kept fat and lazy by overdone government largesse and a vast and effective network of religious, charitable and beneficent persons and organizations. 

It’s a lie – not because there isn’t help, but because help is not a good enough answer to the real truth of poverty in America.

Fifteen percent of Americans, or 46 million human beings, men, women and children, live in poverty right now.  That means absolutely that they do not have enough money for food, clothing and shelter, certainly not at the same time.  More so, thirty percent of us live within the reach of poverty, perhaps having just enough money for the most minimal needs.  Yes, those have TV’s, but they don’t have reliable transportation, or health care, or money to send their children to college.  And sixty percent of Americans, the experts say, live within one missed paycheck, one unaffordable medical disaster, of increasing the ranks of the most poor among us. 

No, Mr. Romney, the poor are not fine, they are not kept by the so-called “safety net,” which at its worst, prolongs their suffering and never, even at its best, changes their circumstances.  No, they are not just a few percent of surplus population (to borrow the phrase from another well-known Scrooge) who can be disregarded for the sake of some more important political demographic. 

Actually, I am not worried about the poor, either.  I am scared to death for them. 

As long as we live in a country where care for the least among us is treated as a hobby, a diversion for those needing occasional penance or the few who can afford the luxury of feigned, sometime interest, the empty stomachs and the long lines waiting for a warm meal will grow only longer and longer.  Until it becomes our national responsibility, our common calling, then we will share together the guilt and the savage price of the poor among us. 

A wise man wrote some 500 years ago:  “Nobody ought to go begging among Christians. It would even be a very simple matter to make a law to the effect that every city should look after its own poor, if only we had the courage and the intention to do so.”   (Martin Luther, a Letter to the Christian Nobility).

Our apologies, Dr. Luther, for our failure to hear your word, and for our continual selfish willingness to tell ourselves lies in the face of our Lord’s sacred charge.

They are still lined up, waiting for us. 

of Trade and Justice

Records show that the giant and ground-breaking office supply company Staples added tens of thousands of jobs during its relationship with Bain Capital, the venture capital concern of which Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is now so famously associated.  He is, justifiably, proud of that result.

Which is entirely beside the point.

By which I mean to say, that it is not beside the point as a measure of either Mr. Romney’s capabilities as a capital manager nor of the Staples enterprise as a business model, but that it is entirely beside the point as a measure of capitalism as it is currently being practiced today.

For this is most certainly true: the addition of tens of thousands of jobs was neither the purpose of nor the measure of Bain Capital’s involvement with Staples.  They did not invest in the company to create jobs – they invested to increase their own wealth.  Period.  Whether Staples had grown and employed more people or not would have made no difference – they would have returned, and probably amply, on their investment, as they did in so many other similar instances.  Dade Behring medical testing returned more than 4 times an $85 million dollar investment but went bankrupt in a decade.  Stage Stores returned $100 million on a $5 million investment, as did American Pad and Paper.  Both went bankrupt, as did many others, but Bain still profited, and mightily at that. 

That is the point.

Capitalism, for all of what it may be in theory or hope, is in its current expression mostly the corrupt and greedy practice of seeking the gain of personal wealth without the burden of adding any value to the larger community.  The stock market is no longer a place to build a retirement nest egg or save for a child’s education, it is a giant casino where loathsome practices like short-selling are no longer cheating, but normative.  Corporations create stock dividends instead of goods and services that elevate our common standard of living, their executives are not properly rewarded for their hard work but blindly paid off with gluttonous compensation packages whether they succeed or fail.  Banks are not vaults of safety, protecting the hard earned savings of laborers or supporters of individuals, families and small businessmen pursuing their dreams, but corporate con men, packing their bad decisions for carefree marketplace swap meets. 

Which is only part of the point, too. 

This is not news.  For all of our idealistic pretension of freedom and opportunity and thrift and the American way, we have always known this about the marketplace.  No, it is not merely the system which is to blame, it is our willingness to unleash the beast in hopes that it will consume our enemies and, by some miraculous and impossible fate, bring in the ship of our own good fortune.  Did not Dr. Luther warn us centuries ago? 

“Among themselves the merchants have a common rule which is their chief maxim and the basis of all their sharp practices, where they say: ‘I may sell my goods as dear as I can.’ They think this is their right. Thus occasion is given for avarice, and every window and door to hell is opened.”   On Trade and Usury (LW 45:246)

In the end, it is not Capitalism that must be fettered, but us, not business that must be regulated, but us, not trade that must be ordered, but me.  Perhaps that is why we resist it so, because we see, however dimly, in the worst practices of modern business our own greed and corruption.  Capitalism is as it is because we are as we are.  We dare not confess its depravity aloud, because if it is wrong there, then it must be wrong in me, too. 

But perhaps, just perhaps, if we could bring ourselves to the hard choice, if we could find the courage to chain that great beast and tame it and bring it under yoke and turn its power to the betterment of all and not just the enrichment of a few, then we might in fact discover the possibility of realizing God’s vision of justice, even in the system of Capitalism itself.  For what the great Reformer spoke in the negative, we might see in the positive:

“Selling ought not to be an act that is entirely within your own power and discretion, without law or limit, as though you were a god and beholden to no one. Because your selling is an act performed toward your neighbor, it should rather be so governed by law and conscience that you do it without harm and injury to him.” Luther, Martin, On Trade and Usury (LW 45:248)

Perhaps never, at least on this side of the Kingdom, will we actually create a world where what is good and right and just permeate our whole life, spiritual and economic and political.  But perhaps, if we were wise enough and humble enough and brave enough, we could come closer.

Which, I think, is actually the point. 

Envy

Mitt Romney thinks I am jealous of him. 

He’s right.

I’d like to be able to fire service companies that don’t deliver according to my standards.  I’d like to be able to fire my insurance company if they won’t pay for a procedure or test I’d like to have done or for meds I’d like to have.  I can’t.  My insurance plan came with my job, chosen for me by someone else who decided what I could afford and what I could not.  I have no real say, and I surely can’t afford to go out and buy insurance on my own, affordable care act or no. 

Not that I’d get insurance from another company anyway, what with the whole pre-existing condition and all.  And it probably wouldn’t be much cheaper either.

I’d like to change a lot of things in my life.  I’d like to pay less for groceries, but commodity traders and other assorted corporate forces keep driving prices upward because they can.  I’d like to not go bankrupt sending my children to college, in fact, I’d like to be sending them to better colleges, but I can’t.  Of course, Mitt and his friends keep telling me that college is a privilege, not a right, and not everyone should get to go there after all. 

Mitt’s right.  I’m extremely jealous of him and of lots of other people who live in a world where they can get what they want and do what they want all the time. 

The question is whether or not that’s a good thing.

I understand perfectly well that it is the nature of a free society that some people will always have more than others – more money, more power, more control.  I get that, and at some level, I’m okay with it.  People are entitled to the fruits of their labors. 

But when does inequality stop becoming an incentive for aspiration and become a barrier to justice?  For that’s the real problem – not that I am jealous of Mitt Romney, who can run for political office now because he doesn’t have to worry about paying his mortgage while I can’t because I do, but that I have absolutely no opportunity to ever reach such a place in my life, nor do the other ninety-nine percent of people like me, and especially the many people even worse-off than I am.  The issue is not that some of us are richer than others, but that the benefits of wealth – success, power, control – have become the sole property of a very few, consolidated, restricted, secure behind gated communities and obscure tax loopholes. 

It’s not that I’m jealous that you got yours, Mitt.  It’s that you’ve got mine now, too.  And in this season of being told what is destroying America, let us clearly speak this one undeniable truth: as we watch old totalitarian regimes all over the world collapse because the many who were kept from power and wealth could take it no longer, let us not fail to observe the same log in our own eye.  Wealth and prosperity are not the same things.  Separating our society into those who have much and those who have some is not the same as separating it into those who have all and those who have none.

Do not scorn my jealousy, Mr. Romney.  If you want to lead this country, fix it.    

The Lord enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of hosts. Isaiah 3:14-15

What ugly is

It’s pretty shocking, really, the ugly stories coming out of Penn State this week.

Well, not, actually.

How many times must we bear witness to the incredibly horrific things that people do to each other til we come to understand that it is not so much that these stories are new and unusual as it is that they are far too old and normal.  It’s not that we’re animals – we should be so lucky.  It’s that we humans.  Sinful humans.  Originally and naturally sinful humans.  Prisoners to sin humans. 

Of course, we don’t want to hear that.  If offends our carefully constructed fantasies about free will and natural virtue.  We are merely good people to whom bad things happen.  We occasionally stumble, misstep, show bad judgment, err.  But we hold on, however ineffectually, to this constant myth, that we are in our very core good, just lacking the rare métier to forestall the temptations of our lesser nature. 

For who would want to face the truth of the abyss that is the darkness of his soul?

Perhaps that is how the secondary tragedy of the Penn State story came to be.  That any human being could perpetrate such acts upon a helpless child is unimaginable, that others could witness it and turn their back is another thing entirely.  The denial intrinsic to the crimes of the other coaches and administrators is more than self-serving at an institutional, academic or programmatic level.  They were protecting more than the Penn State athletic program.  They were protecting themselves from facing the truth about all of us and what we are capable of doing. 

And this perfidy with our falsely superior self-understanding is costly.

If we dared an honest assessment of our brokenness then we might accomplish the construction of a safer world, a more diligent community, a heightened awareness of the dangers we pose to each other and a greater effort at protecting those most vulnerable around us.  If we stopped pretending to be surprised at what people might do we could possibly take some steps to stop them from doing it.  Who wouldn’t trade in a little of our fabricated freedom for one fewer molested child?

But maybe that would be too shocking to do.

Which brings me to Herman Cain, who is also shocked, shocked I tell you, that anyone would dare to accuse a fine, upstanding person such as himself of any kind of inappropriate behavior.  He is, after all, a good person, a successful church-going man of good intent and purpose, and by definition above such ugliness.  Which is the more comical, but still equivalent, experience of our misguided concept of human freedom.  Even if we accept that it can happen, we are most assuredly certain that it cannot happen to me. 

Until it does.

Which brings me to the true cost of our falsely superior self-understanding.  Not that I deny the sinfulness of others, but that I deny my own complete and total corruption and in turn, deny the price paid for that sin by my Lord and Savior.  To suggest that he died on the cross for anything less that the total depravity of human nature is the height of faithlessness.   The price of my free will fantasy is the constant crucifixion of Christ.  If I proclaim my freedom, he dies for nothing. 

But when I confess my bondage, when I admit my loss, then the full power of his gracious love overwhelms, then his ransom pays my debt in full, then I become His prisoner and His alone.  As a free agent, I am alone.  As a confessed sinner, I am His, and in grace, never alone. 

 And that’s not shocking, just amazing. 

The God of flat taxes

Given how much they talk about Jesus, you think politicians would know more about what the Bible really says!

Because there are no flat taxes in the Bible. As far as God is concerned, when it’s time to pay, the wealthy pay more and the poor pay less.

For example, in the book of Leviticus the required offering for sin is laid out in extraordinary detail. The proper sacrifice for a guilt offering is a goat, a male goat, without blemish. A costly price indeed, which a “ruler” is required to give for their sin. An “ordinary” person, however, may give a female goat. Or a sheep. Or if they cannot afford that, two turtledoves. Or two pigeons. Or even one-tenth of an ephaph of flour. Whatever.

Because God’s law knows that not all people are created equal, at least not economically speaking. And in a just society, one modeled after God’s law, it is a given that those who are poor cannot afford the same as those who are rich.

But be not mistaken – this is about much, much more than protecting the poor. Though that is an extremely high priority in God’s reign, there is this other important concern – holding those who have been blessed with worldly riches to the highest responsibility for their position.

Jesus put it this way: “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.” (Luke 12:48) Fair share, it turns out, means something entirely different in God’s eyes.

This saying of Jesus is a punch line to a story about an unfaithful servant who, having been left in charge while the Master was away, chose not to pay the other servants but beat them and used the Master’s money to eat and drink and be merry. It is a powerful and confrontational word to a world where the numbers of both truly poor people and truly wealthy people are both increasing, where the very few enjoy the luxuries of life while more and more and more go hungry every
day. We live in a world hurtling toward a devastating judgment, a world on the brink of self-destruction, a world that does not need an economic philosophy which asks merely the same of the rich as it does of the poor.

It is not enough that consumption taxes burden the poor more heavily than the rich, or that decreasing taxes on rich people and corporations will destroy services that the poorest people depend on. It is a question of whether or not we are willing to live up to what is expected of us - not according to our political philosophies or narrow self-interests, but the God from whom our wealth comes.

A world that reflects biblical justice must tilt toward greater responsibility on the part of those who have greater wealth. It is not that God hates wealth or wealthy people (though the Bible seems to not have much good to say about them) – it is
that God despises a world that worships the accumulation of wealth. “For
the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. (1 Timothy 6:10) Flat tax plans exist for only one reason – to protect the interests of wealthy people against the needs of the poor.

When it’s time to pay God, when it’s time to bear the burdens of supporting the needs of the whoe community, the wealthy must pay more. It’s God’s way, after all.

It's not the Economy, stupid!

Ben Bernanke. Benedict
Arnold. Yeah, I get those two confused
all the time.

When I was younger (I know you hate it when I start a
sentence with those words), treason was a serious accusation, rarely made,
reserved for very particular acts that aided and abetted enemies of our
nation. Selling state secrets. Sharing sensitive information about troops,
battle plans, defense systems.

It was not a word casually tossed about as a political
label, a quick cheap shot at any convenient target.

Evidently that’s changed.

Now, people who don’t subscribe to our philosophy are
traitors, policies that we differ over are treasonous, people who don’t follow
our brand of politics are terrorists, politicians, even Presidents, who don’t
do what we think they should do are unpatriotic, don’t really love
America.

It’s not my way vs. your way. It’s my way, end of sentence. You do not have different ideas, challenging
ideas, debatable ideas. You are just bad
and I hate you.

Is there no wonder that we can’t get anything done?

How amazing our egotism, how great our pride! Have we become incapable now of allowing any
diversity so that we must destroy anyone and anything which is not just like
us? Have we become so insecure that we
must cast off civility and forgo peace to protect ourselves? Is there no room in the world anymore for
anyone who is not me?

This same violence now infects the church. Anyone who believes or practices the faith
differently must be the anti-Christ, the devil, must be cast into hell. Will it be much longer before we start
burning heretics again? There is no freedom
in our theology any longer, we have imprisoned ourselves so narrowly in our
thinking that we have no option but to destroy the community in order to
protect ourselves.

Yet Jesus broke break with Pharisee and Tax Collector
alike, he spoke with divorced women, he exemplified Samaritans in his parables,
he died for all. For all! Not with words of judgment, with condemnation
even for his killers, but with grace and hope for the whole community, and with
the sacred charge to his followers that they were to bring good news to every
end of the earth.

He could do that, you see, because he knew then what we
refuse to believe, a benevolent God, a compassionate God, a God of such
extravagant love that he could not refuse anyone, could turn against no one, a
God who’s defining trait was his amazing and overwhelming forbearance and grace.

A God who could love even creatures full of hate and deceit
like us.

And all he would ever call us is his.