Memory and Education

Here in our large Florida retirement community, we have a growing number of facilities designed to support and house those among us who can no longer live alone and require some level of assistance. Rehab facilities and physical therapy practices abound, helping those who are recovering from surgery, illness, or injury. We’ve also witnessed the construction of many facilities supplying various levels of assisted living. But increasingly common among these new facilities are those devoted to “memory care.” Given today’s remarkable advances in medicine, for many of us seniors, our bodies are outliving our minds. We see so many physically healthy seniors suffering from various forms of dementia. This, combined with the ravages of such diseases as Alzheimer’s, and the inability of aging spouses to care effectively for their loved ones, has created the growing need for this level of institutional care. 

As a deacon, I often visit patients in memory care facilities. Over time their dementia seems to have as great an effect on care-giving spouses and other family members as it has on the patients. I see this far too often as spouses witness and personally experience the gradual loss of the human presence of those they have known and loved for most of their lives. To experience, gradually over time, the complete loss of one’s memory is inevitably to lose awareness of one’s surroundings, of others, and even of self. I recently visited a parishioner who’s in an advanced stage of dementia. I hadn’t seen him in a while and was saddened to encounter only a shell of the man I had known. But there were signs of recognition, signs of faith. When I prayed the Our Father aloud, his lips moved silently along with the words. I've come to believe that in some way we cannot perceive, he will always know the God who brought him into being. 

Societies, too, seem to experience collective memory loss. Some results from the normal passage of time and our tendency to focus on the present or the more immediate future. I recall once being told by a professor of managerial psychology, "You can do nothing about the past, so why focus on it." Of course, he was absolutely nuts. And I immediately thought of Henry Ford's famous and blunt evaluation: "History is bunk." In truth he really didn't say that, but what he actually said in that interview wasn't very different:

"History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today."

Neither Henry Ford, nor my grad school professor, apparently agreed with George Santayana's more famous comment:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

As for myself, I'm more comfortable with Santayana's approach to history than Henry Ford's. Ford was a great manufacturer who could drive his products down that assembly line right into the showroom. But what he knew about tradition you could etch on the head of a pin with a jackhammer. And since he's not around to defend himself, I can attack his attack and fear no rebuttal. 

You see, I look at tradition in its theological sense. I see it as God's communication of Himself to us. As the Church understands tradition (and in the words of the late Cardinal Avery Dulles): 

"Its content is the whole Christian reality disclosed in Jesus Christ...transmitted not only by written and spoken words, but equally by prayer, sacramental worship, and participation in the Church's life."  

Sadly, too many, like old Henry Ford, ignore not only spiritual tradition but even secular tradition. They seem to suffer from a form of temporal bias or bigotry which encourages them to believe that progress toward the good, or at least the better, is inevitable. These are the folks who believe the ancients -- and that includes any generation before their own -- must have been far less intelligent because they didn't have iPhones and iPads or YouTube and TikTok and Google. And using these devices and apps they generate little or nothing of real lasting value. 

Today, too many of our institutions of "higher education" -- all those colleges and universities -- have devolved into high-priced trade schools, turning out well trained but poorly educated graduates. They are trained as coders, or marketers, or number crunchers, or influencers. Some are taught to be teachers, but they learn only how to teach, not what to teach. They might be ready to enter a narrowly defined field or profession, but do they possess an understanding of the human condition? Are they aware of the philosophical and theological struggles that have brought humanity to its present state? Do they know why they exist and what God intends for them? Do they know God and themselves? They, too, are the victims of memory deprivation inflicted on them by lesser souls.

The truly valuable, the great works of men and women of the past are being neglected in too many of our schools. They and the traditions they represent have been intentionally forgotten, eliminated from curricula, discarded from libraries, and certainly not read by or taught to students. Fortunately, there are some schools where the "great books" still have pride of place, and where a truly liberal education remains the sought-after end. I believe St. John's College in Annapolis was among the first of these, but today there are many others, including Thomas Aquinas College, where my daughter, Erin, studied. 

I'm glad I'm as old as I am, so I don't have to help my children make these decisions in today's crumbling world. If I were raising children today, I'd teach them about the real, living tradition that God has revealed to us, about the wondrous relationship between God and His people. And then I'd encourage them to become useful members of society as plumbers, librarians, electricians, beauticians, house painters, farmers, mechanics, even teachers. Doing that, it's less likely your job will consume you or monopolize your life, but it might provide the leisure you need to live the life God wants for you. How you and I live, however, is always our choice.

A Christian Society?

So often we hear people, particularly religious people, speak of our nation as a "Christian Society." Of course, I've never heard one of these folks actually define what that means. To be fair, I suppose it's not a particularly easy thing to define. 

For example, is a Christian society simply a society in which a majority of its citizens call themselves Christians? In the United States this was certainly the case for most of its history, although I'm not sure it remains so today. Anyway, just because a citizenry calls itself Christian, doesn't mean it believes and lives the Christian faith. Such contradictions are apparent with individuals, so why not with nations as well?

Or perhaps a Christian society means the nation is governed by what we consider to be Christian principles; that is, principles based on the Gospel, the teachings of Jesus Christ. Well, if we actually examine the policies and laws of our current government at local, state, and federal levels, the presence of Gospel values seems to be rather rare. Not only are the Ten Commandments increasingly ignored, but the Beatitudes? Well...they're considered irrelevant, certainly nothing on which to base legislation.

These thoughts popped into my aging brain the other day as I re-read the Gospel according to Mark for an upcoming Bible Study session. Mark, who likely wrote the Gospel while in Rome, must have experienced first-hand the persecutions instituted by Emperor Nero. He and the Christians in Rome, who lived under the Empire's totalitarianism and the personal tyranny of Nero, suffered from a level of persecution probably not seen again until the 20th century. I suspect many of these early Roman Christians hoped for a day when the empire might actually be motivated by Christianity. 

Today we have a world in which Christianity is by far the most persecuted religion in the world, By some estimates Christians are actively persecuted in over 160 countries. And I expect this doesn't count the more subtle denigration, social exclusion, and media attacks of Christians increasingly common in the countries like our own.

True Christianity, of course, cannot abide any form of totalitarianism, an ideology  which demands complete control of all aspects of human life by the state. Here in the good ol' USA, a nation populated by those who have historically prided themselves on their love of freedom from all forms of tyranny, we are witnessing a movement toward a form of authoritarianism wielded by those who have forgotten that "we the people" are sovereign. Constitutional rights -- rights endowed by our Creator -- are considered expendable when national crises arise and push those who represent the people to the limits of their authority and capability. And so, they try to exceed both and assume essentially unlimited powers. Although freedom, once lost, is hard to regain, far too many citizens today don't seem to care. 

Some wise sage, I can't recall who, once said that when we give up our freedom we soon forget its value. Even those who regain it often find freedom too much of a challenge and let it slip away once again bit by bit. And those whom we empower? Although they publicly express a loathing of totalitarianism, they privately admit much admiration for its supposed efficiency. I guess it's just the way of the world, really nothing new, simply a symptom of a fallen, sinful people.

Last evening I turned to a volume I hadn't read in a dozen years and was struck by the wisdom of the author. The book was published in the UK in 1940. This was a  time when Great Britain was at war with Hitler's Germany and yet was also aware of the threat posed by another totalitarian state, the Soviet Union. What follows are a few pertinent passages I think worthy of sharing.

"To speak of ourselves as a Christian Society, in contrast to that of Germany and Russia, is an abuse of terms. We mean only that we have a society in which no one is penalized for the formal profession Christianity; but we conceal from ourselves the unpleasant knowledge of the real values by which we live."

Today, sadly, many in both the UK and the USA, are "penalized" for their profession of faith, especially by the technocrats who run social media, which has become perhaps our primary means of interpersonal communication. 

The author went on to write: 

"...a society has ceased to be Christian when religious practices have been abandoned, when behavior ceases to be regulated by reference to Christian principle, and when in effect prosperity in this world for the individual or for the group has become the sole conscious aim."

The author, speaking of the UK of 1940, asks if his society is still Christian simply because it had not yet become something else. He seems to believe that, yes it is, because it wasn't completely pagan. I suppose 80 years ago he was correct. Although I would disagree with his use of the word "pagan" when really we are faced with something quite different from traditional paganism. The growing tendency, at least today in the United States, is to become a-religious, which is certainly not a pagan trait. I suppose this, though, is just a matter of semantics.

The author then turns to one of my heroes, Christopher Dawson, who wrote that non-dictatorial states stand not for traditional liberalism but rather for democracy. Dawson continues "to foretell the advent in these States of a kind of totalitarian democracy." To many this would seem a contradiction, but it's not. Democracy, unchecked by constitutional limitations, inevitably becomes a dictatorship of the majority, often an emerging majority, in which minorities -- for example, Christians -- suffer persecution. 

We then read the following, which should give us pause today as we witness the rapid deterioration of our constitutional rights:

"By destroying traditional social habits of the people, by dissolving their natural collective consciousness into individual constituents, by licensing the opinions of the most foolish, by substituting instruction for education, by encouraging cleverness rather than wisdom, the upstart rather than the qualified, by fostering a notion of getting on to which the alternative is hopeless apathy, Liberalism can prepare the way for that which is its own negation: the artificial, mechanized or brutalized control which is a desperate remedy for its chaos."

As all of this happens, as Liberalism brings about its own destruction, we still "insist upon the preserves of 'private life' in which each man may obey his own convictions of follow his own whim: while imperceptibly this domain of 'private life' becomes smaller and smaller, and may eventually disappear altogether."

Where does this most easily happen? According to the author materialism is both a symptom and a cause.

"The more highly industrialized the country, the more easily a materialistic philosophy will flourish in it, and the more deadly that philosophy will be...And the tendency of unlimited industrialization is to create bodies of men and women -- of all classes -- detached from tradition, alienated from religion, and susceptible to mass suggestion: in other words, a mob. And a mob will be no less a mob if it is well fed, well clothed, well housed, and well disciplined"

And so, today many of the institutions that define our society have left neutrality behind and become openly anti-Christian. Should this trend continue, and I can think of no strictly human effort that will stop it or slow it down, eventually Christianity and Christians will be considered and treated as enemies of the state. In our author's words, the course for the Christian then becomes "very much harder, but it is simpler."

As you can see, even from the few passages I have quoted, the author was prescient in his understanding of where Western society was headed 80 years ago, and where it is today. The essay, written by the poet, T. S. Eliot, is included in the book, "Christianity and Culture." It's one of those books I turn to every decade or so just to remind me that God is in charge and that, without His guidance, humanity will make a mess of pretty much everything. I addressed only a few of Eliot's thoughts, those that set the stage for his major thesis. Read the book. You'll enjoy it. 

Incarnations of Christianity

Note: As I finished writing this post, I realized it was far too long, but rather than edit and compress it, I decided to leave it alone in its original, unorganized state. 

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One of the more interesting aspects of my ministry as a parish deacon is to fulfill the role of what the late Tom Wolfe called “flak catcher.” Some parishioners apparently feel more comfortable approaching a deacon with their complaints and concerns than taking them directly to the pastor. I suppose I can understand that. The deacon might be clergy, but he’s generally, and erroneously, viewed as a kind of part-timer. After all, when we’re not wearing vestments, we deacons look like everyone else. Maybe we’re seen as more approachable because we, too, have families, work for a living, and live in the local community. 

Of course, what most parishioners don’t know is that deacons really can’t do much about most of their concerns. The big issues are decided by the bishop, the pastor handles how the parish will implement those decisions, and we deacons, quite appropriately, do what we’re told. After all, the word deacon derives from the Greek word, diakonia, which means service, especially the service of those who carry out the commands of others (that's us). When I find myself in that flak-catching role, I try to ease the parishioner’s concerns, explain the Church's or the parish's position, and, if necessary, refer the parishioner to someone who might be able to do something about it.

Anyway, I get phone calls. Not long ago two very different people called me on consecutive days with related, but different concerns. One caller wanted to know why we couldn't celebrate an occasional Latin Mass. He brought up his dissatisfaction with the Novus Ordo Missae; i.e., the new order of the Mass promulgated after the Second Vatican Council. He prefers the traditional Latin Mass, now called the extraordinary form, which he believes the Church has abandoned. I explained that both forms are equally valid. I also tried to convince him, as the great theologian Romano Guardini said, that it is the faithful, not the rubrics, which determine the faithfulness of a liturgy, whether extraordinary or otherwise. I then told him that although the vernacular is in general use throughout the world, the Church still prescribed Latin as the primary language for Mass. In fact, all translations derive from the Latin Roman Missal. I added that I, too, had a particular fondness for the traditional Latin Mass, the Mass I grew up with and in which I participated as an altar boy back in the 1950s. But he remained adamant and couldn’t understand why the Church had to change.

The second call was from a seasonal parishioner – what some call a "snowbird" – whom I will kindly describe as a “progressive” Catholic. He, too, had a liturgical question that eventually morphed into a complaint. He was unhappy with the pastor of his New York parish — “always preaching about abortion but rarely about social justice.” I think sometimes he calls just to test me, to see if he can get me to argue with him. Surprisingly, though, I kept my cool as I explained that to preach on abortion, the killing of millions of the most innocent among us, is to preach the very essence of social justice. Our conversation wandered among a variety of subjects and when I mentioned that some Catholics longed for the Latin Mass, he laughed and said, “Just a bunch of lost souls, trapped in the errors of the past. Just wait until we ordain woman. That’ll drive them over the edge.”

These two calls got me thinking about the Church over time. Was it wrong earlier – "the errors of the past" – and correct now, or was it correct in the past and wrong now? After thinking about this for a while, I concluded that the correct answer to each part of this double-barreled question is “No.” Certainly members of the Church, even an occasional Pope, have been guilty of error, and worse. After all, ordination at any level does not guarantee holiness. Called to holiness, deacons, priests, and bishops all remain sinners. Only the Church itself remains holy. And the Church knows this. In fact, one of the recent changes to the English translation of the Roman Missal reflected this internal awareness. The English translation of the congregation’s response to the priest’s prayer preceding the Eucharistic Prayer (a response we altar servers used to call the Suscipiat) was changed to more accurately reflect the original Latin:

“May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of his name, for our good and the good of his holy Church.” 

For years, ignoring the original Latin, this response had not included the word, “holy.” Could that omission in a prayer repeated by millions over several decades had an impact on the Church and its holiness as perceived by the faithful? An interesting question.

This leads us to infallibility, which is a magisterial gift of the Holy Spirit, a gift granted to the pope and to “the body of bishops when, together with Peter’s successor, they exercise the supreme Magisterium.” [See CCC 891.] But many of the details, the nitty-gritty of how we worship, are not immutable. Infallibility simply does not apply. Over the centuries the Church has often changed what it considers non-essential and managed to adapt its approach to the ever-changing political, social, even economic conditions it encounters in the world. But throughout its life, the Church has continued to do God’s redeeming, sanctifying work through the infallible Magisterium and the grace-filled efficacy of the sacraments. 

Because the Church was divinely instituted by Jesus Christ [Mt 16:18], it is transcendent. But because it must do God’s work in the world, it is also incarnate. The Body of Christ lives partly in the world and its history is one of adaptation to many different Christian cultures: Palestinian and Aramaic, Greek and Roman, Byzantine, Medieval, Baroque, Late European, Modern, and today’s emerging global Christianity. The problem occurs when we try to identify the Church with just one of these forms, in effect telling it to become static in its approach to the world. 

The Church cannot be identified with any given race, culture, or society. The true Christian is no more Greek or Roman than Italian or American or Chinese or Indian. The Church, then, freed from its attachment to any specific civilization or society becomes enriched by each culture in which it thrives. God certainly blessed the Church when Western civilization embraced Christianity, but this is just one of many incarnations of the Faith on earth. The Christian message, the Good News of Jesus Christ, because it comes from God, and not from man, must transcend all cultures and societies.

Sacred history began not with Abraham, but with creation. Indeed, God began His formal revelation in time with the words of creation:

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" [Gen 1:1].

Actually...with the Word of creation, for the Person of the Redeemer is Himself the Creative Word of God. 

All that preceded Christianity cannot be dismissed simply as wrong! God is present throughout time, revealing Himself in ways we cannot grasp. The nature religions, Hinduism, Buddhism...all had their roles to play in the world's sacred history. 

Judaism, especially, through which God revealed Himself personally and more deeply over time, paved the way for the fullness of revelation. The covenant with Noah held firm, revealing God’s will for humanity, until it was superseded by the covenant with Abraham. This, too, held firm, reinforced by God’s covenant with Moses, and later with David, a covenant that included a promise.  With Jesus Christ, with the Incarnation, that promise and all that came before is fulfilled. 

Just as sacred history passed through all of human history, the Church has and will continue to do the same. The Church of the future, that emerging global Church, will in its own way incorporate the varieties of human civilization. The deposit of faith and the sacramental life cannot change, but so much of what we do, how we pray and worship, undergoes frequent and often rather radical change. 

If a first-century Roman Christian had tried to introduce the Rosary, I suspect it would have been summarily rejected. The time and place and culture simply weren’t right. But by the 13th century God knew the world needed this prayerful devotion and, through Mary, St. Dominic introduced it to the Church. Today we see the growth of the Divine Mercy chaplet thanks to God working through the life of St. Faustina. 

Devotions evolve over time, as do many elements of sacramental and other rites. Next Tuesday I will baptize a baby girl using the newly revised rite: the Order of Baptism of Children. Over the past quarter-century I've baptized a few hundred little (and not so little) ones, using the earlier rite. Both rites were valid because they center on "the water and the words." The other elements of the rite support our worship and our catechesis. Through them, parents and godparents, and all who witness this sacrament, come to share in and better understand God's miraculous work as He adopts this new Child. Sin is remitted, the grace of the Holy Spirit fills the soul, and the Church accepts a new member. None of this has changed, nor will it ever change. 

I should remind my two callers of this. 

"Make disciples of all nations," Jesus commanded. He didn't tell us what language to use in our worship, for He understands all language. Nor is the Church to be measured solely on its success in improving people's social conditions. Important as they are, these things are secondary.  The essential work of the Church is the liberation of the soul from spiritual bondage...its salvation.

Morning Prayer Reflection: The Song of Moses

Several years ago I posted occasional reflections on the day's Morning Prayer of the Church's Liturgy of the Hours. For some reason I can't  recall, I stopped writing these brief reflections. My guess is that life just got too busy and I simply didn't have the time. Really a poor excuse, since my reflecting on Morning Prayer probably helped me far more than it helped those few who actually read my thoughts. Such reflection is spiritually valuable only if we act on it, and perhaps I just hadn't been willing to live up to my own words. 

Anyway, I’ve decided to try it again, not every day because time remains an issue, but occasionally as the Spirit moves me. 

Perhaps, because of the emphasis on the un-natural, the pervasive influence of technology in our lives, I find myself attracted to the frequent images of nature we encounter in Scripture. In today’s Morning Prayer, for example, we find several of these references:

From Deuteronomy 32:1-2

Give ear, O heavens, while I speak; 

let the earth hearken to the words of my mouth!

May my instruction soak in like the rain, 

and my discourse permeate like the dew,

like a downpour upon the grass, 

like a shower upon the crops:

Here we encounter multiple images — rain, dew, downpour, shower — all likening God’s Word to the purifying, nourishing flow of water from the heavens to the earth. These words, the opening verses of the Song of Moses [Dt 32:1-43], are a prayer, an appeal to both heaven and earth. Among the final words of Moses before his death, they offer us a prophetic view of what awaits the people of Israel and their successors, the People of God. Take a few minutes now, open your Bible, and read the entire hymn. Note how many natural images Moses applied to God’s work in the world, His care for His people, and their response. Indeed, the entire hymn is filled with these images, reflecting a world with which the people were intimately familiar. 

For example, God is like the eagle who encourages its young nestlings [Dt 32:11], and provided His people with nature’s bounty, with all that the earth offers [Dt 32:13-14]. But we also encounter other, very different images when Moses prophesied the Lord’s response to the people’s faithlessness. Here he compared God’s actions to the harsh side of nature:

“Emaciating hunger and consuming fever

And bitter pestilence,

And the teeth of wild beasts I will send among them,

With the venom of reptiles gliding in the dust” [Dt 32:24].

I expect those listening to Moses were familiar enough with the reality portrayed by all these images, and took them to heart. But this led me to wonder about our response today. Recently I read that although there are more than two million farms in the U.S., only slightly more than one percent of our nation’s workforce is directly involved in agriculture. Most Americans live in urban or suburban areas, isolated from nature’s bounty and protected from its harshness. Few have probably ever set foot on a farm or experienced the need to cooperate with nature to earn a living or just to survive. I experienced the latter when the Navy ordered me to attend training programs for both desert and jungle survival. They proved to be far more intense than my childhood Cub Scout camping trips, and led me to appreciate some of the benefits of civilized society.

Today, in our increasingly technological, industrial society, this separation from nature begins early. Years ago, when Diane worked as a teacher in the Head Start program, she told the children that the milk they drank came from cows. One little boy, Michael, could not accept this, exclaiming, “No! Milk does not come from cows. It comes from the store. I know because I’ve seen my mama buy it there.” That was proof enough for him. End of discussion. Admittedly, Michael was a little boy from the inner city, but what about you and me? As we pour milk on our oatmeal or Cheerios, how often do we actually think of that milk coming from a cow on some dairy farm? And Isn’t this also true of that nice, thick steak at Outback, or the chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A, or that glass of Pinot Noir with your dinner? When you take a drive through the rural countryside, can you identify the crops growing in the fields? About all I can recognize for certain are corn and cotton. As for the rest, I can’t tell soybeans from alfalfa. Like little Michael, I too was pretty much a city boy. As a child my closest encounters with nature consisted of mowing the lawn and raking the leaves.

All of this leaves me wondering how seldom we turn to God in thanksgiving for all He has given us. He is the God of Nature, the God of all creation. Yes, He has given us the intellect and will to use His natural gifts in wonderful ways, but it all has its source in Him. Too often, like Diane’s little Michael, we attribute the gift to the wrong giver. As a society we have replaced God with man, replaced the true Giver with just another user.

Perhaps today we should all step outside and take a long walk through a tiny piece of God’s creation, thanking Him for the gift of our world and all it offers us. And so, I’ll conclude with these words from Psalm 95, which we pray every day in the Invitatory of the Liturgy of the Hours:

The Lord is God, the mighty God,

the great king over all the gods.
He holds in his hands the depths of the earth
and the highest mountains as well.
He made the sea; it belongs to him,
the dry land, too, for it was formed by his hands [Ps 95:3-5].