THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE QUOTES

Jerry Harkins




Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
There is no sense worrying about what might happen tomorrow.

Matthew 6:33-34, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” This is part of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has just said that a man cannot serve two masters—i.e., God and Money. So serve God and don’t worry about anything else, including tomorrow. God will provide as he does for the lilies of the field.

Percy B. Shelley started to write a poem called “Sufficient Unto The Day” but only this fragment survives (see “Relics of Shelley,” Richard Garnett (ed.), London, : Edward Moxon & Co., 1862.)

Is not to-day enough? Why do I peer
Into the darkness of the day to come?
Is not to-morrow even as yesterday?
And will the day that follows change thy doom?
Few flowers grow upon thy wintry way;
And who waits for thee in that cheerless home
Whence thou hast fled, whither thou must return
Charged with the load that makes thee faint and mourn?

Incidentally, this is not good advice. It is obviously better to prevent evil than to deal with it when it appears.



A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse.

Necessity is the mother of value. On August 22, 1485, at the battle of Bosworth Field, Henry Tudor defeated Richard III thereby becoming Henry VII. At the climactic moment, Richard is unhorsed. He continues to fight on foot, killing five knights he thinks are Richmond. In Shakespeare’s version of the event, he says,

Slave, I have set my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die:
I think there be six Richmonds in the field;
Five have I slain to-day instead of him.
A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse.
Richard III V:4

Enter the real Richmond. They duel offstage and Richard is killed.

The great Lionel Barrymore was playing the role one night and, at this line, someone in the audience, thinking it was funny, laughed. Barrymore, never skipping a beat, ad libbed in perfect iambic pentameter, “Make haste and saddle yonder braying ass.”



Catch-22
Joseph Heller

A perfect dilemma. Contradictory but mandatory instructions, rules, laws, etc. Captain Rosarian wants to stop flying dangerous missions after having completed so many that he fears the odds are catching up with him. The original Catch-22 goes like this:

• One may be excused from flying bombing missions only on the grounds of insanity.

• One must assert one's insanity to be excused on this basis.

• But one who requests to be excused is presumably in fear for his life.

• This is taken to be proof of his sanity, and he is therefore obliged to continue flying missions.

One who is truly insane presumably would not make the request. He therefore would continue flying missions, even though as an insane person he could of course be excused from them simply by asking.




Up the Down Staircase
Bel Kaufman

The title of her 1965 fictionalized memoir of a year spent teaching English in a New York City high school. An Assistant Principal is always catching her going up the down staircase and writing her nasty memos about it. She thinks staircases go both ways. When a student called her “Teach,” she called the student, “Pupe.” (Ms. Kaufman is the granddaughter of Sholom Aleichem whose birthday was May 12A because he was superstitious about the number 13.)



Time and the River Flowing

The ineffable grandeur of solitude in wild spaces. Used as the title of the Sierra Club book by Francois Leydet that is often credited with saving the Grand Canyon from the dam builders. Sometimes attributed to Henry David Thoreau, it is actually the creation of Edith Warner who wrote:

This is a day when life and the world seem to be standing still -- only time and the river flowing past the mesas. I cannot work. I go out in the sunshine to sit receptively for what there is in this stillness and calm. I am keenly aware that there is something. Just now it seemed to flow in a rhythm around me and then to enter me -- something which comes in a hushed inflowing. All of me is still and yet alert, ready to become part of this wave that laps the shore on which I sit.

Edith Warner (1893–1951), who lived by the Rio Grande at the Otowi Switch in northern New Mexico, has become a legendary figure owing largely to her portrayal in two books: The Woman at Otowi Crossing, by Frank Waters, and The House at Otowi Bridge, by Peggy Pond Church. Because Edith was famous for her tearoom, where she entertained scientists from the Manhattan Project, few people realize that she was also a serious writer. In the Shadow of Los Alamos, edited by Patrick Burns, is the first publication of her own writings including part of an autobiography. Also included are letters, essays published and unpublished, and journal entries (salvaged by various friends from the original, which was burned after Warner’s death at her request). The editor provides a useful introduction outlining her life and setting it in local and historical context, along with a wonderful collection of period photographs and a facsimile of Edith’s famous chocolate cake recipe.



The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.

“Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray

I have always liked Gray’s Elegy the point of which—that differences between people are unimportant—is expressed in many memorable lines.



A man’s reach should exceed his grasp else what’s a heaven for?

Robert Browning, “Andrea del Sarto”

Anticipation is often more satisfying than achievement because at that stage the pleasure is in the imagination. Only heaven is sure to be better than its anticipation. As St. Paul says, “Now we see through a glass darkly, but then shall we know as we are known.”





"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (Lines 49-50)

The game is or is not worth the candle.

I’ve always been a bit confused by this line. The conventional interpretation, of course, holds that it is the ultimate expression of romantic philosophy. Coleridge said that poetry is opposed to science in that it seeks pleasure, not truth, the beautiful rather than the good. This is, of course, unadulterated high romanticism, sharply at odds with the dominant Aristotelian strain in Western philosophy. Along comes Keats who equates truth and beauty, ignoring pleasure and the good. The line in question is the message of the Urn to its viewers. Its scene depicts something true and beautiful but also something that is only art. It does not exist in the real world. He tells the lover chasing the lady:

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

If I were the lover, I’m not sure I’d think this was a good deal.



In wildness is the preservation of the world.

Henry David Thoreau

The world would survive if it were entirely natural and could not survive if it were entirely artificial. Thus, it is its measure of wildness that preserves it and, thus, the preservation of a measure of wildness is essential.

From “Walking,” a lecture he first gave in 1851 and which was published posthumously in 1862. From Part II, the eighteenth paragraph which begins, “The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the world.”

Thoreau was, of course, a great walker. In his diary, he wrote, “I have told many that I walk every day about half the daylight, but I think they do not believe it. I wish to get the Concord, the Massachusetts, the America, out of my head and be sane a part of every day." He also famously said, “I have traveled widely in Concord.”

Used as the title of another one of the Sierra Club Exhibit Format Books (1962) which juxtaposed quotes from Thoreau with the beautiful color photography of Eliot Porter.




Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of a wolf...We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness. The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time. A measure of success in this is all well and good, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run. Perhaps this is behind Thoreau's dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world. Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men.

Aldo Leopold.

Of course, if you’ve been paying attention, you know what Thoreau really said was that in wildness is the preservation of the world.




We are each entitled to our own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan




For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

St. Paul, 1 Corinthians 13:12



The mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceedingly fine.

This is one of those ancient quotes that has been cited so often that its origin is hard to pin down. Plutarch attributes it to Sextus Empiricus in his Adversus Grammaticos (Against The Logicians). Sextus was a third century stoic philosopher who seems to have grown up in Alexandria and who wrote in Greek. The American conservative historian Charles A. Beard wrote:

All the lessons of history in four sentences:
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power.
The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.
The bee fertilizes the flower it robs.
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.

The German satirist Baron Friedrich of Logau. (1604–1655) wrote the quatrain Sinngedicht (Retribution) which was translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.



The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Henry David Thoreau

From the first chapter “Economy” of Walden (1854) in which he makes the point that it is the individual not the mass of men or the community that should be the standard of worthiness. Thoreau was also completely convinced that each one of us could live completely satisfying lives if we only had the courage to do it. Here is the quote in context:

“The government of itself never furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of the way.

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest.

When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one Man?

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”

A lot of this is libertarian nonsense but there is an element of truth in the last line. For the mass of men, quiet desperation is the result of elitists who believe in the preceding four aphorisms.



I may make all things well, and I can make all things well, I will to make all things well and I shall make all things well, and thou shalt see thyself that all manner of things shall be well.

Dame Julian of Norwich (c. 1342-1417)

Showings (also, Revelation of Divine Love), This is from Showing 13, Chapter 31. Dame Julian’s memoirs of the visions she experienced during a serious illness, probably Bubonic Plague, is the first book written by a woman in modern English. She understood I may to refer to the Father, I can to the Son and I will to to the Holy Spirit.



When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Abraham Maslow, 1966

He actually wrote, “It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” (The Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance, Chapter 2). My favorite version is: To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.



In respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of his characters, it must always be remembered that his locale was Celtic and his season Spring.

—Hon. John M. Woolsey, United States of America v. One Book called “Ulysses,” U.S. District Court , Southern District of New York, December 6, 1933.

Well, yes, I suppose. June 16, 1904 to be precise. The new male or “womanly man” Leopold Bloom takes a long walk and has an intense orgasm imagining looking up the skirt of a young girl with a gimp leg. Not, however, as intense as that of his wife, the “manly woman” Molly which lasts 43 pages. Celtic sexuality may be beyond the reach of someone named Woolsey.


How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears. Soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony
—The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene 1

Lorenzo and Jessica are at Belmont awaiting the return of Portia. They are discoursing somewhat acerbically about the moon. “On such a night as this” unrequited or frustrated love occurred. Lorenzo is in a more romantic mood and orders up some music from the servants. Jessica says “I am never merry when I hear sweet music.” Lorenzo says she thinks too much. “The man that hath no music in himself, / Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, / Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; / The motions of his spirit are dull as night, / And his affections dark as Erebus: / Let no such man be trusted.”




Bless the poor,
Bless the sick,
Bless the whole human race.
Bless our food,
Bless our drink,
And all our families
Please embrace.
Amen.

The grace of Saint Brigid of Kildare.



God writes straight with crooked lines.

Attributed variously to St. Augustine, Thomas Merton and others. Used by Paul Claudel as an epigram for his play “The Satin Slipper” (1931). It is certainly an old Portuguese proverb, “Deus escreve direito por linhas tortas.” Claudel followed it with “Etiam pecata,” which he attributed to St. Augustine. Thus, the whole epigram translates, “God writes straight with crooked lines. Even sins.” Presumably he was trying to say the even sins are put to use by God.

Generally used in the sense that we can’t always understand why things happen or are allowed to happen. A somewhat more favorable (to God) version is the famous remark of Albert Einstein, “God is subtle but not malicious.”



O God, thy sea is so great and my boat is so small.

Said to be the prayer of a Breton fisherman. Admiral Rickover gave a plaque with the prayer to all new submarine captains. He also gave one to John F. Kennedy who quoted it at the dedication of the East Coast Memorial to the Missing at Sea.



This too shall pass

Like many good lines, this one is hard to track down. Pete Seeger used it to introduce "Seek and You Shall Find" on Waist Deep in the Big Muddy and Other Love Songs (Columbia Records, CS 9505). The title of the song is from Matthew 7:7-8, “"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.” The shall pass line sounds biblical but it is not. Pete got it from his father, the noted musicologist Charles Seeger. It had been used by Abraham Lincoln in a speech he gave in Milwaukee in 1859 and the line appears by itself in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1860 novel, The Marble Faun. There are a number of folk tales from different parts of the world that end with the same sentiment. As a child, I remember being told that when Caesar paraded in triumph through the streets of Rome, a slave rode with him in the chariot repeatedly whispering in his ear Etiam transebit! This too shall pass! It made an impression and, if true, it is certainly the source. But sadly I have never found it in writing.

This line can be optimistic or pessimistic depending on what it is that will pass. But the underlying emotion is resignation that nothing is permanent. In this it is like the remarkable lament of Solomon in Ecclesiastes 3:20, “All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” And later, in 5:15, he tells us, “As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand.” The latter line resonates with the resignation of Job 1:21, “Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”


Time is short and the river is rising.

I have no idea where this came from but I love it. It is much more subtle than might appear on first reading. Obviously it means that the river is reaching flood stage and
immediate action is essential. There is also the implication that the appropriate authorities are lacking a sense of urgency. Finally, since there is nothing subtle about a rising river, there is the hint that said authorities are stupid.



There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and miseries.

Shakespeare’s metaphors are often opaque but this one, from Julius Caesar (Act IV, Scene 3, Line 217 ff.), is just plain ignorant. When the tide is at flood stage, it is too late to do much but run for the hills. A couple of lines later, Brutus explains to Cassius that the enemy’s strength is still growing while ours is at its peak. We need to strike while the iron is hot because after the peak comes decline. But ships almost always sail on the outgoing tide.

For all its problems, this is a favorite because it may be the most famous incorrect metaphor in English.



Man is the only animal that can laugh and cry because he is the only animal that can see the difference between things as they are and things as they ought to be.

At one time, possibly because of Darwin, there was great scholarly interest in the difference between mankind and other animals. An English author using the pen name Philalethes, for example, reviewed fourteen proposed differences: thought and its expression in language, language itself, the power of abstraction, anatomy, vertical orientation, the affective characters, the expression of emotions, self-consciousness, perfectability, the moral sense, the powers of memory and will, the sense of religion, the possession of a soul, and the belief in immortality. He found all such formulations wanting and concluded that, “…there is no such point of distinction” and that both man and animals are inextricably linked to each other and to the inorganic world. (“The Distinction between Man and Animals,” Anthropological Review, August, 1864, pp. 153-163.)

I first heard this quote when I was in college.  It is derived from a remark of the British essayist William Hazlitt (1778-1830) who wrote, “Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.”  (“On Wit and Humour” in Lectures on the English Comic Writers, 1819.)

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

These are the last two lines of E. E. Cummings’ sonnet “i thank You God for most this amazing” published in the collection XaipeI in 1950. In context, the lines are:

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any--lifted from the no
of all nothing--human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

I take the parenthetical lines to refer to the birth or rebirth of insight and the entire poem as an explication of Psalm 118 which contains the line (Verse 24) “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

Xaipe is the Greek verb for rejoice. In Prospero’s Cell, Lawrence Durrell writes, "When you see the gravestones from the little necropolis of Cameirus . . . it is the so-often repeated single word -- the anonymous Xaipe-- which attracts you . . . . It is not the names of the rich or the worthy . . . but this single word, 'Be Happy,' serving both as a farewell and admonition, that goes to your heart with the whole impact of the Greek style of mind, the Greek orientation to life and death: so that you are shamed into . . . realizing how little you have fulfilled . . . a thought so simple yet so pregnant, and how even your native vocabulary lacks a word whose brevity and grace could paint upon the darkness of death the fading colors of such gaiety, love and truth as Xaipe does upon these modest gravestones." "Prospero's Cell," originally published in 1945, is still, I believe, one of Lawrence Durrell's best books




“Rise, clasp My hand, and come!”
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
“Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest me.”

These are the last lines of The Hound of Heaven by Francis Thompson (1859-1907), the poem that begins with the famous lines “I fled Him down the nights, and down the days / I fled Him, down the arches of the years.” “Him,” of course, is God who is also the hound of heaven.

The image is of a loving God who has chased the poet implacably through his life. Suddenly, the poet realizes that his troubles are merely the shadow of God’s protecting, loving hand. “Dravest” is said to mean drives. If so, the last line equates God and love in the same manner as the epistle 1 John 4:8: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”



“Nobody fucks with my hustle!”

Younger black musicians often though of Louis Armstrong as an Uncle Tom, misunder-standing his stage persona and his era. This was his answer. When asked, “What’s new?” he replied, “Nothin’ new—white folks still ahead.” Incidentally, he never called Orval Faubus an “uneducated plowboy.” The term he used was “no-good motherfucker.”

THE WILD BLUE YONDER
Jerry Harkins

When Bill Clinton was running for President in 1992, he promised among other things to allow gay people to serve in the armed forces. His argument was simple and compelling: America has no talent to waste. He felt so strongly about it that he promised to end the ban on the first day of his Presidency. There was no great uproar about the issue until after the election when panic set in among Christian conservatives and their strange bedfellows, the tonier classes of the Washington establishment. Senator Sam Nunn, a conservative Democrat, an Eagle Scout of Perry, Georgia, and the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee knew the way to the heart and mind of his fellow Southerner. “Billy,” he must have drawled, “you’re doing the right thing, of course, but we need some time to bring Congress on board. They’re decent folk but not as bright as you and me. Give me six months and we’ll get the job done right.” The President-elect was flattered to be considered a member of the same intellectual fraternity as the brainy Sam Nunn, so he caved and, over the next six months, Sam sandbagged him. There were two results. First, we got “Don’t ask, don’t tell” as the official policy of the United States. Second, Mr. Clinton learned a bitter but important lesson in the ways of Washington’s swamp dwellers. We might have learned a third thing: the United States military establishment is a textbook case of psychosexual confusion. But somehow that lesson never took.

Fast forward to May of 1997. The United States Air Force set out that month to court martial a young lieutenant named Kelly Flinn on charges of adultery and conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman, charges involving a dishonorable discharge and 14 years at hard labor. Ms. Flinn was America’s only female B-52 pilot, having graduated from the Air Force Academy near the top of her class and having won all sorts of prestigious military awards in her brief career. She had grown up in Cobb County, Georgia and had been nominated to the Academy by none other than Sam Nunn. She also happened to be an attractive blond and had become a poster girl for Air Force recruiters. But she had to go. In addition to having a verboten affair with a married enlisted man, she was also publicly accused of wearing black pumps and a black lace camisole under her flight suit.

It wasn’t that the Air Force failed to notice that Ms. Flinn could no more act like a gentleman than an elephant could fly a B-52. Nor was it that the Air Force had adopted a post-cold-war mission of providing material for late night comedians even though the buffoonery of its spokespersons might have suggested to the contrary. And, finally, the Air Force, as an institution, was not so stupid as to think that its abhorrence of adultery was a wise policy. Some of its best and brightest were themselves notable adulterers and its chaplains were, one would hope, aware of the grand ambiguity of whatever it was that Jesus wrote about the adulteress in the sand. However, it ritualistically invoked the higher morality of the fox hole — the utter need for soldiers in combat to trust their buddies. Even as they repeated this mantra, they knew it was the same wimpy argument their predecessors had advanced against the integration of African-American soldiers in the 1950’s, female soldiers in the 1980’s and, as we have seen, gay soldiers in the 1990’s. Foxholes may long since have gone the way of buggy whips, but the generals still sing about caissons rolling along. And they still evince a delicate sympathy for the feelings of the bigots who serve under them.

In fact, Ms. Kelly had violated an actual provision of the Uniform Code of Military Justice against “fraternization” and had compounded her offense by essentially laughing at a written order requiring her to cease and desist. Laughing is the only possible reaction to the presumption that the law can prevent adultery. It is one more proof if needed of Mr. Bumble’s observation that “the law is a ass.” The underlying assertion that adultery is antithetical to good military discipline is equally foolish. As stated by the generals, it sounds plausible enough—how can you trust the guy in the next foxhole who’s been makng time with your wife?—but it can certainly be argued to the contrary:

All armies throughout history have included large numbers of adulterers. There is absolutely no evidence that successful armies have contained fewer adulterers than unsuccessful ones. Therefore, the belief that adultery adversely affects unit cohesion is a simple prejudice pretty much limited to present day American generals.

Of course, the generals do not really believe that adultery is bad for discipline. They have too much experience with their own weaknesses to think any such nonsense. The real offense of the military adulterer resides in breaking the law and not in the nature of adultery. In slightly different contexts, this is the last argument to which fools and kings (and occasionally parents) resort: “Because I say so.” By precisely this logic, the Inquisition had another female military officer, Joan of Arc, burned alive at the stake. Count your blessings, Kelly Flinn. Now certainly obeying orders is important, especially in combat, but there are exceptions. An order to break off a love affair is stupid and probably unlawful unless the Air Force has an overriding interest to the contrary. Otherwise, under the Fourth Amendment, one’s sex life is simply not subject to the whims of generals.

At the time, the head air force general was one Ronald R. Fogleman who testified before Congress that trust and integrity are crucial character traits in a person licensed to fly around in a B-52 loaded to the gills with nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, his argument lost some of its force when the general kept saying nuke-you-lar. All things considered, I’d just as soon have my bombs flown around by someone who can pronounce the English language. Of course, what goes around comes around. Not three weeks later, the goddess took her revenge on the Air Force.

On June 4, another of its four star heroes, a fellow named Joseph W. Ralston, was himself revealed as an adulterer. He had, it seems, been having an affair with a CIA employee. Unfortunately, this particular hero had been slated to become the next Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen was reduced to pleading that his case was different because, among other things, it had not threatened morale and discipline. “It is,” he said, “time for a rule of reason rather than a rule of thumb.” The lovely Latin phrase res ipsa loquitur was coined for just such logic. Indeed, it speaks for itself and it says, does it not, that the rule applied to Kelly Flinn was only a rule of thumb. Joe’s wife caught him. He begged her forgiveness. She gave him another chance. He cheated again. Sound familiar? Sound like the kind of trust and integrity General Fogleman wants in folks flying his bombs? No matter. Ralston was not threatened with court martial. Rather, he was made Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs instead. At his confirmation hearings, Senator John W. Warner said, “Given the unusual circumstances of what happened, you and your wife and family handled that period in a commendable and professional manner.” Today, Ralston is a well paid employee of the Cohen Group. Yes, of course. The same Cohen.

As you can see, the Air Force has a lot more trouble with sex than you might think. Fighter pilots are widely thought to be among the planet’s most accomplished swordsmen, a sure symptom of low self esteem and sexual dysfunction. Shortly after the Flinn affair, it managed to compound its own embarrassment in the matter of Lieutenant William R. Kite, Jr. and his bride, former Airperson Rhonda Kutzer. The Lieutenant was being threatened with 14 years at hard labor for “fraternization” which, in this case, meant that a single officer met and married a single enlisted person. (Is there no end to the perfidy of warriors?) The only other place in the whole world where this is considered a crime is Baxter County, North Carolina, the fictional hometown of the late Jesse Helms. What is interesting about the Kite affair is the cast of characters which includes the Reverend Colonel Robert F. Ippolito who filed the original complaint against Kite. Father Ippolito was the base chaplain at Whiteman AFB. It is not clear just why he was so offended by something that normal young people normally do but, when your chaplain turns you in, you know you’re in trouble. There is also the unnamed Major who was Airperson Kutzer’s psychologist and who wound up testifying against her. The proceeding was organized by the base prosecutor, also unnamed, whose sense of humor and justice are neatly cojoined in the title of the newsletter he publishes, Nooseletter. If a sophomore came up with that, you’d think it was clever.

Why am I reciting all this history in the year of grace 2010? Because the patient is still a very sick chickadee. The military, especially the Air Force, still cannot come to grips with the problem of human sexuality. Now the issue is gays. This time, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says he is for allowing gays to serve openly. His colleagues are horrified. Of course, as active duty officers, they have to be careful about what they say. General Merrill A. McPeak, however, is a retired Air Force Chief of Staff so he can say any damn fool thing he wants. His pulpit is the Op Ed page of The New York Times for March 5, 2010. His argument is the need for unit cohesion but he does not bother to explain it at all. Rather he sets up three strawman arguments for a new policy and proceeds to demolish them. Rule No. 1 in debate: don’t let your opponent construe your own arguments. But I can’t take issue with the General because my father always warned me against arguing cosmology with someone who thinks the moon is made of green cheese. What fascinates me is the man’s failure to take up the question of unit cohesion. Would gays in foxholes or cockpits (no pun intended) be as detrimental to winning wars as adulterers? General McPeak assumes it is and that the fact is obvious. He doesn’t bother to discuss it. It is obvious only to a homophobe.

You have to bear in mind the simplicity of the question. It has nothing to do with gays serving in the military. They do. There are lots of gays in uniform, an estimated 66,000 half of whom are on active duty, and, as in every other area of human endeavor, they do very well. As they say, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” It’s all perfectly legal as long as they stay in the closet (don’t tell). Unlike poor Kelly Flinn, the Air Forces is perfectly willing to tolerate a certain lapse of integrity in gay people who fly their bombs around but not in adulterers.

Among human resources researchers, there is no doubt that the unit cohesion argument is nonsense. One study by the Rand Corporation and the University of Florida concluded, “Serving with another service member who was gay or lesbian was not a significant factor that affected unit cohesion or readiness to fight.” In surveys of returning Iraq veterans, three-quarters say they felt “comfortable” or “very comfortable” in the presence of gays or lesbians. The generals should take a leaf from the notebook of Benjamin Disraeli who observed, “I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?”

REMEMBERING THE BUSH BABY

Jerry Harkins


The lesser galago, also called the bush baby (Galago sene-galensis), is one of the smallest members of the order of primates, being about the size of a squirrel with a brain weighing a couple of grams. Despite its size, it is exceptionally vocal, producing loud, shrill cries surprisingly like those of a human baby. The plaintive cries and "cute" appearance may account for the name "bush baby.”

It could be a lot worse and, not so long ago, it was. This essay first appeared in 2005:

I am the bearer of very bad news. Your President is a moron. He didn’t know anything. Nobody told him anything. And he doesn’t remember anything. About anything. Fortunately, God whispers in his ear. Unfortunately, the voice he thinks is God’s actually belongs to Dick Cheney and Mr. Cheney isn’t telling him any different. The White House PR machine goes to great lengths these days to proclaim that the President is smarter than he looks and is a terrific manager who’s right on top of things and makes all the big decisions. He never looks backward. In other words, it’s become embarrassingly obvious he’s a moron. The posturing is necessitated by a series of books by knowledgeable insiders the burden of which is that the President drools a lot and is not completely toilet trained.

• He used to be a businessman who was so bad at business (three bankruptcies) he required serial bailing out by Stalwarts of the Bush family (SOB’s). In spite of his Harvard MBA.

• He used to be a bum who engaged in binge drinking and related intellectual pursuits. He was saved by the love of Jesus and a strong woman.

• He is a born again Christian. He believes the universe was created on October 4, 4004 BC at 9 o’clock in the morning, Texas time. In spite of his Yale BA.

Did I mention that he’s a moron? This is important because it explains why he keeps saying we’re winning a war we have already lost, why he paid no attention to the August 6, 2001 memo regarding terrorist hijacking, and why he can’t pronounce words of more than two syllables. It explains his goofy facial expressions and why he likes to play cowboy down on the range in Texas. It explains a lot. For instance, do you really think anyone with even half a brain would embrace tax cuts as a way to reduce the federal deficit? Why was he the last person to hear about the two most disastrous events of his administration, the attacks of 9/11 and the publication of those prison photos? And even if he was so disconnected, why in God’s name did he use “nobody told me” as a defense, thereby admitting his ignorance? Why else would he tell transparent lies like the one about cutting down all the trees, not to help his fellow plutocrats in the forest products industry, but to prevent forest fires? (Of course, technically he’s right about this: no trees does mean no forest fires among other things.)

Now a lot of you are thinking how can you say such terrible things about such a decent fellow who, as a matter of fact, was twice elected Governor of Texas? By God, you think, the American people almost elected him President of the United States. Wouldn’t that make all those voters morons too? Well, sure. If you insist on measuring the intellect of the voters by the people they routinely elect to govern themselves, then it follows that we’re all morons. You could, of course, point to the occasional exception. The more cynical among you could attribute it to the absence of “none of the above” on most ballots. Finally, if you’re really feeling nasty, you might say that American politicians and voters are no better and no worse than their counterparts elsewhere in the world. Actually, however, the only way to assure that we and our leaders are blessed with roughly the same intellectual skills would be to select the latter by random sampling. Otherwise, Harkins’s Laws of Competitive Politics inevitably see to it that, in any political contest, the worst possible candidate always wins. To wit:

• In politics, the sound bite is king. Short sentences endlessly repeated are the coin of the realm. This is a variation of the principle that empty barrels make the most noise.

• Government is the art of unkept promises. A candidate who knows this will always prevail over one who doesn’t. Voters, given a choice between a candidate whose promises are realistic and one who promises them the moon will always choose the latter. Everyone knows neither will keep his or her promises but a little fantasy can serve as a warm blanket.

• In every election, symbols trump substance. This is a corollary of Parkinson’s Law to the effect that the only factor influencing the outcome of a meeting is the seating arrangement.

• Lord Acton was right: power tends to corrupt. Politicians are obsessive about power to the exclusion of all rational thought. It begins with achieving the most important goal in a politician’s career which is getting the right parking space
.
• Finally, crime pays. This is axiomatic. While it is true that most career criminals are smarter than most politicians, there is considerable overlap between the two professions.

There are a few advantages to having a moron in charge of things. First, since he can’t learn anything, no one has to tell him anything. He has universal deniability, a huge asset for any politician. Second, it is futile and unsporting to second guess his decisions. Once he acts, it would be churlish to say that heads would have been a better call than tails. Third, the only rational way to hold him accountable is to have the lowest possible expectations which, of course, he is bound to exceed half the time unless his lucky coin is defective. It could be worse and would be if Karl Rove were the de jure President instead of just the de facto one.

There are also serious disadvantages to having a moron running the country—I mean in addition to the horrific notion of having the little black box with the big red button anywhere near him. It is a well established scientific principle that morons cannot resist big red buttons. Beyond that, though, you have no idea who is making the disastrous day-to-day decisions. When the President endorsed Ariel Sharon’s assassination squads and yanked the right of return rug out from under the Palestinians, he undid 50 years of American diplomacy in a single casual sentence which he ad libbed at a Rose Garden Photo Op. The Palestinians, who never had much faith in us anyway, rightly concluded that the President was washing his hands of the peace process. Now maybe you think Mr. Bush was right. Or, maybe you think he was just lucky. He called heads and, sure enough, it came up heads. It doesn’t make much difference what you or I think. What should bother all of us is that he made this huge, earth-shattering, policy-reversing decision pretty much between potty training and coffee break. I don’t want to “misunderestimate” him, but you know he was winging it. Or maybe Paul Wolfowitz put something in that coffee. Do you think he consulted Colin Powell? Do you think he has any idea that the Balfour Declaration is not some gay rights manifesto? When he says tax cuts are good for reducing deficits, is he recycling what even his daddy called “voodoo economics?” No, it’s not that complicated. Some Republican who has his ear told him tax cuts for the wealthy translate directly into campaign contributions. “As a bonus, Mr. President, you will reduce the deficit.” Who told him such a thing? My friend, you do not know. You know it wasn’t a conservative economist like Milton Friedman or a Keynesian like Bob Ruben or even an acolyte of Ayn Rand like Alan Greenspan. All you know is that whoever told him that was (a) filthy rich and (b) a Republican.

Who’s in charge here? There are times I get all teary eyed remembering the good old days when you knew Al Haig really was running things. We have had Presidents who were happy to be thought of as intellectually challenged. Eisenhower, for one, cultivated the image of an average Joe who graduated sixty-first in a West Point Class of 164. But can you imagine George W. Bush playing Ike’s role in World War II? Please! Not even Omar Bradley, who graduated forty-fourth in the same class of 1915, could have done that. And Bradley was a genius.

When Mr. Bush drools, he’s not putting it on. When he looks puzzled, it’s because he is. Jacob Weisberg says he wasn’t born stupid, he chose it. Which is pretty much the same line the White House is trying to sell when it says he’s smarter than he looks. They’re both wrong. A smart person like Eisenhower can choose the appearance of stupidity but cannot actually become stupid (any more than a truly stupid person can become smart). Someone like Jessica Simpson can make a career out of really dumb remarks but you have to be pretty smart to get away with such a gig. George II is no Jessica Simpson. When he wants to say that repealing the estate tax is good for everyone, it comes out, “The death tax is good for people from all walks of life.” This is not a regrettable lack of fluency; it is a tragic lack of intelligence. The words come out meaning the opposite of what he wants to say. He can’t even lie logically. When he proclaims his Iraq policy has been a “catastrophic success,” it is not a Malapropism, it is a short circuit in what passes for his brain. When he claims, “We're making the right decisions to bring the solution to an end” it’s not a slip of the tongue. It is a profound ignorance of cause and effect logic. When he claims, “Our economy is on a rising path,” he means it as an optimistic metaphor. He has never heard of Sisyphus (he cut that class at Yale) and he never stopped to think about the difficulties of a rising path. When he blames the trial lawyers for the fact that, "Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country," he’s not ad libbing an inanity. He probably has no idea what an OB-GYN does for a living but he knows loving women is widely practiced among Texas cowboys. Finally, when he says, “It’s the executive branch’s job to interpret the law,” it is not a simple mistake. It is a dangerous combination of Mr. Bush’s stupidity and Mr. Rove’s megalomania. God save us!

Subsequently

 God did not save us.  Instead he chose to punish me for thinking he could not do worse than George W. Bush.  It was by way of reminding me that God is omnipotent.  He can do anything, even invent a President like Donald Trump.  Didn't even break a sweat.

Much Later Than Subsequently

Back in the days when I wrote political satire, I didn't pay much attention to such offenses as name-calling.  George W. Bush is not and never was a moron.  He was frequently inarticulate and he made a lot of decisions I didn't approve of.  He surrounded himself with too many jackasses but a woman like Laura would not have stuck by a moron and a moron would not have been able to do such a good job raising children.  Finally, a moron could never have turned himself into a serious and talented artist in retirement, an artist whose portraits convey a forceful emotional intelligence.  I only regret that I never had a chance to have a beer with hm.

THE CHURCH VERSUS THE GOSPEL OF LOVE
Jerry Harkins

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to capture the historical Jesus. He was an itinerant teacher but we know what he taught only in rough outline. You sense his message was sophisticated and innovative but not radical. Much of what we think he said seems enigmatic (the first shall be last), perplexing (to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding), counterintuitive (turn the other cheek) or simply illogical (anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress). Part of the problem is that, by the time the books of the New Testament were written down, the sources were at best second and third hand memories. In many important passages what we have are historical memories in the process of becoming myths. The Bible was written by parties with different vested interests. The orthodox position is that the scriptures were “inspired” by God, but the evangelists remind one of the blind philosophers trying to describe an elephant to the king. For example, the four accounts of the central event of Christianity, the resurrection, are different in many respects. When whoever came to the tomb on the first Easter morning (there are at least six candidates in four configurations), did they find the door open or shut? Mark (16:4), Luke (24:2) and John (20:1) say open; Mathew (28:2) says closed. And whom did they meet when they got there. Matthew (28:2-5) says one angel, John (20:12) says two, Mark (16:5) says one young man, while Luke (24:4) says two men. Paul is another problem. He claimed to have received his teachings by direct revelation, but he never met or even saw Jesus in the flesh. In fact, Paul’s idea of the Christian message was fundamentally at odds with that of Jesus. He invented the fantastical notion of original sin which went on to become the lynchpin of all subsequent Christian theology.

One thing, however, is clear: the God whose personality evolves from Genesis through Job and the prophets to the gospels is, in the end, a god of love, a god who needs to love and be loved by his own creation. The story doesn’t start that way. The God of Abraham and Isaac, of Sodom and Gomorrah, of Job is something of a psychopath. As he says, “ I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.” The God of the Torah is a law giver. He gives the Jews ten commandments and 613 mitzvot in which love plays only a minor part. Love God (No. 4). Love both your fellow Jews (No. 13) and those who convert to Judaism (14). Jesus is only a bit more expansive—he adds your neighbor—when he tells the scribe about the great commandment, but love is the essence of his teaching and the consistent example of his life. “Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” And later, “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.” God is love. These are the first words (and thus the title) of Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical.

At the Last Supper Jesus said, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” Later he said, “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” These lines are part of a lengthy and remarkable homily that might be taken as a constitution establishing the universal church as a manifestation and messenger of God’s love. It is, therefore, reasonable to ask, “What happened?”

Love as an abstraction has been a consistent teaching. In practice, however, there has been at least as much hatred in the history of the church. Indeed, the church rejects entirely any manifestation of sexual love outside its own extremely limited definition. Gay love is an abomination. Heterosexual love is tolerable only in the narrowest of circumstances. At various times, it has been perfectly acceptable to slaughter infidels and heretics, to mutilate eunuchs, to burn witches, to practice slavery, to promote tyranny and even to wage war. Christianity is not the only religion that has done all these things but it is the only one that has done them in the name of a loving God or, since God is love, in the name of love.

The problem is that love challenges power whether it is the infinite love of a God who has no need to browbeat his creatures, no need to torment them with the fear of hell, or the love of sexual partners who, being swept up in ecstasy, have no need for the preaching of dour priests.

The power of the church is based on the assertion that the Pope and the bishops are the “successors” of the apostles, and that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ on earth. The church believes, without biblical or historical support, that Peter was the first Bishop of Rome and all subsequent members of the hierarchy have descended from him in unbroken succession through the laying on of hands. Unlike so many other parts of the “sacred tradition,” apostolic succession is a truly ancient belief tracing back at least to 90 CE or, in other words, no later than two generations after the death of Christ. There were still living witnesses to his preaching and death.

The church’s reasoning begins with Christ’s charge to Peter as reported by Matthew 16:18-19: “And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” This may be coupled with his final words before the Ascension: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” We are dealing, then, with three clauses: build, whatever and always.

It is notable that this grant of seemingly absolute power appears only in the gospel of Matthew even though Mark (8:27-30) reports the same occasion. Mark was the first gospel written. It is thought to be dated about 64 CE written by a companion of Peter and based on Peter’s sermons. It may seem strange that one of the most important statements in the life of the church escaped such a well-placed evangelist. Matthew, on the other hand, wrote around 90 CE about an event at which he had not been present. It seems clear that he had access to Mark’s account but he made many additions and changes. His also contradicts the others in fairly important respects. For example, Matthew says Jesus was born during Herod’s reign which means no later than 4 BCE. Luke, on the other hand, says Jesus was born when Quirinius was the governor of Syria which was between 6 and 9 CE.

Regarding the build clause, whatever you believe about Matthew, there is no indication that Peter was told to pass his authority to a successor. Nor is it anywhere said that Rome was to be the seat of the church or that the Bishop of Rome was to be supreme. Indeed, the Council of Nicaea in 325 said there were three primacies: Rome, Alexandria and Antioch. This was twelve years after Constantine had issued the Edict of Milan which legalized Christianity in the Empire and made the Emperor, who was still a pagan, the de facto head of the church. It was, in fact, Constantine who called and presided over the Council of Nicaea. And, while he did not proclaim doctrine, he did try to force doctrinal conformity throughout the realm, not through the Bishop of Rome, but through his Council. In the early church, the title of Pope was given to any bishop and it was not until the sixth century that it began being reserved to the Bishop of Rome.

The whatever clause is more interesting still. First, Peter did not or could not impose his views on the others. Even the non-apostle Paul engaged him on the most serious matters and won every time. The modern church is much more the church of Paul than of Peter. But the real problem is that the church invokes the whatever clause when it is convenient but denies it when it is not. Thus, in a letter to the world’s bishops, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, given on May 22, 1994, Pope John Paul II said, “…in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.”

No authority! So much for whatever you bind. The historian Garry Wills titled his 2000 book Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit by which he referred to the persistent lying employed by the Popes as basic strategy. A perfect example of this is John Paul’s claim to Peter’s mission of “confirming the brethren.” He propounds a deliberate distortion of Luke 22:32. It is the famous scene near the end of the Last Supper. Jesus says, "Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." But he replied, ‘Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.’ Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me."

The Pope wants his readers to believe that because Jesus told Peter to reassure his terrified colleagues, he, John Paul, has the right to declare definitively that women cannot be priests. That is obviously not what Jesus meant. The Pope is proclaiming an absurdity on the basis of an absurd claim of authority unless, of course, one assumes that the doctrine of infallibility can transform an absurdity into an eternal verity. Sadly such miraculous mutations are often the sum and substance of papal logic. Virtually all proclamations are infused with beatific love for that which is being denounced. Thus, you will read that the church loves and respects homosexuals, women, heretics and sinners of every description. “Hate the sin, love the sinner” is pretty much the official mantra even though it has no correlation with actual actions of the church. Indeed, when it was abandoning such malefactors as Joan of Arc to the stake, it prayed the formula Rogando eam ut cum velit mite agere, that the executioners should treat her with gentleness. Burn her alive but do it gently.

There have also been formulas for less sedate occasions. On July 22, 1209, the crusaders of Pope Innocent III invested the town of Beziers in what is now southwestern France. The knights asked Papal Legate and Cistercian monk Arnold Amaury how to distinguish friend from foe. Arnie replied, "Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius!" Slaughter them all! God will know his own! And they did, all 20,000 men, women and children according to Arnold himself in his report to the Pope. The dead included a thousand women and children huddled in the Church of Saint Mary Magdalene. The bones of these martyrs were uncovered in 1840. As Stephen O’Shea wrote about the massacre, “In the days before gunpowder, to kill that many people in so short a time required a savage single-mindedness that beggars the imagination.”

Some may think that the fully documented stories of the Cathars and Joan of Arc represent not the rule but the exception in church history. Of their kind, they are certainly egregious but their kind is not at all uncommon. It is also true that from the beginning the church has been blessed with adherents who were kind and loving, wise, gentle and courageous. But it has rarely admired these virtues and has often persecuted their practitioners. Consider Saint Francis of Assisi and his followers. During his life (1181-1226), he was generally accepted and even venerated as a holy man and a man of peace. He founded his order on the basis of the rule of poverty in Christ’s mandate to the apostles, “Do not take along any gold or silver or copper in your belts; take no bag for the journey, or extra tunic, or sandals or a staff; for the worker is worth his keep.” He and his followers preached the holiness of poverty and opposed the ostentation of the papal court and the Italian hierarchy. Francis was canonized by Gregory IX two years after his death but during the following decades, the Franciscans and the papacy became estranged over the issue of poverty. A group of Franciscans led by Umbertino of Casale (1259-1330), William of Ockham (1288-1348) and Michael of Cesena (1270-1342) mounted a strong opposition to the papal court which, by this time, had fled to Avignon. Michael was excommunicated as a schismatic and sent to prison for the rest of his life. He was rehabilitated twenty-one years after his death. William was excommunicated for reasons that were never made clear. Umbertino ultimately escaped being tried for heresy by fleeing to Germany. The Pope, John XXII, lived a life of extreme luxury and was opposed to evangelical poverty because he felt he needed to impress his competitors, the electors of the Holy Roman Empire, whom he regarded as his spiritual and temporal vassals.

The lust for power, like other lusts, feeds on itself and seeks as many outlets as are available. Princes and prelates acquired vast art collections, for example, not because they were expressing their esthetic sensibilities but because the ostentatious display of wealth was a metaphor for their power that was obvious to friends and foes alike. The church nearly bankrupted itself in the building of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and, in the process, had to resort to extortionate tactics to raise money, tactics that ultimately cost it Germany. St. Peter’s is not beautiful. It is not an expression of the faith and hope that inspired the builders of Chartres. It is, in fact, ugly but it is big, boasting the largest interior of any church in Christendom. By far. It dominates Rome. It inspires awe as it was meant to.

The same forces translate easily to the parish level. Until very recently, they protected clergy engaged in the most odious, depraved sexual crimes against children. The church purports to see no relationship between the psychosexual pathology characteristic of the enterprise and the fierce historical misogyny and self-destructive insistence on a celibate all-male priesthood. What must be protected at all costs is the power. If anything frightens them, it is not the slippage in sacramental observance or mass attendance but the exposure of the church as Oz-like. The wizard of Vatican City is a small, frightened man with a megaphone hiding behind the elaborate façade of a Potemkin village. Popes like John XXIII and John Paul I are regarded as mistakes. This explains why Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae with all its embarrassing theology and fraudulent history. He was persuaded that to change the teaching on contraception would erode his own power and that of his successors.

Power, red in tooth and claw, is the sum and substance of papal ambition. The God preached by these men is a God of fear not love, of Genesis, not John. The “faithful” must be taught that it is virtually impossible to gain entrance into heaven and that only the hierarchs hold the keys to the kingdom. Only they can commune with the divinity and only their blessing can counteract man’s natural wickedness. They invented the idea of original sin: the sin of Adam passed on to his descendents so that every human being except the Virgin Mary is born in a state of degradation, of alienation from God. In the words of the official Catechism of the Catholic Church, there is an, “…overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination towards evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam's sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the ‘death of the soul.’” Baptism cleanses the soul but, “After that first sin, the world is virtually inundated by sin…Scripture and the Church's Tradition continually recall the presence and universality of sin in man's history.”

This is the logic of the Red Queen. It is not biblical. The Catechism itself claims that it is a “mystery” but even that is absurd. There is nothing mysterious about it. It is exegesis in the service of a political ideology. The church is interpreting a perfectly conventional creation myth, that of Genesis, to support the centralization of absolute power in its own hands. And the church’s interpretation is incompatible with the gospel of love.

Imagine a religion based on the notion that God is love. This would be a religion that understands its mission to be promoting love of all kinds by helping people find their way—their own way—to lives of love. Now think of the leadership of this religion. Is there a central figure who sits on a gilded throne wearing a huge crown and an elaborate costume? Does he affect red patent leather shoes made for him by Prada? Do its legions of celibate bureaucrats and canon lawyers spend their lives promulgating detailed instructions on the sexual behavior of members and non-members? Does it profess the inferiority of the female half of the species because of a warped understanding of the myth of Eden?

On December 7, 1965, Pope Paul VI promulgated Gaudium et Spes, the final major document of the second Vatican Council. Its first sentence declared, “The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ.” Yes. Gaudium et Spes is a revolutionary declaration. In language that is diplomatic but perfectly clear, it affirms that the church must always change to address the needs of a changing world. It has many themes, among them the notion that the church is the servant of the “people of God.” It embraces human freedom, the “dignity of conscience,” the high estate of marriage and, most importantly, the dignity of the human person. It is not without compromise as the council tried to accommodate its critics, notably Joseph Ratzinger who was otherwise regarded as a progressive (and is, of course, now Pope Benedict XVI). But aside from the gospel of love preached by Jesus himself, it is the only document in the history of the church that might serve as the creed of a church based on the notion that God is love.

Gaudium et Spes was sabotaged, deliberately and with malice aforethought, by the Holy Roman Curia which saw it, correctly, as a challenge to its power. The opposition was led by Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, perhaps the most conservative prelate of the twentieth century. Taking advantage of Paul VI’s indecisiveness, the curia practiced the politics of delay and obfuscation, ultimately convincing the Pope to issue the birth control encyclical, Humanae Vitae, which halted the momentum of the council and then reversed it. That single document came close to destroying Roman Catholicism as priests abandoned the ministry by the thousands and lay people first ignored it and then stopped going to church. Ten years later, the curia engineered the election of Karol Józef Wojtyła as Pope John Paul II. There is little doubt that they knew that their preferred candidate Giuseppe Siri of Genoa could not prevail and that they were worried that the liberal Giovanni Benelli of Florence could. They then seized upon the suggestion of the progressive Franz König of Vienna, knowing as apparently König did not, that Wojtyła would be reliably ultraconservative on the issues that mattered most to them, most importantly, the power of the Vatican. Thirty-two years later, it is clear that the church is more conservative than it has been at any time since the death of Pius IX. The gospel of love survives only as a talking point to be trotted out occasionally to disguise the latest corruption of the good news. Love is dead and the church is dying.

JESUS-COME-LATELY CHRISTIANS
Jerry Harkins

The English were not history’s most obnoxious colonialists for which they can thank the Belgians. But they were, by far, the most successful. For nearly three hundred years it could be said that the sun never set on the British Empire and, although Winston Churchill did not become His Majesty’s first minister to preside over the collapse of said Empire, he did his best. Personally he was probably the nastiest colonialist since George III and he tried valiantly to stick his finger in the dike against the tide of history. It did not work and when the “blood-dimmed tide” was loosed, the world was swept up in a sea of unintended consequences that still plays out tragically in Ireland, the Middle East, Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Southeast Asia. But the Brits always tried to be soldiers of the cross, trading salvation for slaves and raw materials. They saw it as their Christian duty:

Take up the White Man's burden
Send forth the best ye breed

Go, bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild

Your new-caught sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child. (1)

One of the more amusing consequences of Kiplingesque insouciance was the emergence of Anglicanism in the former colonies. The Church of England has its roots in the marital misadventures of Henry VIII. Unlike other Sixteenth Century exercises in religious reform, its Protestantism was confined mostly to liturgy except, of course, for His Majesty’s marital preferences. Theologically, its mainstream has always remained close to Mother Rome and it claims the true apostolic succession. It tends to be more flexible than Rome in the breezes of change but it is still essentially a very conservative organization. Indeed, in some parts of the world—Africa notably—it is more Catholic than the Pope. There are several reasons for this. First, the Africans are new at Christianity. While today they are a majority of the world’s Anglicans (2), they are only a generation or two removed from their pagan past and they must constantly struggle against regression. They are surrounded in many places and under siege by the most extreme sorts of Muslims. And, of course, they cannot be indifferent to the reality that they are a remnant of the white man’s burden. This puts a chip on the shoulders of many African hierarchs, especially those whose churches remained more or less loyal to the mother country during the wars of liberation.

These forces converge to produce an attitude toward women and homosexuals that is as extreme as any to be found anywhere in the world. The Africans are currently in the process of causing a schism within Anglicanism over these issues and, worse, they are carrying the day within the worldwide Anglican Communion. In terms of practical effect if not hateful rhetoric, they are a more serious threat to the Christian ideal of brotherhood than Pat Robertson and all the other fundamentalists combined. Consider, for example, the leader of the evangelical (i.e., conservative) Anglicans in Nigeria, His Graciousness the Primate Peter Akinola. In February 2006, he issued a communique on behalf of his Church of Nigeria Standing Committee lending support to a law outlawing same-sex relationships in Nigeria. The bill also proposed to criminalize gay clubs and other organizations and prohibit publicity, procession and public display of same-sex amorous relationships through the electronic or print media directly or indirectly. This was too much even for the Bush Administration which denounced it a violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. When you’ve been labeled a human rights violator by George W. Bush, you are well advised to get your spiritual affairs in order.

Not all African prelates are so burdened as Akinola. The Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu, retired Anglican Primate of South Africa and Archbishop of Capetown, recently wrote:

“Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?” (3)

The difference is that Tutu has been on the front lines of the struggle for human rights all his life. For him, it is not a theological abstraction or a political ideology. It is personal and emotional. "I am deeply saddened,” he said, “at a time when we've got such huge problems ... that we should invest so much time and energy in this issue...I think God is weeping."

There are two intriguing questions about the coming schism: why is so much of the African hierarchy so vehemently opposed to homosexuality, and why is the Anglican Communion taking its lead from the Africans? As to the first, the simple answer is that the Africans are more literalist in their reading of the Bible than their more experienced fellow religionists. Unlike Europeans and Americans, they do not have the witness of two thousand years of the horrific effects of Biblical inerrancy. Nor have they been forced to cope with Christian hypocrisy. They have been told the Bible is the inspired word of God and they do not yet understand the winking of the theologians. When the well known Anglican theologian John Stott writes, “However strongly we may disapprove of homosexual practices, we have no liberty to dehumanize those who engage in them,” they do not parse the logic carefully. They jump at a chance to hate the sin and love the sinner without reflecting on the fatuous disapprove/dehumanize dichotomy. It does not occur to them that making hand holding a five-year felony for gay couples but not for straight ones is, in fact, dehumanizing the former.

Would that the explanation were so simple! Of course, if you believe it, you have to also believe the Africans are stupid or at least unsophisticated—the half devils, half children of Mr. Kipling’s poem. Sadly they are neither. His Righteousness Akinola is a very smart man as is evident from the ease with which he is dominating the discussion. By contrast, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Douglas Williams is a naïf. Both may think they can undo the American Revolution and intimidate the U.S. branch of the Communion but Williams is leading from wishy-washy hope and Akinola from steely determination. For both of them, this is not theology, it is politics—for Akinola, power politics of the most brutal kind. Williams, in the great tradition of Neville Chamberlain, is merely trying to appease his brother in the Lord. His position, of course, has evolved although always in the context of what he claims is his profound concern for the dignity of gay and lesbian people. In 1989, he said, “In a church that accepts the legitimacy of contraception, the absolute condemnation of same-sex relations of intimacy must rely either on an abstract fundamentalist deployment of a number of very ambiguous biblical texts, or on a problematic and nonscriptural theory about natural complementarity, applied narrowly and crudely to physical differentiation without regard to psychological structures." Yes, this is gobbledygook but it is gobbledygook clearly on the side of the angels. By 2007, however, he was calling for the exclusion of the Americans and Canadians from forthcoming meetings of the Communion unless they repented and changed their ways. This is not gobbledygook. It is high church hypocrisy. But it is necessary to placate the noisiest members of his flock.

On the face of it, it is absurd to imagine that the Africans can excommunicate the Americans even though they outnumber them twenty or so to one and even though the Americans themselves are divided on the subject. The problem is that the Episcopalians contribute fully 70% of the Communion’s budget. His Grace Akinola knows this and appears to take the view that God will provide or, failing that, the Americans are so pusillanimous, they will continue to provide. His assumption is based on his experience of the English and his belief that the Americans are their genetic clones.

The problem His Excellency does not dwell on is that he and his congregants live in a maelstrom of chaos. Nigeria is an oil-rich nation with a Gross Domestic Product per capita of about $1,400 a year. The average age expectancy is about 46 years and about 6% of the adults are living with AIDS. Even Sudan is richer, healthier and in many ways more stable than Nigeria. Akinola’s self-sufficiency is empty braggadocio. He may be able to open his churches on Sunday but his Christians are routinely “disappeared” and without American political support he himself would be dead meat for the Muslims in the North. Thus when His Magnanimity denounces gays, he is acting out of fear. He tosses a red herring to his tormentors hoping thereby to distract them. He reasons that the Islamic fundamentalists hate gays more than they hate Christians. By waving his homophobia in their faces, he does not have to denounce their theocratic idealism too loudly and can hope to live another day. Those of us who have never lived in terror of night visitors must not be overly critical of this strategy.

The second question is even more intriguing. Why are the Africans winning the debate? Again there is a simple answer: they are enjoying the natural fruits of being the majority. The rubber ducky is theirs and the rest of us need to accede humbly to this democratic reality. The founder, of course, was a man who consorted with prostitutes and tax collectors. His reverence for democracy was never obvious and his followers have never felt it necessary to put doctrinal issues to the vote of the “faithful” who are regularly referred to as sheep or pigeons.

In theory, the Archbishop of Canterbury might think Akinola’s crusade was an opportunity for loving instruction in the gospel of love. "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Whoever. The class of the saved is coextensive with the class of the believers. Whoever. Males and females, sinners and the just, whites and blacks, cowboys and Indians, even blonds and soccer players. But God forbid a white Englishman should be seen as instructing a black Nigerian.

Notes
1. “The White Man’s Burden” was written for Empress Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897 but Kipling decided to go with “Recessional” instead. The latter reflects on the inevitability of hubris in the colonial enterprise and portends its ultimate decay. It is said that he tweaked “Burden” to turn it into a commentary on American imperialism in the aftermath of the Spanish American War. But it should not in any way be read as an anti-colonialist screed.

2. At least 40.5 million of the world’s 77 million Anglicans (53%) belong to one of eight African Provinces, and that does not include the Provinces of Congo and Sudan for which there are no reliable statistics.

3. Preface to Sex, Love and Homophobia by Vanessa Baird, Amnesty International UK, 2004.

SINS OF THE FATHERS

Jerry Harkins

You will not read this in your Sunday bulletin but, until the Fifth Century, the Christian Church was little more than a diverse collection of local entities united only by the belief that Jesus of Nazareth had been the promised Messiah of the Jews. He was often referred to a the “son of god” but the exact meaning of that phrase remained elusive. The Christian congregations were in touch with one another but there was not even a widely accepted biblical canon until the Synod of Hippo in 393. There was little in the way of dogma although there was vigorous debate over such basic issues as the personhood of Jesus and the nature of the Trinity. What liturgy there was was celebrated mainly in private homes. The Bishop of Rome was just exactly that, the elected leader of a small number of Christians living in a large city who became the principal bishop of the Roman Empire only after that Empire began to decline. Other dioceses, including Alexandria and Antioch and, later, Constantinople, contended on an equal footing with Rome and the language of the church was Greek. The Roman church did not begin to assert global primacy until the middle of the seventh century. It encountered fierce resistance and was not notably successful until the aftermath of the Great Schism of 1054. Finally it did manage to establish supremacy in Europe because the Holy Roman Emperors and other kings feared divisiveness in the face of the threat from Islam. In 1073 Pope Gregory VII issued Dictatus Papae, a claim of absolute papal supremacy in both the spiritual and the temporal realms.

Although the Gregorian “reforms” had several important (mostly unintended) consequences, they came too late to re-establish Roman hegemony. One of the great tragedies of Roman Catholicism has been that it has never acquiesced to this reality. It is also ironic because, in the beginning, the Christian enterprise was nothing if not eclectic. In many places, including Rome, the church was an adjunct of local warlords who treated the papacy as a useful ally or a deadly enemy. The great strength of the church existed on another plane entirely, that of small congregations that gave succor to besieged believers in a new and comforting relationship with the divine. Obviously there were theological similarities but there was no orthodoxy and no heresy until the Roman civil authorities decided to impose a single ideology for their own management reasons. That ideology was under the control of the Emperor.

Constantine I convened the first ecumenical council at Nicea, about 70 miles as the crow flies southeast of Constantinople, in 325, just 12 years after his Edict of Milan had freed Christians from official persecution. The thirty-third Bishop of Rome, Sylvester I, did not attend. It had a lengthy and doctrinally important agenda but the principal issue was the question of whether Jesus was of the same substance as the Father or of only similar substance as the Arians contended. The Arians lost and the Nicene Creed, approved by a vote of the bishops and still recited at every mass, refers to Jesus as “consubstantial with the Father.” After intense debate, the bishops also agreed that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

The Nicene Creed was the first official statement of orthodox Christianity but, like all such documents, it raised as many questions as it purported to answer. For example, in referring to Jesus, it says, “Who, for us and for our salvation, descended from heaven and was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, [born] of the Virgin Mary and became (literally, factus est, was made) human. He was also crucified for us.” The Nicene fathers agreed and modern Christians believe that the horrific suffering and death of Jesus was necessary to “redeem” humanity from the sin of Adam. This belief is based on several ambiguous biblical passages. Moreover, in spite of Nicea, the precise nature of the redemption was not obvious to the Fathers and Doctors of the church who also continued to debate what kind of God would submit himself to such ignominy. It was important to them and is important to modern Christians because the redemption was already replacing love as the core part of the “good news” of the gospels. Control over redemption gave great power to the hierarchs whereas there is no such thing as control over love.

To Catholics raised in the years before Vatican II, sin and a strong inclination toward sin were brought into the world by the disobedience of Adam. His descendents somehow share in his guilt through the mechanism of original sin. Christ “redeemed” us which means that the guilt is absolved even while its consequences remain the central feature of human life.  Sin and the inclination to sin remain with us but now, at least, we are given a chance at eternal salvation. It is not clear how this redemption occurred although Paragraph 517 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Christ's whole life is a mystery of redemption. Redemption comes to us above all through the blood of his cross, but this mystery is at work throughout Christ's entire life.” “Mystery” is the key word. Both the fall and the redemption are problematic—indeed eccentric—ideas but it was the best the dogmatic theologians could do and it has stuck.

The first problem is fatal: Adam’s disobedience was not sinful. Until he ate the forbidden fruit, Adam had no knowledge of good and evil, a knowledge necessary for an act to be sinful but available only to the gods, whoever they were (Genesis 3:4-7). He could only have thought that, if he disobeyed, he would “certainly die” (Genesis 2:18) which is all God had threatened. In fact, Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden not to punish them but to prevent them from returning to the tree and continuing to eat its fruit, thereby becoming as “one of us” and living forever (Genesis 3:22-24). If he had known the apple was poisonous, which is precisely what God implied (Genesis 2:17), he would not have eaten it. Of course, he had no concept of poison or death so God’s threat was meaningless to him.

The second problem is equally serious and is the first of several instances of injustice at the hands of the God of Genesis. Only after Adam ate the apple did God extend the punishment to all Adam’s descendents. Why? The answer is known to every Sunday school child: because we somehow “share” in Adam’s guilt. We are born in a state of “original sin” which, of course, is Adam’s sin. The church teaches there is no personal guilt in this, only personal punishment. At the moment of our conception, we are marked as children of Satan and heirs of hell (or limbo). We inherit all the earthly punishments of Adam and Eve—suffering, death, the inclination to sin, and sexual attraction. Eventually, God will explain to Moses (Exodus 20:5), “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.” There is no doubt that an all-powerful God has a right to make such a rule but there is also no doubt that it is unjust.

The third problem arises because of the undoubted presence of good in the post-Edenic world. Job, for example, is described as, “…blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil” (Job 1:8). Job denies he has sinned but explains to his friends that God has a perfect right to strike at him. But again, this is a conundrum. Most later Christian philosophers would say that God cannot commit an injustice because it is contrary to his nature. But God wreaks havoc in the life of Job merely to win a whimsical bet with Satan. He bets that Job will remain faithful to him in spite of a series of grave injustices. And, of course, he wins. Job confesses “I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted…My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42:1-6).

The Christian notion that God sent a redeemer for people like Job who seems to have avoided both sin and the inclination to sin requires some awkward reasoning. A redeemer was not part of God’s covenant with either Noah or Abraham. After the fact, John (3:16) tells us, “…for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, so that every one who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life.” So God still loves fallen man and wants him to have eternal life but the price of this gift is the death of God. This absurdity is not something you will find in the Bible. Rather, it is something the early fathers and doctors reasoned to because they wanted to explain a seemingly absurd event, the literal death of the deathless God. They wanted to see the crucifixion not as ignominious but as the ultimate expression of God’s love for us. The crucifixion did not, however, restore the status quo ante by removing evil from the world. If it had, there would be no need for an institutional church holding the keys to heaven.

Theologians have struggled with the distinction between evil and sin without notable clarity. Sin has been defined as, “…an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as ‘an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law.’” This is gibberish of a high order. What makes a conscience “right?” Which goods? And why not other goods? Is the perversion sinful or is perversity only the cause of sin? Is it man’s nature to be good that is wounded? And exactly what is the eternal law? How can we know it apart from the fantasies of elderly priests? Adam’s disobedience was clearly an offense against the will of God. Disobedience may, under some circumstances, be evil but he did not know evil. “Evil” is a tricky notion. We cannot be sure that there was actual evil in the world prior to the sin of Adam. The idea of evil was, of course, well established and known to the gods. Many Christians think of Satan as a “fallen angel” and the personification of evil, but this is based on a single subjunctive in the New Testament (2 Peter 2:4), “For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but sent them to hell, putting them into gloomy dungeons to be held for judgment….” Similarly, the snake in the Garden of Genesis is often equated with the devil but there is no suggestion of that in the text. The snake is said only to be “craftier” than other animals. The story of Lucifer and the fallen angels mentioned in the first canon of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) suggests there may have been pre-Edenic evil although the existence of fallen angels or any other form of evil is not at all consistent with the story of the creation itself. Before the creation, there was nothing except God. At the end of creation, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31).

All the relevant exegesis between the First and Fifth Centuries arose in the context of complex philosophical debates. It is madness to think that a minor act of disobedience should redound to the accounts of all succeeding generations, unless one also wants to think that God’s creative act turned out to be a mistake. There is a hint in the Noah story that God did indeed think he had made a mistake. “The Lord saw how great man's wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain” (Genesis 6:5-6). There must have been something wrong—a disposition to sin—in the original plan. Which is precisely the logic that one notices in Paul’s epistles. “Since by man (Adam) came death, by man (Jesus) came also the resurrection of the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:21). Is Paul saying that man created evil? Thomas Aquinas would ultimately give a brilliant answer by defining evil as the absence of good which implies we do not have to worry so much about its creation. But that would come 800 years too late. Meanwhile, Augustine of Hippo developed a truly fantastical answer of his own.

Augustine began by confronting the most basic question of moral theology: how did evil enter a world created by an all-good God? As a young man, he had been a "hearer" of Manichaeism for nine years and, while he later rejected it, he never fully abandoned its philosophy of evil. He seized upon the sin of Adam, claiming that it unleashed evil in the world very much the same way Pandora unleashed evil by opening the box Zeus gave her. The onrush of evil overwhelmed the Edenic good and the crucifixion merely made the good accessible again.

There are enormous problems with Augustine’s analysis. What kind of God would create a humanity inherently opposed to his will? The modern word sociopath does not seem blasphemous in this context. And, of course, if evil is the natural condition, how does good come into the world? Christians conclude that good comes from the merits of Jesus through baptism, citing John (3:5) to the effect that “no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit.” But why is baptism good? Well, because it was created by God and it imparts God’s grace. But God created everything. In the vast array of creation, is only baptism good? The circularity of the logic is truly impressive but typical enough of an advocate reasoning to a foregone conclusion. In any event, the doctrine of original sin quickly became an integral part of the “deposit of faith.”

By the early Fifth Century both Rome and the Christian church were in turmoil and, in some ways, already in decline. The barbarians were at the gates of Rome and there was open rebellion in Britain. By 404, even the so-called Western Emperor, had to be removed to Ravenna and in 410, Alaric and his Visigoths sacked Rome itself. Both church and state retreated and paganism became resurgent in much of Europe.

Meanwhile, the subtleties of theological discourse had never reached the ends of the earth. The new faith spread to Ireland long before St. Patrick or his predecessor Palladius arrived in the Fifth Century. Presumably it migrated from Roman Britain. At the time, the Irish were still practicing a vigorous Druidic spirituality. The English evangelists, in all likelihood, would have been Romanized Britons with their own albeit less current Druidic heritage. In Ireland, the two religions merged in ways both superficial and profound. Celtic mythology was translated into Christian iconography, Celtic practices were adopted whole cloth. Brigida became Bridget but kept her whole repertoire of miracles. Christianity became simpler, more personal. In the place of great philosophical debates about the triune god of Nicea, the Celts simply taught that all gods are one god. There were no codes or creeds and not much in the way of liturgy. Small isolated communities simply inbreathed the simplest teachings of the Christians, interpreting them as seemed most useful. You can feel the difference by reading the stories. Roman hagiographies of the early middle ages told stern, didactic morality tales of heroic sacrifice and horrific martyrdoms. The Irish, on the other hand, were gentler, more entertaining. We learn of Brendan and his crew celebrating Easter on the back of a whale they thought to be an island. Bridget stops a battle by conjuring up a mist that makes the enemies invisible to each other. She prays for a long list of favors and offers heaven a lake of beer in return. Patrick negotiates special dispensations for the Irish with God through a chorus of angels who laugh at his requests and are properly shocked when God grants some of them.

Celtic Christianity was comforting, not threatening. Its greatest proselytizer was not Patrick but Pelagius who was born in about 354—the same year as Augustine and eighty-seven years before Patrick began his mission in Ireland. He was a Celt, whether British or Irish is not certain but probably the latter. Certainly, at the beginning and end of his career, he was an itinerant Irish monk. He came to Rome around 400 and was appalled by what he saw as the decadence of the Christian community. He began to preach what he must have thought of as revival. He probably considered Augustine and Jerome dissidents. His original dispute with them was over matters of discipline and did not become theological until they attacked him as a heretic.

To someone only two or three generations removed from Druidism, Augustinian Christianity must have seemed perverted and demented. The Mediterranean theologians had no sense of metaphor, mythic grandeur or esoteric intuition. They confused truth with meaning and zealotry with faith. They quibbled over trivia. What had been polite discussion before the Edict of Milan soon turned into bitter disputation because the spoils of victory meant power, and power trumped mere theology. Consider, for example, the comic opera “interdict” of England between 1208 and 1213. King John, widely regarded as the worst monarch in English history, rejected the church’s choice of the Subprior Reginald as successor to the deceased Archbishop of Canterbury. His choice was Bishop de Grey of Norwich but Pope Innocent III rejected both candidates, appointing his own man, Stephen Langton, to the see. When John threatened death to anyone who accepted Langton, the Pope, with the help of the English barons, placed England under an interdict which meant that all the churches were closed and no sacraments or other liturgies were available in England for periods ranging from one to five years. John gave in and prostrated himself to Innocent as his liege lord. The barons, feeling empowered by being on the winning side, forced John to sign the Magna Carta but the Pope, seeing the threat to his new vassal’s power and thus his own revenues, excommunicated them and pronounced anathema on the document. Unlike John, Innocent III is widely regarded as the greatest Pope of the Middle Ages but his achievements involved principally his own secular power. He instigated the Fourth and Fifth Crusades, both dismal failures, and the Albigensian Crusade which was successful in the extermination of tens of thousands of unarmed Cathar heretics.

The key to understanding almost all significant papal actions down to the present day is power. Power was the motive behind Pius IX’s absurdist proclamation of the Syllabus of Errors in 1864 and Paul VI’s disastrous encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968. It is thought Paul wanted to change the teaching on contraception and that his own commission had given him a decent if not perfect basis for doing so but the Curial Cardinals were able to persuade him such an action would weaken the power of the papacy forever. Innocent III was in fact promoting the best candidate in 1208 but his only motive was to assert his supremacy, both spiritual and temporal, over the king. Like Caligula, he would have appointed his horse to the job if he thought it would enhance his power. Like all Popes, Innocent, Pius and Paul were heirs of the ambitions and fears that bedeviled the church as the result of what might be called the disputes of the fathers. The earliest Christians had no thought of building a great timeless institution. They expected Christ to return imminently. Saint Paul told them, “We shall not all die but we shall all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:51). With this mindset, they had no use for the underpinnings or the structures of a formal enterprise. Thus, when it became apparent that Christ had been misunderstood about the end times, they had to transform Christianity. In the second, third and fourth centuries, the church was blessed and cursed by numerous leaders—the fathers and doctors—who were brilliant and scholarly disputators. To them, Christianity’s meaning was ambiguous. It consisted mainly of oral traditions and various writings of uncertain authority. They believed, incorrectly, that the evangelists had been eye witnesses to the events they reported but they knew that most of the sources, including the most important ones like Saint Paul, were derivative accounts based on fading memories. They also knew that the sources were inconsistent, often contradictory. Moreover the core documents were not philosophical tracts. The gospels, except for parts of John, were more of the nature of folk tales, simple, direct, homely and, most problematic, metaphoric. Their material was inherently unsuited to institution building and they felt they had to convert it into something grander, a vast, tightly woven tapestry of philosophy regarding issues both greater and more trivial than any addressed by Jesus. They also abhorred the uncertainty they encountered in the sources. It was a weakness in the competition with other religions some of which were backed by the brutal police power of the state.

Faced with these difficulties, the fathers and doctors did what intellectuals are wont to do: they theorized, interpreted and explicated, often brilliantly but rarely in disciplined consonance with the texts. Read the letters of Saint Jerome on virginity, the homilies of Saint Basil, the apologetics of Tertullian, the inventor of the doctrine of the Trinity who later became a Monatist heretic, the dialogues of Gregory the Great or the didactics of Irenaeus of Lyons. Some are interesting, some are boring, but they are all disputatious. Agreement eludes them; persuasion is less important than dominance. They stake out every conceivable position on an issue as though they are engaging in argumentation for its own sake. Over time, the issues became narrower and more specialized and the debates turned captious; more heat and less light were generated by increasingly arcane subjects. The church was still more than seven hundred years from executing people for heresy but the arguments were ferocious. Jerome and Augustine, who were actually quite close on most matters, seemed to despise each other. Parties were formed and, as the fortunes of power ebbed and flowed, they excommunicated each other with abandon. Pelagius, the ascetic critic of Roman excess, was excommunicated and later acquitted at least twice.

Ultimately, senior churchmen abandoned theological disputation in favor of power politics. For a thousand years, they grasped for more control over the minds and purses of princes and serfs. They amassed vast wealth and displayed it with shameful ostentation. Ecclesiastical appointments were called “benefices” because they came with income streams based on rents, taxes and the right to sell certain indulgences. Popes and bishops of major sees were expected to maintain both conscripted and mercenary armies, contract alliances, wage wars and conclude peace treaties. These things did not go unnoticed. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries an influential group of Franciscan friars attempted to call the church back to Christ-like poverty. The Popes, ruling at the time from Avignon in the south of France, at first temporized, then threatened and finally had a small number of Franciscans burned at the stake. Around the same time, Jan Hus in Prague and John Wycliffe in England preached heretical doctrines including the belief that the church should embrace poverty. Both were burned although Wycliffe had been dead of natural causes for thirteen years before his body was exhumed for burning on the order of Pope Martin V.

The Reformation did nothing to reform the church but was instead met with the Counter Reformation which culminated in the Council of Trent (1545-1563), a sad and regressive attempt to freeze history and doctrine–to restore the status quo ante. Except for a handful of small events and the fresh air allowed in during the short reign of John XXIII, the church has become progressively more sclerotic since Trent. Since John’s death in 1963, we have witnessed a second Counter Reformation aimed at interpreting away the decrees of the Second Vatican Council and returning to the anti-modernist teachings of Trent and Vatican I. It seems certain to succeed as conservative popes proclaim conservative doctrines and appoint conservative bishops all the while proclaiming themselves not conservative at all but only faithful to unchanging and unchangeable truth.

GOING HOME

Jerry Harkins

God does not create a longing or a hope without having a fulfilling reality ready for them. But our longing is our pledge, and blessed are the homesick, for they shall come home.

- Isak Dinesen

As it turned out, Moville was nothing like the town I had carried around in my imagination all these years. My father talked about it endlessly when I was a child but, of course, he had never been closer to it than Montauk Point. I’d read everything ever written about the town and seen hundreds of early pictures. I’ve known its gross anatomy since I was old enough to sing “Danny Boy,” the harbor, the main street, the country churchyards, the farms. I knew it was a small town—once called Bonafobble—on the West Bank of Lough Foyle about half way up the east side of the remote but storied Inishowen Peninsula, home to the O’Neills, the O’Dougherties, Saints Finian and Finnian, and to the famous school founded in the fifth century by the former who educated a whole choir of Irish saints and scholars. Home also to us. We were from Moville.

We are the Harkin (O’hearcáin) family, minor kings in Ireland, descendents of Saints Erc and Finnian. Moville looms large in our history and mythology. My grandfather, Big Hugh Jerome, left there under mysterious circumstances sometime in the 1870’s. His blood makes up only a quarter of my own which includes, in equal proportion, contributions from the counties Mayo, Roscommon and Cork. But if I am from anywhere—anywhere save Brooklyn—I am from Moville. This reality was imprinted on my self-awareness at an early age by a father who obviously thought it important. There are twenty-six of us second generation descendents of Hugh Jerome but I believe I am the only one with this sense of the home place.

I finally arrived in Moville three weeks before my seventy-first birthday. What I found was a prosperous, attractive town that looked, in some ways, like a neat American suburb. The houses are mostly newish, smaller than their counterparts in Westport or Yorktown Heights but clean, modern, well maintained and attractively landscaped. They sit in small developmentally related clusters. There are a few small coops repurposed from old forts and factories. There is still a commercial fishing fleet but it has moved to the satellite town of Greencastle. The dock from which so many emigrants left after the famine is still there although now used mostly for laying up slightly derelict work boats.

The district surrounding the town proper contains two “parishes” and fifty-five “townlands” or neighborhoods and, until recently, was smaller than before the famine. Both town and district are much larger than I have always imagined. All those new houses are on land that used to be small farms, not nearly as small as the pathetic tenant holdings of Mayo or Galway, but no larger than necessary to provide food and wool for a large family and barter for the few things you did not make yourself. Now, ten years after the Good Friday Agreement, many people commute to work across the border in Derry. There is prosperity even in a recession year.

The Moville of my heart is very different. It is a place where for generations things kept happening whose effects rippled out and came to rest against me. I will never know what they were or whether they were even noticed by those to whom they happened. Who knows which turn in the road changed everything utterly? But one of them caused Big Hugh to migrate to Brooklyn where he met Ellen Howard lately of County Cork. As Francis Thompson taught us, “Thou canst not stir a flower / Without troubling of a star.”

In 1837, the townships were home to 10,687 souls It was a remote, windswept landscape with an economy based on fishing and shipping. Almost every family farmed. They were culturally isolated but cultured nonetheless. The tradition of educating their children pre-dated Christianity and, in the early part of the nineteenth century there were a half dozen schools. After the Great Hunger, there were no schools, very few priests and no form of representative government at any level. Still, almost everybody could read and write English. Except for praying and singing, they spoke no Irish. The music of Inishowen, however, was noticeably different from the rest of Ireland. It consisted of three or four unique and antique Celtic styles whose scales contain bent notes and microtones not unlike those of the Delta blues. These derive from the most ancient of instruments and, until the advent of the electric guitar, were most easily realized on modern fiddles. Not surprisingly, Inishowen has given us some of the greatest fiddlers and fiddle music. The men of old included immortals like Neilly Boyle, Francie Byrne, Con Cassidy, Frank Cassidy, and James Byrne. Still playing are such notables as Vincent Campbell, John Gallagher, Paddy Glackin, Danny O'Donnell, and Tommy Peoples. Dozens of internationally known singers have come from Donegal including, currently, Enya and the two bands Clannad and Altan. Oh, yes, the music. Even as a child, I understood William Irwin Thompson’s claim that, “For a Celt, the world is made of music.”

The people I imagined were individualistic, enduring, phlegmatic. They were simultaneously generous, charming and welcoming. Most of all, they had a strong sense of the absurd and could laugh at their tormentors and themselves. Penal times persisted in Inishowen for decades after Dan O’Connell achieved emancipation in 1838 but the English had little presence and the Church of Ireland folks, as isolated as their neighbors, tended to be less sectarian than their Protestant, mostly Presbyterian brethren in the rest of Ulster. The isolation protected everyone against the Catholic bishops and their Roman masters who contributed so generously to British imperialism. Priests assigned to Donegal from Maynooth or reassigned from other places were being punished for some sin or other. Most easily accommodated themselves to the prevailing Pelagian heresy and those that resisted it were, often as not, dealt with. Some were merely ignored. Others were actively shunned. It is said that in 1873 one of the O’Neill boys actually killed a priest who was seen consorting with a local Cruelty Man and then killed the Cruelty Man himself by hanging him upside down and shooting him in the testicles.

One cannot imagine such a thing happening in modern Moville. Indeed, one cannot look at the town today and see the way it must have been 130 or 140 years ago when Big Hugh left. The thought that first comes to mind is the Old Fella wouldn’t recognize the place. But on reflection I realize he certainly would feel right at home. I know this because I felt the same way. For one thing, I had never been in a place where there were so many Harkinses—three and a half columns in the phone book, dozens of them in the old cemeteries. Main Street stores and offices: Harkin’s Gifts, Harkin Beauty, Harkin Solicitor and so forth. In all my life, I’d met only one other Harkins who was not closely related to me. But the connection was more than that. It seemed that the soul of the place resonated with my own soul.

Places, you know, do have souls. I have experienced a similar sense of presence standing in front of the Cathedral of Our Lady in Chartres, at the shrine of the North American Martyrs in Auriesville, New York, and in the American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy. In Moville, though, I had the immediate visceral sense that I belonged. It is not easy to explain.

Although I never thought about it, it was not surprising that the town would have changed dramatically between the 1870’s and the Good Friday Agreement. It did surprise me that it has changed even more since. Remote, beautiful, wind-swept Donegal is still a physical fact. Moville still rises from the shore of Lough Foyle. But remoteness no longer imposes isolation. The global village has arrived. The information revolution has linked the town to the emerging planetary uberculture. When the Troubles receded in 1999, citizens on both sides of the border understood that the political resolution might be temporary and even fragile but they decided to act as though it was now safe to ignore the politicians and other crazies. In 2002, I wrote, “If the Accord lasts 20 years, it may last 100 and that might be time enough to do some good.” Good in that sentence meant peaceful reunification which I believe will ultimately materialize even though I now realize that it is irrelevant to virtually everyone living there now. Back and forth they go every day and no one seems to remember where the checkpoints used to be. Not forgotten exactly, but like everything else in Ireland—the Flight of the Earls, the Wild Geese, the Penal Laws, the Transportation, the Ascendency, the Great Hunger, the War of Independence and the Civil War—the harsh history has done its work and acquired a soft edge. The Celtic Tiger brought prosperity and, with it, the business cycle. At the moment, Ireland is suffering from a terrible recession induced by the same forces that have wreaked havoc everywhere. Things are somewhat better in Derry due to a successful development plan undertaken in the late 1990’s and, as Derry goes, so go the communities of nearby Inishowen including Moville.

Things change but the soul of a place is cumulative. Nothing important is ever lost. A town retains its history and the repercussions—emotional and spiritual—of that history, its genius loci. In “The Gift Outright,” Robert Frost argues that people and their places belong naturally to each other. If we deny the connection, we diminish ourselves. “Something we were withholding made us weak / 
Until we found out that it was ourselves 
/ We were withholding…” Standing for the first time in Market Square, I was not the tourist, the stranger, the other. I was part of Moville’s history, part of the story, a small offstage part and more important to me than to Moville, but still both a giver and a receiver.