"And Service to the Poor"

Towards a Poor Church

More and more Americans are pushed into or are kept in poverty every year. The American poverty rate is a scandal -- or it would be if anybody was paying attention.

So we now have a Pope in Rome waxing lyrical about a "poor Church" and "service to the poor."

Yes, well.

It's a good thing in a way, because no world leader has given a good gott-damb about or for The Poor for many a long year, not since the expiration of the Soviet Union, and the marginal leaders like Hugo Chavez and a handful of others who actually did something to lift the poor from the depths are excoriated and denounced as some kind of evil.

Ergo.

A Pope in Rome making these noises about the Poor, after all these years of focusing on papal piousness and saintliness (well, and Prada) is a breath of fresh air.

But take it with something like a barrel of salt. What we have is a situation in which government policy throughout the west and much of the rest of the world is making more poor people every day. And let's face it, the creation and perpetuation of Teh Poors is good for the God Business. Oh, very good indeed!

Over at dKos, Betty Clermont has penned a devastating take down of the Papal Show we've been treated to the past few days. It is not, she assures us, what it appears to be. A Pope like Francis who appears to be too good to be true probably is. And we'll be in for even more duplicity, deception and despair, no doubt, as the rituals of the Church, the acts of the Pope, and the realities of living in the material-world-as-it-is gain an even tighter grip on our collective throats than ever before.

Nothing, fundamentally, will change for the better. Much may well change for the worse -- at least for the many millions whose toil and travail continues to boost the wealth of the diminishing few. We've been down this road before...

Indeed.

Ask any of our Third World neighbors; most will tell you they've never left this road, and it would seem that it is the intent of our neo-Fascist rulers to ensure that there will be many more poor and far fewer (but much wealthier) rich in perpetuity.

The Church may serve its solace on Earth and hope for reward in Heaven to the masses once again, with the benign Francis dispensing alms, serenity and beauty.

St. Francis was a young man when he was called by the Divine. He died at the age of 44 or so. His ministry on Earth had lasted less than 20 years. Pope Francis is old and most likely will not survive anything close to 20 years on the Papal throne. His work will have to be quick, therefore, and the changes he is expected to make in the Church will by necessity be superficial.

Matters of style, not dogma.

The Journal of a Mud House, a continuation --4

[Illustration from "The Journal of A Mud House" by Elizabeth Shepley Sergeant, Harper's Magazine, April 1922]

Like many other areas where the Spaniards went a-conquering, New Mexico is blessed with an abundance of penitentes who go about on pilgrimage, flagellating themselves, praying, and at one time nailing one another to crucifixes in imitation of the Passion of Christ. (Rumor has it, they still do that in their secret rites, but I wouldn't know.)

In fact, I'm not much into the Passion. It's a frankly ugly story that relies on credulity and faith to be transformed into... "beauty." Yes, yes, I understand about suffering and redemption and all that. Taking on the sins of the world, forgiveness, resurrection, choirs of angels at the right hand of the Father. Yes, yes, yes.

But what has happened with this story is that the Suffering of Christ to Redeem Mankind has been used as a sort of global justification for Believers (not just Catholics by any means) to impose such suffering as they wilt on Believers and Non-Believers alike if not in Imitation of Christ, then certainly in His Sacred Honor.

And that's disgusting. Immoral. Wrong.

It was this Imposition of Suffering -- by Men of God as well as civil authorities -- that in due time led to the Pueblo Revolt in 1680 here in New Mexico, the only time Indians successfully rebelled against the Conquest. Not only did they successfully rebel, they expelled the Spanish colonists and their hypocritical, devilish priests.

Of course, there was a Reconquista, there always is, isn't there? But in returning, the Spanish, wonder of wonders, were chastened and chastised and they promised to reform. Strangely enough, they weren't lying. They wanted to make peace with the Indians, promised to respect them and their culture, promised further that the Church would be restrained, the burdens of conversion lightened, encomienda ended, and cooperation between the peoples ensured. And so, more or less, it was.

Because of this rebellion and change of heart, both the Spanish and the Indians were surprisingly successful in maintaining their cultures here, while intermingling all the time, right up to the American Conquest.

And when the Americans came, they didn't know what to make of what they found here.

Americans had been coming down the Santa Fe Trail for a generation before the conquest, and most of those who made the trek were inclined to tolerate if not exactly favor the ways of the strange peoples who lived along the Rio Grande Valley, if only for the money they could make from them. Well, money such as it was.

These were poor people. Even the Grandest of Grandees in New Mexico was a poor man by American standards; even by Mexican standards. This was a backwater where people had to do for themselves or do without. They lived as simply as possible, sufficient unto their needs first and foremost, but within that stricture, they were surprisingly creative, artistic, and -- at least from time to time -- happy.

The story of the Spanish Conquest of these parts is complicated. Coronado came through in 1540 or so, and he made an unholy mess on his travels in search of the Seven Cities of Gold. Murder, rape, pillage, plunder, disease and destruction were all integral to his exploratory technique. The Coronado Monument up by Bernalillo is a pretty good representation of what his expedition left in its wake. It's a ruined pueblo on the banks of the Rio Grande, obviously a very fine place at one time. There is little left of it but some tumbled walls and a mural-painted kiva that astonished archeologists who excavated the ruin in the 1930's.

The theory is that Coronado stopped here in 1540, demanding supplies, killing and plundering at will, taking hostages and women, and otherwise behaving like a rampaging beast. The Indians were not amused.

Soon after Coronado moved on, perhaps as soon as the next spring, so the theory goes the pueblo was abandoned and fell to ruin. Where the people went is hard to say, but there were many other pueblos along the Rio Grande and elsewhere, so there was no lack of potential destinations. Eventually, the ruin was "discovered" and became what it is today.

In 1598, Don Juan de Oñate went on an expedition of Conquest, during which (as was the style of the Spaniards of the day) he committed numerous atrocities, perhaps the most egregious of which was the amputation of one foot from each of the adult male survivors of his reduction and conquest of the Pueblo of Acoma.

This was but one of his atrocities, but it came to symbolize just who these Spaniards were, and what they would do if they didn't get what they wanted.

It took some time to get over the shock, but more to the point, it took time to adapt the Spanish new arrivals to the rhythms and patterns of living in this harsh but beguiling land. As they adapted they imposed their own spiritual rhythms -- a very harsh form of Catholicism built from the practices of the Church Militant during the Reconquista of Spain from the Moors -- on the local Native Peoples. Up to a point, the Native Peoples were willing enough. But when the Church Militant commenced to destroy all the Native spiritual elements, as was their common practice throughout the conquered realms, the Indians resisted and eventually rebelled. Successfully.

Coronado was bad, Oñate was bad, the Padres could be horrible.

And at least in my view, much of their badness was a result of their peculiar understanding of religious faith and what it justified them to do.

It took centuries and centuries to correct.

In the meantime, plenty of peculiar practices became inculcated into the Ways of the People in these parts, one of them being the Penitente Pilgrimages at Easter time.

Here we are.

And you know, as long as they don't try to impose their beliefs and practices on others, there is no problem and their should be none. But it took so many centuries for the notion of Live and Let Live to penetrate the minds of many Euro-Americans.

I was clearing brush this morning, specifically a frost bitten thorny pyracantha, and I thought for a time over saving some of it to make a Crown of Thorns in remembrance of Good Friday.

But what would I do with it?

Depraved

While it's never been my intent with this blog to get too much into religion and religious belief, my situation these days is one that allows me to listen to some of what is put out on Catholic Radio to a willing flock.

Yesterday, I happened to hear parts of an impassioned sermon against abortion delivered by a priest from the pulpit. He was doing fine, I thought, imploring women not to have abortions, describing in lurid detail what happened to their "babies" during an abortion procedure, and even injecting some humor into the picture when he described how he would have been a "one-issue voter" if the abortionists scalpel had been scraping at his left arm when he was still in the womb.

There are plenty of reasons not to have an abortion, and most women don't have abortions, so hearing an impassioned sermon against abortion shouldn't trouble most people, and it doesn't trouble me.

But then this priest went off the rails. And his argument failed spectacularly.

His premise was that abortion was the only real issue that mattered in this or any election, and his objective was to elect anti-abortion candidates, even if their records weren't all that pure, or even if they sometimes voted the "wrong way" on this all important topic. Baby steps. Can't make perfection the enemy of the good and all that.

But then he destroyed his argument, literally blew it to smithereens, with one of the most morally repugnant, indeed morally depraved statements I think I have ever heard from any clergy-man (and that's saying a lot.)

"But Father," he said someone asked him, "if you are such a supporter of the 'Culture of Life,' why aren't you actively opposed to the War (meaning the Iraq War)?"

And this man had the nerve to say this [paraphrase, of course]: "Well, I said to him, 'Look. Even at its height, the Iraq War was only claiming 9 American soldiers a day. Abortion kills 5,000 babies every thirteen minutes. Which is more important to oppose?"

This is not moral equivocation or moral relativism, this is complete moral depravity. The war in Iraq does not involve solely American soldiers, and the deaths and destruction there is literally "uncounted." We don't know how many dead innocents there are there, but there are a lot, all of them -- every single one of them -- a consequence of the American invasion. For this hideous man, this disgusting, depraved, appalling representative of the Catholic Church to dare claim that "only 9" American soldiers were being killed each day at the height of the Iraq War and therefore opposing the war was not as important as stopping abortion simply destroyed his argument altogether.

There is no "moral" foundation to his opposition to abortion at all. If he limits his knowledge of what has been going on in Iraq since the American invasion to the highest number of American soldiers killed per day and uses that as a basis for his relative passion against abortion and absence of passion against the war, this man has no business ministering to the public.

And this is one of many reasons people turn away from the Church. No, it's not a Mystery of God. It's a failure of man and it is a massive failure of the institution of the Catholic Church.

And it is not solely the Catholic institution that has failed.

On the Radio

During this period of home hospice care, I keep the radio on the Catholic station for the lady's comfort. For myself, hearing the Mass or the Rosary is calming. There's one Irish priest who says the Rosary in what sounds very much like a trance of devotion, and it's surprising to hear it again and again. Some of the Masses presented on Catholic Radio -- from various locations like Alabama, Rome, and Spain -- can be quite moving.

It may help to be of lapsed Catholic persuasion. But I wonder what non-believers who have never been associated with the Church think when -- or if -- they hear the programming on Catholic Radio. Do they think of Satan? Hmmm.

Since it is an election season, the obsession with abortion, homosexuality, and "culture" some of the priests and laity on the station have is striking. Over and over, listeners are implored to vote for candidates -- and only for candidates -- who will bring an end to the crimes and sins aforementioned. When laymen address the topic with Church apologists and point out that many candidates who are opposed to abortion are all in favor of war, the death penalty and so forth, the priests and whatnot go into real contortions to justify voting solely on the matter of ending abortion -- as opposed to other "life" issues -- claiming that the Church and the Holy Father specifically condemn abortion (and euthanasia) whereas war and the death penalty are, well, sometimes condemned. Not always.

They also claim that while they don't and can't endorse any candidate (McCain), that McCain's views are closer to those of the Church and the Holy Father and that should be the primary consideration of Catholic voters.

Strange.

Earlier today a priest was trying to explain "democracy" vis a vis the Church, claiming in fact that the Church -- while hierarchical -- was clearly "democratic" as well, in that the Pope is elected and for many centuries elections have been held at various levels and on various matters having to do with Church personnel and operations, so it is "democratic."

OK.

This seemed to be way of justifying Catholic participation in elections at all.

And always there are the callers who have to be cautioned against too much judgementalism toward their neighbors and relations -- who of course have fallen into sin and will burn eternally in hell for it.

It's... fascinating.