Most Americans are aware of the fact that President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Then the Congress of the United States adopted the 13th Amendment in 1865. Almost one hundred years later, in 1964, the Congress of the United States adopted the first realistic and effective Civil Rights Act since the Civil War. In the next three or four years, several other important pieces of legislation were passed, such as Open Housing Act and Voter Rights Act. Our nation, founded on the principles of human freedom and dignity, nevertheless tolerated slavery for most of its first century as a Republic. It has been endeavoring to deal with this scandalous contradiction for more than 150 years. Regretfully, we are not there yet!
The January 5th issue of the New York Times tells us that, “In October, the Arkansas Times reported that Jim Hubbard, a Republican state representative, wrote in a 2009 self-published book that the institution of slavery, that the black race has long believed to be an abomination upon its people, has actually been a blessing in disguise.” His misguided point was that for all the horrors of slavery blacks were better off in America than in Africa.
Signs of slavery’s shadow can be found in many different directions. I have not read Michelle Alexander’s popular new book, The New Jim Crow, but she tells us that, “Today, there are more African American adults under correctional control, in prison or jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War. Finally, a poll about the Civil War found that Americans, when queried about the Civil War, had very different views. In the West, 11% were more sympathetic of the Confederacy than the Union, the Northeast was 14% and in the South THIRTY-EIGHT PERCENT tilted toward the Confederacy.
Shadow indeed.
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Pope Paul VI was the first pope to ever speak to the General Assembly of the United Nations. When he was there in the early ‘70’s, he made an impassioned push to world leaders to find another way of resolving conflicts and misunderstandings. War is awful. It is destructive. It destroys culture and economic development. Most of all, it destroys people’s lives and generates so much poverty that life goes down, down, down into a vicious circle. No wonder he prayed with all his heart – “No more war. War never again!”
My guess is that this wonderful pope is praying for the human family before the throne of God and he may know the long-term outcome of what is going on here on this planet. Certainly his prayer is not even close to being answered in 2012. From 1941 until 2012, people of the United States were at war almost constantly. Think about it – World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and some of our leaders talk recklessly about Iran. A terrible tragedy in this country is that Americans seem to have taken war for granted. I remember the Second World War so clearly. It consumed the thinking of everyone in the country. Today, the majority of Americans hardly think about the two wars that we have been engaged in over the last 10 or 12 years. U.S. foreign policy grows evermore militarized. Defense spending dwarfs the State Department’s budget by roughly 30 to one. Republicans would love to slash this even further.
In a large crowd, if you suggest working our way out of the Afghan war with diplomacy or in Iran, you will find yourself in serious trouble, possibly being hysterically anathematized as another Neville Chamberlain. A sadly interesting new book on this subject is Useful Enemies: When Waging War is More Important Than Winning Them by David Keen, Yale University Press. Give it a try.
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Older Americans remember that in the dim past we frequently made use of the rather poetic antique expression “fortnight” referring to a period of two weeks. Inside the Church in the United States, it recently came back into use over the last two or three months. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sponsored a series of public activities for a two-week period ending July 4th. The purpose of the program was to warn the Catholics of America, and all Americans for that matter, that there were tremendous threats to religious freedom. Some of the material distributed seemed to indicate that we were holding on that freedom with white knuckled grips.
The fortnight has come and gone and it is hard to say what kind of influence it has had in the differences between the U.S. Bishops and the Obama Administration regarding the all too narrow definition of exempt religious institutions. Time will tell as to whether or not the fortnight had any influence at all in this country. If you are worried as to whether or not you will be allowed to go to the church of your choice next Sunday, put that concern behind you. Religious freedom is alive and well in the United States. However, is that true across the world? By no means.
In a growing number of other places around the world, there is decidedly a literal war on religion underway and Christians are often its primary targets. We are lucky to have the Rome based Asian News Service which keeps track of atrocities carried out in the name of religion and they document that the vast majority of these crimes are against Christians, making Christianity the most persecuted religious community on the planet. We need to become more aware of this unjust reality.
Congratulations to the U.S. bishops and the Catholic University of America. They have joined with Catholic Relief Services to plan a conference entitled “International Religious Freedom: An Imperative for Peace and the Common Good” to be held in Washington on September 12th. A concrete plan of action needs to come out of this that will sensitize Christians to the dangers that they face across the world and provide models for action to assist and protect men and women who are suffering because they believe in Jesus of Nazareth.
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For the most part, Americans are rather forward looking. They are optimistic and ready to take on the future. That is a good trait but it comes at a cost. As a nation, most of us are not overly interested in history. Here I pass up the temptation to use that tired, hackneyed expression about who is going to repeat it, but you know what I mean. One thing that most Americans are not familiar with is the history of organized labor. It is a great story of courage, heroism, some violence and, for a while, a period of triumph…but only for a while.
Labor has been in the news quite a bit of late but almost always in a negative light. Dues paying members have dropped dramatically over the last 25 years and the only area where successful organizing has been occurring is in the public sector unions. Realizing that, the opponents of organized labor have moved effectively to undercut and, if possible, break the backs of the public sector unions. For the last two years, we have seen a number of states move to block organizing efforts by their employees, cancel pensions, cut back benefits and blame the working people for the economic problems that these states face. I am saddened by the fact that while all this is going on the voice of the Church has been strangely silent.
First in Germany and then across Europe and the United States, the Roman Catholic Church espoused the cause of the working people and stood staunchly beside them as they struggled in the face of overwhelming odds. Although Leo XIII strongly supported workers rights to organize in 1899, American workers did not get that legal right until 1935 with the passage of the Wagner Act. Following the passage of that act, labor unions grew enormously in this country. Secretaries of Labor in the Democratic Administration were staunch supporters and bishops and priests became very public in their endorsement of working people’s right to better their economic condition. Things were going wonderfully well and then labor made a terrible mistake from which it has not yet recovered.
More on that tomorrow.
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Arlington National Cemetery
Today is a holiday- Memorial Day. There will be a lot of picnics and one-day outings, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, every one of us should take serious time today to be thoughtful and prayerful about the fact that we have so much for which to be thankful, so much to remember. That thankfulness and remembrance is to center on the fact that so many of our fellow Americans over the last two hundred years have given their lives in order that our country might be free, and that this freedom and prosperity could be maintained in a difficult world that has constantly threatened it.
The facts can be laid out on the table, the figures can be totaled out but there is no way that they can begin to grasp the reality that is behind these numbers. During the first one hundred years of our existence, 683,000 Americans lost their lives with the Civil War counting for 623,000 of that total (91%). The next one hundred years, a further 626,000 Americans died through two world wars and several more regional conflicts. Of this latter figure, World War II represented 65% of that total.
Let’s look behind those cold statistics. For every one of those digits, there are heartbroken parents, crushed fiancées, brokenhearted wives and children by the millions. Yes, we must remember and we must give thanks for their generosity. However, while we are giving thanks, we should pray fervently and work within the confines of our own situation in life to do whatever we can to lessen the threat of war. In some ways, we find ourselves in a unique moment of history. We have developed structures that improve communication between countries and lessen the type of resolving conflicts with guns and bombs, but at the same time we do have weapons of mass destruction that if we don’t handle ourselves rationally, all of the losses of our wars will seem minor compared to what could possibly happen. Remember? Yes, indeed remember! But also pray – pray – pray.
For an excellent book describing the proximity of our peril, try reading How the End Begins by Ron Rosenbaum. This book thoughtfully describes what the author sees as a road to an approaching nuclear war.
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After 56 years in the priesthood, I have seen and experienced many bad and evil things, a great deal of pain and suffering and, yes, serious sinfulness. Nevertheless, I continue to be a strong optimist and have a great deal of confidence in the innate goodness of most people. Just look at the response of the American people to international tragedies. Look at the response within our parishes when this or that problem presents itself. The initial responses are universally generous, sacrificial and make a dramatic difference in lessening the suffering that is confronted in one or another concrete situation. But how long can we maintain it?
I think that there is a tendency among us that once we have been asked to help with this or that program, need, charity, or undertaking we feel that we have properly responded and then go on to think about other things. Several times over the last two years, I have used this space to remind people about the continued suffering in Haiti. When something horrible happens the media covers it immediately and effectively, and the generous response I mention above occurs, but life moves on and gradually these horrors recede from our consciousness.
There is no evil in our forgetting the problems of yesterday. It is simply regrettable. I think we should work hard to maintain sustained assistance to difficult situations if they are not ultimately taken care of and provided for.
Let me take advantage of this opportunity to mention to you once again the Capital Area Food Bank. We know that there is hunger in the South Sudan and that there are really difficult problems in food distribution in Northern Mexico. However, we need also to be conscious of the fact that there are real serious food problems in Austin, Texas.
None of us can respond adequately to the needs that are before us but our society has gradually developed programs and organizations in which by contributing a little bit of ourselves and our resources we can make a dramatic difference. For this, I would like to mention Meals on Wheels. It is a wonderful organization that day-by-day feeds thousands of sick and elderly people who are in desperate need, not only of food but of the encouragement that comes from somebody coming to their front door, bringing warm food and, equally important, placing their arm around them and letting them know that they are remembered and loved.
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Everyone makes mistakes. I may write a magazine article on that subject someday since I feel so experienced in that area. Regretfully, a troop of U.S. Marines recently stumbled into a major mistake hopefully due to ignorance of modern history.
A troop of about 12 Marines posed in Afghanistan in front of a flag bearing the SS emblem, the shape of lightening blots. The SS was the police arm of the Nazi Party. A lot of terrible things happened in the Second World War but the SS ranked at the top for cruelty and brutality. The best explanation of this embarrassing and humiliating event was that those 12 grown men, American citizens all, did not know anything about the SS. In this instance, they are guilty of bad manners and ignorance but it is a reflection of a bigger problem for life in the United States.
I am told that most Americans do not know the maiden names of their two grandmothers. If we don’t know our own story, that is regrettable but if we don’t know our story as a nation, that is dangerous.
The generation of the fathers of these 12 men lost their lives by the tens of thousands fighting the SS and what it stood for. All of us are living today but need to be planning for tomorrow. I don’t think you can successfully plan for tomorrow unless you have a fairly strong understanding of what happened yesterday. A knowledge of what has happened before can help us avoid repeated mistakes.
Onward through the fog.
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Most Americans are woefully inadequate when it comes to a real knowledge of our own history. When older Americans made references to the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Bonus Army of 1932, many young people’s eyes just glaze over. There was a Bonus Army after the First World War and tens of thousands of unemployed men came from all over the country demanding the $1,000 bonus that the government had promised them for fighting in Europe. They were messy, they lived in tents but most of all, they were hungry and desperate.
The hungry Bonus Army of 1932 was driven from our nation’s capitol at army bayonet points at the command of General Douglas McArthur. It is one of those many dark chapters in American history. The camp was burnt and two of the demonstrators were killed. The whole story moved across the country in the weekly newsreels popular at that time and the view of the American people changed dramatically and McArthur and his men were booed.
Occupy Wall Street is not neat, it does not have a political structure to bring leaders to the fore. What it reflects is that the great majority of Americans, who have hardly been affected by this disastrous Recession, are sadly ignorant about the amount of suffering and pain that has been experienced by a sizable segment of the population. In addition, all the forecasts indicate that this situation is to go on for several years and the nation is doing nothing about it – nothing. Should anybody be surprised that people who want to work but can’t find it, who want to support their families but have lost their income, who have pride and dignity in themselves but are losing it by the humiliation that comes with poverty and destitution are angry?
Anger is not usually a productive response but sometimes it is necessary in order to spotlight a problem or weakness.
Wake up America.
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A few weeks ago, Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies made a determined effort to put a price tag on our wars up until the present moment. Naturally, a precise figure is not possible but Brown estimates that to date the costs have been $3.7 trillion and possibly as high as $4.4 trillion. Those are ghastly figures when it comes to wasted and dissipated resources, resources that are so sorely needed in other areas of our life. The horror of the high numbers is nothing compared to the human toll that has been involved.
Others are attempting to assess the cost of war. A few months ago, the Congressional Research Service reported a lower figure than what was mentioned above. The Congressional Budget Office projected costs at $1.8 trillion. Obviously, different people are counting different ways.
Forget the money for the moment. The agony of these wars is the human suffering that has been caused by them. Hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan and thousands of killed and wounded Americans. And how do you estimate the pain and suffering among all of the families that are involved? It totals out suffering, suffering, suffering. And the cost goes on and on. Studies show that when these veterans return home they are more likely to die in suicides and automobile accidents than if they had not gone to war.
Onward through this very dense fog.
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Is anyone surprised? Now that the ten-year census has been completed, we are able to go over it and study and analyze all of the information buried within it. There are a lot of numbers about the sizes of cities, the number of automobile traffic, petroleum production, increased energy from wind, etc., etc. That is all interesting and much of it is needed but for me the sad thing coming out of the census was the report that the income gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew last year to its widest amount on record as young adults and children in particular struggled to stay afloat in the recession.
We brag about our over all economy and we should. Bragging tends to be about its accomplishments in the area of productivity and not the fairness of its system of distribution.
How about this for a fact? The top earning 20% of Americans, those making more than $100,000 each year, received 49.4% of all income generated in the U.S. Compare that with the 3.4% of all American income earned by those below the poverty line. Last year the poverty level was set at about $22,000 for a family of four. The U.S. has the greatest disparately among Western industrialized nations between the upper and lower levels. These figures tell us a lot but unless you have real empathy for the suffering going on in this country we can’t grasp what it means in terms of lost houses, inadequate education, inadequate diet and overall suffering. Let’s pray that the United States can develop a sense of unity so that the wealthiest are concerned about the most vulnerable. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have given us a wonderful example not only in committing and sharing their own massive fortunes to the needs of the country at large, but urging other wealthy Americans to do the same. Their generosity gives hope in an otherwise bleak situation.
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