Meditations at the All Star break

Tuesday, 21 May 2013 19:21

For the past two decades I’ve taught in Cracow every July. I’d not trade the experience for anything, but it’s had one drawback: I haven’t seen baseball’s All Star Game in a long time. The game itself is no big deal. But the sight of so many great players gathered in one place is an annual reminder of the pastime’s remarkable capacity to renew itself, generation to generation. The rancid steroid era ends; the era of Josh Hamilton, Matt Kemp, Stephen Strasburg and Justin Verlander begins. Tell me baseball isn’t divinely inspired.

My grandfather Weigel taught me the game during steaming hot Baltimore summers in the late 1950s. There wasn’t much fancy about old Memorial Stadium in those days: a brick horseshoe with two decks; a non-exploding scoreboard; plank benches against whose splinters we armored ourselves by buying an Evening Sun on the way into the park. Tickets cost less than $10; I doubt that my popcorn and Coke set my grandfather back by a buck; there were neither mascots, nor ballgirls, nor ear-splitting rock ‘n’ roll between innings. Uniforms were honest baseball flannel and outfielders’ gloves didn’t approximate the circumference of peach baskets. It was a simpler, ruder environment, to which you didn’t come for an “entertainment experience”; you came for baseball.

And you came for a team. I’ve never met a serious baseball fan whose love for the game isn’t specific rather than generic: one becomes passionate about a team; love of the game itself follows from that. Which is why, I suppose, otherwise sane people remain fans of the Chicago Cubs or still mourn St. Louis’s loss of the Browns (who became my Orioles in 1954). That specific loyalty is a “shield and buckler” (Psalm 91: 4) against the ebbs and flows of baseball fortune. And those highs and lows themselves reflect the game’s deeper truths, never better expressed than by the late Bart Giamatti, who was president of both Yale and the National League and rightly thought the latter the higher distinction:

“It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and it leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when you need it most, it goes … and summer (is) gone.”

A half-century ago, my baseball education was furthered by other classic pedagogical tools: the sports pages of the papers, boys’ baseball novels, baseball cards (10 for a quarter, with bubble gum, but without cash resale value); and radio—well do I remember fetid Baltimore nights, pre-air conditioning, when I would lie at the foot of the bed by an open window, with a small transistor radio held to my ear, listening to Ernie Harwell, Herb Carneal or Chuck Thompson, three masters of the play-by-play. But it’s to my grandfather’s personal instruction that I owe the most. And, as I’ve found myself doing with my own children (and now my grandson) what he did with me, I’ve come to appreciate even more the impact of his instruction on my life. For we learn baseball the way we learn the faith: through stories, family traditions and rituals. The refinements of doctrine, essential as they are, come later. First, we are converted.

The midseason break also brings to mind a legend from my baseball youth: 15-year All Star Brooks Robinson, who arrived in Baltimore before my 10th birthday and reinvented the playing of third base. The true nature of his greatness—a human decency that is one expression of the Catholicism he embraced in 1970—was neatly captured by a teammate, Ron Hansen: “In New York, they name candy bars after Reggie [Jackson]; in Baltimore, they name their children after Brooks.” As Brooks Robinson struggles with the pains of age and disease, he remains, in so many hearts and minds, a perennial All Star as a man.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Cristeros, a passionate defense of Catholicism

Columns - The Catholic Difference

Tuesday, 21 May 2013 19:21

Most Americans haven’t the foggiest idea that a quasi-Stalinist, violently anti-Catholic regime once existed on our southern borders. Those who don’t know how bad Mexico was in the late 1920s are about to learn, though: at least those who see “For Greater Glory,” a recently-released movie about the Cristero War, a passionate (and bloody) defense of Catholicism that’s remembered today, if at all, because of Graham Greene’s novel, “The Power and the Glory.”

There’s been a strange silence about all this for almost a century. Even Catholics aware of the extent of 20th century martyrdom seem to have little sense of the modern Mexican martyrs—although the addition of the memorial of St. Christopher Magallanes and Companions to the universal liturgical calendar (May 21) ought to remind North American Catholics just what was going on south of the Rio Grande during the years when the brutal government of Plutarco Elias Calles tried to destroy the Catholic Church in Mexico. It was a terrible time, and the example of the Cristeros, who included both underground priests like Blessed Miguel Pro, S.J. (perhaps the first martyr in two millennia to be photographed at the moment of his death) and fighters like General Enrique Gorostieta (well-played by Academy Award nominee Andy Garcia in the new film) ought to inspire 21st-century Catholics to stand firm in defense of religious freedom.

“For Greater Glory” takes some artistic liberties with history; the martyrdom of Christopher Magallanes, for example, happened in somewhat different circumstances than those described in the film. But taken as a whole, the movie conveys both the hard truth about the Calles regime and the often noble, but sometimes conflicted, story of Calles’s Cristero opponents. The most moving subplot in the movie involves Jose Luis Sanchez de Rio, a teenager converted to serious Catholicism by Christopher Magallanes (as the film tells it) and “adopted,” in spirit, by General Gorostieta when the lad asks to join the Cristeros. Whatever the artistic license taken with the details of these relationships, it will be a hard heart indeed that is not moved by the depiction of the boy’s martyrdom, as he defies torture and blandishments, all intended to get him to apostasize, and cries “Viva Cristo Rey!” just before the bullets strike him down. Jose Luis Sanchez del Rio was beatified on Nov. 20, 2005; his liturgical commemoration (Feb. 10, the day of his death) should shape the rhythm of liturgical life in U.S. parishes, like those of St. Christopher Magallanes and Bl. Miguel Pro (Nov. 23).

In his Chrism Mass homily in April, Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington urged his priests and seminarians to see “For Greater Glory.” Cardinal Wuerl is not given to dramatic gestures; his suggestion that the film might help form the self-understanding of Washington’s priests and future priests was all the more powerful for that. Barack Obama is not Plutarco Elias Calles, and the United States in 2012 is not Mexico in 1926-29. But anyone who doubts that there are grave threats to religious freedom in North America today has only to consider the HHS “contraceptive mandate,” the administration’s refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, the administration’s efforts to void the “ministerial exemption” in U.S. employment law, and the bad habit of Canadian human rights “tribunals” to levy serious financial penalties against Christian ministers who preach biblical truth.

Threats to religious freedom come in many forms—some hard, like during the Cristero War; some softer, if no less lethal to the first freedom. One way to blunt the hard threats is to stand firmly against the softer threats and to name those threats for what they are. “For Greater Glory” will inspire and encourage those already committed to defending religious freedom today. It is even more important, though, that those who haven’t yet seen the threat, or who deny that it exists, ponder this powerful depiction of the nearby and not-so-distant past, for the sake of the present and future.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

A Public TV Grand Tour of the Catholic world

Columns - The Catholic Difference

Tuesday, 21 May 2013 19:21

In the fall of 1972, a group of us, philosophy majors all, approached our dean of studies, Father Bob Evers, with a request: Under the supervision of a faculty member, could we build a two-credit senior seminar in our last college semester around Kenneth Clark’s BBC series, “Civilization,” which had been shown on American public television. Father Evers agreed, and we had a ball. “Civilization” was the perfect way to finish a serious undergraduate liberal arts education; it brought together ideas, art, architecture and history in a visually compelling synthesis of the history of western culture that respected Catholicism’s role in shaping the West.

Over the next four decades, I wondered whether someone, somewhere, at some point, would do a “Civilization”-like series on Catholicism itself: a Grand Tour of the Catholic world that explored the Church as a culture through its teaching, its art, its music, its architecture—and above all, through the lives it shaped. That has now happened. The result is the most important media initiative in the history of the Catholic Church in the United States.

The man responsible for this feat is Father Robert Barron, a priest of the archdiocese of Chicago and a faculty member at Mundelein Seminary. Father Barron is an old friend (and a colleague on NBC’s Vatican coverage), but I’ll risk the charge of special pleading by stating unequivocally that Father Barron’s “Catholicism”, a 10-part series premiering on public television stations around the country this fall, is a master work by a master teacher. In 10 episodes that take the viewer around the Catholic world, from Chartres to the slums of Calcutta and dozens of points in-between, Father Barron lays out the Catholic proposal in a visually stunning and engaging series of presentations that invites everyone into the heart of the faith, which is friendship with Jesus Christ.

Having talked with Father Barron and his colleagues at Word on Fire, his media ministry, throughout the production of “Catholicism,” I can testify that this was a great labor of love: love for the Lord, love for the Church, and love for the truths the Church teaches. Yet there is nothing saccharine here, nothing cheesy, nothing pop-trendy. It’s Catholic Classic, not Catholic Lite, but John Cummings’ cinematography is so beautiful, Steve Mullen’s original score is so fetching (drawing on ancient chants in a thoroughly contemporary way), and Father Barron’s narration is so deft—the man has a genius for the telling example or analogy—that even the most difficult facets of Catholic belief and practice come alive in a completely accessible way.

At the center of it all is Jesus of Nazareth, posing that unavoidable and disturbing question: “Who do you say that I am?” Viewers of “Catholicism” will get to know many of the great minds and spirits who wrestled with that question over two millennia—Peter and Paul; Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and Dante; Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross; Edith Stein and Katherine Drexel. But throughout the series, the focus keeps coming back to the Lord Jesus. “Catholicism” is built on the firm convictions that it is his Church and that it is his truth that measures all truth. Father Barron understands that post-modern culture poses special challenges for the proclamation of the Gospel. That’s why this committed believer, who is also a fine theologian, can sympathetically but forcefully invite his viewers into a thorough exploration of the Creed (an exploration deepened in the series’ companion book, “Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith” [Doubleday]).

There is no dithering about the bad news, either: Father Barron knows that the Catholic Church is a community of sinners whose infidelities have often marred the face of the Lord. At the same time, Father Barron’s series displays the innumerable ways that the Catholic Church has been and remains a force for truth, decency, compassion, and sanity in an often-cruel world.

Watch it. Politely lobby your local public television station to show the series in its entirety. Spread the word.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

‘A man of wisdom who invites others into wisdom’

Columns - The Catholic Difference

Tuesday, 21 May 2013 19:21

CRACOW—Twenty years ago, the American Catholic thinker Michael Novak put his head together with his friend Rocco Buttiglione, a distinguished Italian thinker, to see what might be done about educating a new cadre of young Catholic leaders in the social doctrine of the Church. John Paul II’s recently-released social encyclical, Centesimus Annus, seemed an ideal intellectual anchor for such an enterprise, given its rich development of the social doctrine and its bracing challenge to build free and virtuous societies in the 21st century. Rocco had a teaching position in Liechtenstein at the time, and it was decided that the Centesimus Annus Seminar on the Free Society could meet at the International Academy of Philosophy there.

Michael recruited Father Richard John Neuhaus, Father Maciej Zieba, OP, and me onto the faculty team, and the project was launched in July 1992. As we were completing the second annual seminar the following year, I suggested to my colleagues that God did not require us to spend any more of our lives in Liechtenstein, and that we ought to look for a new seminar home. Given that the majority of our students were recruited from the new democracies of central and eastern Europe, the two likeliest places to move were Prague and Cracow. I was decidedly in favor of the latter, as was John Paul II, and, with the invaluable aid of the Polish Dominican province, the move was made.

The annual seminar has been in Cracow ever since; its name changed during the Great Jubilee to Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society, in order to catch the emphasis of our patron, John Paul II, on the future of evangelization in the third millennium. The world’s only seminar named by an ablative absolute has just completed its 20th annual assembly, bringing American graduate students together with peers from all over central and eastern Europe for what my faculty colleagues and I have come to think of as Officer Training School for the culture wars.

On this 20th anniversary, it’s worth noting and celebrating Mike Novak’s indispensable role in launching this unique program in international Catholic education. I tried to capture some of the flavor of Mike’s presence to the seminar in recent years in a toast I offered last July at his retirement dinner:

“Just last week, Michael and I were teaching in Cracow, in the 19th annual assembly of the Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society….Michael has made many original contributions to the development of contemporary Catholic social thought, principally in helping the church grapple with the meaning of democratic capitalism. Yet, in our seminar last week, Michael returned to his philosophical roots and spoke about ‘the experience of nothingness.’

“He wasn’t discussing the Washington Wizards’ 2009-2010 season; nor was he reflecting on his daily encounter with the New York Times editorial page. Rather, he was leading our students through an exploration of the soul-withering nihilism that has eaten the heart out of so much of the contemporary world, and into an examination of how we might heal those wounds in our culture.

“As I watched our students interact with Michael, an image from Chaim Potok’s novel, The Chosen, came into my mind. At the novel’s dramatic climax, the old Hasidic rabbi, Rav Saunders, is mourning the fact that his brilliant son, Danny, will not to take up the hereditary rabbinate in his father’s stead, but will pursue a vocation in the world as another kind of healer, a psychologist. Yet Rav Saunders consoles himself with the fact that Danny can still be a tzaddik, a wise man who can help others grasp the truths of a truly human life amidst life’s inevitable pain. Danny, Rav Saunders says, will be “…a tzaddik for the world. And the world needs a tzaddik.”

“That is what Michael Novak has become in his eighth decade: a tzaddik for the world, a man of wisdom who invites others into wisdom. So please join me in a toast to a Catholic tzaddik-for-the-world: Michael Novak, the tzaddik from Johnstown, Pennsylvania.”

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

The enduring importance of Centesimus Annus

Columns - The Catholic Difference

Tuesday, 21 May 2013 19:21

Amidst the excitement of John Paul II’s beatification on May 1, the 20th anniversary of the late pope’s most important social encyclical Centesimus Annus, got a bit lost. Blessed John Paul II was not a man given to rubbing it in. Still, it is worth noting that the encyclical, which celebrated the collapse of European communism and probed the social, cultural, economic, and political terrain of the post-communist world, was dated on May Day, the great public holiday of the communist movement. It was a subtle but unmistakable reminder that, in the contest between the Catholic Church and communism, someone had won and someone else had lost.

Twenty years after it was issued, Centesimus Annus remains a hard encyclical to swallow for those whose politics require them to defend the constant growth of the welfare state, and to identify such bureaucratic and budgetary growth with compassion for the poor. The encyclical was also a sign of contradiction to those who had long insisted that Catholic social doctrine proposed some “third way” that was neither communism’s state ownership of the means of production nor the free market of the liberal democracies. By abandoning “Catholic third way” fantasies, Centesimus Annus firmly anchored the Church’s teaching on economic life in the realities of the post-industrial global economy while insisting (as the social doctrine had, all along), that economic decisions, like political decisions, are always subject to careful moral scrutiny.

What else did Centesimus Annus teach that remains urgent and relevant today?

John Paul taught that what the Church proposes is not simply the free society, but the free and virtuous society. It takes a certain kind of people, possessed of certain virtues, to make free politics and free economics work toward genuine human flourishing. Democracy and the market are not machines that can run by themselves, so a vibrant public moral-cultural life is essential to disciplining both the market and democratic politics. In fact, in the Catholic vision of the tripartite free and virtuous society—democratic polity, free economy, vibrant moral-cultural sector—it’s the latter that’s most important over the long haul. The habits of heart and mind of a people are the best defense against their allowing their political and economic liberties to become self-destructive.

John Paul also taught the Church new ways of thinking about the poor and about economic justice. In the emerging global economy, the Pope recognized, the source of wealth was less stuff in the ground than ideas and skills. Thus economic justice meant including a greater and greater number of people in the networks of productivity and exchange by which wealth was created and distributed: rather than problems-to-be-solved (as 20th-century welfare states understood them), the poor should be thought of as people-with-potential. Inclusion, not redistribution, became the paradigm of economic justice; empowerment and getting people off the dole became the measure of how well a social welfare system worked; philanthropy and the independent social welfare agencies it made possible, not just taxes and government, were the means by which the poor were to be empowered.

The encyclical’s analysis of the collapse of communism is also relevant to contemporary debates. Denying God, communism had a false view of the human person, and that was ultimately its undoing: it could not build a humane culture, politics or economics. This truth has implications for a world without communism, too. Culture is the key to making free economies and free politics work well, and at the heart of culture was religious conviction, John Paul insisted. Thus religious freedom had to be defended, not only against the hard totalitarianism of communist systems, but against softer, but nonetheless aggressive, forms of political pressure: pressures summed up in Pope Benedict’s biting (and wholly accurate) phrase, the “dictatorship of relativism.” Governments that impose political correctness through coercive state power—as, say, Canadian human rights tribunals do when they fine pastors for preaching biblical morality—are violating both religious freedom and weakening the moral-cultural foundations of democracy.

Centesimus Annus at 20 is coming into a needed maturity.

George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.