Veto by Annoyance

Last week, I mentioned two different Catholic legal obligations: follow the law, and fight unjust laws.  There’s a reason I mentioned following the law before righting injustice—we don’t like to think about it as much.   While there might not be so many complaints over laws telling us to not kill others, when it comes down to it, paying our taxes, walking at a crosswalk and following the speed limit seem to have almost no moral value as compared to signing the most recent petition to stop impressing children into armies in Africa.

But more than that, laws can just be annoying!  When I’m in a hurry to get home, or running late to class, the last thing I want to think about is that when I break the speed limit, I breaking the law as surely as if I snuck a Snickers bar out of a 7-Eleven.  However, as I alluded to last week, the Council Fathers of Vatican II have strong words about that exact activity:

“Others think little of certain norms of social life, for example those designed for the protection of health, or laws establishing speed limits; they do not even avert to the fact that by such indifference they imperil their own life and that of others” (Gaudium et Spes 30).

After all, remember last week when I said Romans tells us we should follow the law not just because we’re afraid of fines, but because we are bound by our very conscience (Romans 2:5).  And the moment conscience is brought into, we should recall Fourth Lateran’s comment, “He who acts against his conscience loses his soul.” 

I find a lot of irony when I hear someone say we should value democratic ideals so much that we send our military overseas to kill those who lack a legislature, but then drives home at 95 mph. I guess on the highway, the vaunted democratic process gets thrown out the car's open window.

Of course, this veto by annoyance becomes even more obvious when you think of alcohol.  When I was in college, the legal drinking age of 21 was simply annoying.  Perhaps it’s even bad public policy. Unfortunately, St. Augustine said “an unjust law is no law at all,” not “an annoying law is no law at all” or “bad public policy is no law at all.”  If every time we found a law annoying or bad public policy, most every business would suddenly find themselves tax-exempt entities. 

Now, certainly, we might claim that the drinking age of 21 is unjust—that our fundamental human rights as persons are being violated by not being able to have a beer on a Saturday night before the Earth gets around sun 21 times from the time we were born.  I’m sure the 12-year-old children who have been forced to fight in the Lord’s Resistance Army in the DRC feel the pain of our violated liberty. Sadly, when I was in college, I must have missed the liquor store sit-ins to resist the tyranny imposed by the oppressive Alcohol Law Enforcement.  In another striking moment of solidarity-by-Fried-Chicken, people might have been willing to drink a fraternity’s free beer to protest injustice, but no one was willing to go to jail.

So certainly, in a Democracy, every citizen should actively, And indeed, an unjust law is no law at all.  But remember, it takes a law being unjust before we can simply repudiate it and feel ourselves from the duty they impose.  As a Catholic, we generally find a good way to uphold the rule of law by following it.

And when law and justice are at odds, I hope we find a better way to fight injustice than at a frat party, hiding from ALE, holding on desperately to our right to Veto by Annoyance.

A Catholic Lawyer

Prescript: I apologize for my absence and tardiness today.  As you may know, I started law school, and have taken a bit of time to adjust to a new course load, et al.  I plan on returning to my previous weekly 8 am Sunday posts.  Thank you for your patience

This past Tuesday, our professor surprised my law school section by walking into our first class, and asking us to take a moment of silence to reflect on 9/11.  This wasn’t a class on criminal law, or international security.  This was Civil Procedure. For those of you who intelligent enough to avoid law school, civil procedure is the dreaded class that indoctrinates impressionable first year law school students in all the procedures you need to know to sue someone, in gruesome detail.   At our first class, our professor promised us that by the end of the term, we will know the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure like the back of our hands.  He quickly followed up with the warning:  “But don’t just read them; you might get to Rule 17, and then you will die.”

So why, in a class that trains a new army of lawyers to aid and abet a society often called overly litigious, about procedure so dry that we would die upon reading it, would my professor bother to mention 9/11?

My Professor had been teaching in California in 2001, so by the time his 8:30 Civil Procedure rolled around, the events in New York were long past.  He and his students arrived punctually, as one would expect in a class on procedure, but after playing the video footage of the attacks, he paused, and then asked them, “So what do you want to do?  Should we even have class?”

After a moment, a student with a military background stood up and said, “If we don’t have civil procedure class, the terrorists win.”  My professor says he didn’t know quite what to do with that, but hearing no one offering any objections, he acquiesced, and class began with cases talking about the evidentiary support required to bring suit in federal court.

So why did the student say the terrorists win if his classmates don’t learn how to sue people?  Well, there’s perhaps no other class in law school that allows one to take a stand against terrorism than one on civil procedure.  The whole point of civil procedure—of law—is to offer an alternative method for us to resolve our differences.  If I feel wronged by you, I submit to (hopefully) fair adjudication with the goal of just recompense.  I don’t ram my car into yours.  The rule of law is the repudiation of the mindless violence the acts that day.  The rejection of the belief that might makes right and that because we can we should.

The respect that Catholicism, and Christianity, has for the rule of law—even the littlest law—is remarkable.  If a law is not specifically unjust, we are under a strong obligation to follow it, down to the venerable Vatican II Council specifically calling out speed limits as something we are called to follow (Gaudium et Spes 30).  For, “whoever resists authority opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will bring judgment upon themselves” (Romans 13:2).

But the obligation to follow the law has a strong and equally powerful opposite—action against a law when it truly is unjust.  St. Augustine wrote, “an unjust law is no law at all,” and as the Fourth Lateran Council says, “He who acts against his conscience loses his soul.”  Yet as Catholics, if we don’t like a law, we can’t just shrug our shoulders, pretend it doesn’t exist, and ignore it.  Instead, if our conscience points out an injustice in our society—especially one that the authority that Romans tells us has been appointed by God—we have a duty to fight it with all our hearts.

In her welcome address, our Dean told us that in teaching us law, my school is giving each of us a tool of great power.  How are we going to use it?  These twin principles—upholding just laws and fighting against injustice—this is why I am studying to be a lawyer.  I study to ensure that we are a society of order, and that the events of 9/11 are a catastrophe, not an everyday occurrence.  I learn law to ensure we are a society of justice—that the last, the littlest, and the least are protected no matter the circumstances. 

I am studying to be a lawyer so that I can live, more fully, a Catholic.

The Ultimate Act of Faith

Contemplative monks and nuns in today’s world are often looked at in a negative light.  Those of us who live active lives look at the suffering all around us, recall God’s words about giving Him food, shelter, et al., and something inside us rebels against those who, in our view, lock themselves away from the cares of the world.   How dare they live semi-comfortably with a solid roof over their heads and often breathtaking surroundings, while children are being conscripted into armies in Somalia?  How selfish!  Aren’t we all instructed constantly by our teachers, our society, our priests on how we are supposed to give back?  Why are they exempt from that basic pillar of our society?  Give back to the world that has given you so much!

But take a second a reread that last sentence in a Christian light: “give back to the world that has given you so much.”

The world has given us so much?  What has the world given us? “All that is in the world…is not from the Father” (1 John 2:16). “Do not be conformed to the world” (Romans 2:12).  And finally, as Christ Himself said, “If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to this world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you” (John 15:19).

We owe the world nothing.  We owe God everything.  Christ did not merely say “be nice,” but “whatever you did for these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40). The only reason we owe the world anything is because, and only because, Christ commanded us as such.  It is God who has given us everything.  To claim the world has given us anything disregards the Creator from whom all blessings flow.  God gave us life, light, truth, and every gift that we have.  We owe God everything—not the world.

Of course, for must of us, the Creator calls us to take care of the world of His creation.  It works out quite well for us.  We work at some business, or in government, or perhaps even at a nonprofit (and then we really feel holy).  We tell ourselves this organization is serving God’s creation in some way, and then we happily collect our paychecks every other Friday, donate a few bucks on Sunday to starving kids…somewhere—I can’t remember quite where right now…to calm that annoying voice God put in our hearts we call “conscience,” and then take the rest of the money to go on a well-deserved cruise in the Bahamas. 

For most of us, that’s all God asks, so long as we get rid of any prideful notion that we have somehow “earned” that money through our own merit or that we have any more right to it than our neighbor or the starving children.  Remember, each and every gift we use, down to our perseverance and work ethic, is a gift God chose to give us.  God asks us to direct some of it for the good of His creation, and then, in yet another gift of love, allows us to enjoy our cruises even while His other children starve.

Again, no problem, so long as if God asked, we’d cancel the cruise tomorrow and go work in soup kitchens on the south side of Chicago.  So long as if God asked, we'd cancel the cruise tomorrow and pray for him for 9 days straight.  After all, Paul instructs us to “pray without ceasing” (Thessalonians 5:17), and even three thousand years ago, the Psalmist instructed us to pray 7 times a day (Psalm 119:164).  The contemplative agrees that he cannot turn his back on the world (Thomas Merton has written beautifully about this in his book Contemplative Prayer).  But He is called by God to listen to Paul, and takes literally the Psalmist’s instruction.  He cancelled his life plans to get closer with God. 

Sure, God has called few to this vocation, but it is a vocation that I have come to immensely respect. I spent this past week with the monks at Gethsemani Abbey in Trappist, KT.  I tried to pray with them 7 times daily plus Mass (starting with a vigil at 3:15 A.M.).  I walked around the grounds as a retreatant while they were hard at work, and I could feel the effect on the surrounding area of their 164 years of constant prayer in that location.

Most of all, though, I came to realize that their lives were the ultimate acts of faith.  The rest of our lives are full of acts of faith, sure.—we do say the Creed every Sunday.  However, we all have insurance policies.  We have kids we’ve raised, causes we’ve fought for, people we’ve helped.  And, just in case this God thing doesn’t work out, we can still look back on our lives and know we have a legacy.  We’ve been “productive—” we’ll be remembered. Even the Pope has overseen the largest international charity in the world, and the lowliest priest helps people who are suffering every day.

Contemplatives, however have no such insurance. They have no families.  They haven’t given money to causes.  Sure they show “hospitality” to visitors, but generally that’s the Cross of the Guestmaster, and no one else need really know they’re even there.

If you view contemplatives with the eyes of the world, their lives are of 0 value (literally: with their vows of poverty, their net worth is 0).  Even martyrs, who give “everything” for God, have more: every Martyr is automatically a saint, and is remembered throughout the ages with their own feast day. Not many people mourn the passing of a contemplative.  Name 3 Benedictine monks who you’d pray for if the got sick or died.  How about 3 Cistercians?  Do you know any Carthusian nuns? Bethlehem nuns?  No?   Good—that’s the point.  Merton talks about how the purpose of a monastery or convent is to make contemplatives understand in a visceral sense that we are strangers in a strange land called earth.   It’s a rare stranger who gets a eulogy.

A contemplative takes Paul and the Psalmist’s words very seriously.  Their whole life’s purpose is devoted to getting closer to God.  They have no back up plan, and no one outside their individual cloister will remember them when they die.

We cannot help but look at them, and think that they are fools. 

And they are fools—fools for Christ. 

Especially if there is no Christ.

This week, I saw many men living out this ultimate act of faith every day.  I knew hardly any of their names, but I saw every day a faith lived out without excuses, without insurance policies, without advertizing.  And I ask myself, and you, what do we do for God’s sake and His alone?  What do we do that, without Him, would be meaningless.

Whatever it is, that’s what we should be doing more.

Sisters

This past week, I took a camping trip with my sister up to Niagara Falls (graduation gift).   My sister and I have always been really close, but we get busy, and taking trips like this allow us the moment to take a step back and reconnect.

My sister’s one of the people who has influenced me most in my life: I started piano lessons because she started piano lessons.  I started gymnastics because she started gymnastics.  The list goes on.  Despite the fact we see talk to each other way less than we should, and see each other even less, This week, we kept surprising ourselves with similarities—the same reactions (literally saying the same thing at the same time), ordering the same food at a restaurant never having discussed it. 

But that doesn’t mean we don’t have plenty of differences.  She’s always been the adventurous one, the social one, the athletic one.  I tended to stick to my books and my piano.  She’s a high school English teacher, while I’m studying to go into law.

The Bible doesn’t really abound with many stories of older sisters.  But one exception is a story I particularly love.  It’s about Miriam, Moses’ older sister.   When Moses’ mother saved his life by literally setting him adrift down the Nile, Miriam kept watch over him.  After the Israelites had left Egypt, Miriam (by now referred to as a prophet) grabbed a tambourine and led the singing and dancing, composing a victory song to the Lord on the spot. 

I see a lot of my sister in Miriam: protective, charismatic, fun-loving, and creative.  Most of all, though, she is an inspiration to me.  The stories she can tell about the impact she has had in the lives of her students even in just two years of teaching can make me rethink my plans to Save the World through my Law Degree.  She reaches out and connects with all sorts of people on an individual level in a way I never will be able to.  Above all, though, she challenges me on a personal level.  Sometimes, that means getting me to more completely experience a waterfall in Hawaii by climbing it when I would have been perfectly content taking a few pictures.  Other times, it’s getting me to go to a club I might otherwise be a bit leery about going to, or introducing me to sets of people I would have never struck up a conversation with on my own.  It’s through the new experiences like these that I am challenged and can really grow as a person.

It’s so easy to get comfortable, surround yourself with people who think the same as you, and coast through plans that you came up with several years ago.  It’s easy to condemn people who act differently than you as cowards, fools, immoral, etc., all so you don’t have to deal with your own views and beliefs being challenged.  But my sister never lets me do that, and instead has taught me to look for the Christ in them, and the wisdom that they may have—however different it is from my assumptions. 

Aristotle always thought that the highest form of friendship was the one in which friends inspire each other to be better people.  I think the same thing might apply to family, and I’m thankful for the blessing that my sister is for me every day.

An Open Letter to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious

Dear Srs. Deacon, Farrell, and Zinn:

I am writing to express my solidarity with the LCWR during this time while it is in dialogue with the Church in this aftermath of the doctrinal Assessment.  I was praying for you during your meeting these last few days, and was pleased to read of your intent to engage the Church in dialogue over its objections to some of the theological views of your Sisters the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith found in its doctrinal assessment released this past April.

I was very active these past four years in my campus ministry as a student at Duke University, and I plan on continuing when I begin law school at the end of the month.  Unsurprisingly on a University campus, I encountered many Catholics who had many questions and struggles with the Catholic faith, which the current official explanations were insufficient to allay.  I myself struggle with numerous Church doctrines, and have taken all means I have seen possible to inform my conscience.  (Indeed, after I complete my J.D., I am seriously considering applying for a theology degree.).  Yet, the ecclesiastical hierarchy seems increasingly hard of hearing with respect to any sensus fidelium (Lumen Gentium 12), and the ability of our primary “teachers of the faith…and pastors”—our  Bishops—and their ability to “seek out men and both request and promote dialogue with them“ nearly impossible with so many other demands on their time (Christus Dominus 2, 11).

You and your Sisters are an inspiration for us Catholics in whom God has planted an invitation to engage with our faith at a deeper level.  As Sister Pellegrino of the Sisters of St. Joseph said at your conference, your use of dialogue can “model something different for our culture, for our politic, and for the Mystical Body of Christ.”  We are indeed one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.  However, our call to oneness must always be understood in the context of our catholic universality, and the authority of apostolic succession must be understood that holiness is granted to the whole Church—all “the holy people of God”—not merely those who have received the sacrament of Holy Orders.

Mary, who was no priest, had perhaps the most direct revelation of God’s Word of any man or woman who has ever lived.  Yet she needed no permission by either the religious authorities of her time or by Joseph for her to say yes to God’s call, or for her obedience to God’s authority in heaven to result in a worldwide renewal of faith.   I pray for Mary’s intercession on your case—that the Star of Wisdom and Comfort of the Afflicted may stand by you and strengthen you for what must be a trying time.

Thank you for all you do, and please know that I am continually praying for the success of your effort.

In Christ,

Shane 

The Correct Resolution

This past Wednesday, I was able to see the Venezuelan-American pianist Gabriela Montero perform at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s (CSO) summer home at Ravinia, just north of Chicago.  After her performance of the Grieg Piano Concerto—an old favorite of mine—she took a tune unfamiliar to both me and her that a random audience member sung for her and improvised on it.  (For the musically-inclined: she added counterpoint to a random melody on the spot.)  

Improvisation, or making up music as you go along, is normally strictly the realm of jazz pianists, but Montero has made a name for herself by creating improvisations based on well-known (or less well known) tunes suggested to her by the audience.  She does it with all sorts of music:  a Classical/Baroque Happy Birthday, Rachmaninoff’s 3^rd piano concerto à la Bach or à la jazz, a Romanticized national anthem of Scotland, and a latinized Harry Potter.

Certainly, if you transcribed Montero’s improv, it probably wouldn’t satisfy music theory professors who critique composers who spent years on their compositions.  But my jazz piano teacher in High School always said there is no wrong note in improvisation. Whatever note you play is the right one, no matter how weird it sounds to the ear. The trick, though, is how you “resolve” the note you just played.  If your note was dissonant, building tension or perhaps downright discomfort in the listener, do you relieve that tension with a harmonic note, or purposely build it up further for a later release?  The true art of improvising is making that choice deliberately and correction.  So “There is no wrong note in improv—just incorrect resolutions.”

This makes me think of how God works in our lives.  In his allegory, “The Music of the Ainur” from The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien describes the act of God’s creation as that of a composer directing His musicians (angels) in improvised variations on His theme.  Tolkien writes of God as the master improviser and composer, while the Devil attempts to insert His own themes and creations over and above God’s.  Eventually, there are two clearly different musics being played at once. God’s “was deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came,” while the Devil’s was “loud, and vain, and endlessly repeated; and it had little harmony, but rather a clamorous unison of many trumpets braying upon a few notes.”  While the Devil’s music might try to drown out God’s by sheer force of violence, somehow “its most triumphant notes were taken by [God’s] and woven into [God’s music’s] own solemn pattern.”

I’m always skeptical of the “it’s all in God’s plan” reassurances when things are going rough.  It’s hard to look at the Aurora shootings and say “Yup, God’s plan at work.  Isn’t it beautiful?” It seems loud.  And vain.  And endlessly repeated.

So instead of being endlessly distracted by the discord, I started looking for God’s resolutions, for no matter what notes the Devil may insert, the Master Improviser could certainly resolve them in a way to make even the most ugly act a part of a beautiful composition.  Then, I read this article a friend had sent me a few days after the shootings, and I realized that here was just one small example of God doing just that, and I saw in a moment of resolution a piece of God’s grace.

God gave us free will, and as a result, a lot of things against His law happen.  And it is so easy to allow the Devil’s dissonance to crowd out God’s melody of grace and hope.  Those of us forced to live with the discord can only strive to make sure that we don’t cause it and have the faith to look for those moments of resolution, for in those moments, we find not only grace, but hope.  And not only does hope save us, but with faith, perhaps God will begin to call on us to be a vehicle of hope to another person.  And that is the greatest gift of all.

A Weed Solution?

The article I mentioned in last week’s post has made me think a lot.  This is my response to it, so if you haven’t read it, I recommend clicking here and reading the story of Josh Weed, a gay Mormon married to a straight woman. 

Weed is careful to describe his experience of homosexuality by his attraction to men.  He notes, “Sexual orientation is defined by attraction, not by experience. ”  The latter part is true.  Or at least I hope so—else I’ve lied every time I’ve said I’m gay.  And certainly same-sex attraction is a pretty good indicator of someone’s sexuality. However, I do not think that for myself or for most gays and lesbians, “attraction” completely covers what it means to be gay or lesbian.  For me, being gay means I get crushes on and fall in love with men the same way many of my straight friends fall in love with women.  Perhaps this distinction between same-sex attraction and same-sex love is why I’ve found general the only people who stick to the term “homosexual” are those who are somehow uncomfortable around it.  Those more familiar with us “homosexuals” realize it goes deeper than just sex, or just physical attraction. 

Thus, Weed, though he may feel same-sex attraction, is not gay in the same way I feel I am gay.  One can be guided by something he points out in this beautiful quote:

“When sex is done right, at its deepest level it is about intimacy.  It is about one human being connecting with another human being they love.  It is a beautiful physical manifestation of two people being connected in a truly vulnerable, intimate manner because they love each other profoundly.  It is bodies connecting and souls connecting.”    

First, I would like to note his lack of emphasis on physical attraction in this quote.  This lack of focusing on merely physical attraction is at the heart of the Catholic conception of love and marriage.   John Paul II, in his Theology of the Body (47:2), reminds us that according to Plato, eros is the internal desire for towards everything good, which lifts man up to the divine (Symposium 205d, 211).  However, it’s more than just that.  JP II teaches, “man becomes the image of God…in the moment of communion—“ the moment of sexual intercourse (10:3).  However, humans acting in lust “no longer seem to express the spirit which aims at personal communion.  They remain only an object of attraction” (TOB 32:1). 

If Weed’s homosexuality remains limited to mere same-sex attraction, to act on it would indeed be sinful lust.  He does not see man and cry out in the “first time joy and even exaltation” of Genesis 2:23 of finding his “second self” (TOB 9:4). 

I have not experienced Weed’s separation of love and attraction.  Indeed, if it is possible to separate the “mutual attraction” John Paul II writes about as intrinsic to conjugal love elsewhere in TOB, and sex, it seems to me to be inconsistent with how JP II understood his Theology of the Body (though, admittedly, so is applying the idea of the love JP II writes about to same-sex relations).   Regardless, in this case I shall assume Weed has a greater understanding of his own personal experience than I do.  However, though members of Church may be tempted to prescribe the Weed solution to all their gay friends, I assure you, to do so would be to disrespect their self-understanding, and indeed the nature of love our late Pope set down that has been dominating Catholic thoughts on sexuality of late.

In any case, I want to end on a different note.  Since the whole Chick-Fil-A debate has flared this week, I wish I could write a post on it.  However, since I have gone on long enough about LGBT stuff, I want to leave you this last piece of food for thought on the human effect of the debate over LGBT status.  Please focus less on the chicken, and more on the meat of what he has to say, especially this: 

“…When we rant about the pastor who preaches that gays should be thrown into a concentration camp, we scream out of fear. And our fears are justified -- in the last seven days, a lesbian in Nebraska was carved with a knife, a gay man in Oklahoma was firebombed, and a girl in Kentucky was kicked and beaten -- her jaw broken and her teeth knocked out -- while her assailants allegedly hurled anti-gay slurs at her.”

I urge you in any discussion of LGBT individuals’ religious or civil status to be mindful of the context your words are spoken in.  Even if the above situation is not what is meant to be conjured by your words, it understandably might be.