Preaching Trinity Sunday

Well, it’s Trinity Sunday, our annual chance to hear how poorly catechized our priests are. This year the priest was a really good one, but the homily was just as bad. Sure we should live in unity as the Father Son and Holy Spirit live in unity. But (a) if we don’t know what the Trinity is, we have no idea what it means to be like them, (b) that’s not the point of the feast, and (c) the point of John 17 is that we are bound together because we have entered into the life of the Trinity. If we’re not interested in the Trinity in itself, than there’s no point talking about sharing in Trinitarian unity.

So here’s six points to ponder on Trinity Sunday.

(1) Trinity Sunday is the octave of Pentecost. It is the culmination of that feast, not just a random Sunday in the year.

(2) Trinity Sunday is about God. Given than the Trinity is no more or less than the Christian doctrine on God, it wouldn’t hurt to think of this as “God Sunday.” This is the one time of the year that we are specifically enjoined to think about God himself. In traditional Catholic spirituality, from the Eastern mystics of the first millennium to the Spanish Carmelite mystics of the second, the Trinity is seen as the goal of our faith. This is not something to skim over on our way to more interesting things. The Trinity is the height of contemplation, and Trinity Sunday is the Sunday specifically given to contemplation. Homilies are supposed to make doctrine practical, to be sure. But the practical application here is prayer. Christianity without contemplation—and a Christianity that can never once, even on Trinity Sunday, think about God in himself—is no Christianity at all. That’s the point of the feast.

(3) We have only the faintest idea what Trinity, three-in-one, means. That implies, first of all, that we shouldn’t use the Trinity as a jumping-off point for other metaphors. We don’t say, for example, that since the Trinity is three-in-one, our families and communities should be too! We don’t know what that means! Above all, what should be stressed on Trinity Sunday is that God is beyond our grasp. Trinity means that God is not domesticated, not within our ken. Intelligible, to be sure. But not to us. Trinity Sunday is our time to realize that God is greater than the limits of our minds.

(4) Trinity Sunday is Christological. Historically, the doctrine of the Trinity arose out of controversies about the person of Jesus. Is he less than God? Sort of like God? A separate God? Just the one God sort of doing a new thing? No, Jesus is the eternal Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity. It is surely very hard and obscure to preach about how God is three in one. But this is not so hard to preach about. Jesus is God. He is the Son of God, and equal with God, and one in being with the Father . He was in the beginning with God. To talk about the Trinity is to talk about who Jesus is in his most deepest self, in his divinity. And to talk about who Jesus is is to talk about the Trinity. Jesus is God: there's a good homily.

(5) Trinity Sunday is about the Holy Spirit. Everything said about Jesus goes for the Holy Spirit too. In this sense, Trinity Sunday is about soteriology. Jesus can reconcile us to God because he is God. If he were less than God, he could not bring us into full contact with God. And if he were just the One doing something new, instead of an eternal person within the Trinity, there would be no relation to enter into: we would either have to melt into the sheer unity of God, or stay utterly removed. To say Jesus is the Son of God is to say that we can enter into divine sonship: that we can be divinized, as the Eastern Fathers say (and St. Thomas repeats). If you can't preach about this, you can't preach about Christianity, because divinization is Christianity. This is what it's all about.

How are we divinized? Jesus sends his Spirit, who dwells in our hearts. And like Jesus, that Spirit is not something less than God, nor some emanation of God, but God himself. The Trinity means that the Spirit who dwells in our hearts is God himself: and so we are elevated into the life of God. This is not abstract, and this is not obscure stuff about doctrines that don't effect us and that we can't understand. Real preaching about the Trinity is preaching about divinization, about the Spirit bringing us into conformity with Christ so that we can enter into the life of the Trinity. If, as John 17 says, we are to be one as the Father and the Son are one, it is only because we are to enter into that very Trinitarian life, through the Spirit dwelling in us.

(6) Trinity Sunday is Eucharistic. How do we enter into this life? Through the sacraments, and above all through the Eucharist. This is close to the heart of the Eucharistic prayers, at the Epiclesis. Eucharistic Prayer Two, for example, begins, "Lord, you are holy indeed, the fountain of all holiness. Let your Spirit come upon these gifts to make them holy, so that they may become the Body and Blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ." The Eucharist can become the Body of God's Son because the Spirit who descends upon the gifts (like dew, in the Latin) is the Spirit of God, God himself, with the full power of divinity. Unless the Spirit is God, he has no power to effect the awesome mystery of the Mass. And the Jesus whose Body and Blood we receive is no ordinary man, but God himself: not less than God, but God himself. And because the Trinity is inseparably One, by receiving one we receive them all. This is the doctrine of concomitance: sacramentally, we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, symbolized by the bread and wine and actually made present by the sacramental power of the Holy Spirit. But in receiving the Body and Blood of Christ, we also receive all that is connected to them: the soul and Divinity of Christ, and with them the Father and the Holy Spirit who are inseparably united to him. Trinity means that what we receive gives us the Holy Spirit within us, and that union with the Son and the Spirit is union with the Eternal Father himself. This is not obscure. This is the whole point of the Mass, and the whole point of our faith.

And so, to return to the first point, Trinity Sunday is the culmination of the Pentecost octave. On Pentecost Sunday we celebrate a historical event, the opening of the apostolic age. We celebrate the manifestation of the Spirit through charismatic gifts. But on the octave, we celebrate the deeper meaning of this manifestation. We celebrate that what we receive is not just the gift to speak in foreign tongues, or to heal, or to preach, or to be caught up in some ecstasy. We receive the very life of God himself. This is the heart of Christianity. It's a shame no one's told our priests.

The Benedictine Strategy

Papal names are a mystery. There is, it seems, some discussion of names among the cardinals even before they choose a pope. And so there must be: the new pope must immediately choose a name that will identify him to posterity. Hard to imagine. Benedict XVI, our present pope, has been a bit obscure about his own choice. He usually speaks of Benedict XV (1914-22), the most obscure pope of the twentieth century. It has been suggested that this comparison is meant to reference the predecessors: Pope St. Pius X (1902-14) was enormously popular with the faithful and quickly canonized; Benedict XV remains veiled in obscurity. So too, perhaps, John Paul II and Benedict XVI? That is the main explanation Benedict himself gives.

But there is no doubt he is also referring to St. Benedict of Nursia (480-543), whose Rule for Monks codified Eastern monasticism for the West and gained him the titles Patron of Western Monasticism and Patron of Europe. Before he was pope, Benedict XVI often spoke of the great abbot as one of his models for Christian renewal. Indeed, as we shall see below, St. Benedict might be the key to Benedict XVI’s evocation of the obscure Benedict XV.

The standard explanation of Ratzinger’s love of St. Benedict talks about small intense communities. The stereotype (which Pope Benedict has directly rejected) notes that John Paul II spoke of a “new springtime” and claims that this meant a rapid expansion of numbers and Christians overtaking society. Then-Cardinal Ratzinger, by contrast, is said to have preferred diminished numbers, a sort of separating of the wheat and the chaff, so that what Catholics remained would be really solid in their faith, and all the dross would be cast aside. (This view is often favored, I might cynically add, by those who think they alone are the true Christians. Theirs is often a Christianity without mercy, conversion, or redemption, a gnosticism in which the traditionalist elect consider themselves already perfect. But don’t let me tip my hand too much!)

In any case, the stereotype doesn’t fit the data. Benedict XVI has himself embraced the language of a “new springtime,” perhaps to undermine this opposition, and has been quite shy about affirming his vision of a smaller, more radical church, when asked. He has taken remarkably little disciplinary action, and has chosen to portray Christianity in terms of charity and hope, a message at least as welcoming as his predecessor’s. Indeed, as I have argued previously, the toughness of Cardinal Ratzinger may belong more to John Paul than to the man who is now pope.

So let’s rethink the Benedictine strategy. By way of contrast, consider the strategy of the Jesuits. The greatest Jesuit apostle is supposed to be the companion of St. Ignatius (1491-1556) St. Francis Xavier (1506-52). Xavier travelled unaccompanied throughout Asia, preaching to the natives: in India, China, Japan. The great image of St. Francis—and I do not doubt that it is true—is of him on the beach baptizing thousands at a time. It is an inspiring image.

Until you consider the fruit. The missions to these countries are, without question, the least successful in Christian history. India has a very tiny church, in China and Japan it is all but non-existent. There are, of course, external factors. Never before — or at least never since the beginning — has the Church faced such a highly developed culture. (Though of course that could be as much a blessing as a curse.) There were persecutions. But where haven’t there been?

The Jesuits pursued a similar strategy to the American Indians. America’s first saints, the North American martyrs (d. 1642-49), who were French Jesuit missionaries to the Iroquois, and Kateri Tekakwitha (1656-80), who was an Iroquois convert, are certainly inspiring. But what was the fruit? Are there any American-Indian Catholics now?

The Jesuits went to Latin America too, though this is confused by the confluence of Dominicans and Franciscans. It is confused, too, by the confusing state of Catholicism in South America. Certainly Catholicism won the day. But there is some debate about the depth of conversion. There is certainly a notable lack of integration: the natives were never allowed to become priests. I don’t know the history well enough to comment intelligently, but the case can certainly be made that mistakes made then are bearing fruit in today’s South American apostasy. In any case, South America is no straightforward success for the Jesuits.

Finally, the Jesuits went out to Europe. Here too they are considered heroes. But what fruit did they bear? In their early years, they are credited with half of Europe remaining Catholic. But the Protestant reformation — that is, the failure of the Jesuits in Northern Europe — was an unprecedented cataclysm for the Church in Europe. St. Edmond Campion (1540-81) may have been heroic in England, but that country drifted farther and father from the faith. Heroic, yes. Saintly, yes. But an effective strategy? No.

And indeed, during the four hundred years while the Jesuits dominated the Church, roughly 1550-1950, Europe itself collapsed into infidelity. Many of the greatest apostates of the modern age — from Descartes through Diderot, Molière, Voltaire, and de Sade, right up to Derrida and Sartre — were Jesuit educated. The tenure of the Jesuits was an unmitigated and unprecedented disaster for the Church in Europe. Many were heroic, many were saintly, but their pastoral strategy was the greatest failure in Christian history.

Compare the Benedictines. The Benedictines were the primary evangelizers of Europe. How? Not by standing on the beach preaching, not by sending out heroic individuals, but by creating little enclaves of fidelity, hospitality, and excellence. To be sure, St. Boniface (675-754), the English evangelizer of Germany, preached in public places and knocked down pagan altars. But he also established monasteries, bringing in holy people to live holy, unthreatening lives and to welcome whomever might be interested in the religion they practiced.

Under the Benedictines, Christianity took root in Europe, and grew deeper and deeper until the rise of the Jesuits in the sixteenth century. There were most certainly challenges: a pagan culture; the terrible violence of the Dark Ages, dominated by Goths, Vikings, and Huns; and later, heresies. It’s not fair to say that the Jesuits just had a harder task; it’s not fair to blame the different results entirely on external factors.

To understand the difference, it’s important, I think, to understand the parallels between the Benedictine monastery and the feudal culture of the time. From our perspective we might think that what distinguishes the Benedictine monastery is its seclusion. The Benedictine strategy, we might think, is to wall off the outside world, to head for the hills and seclude ourselves from the pagan culture.

But this is precisely what the Benedictines did not do. The Benedictine monastery was based on control of land, to be sure — but so was the culture of the time. Like every other feudal lord, they had their own place, their own serfs, and their own land that they farmed. That is not what distinguished the Benedictines from the culture around them.

What distinguished them was, first, religion: they prayed. They brought the culture of their time into contact with the eternal. From this flowed other key differences. The Benedictines loved one another, living peacefully instead of warring with their neighbors. They welcomed strangers, making hospitality their chief form of evangelization. And they embraced the intellectual life, keeping alive the Roman classics and the great achievements of culture and philosophy in an age that did not care. All these things made them a city on a hill, a light to the nations.

They did not so much challenge the culture around them so much as transform it from within. They did not separate themselves, but entered in — like leaven. The building of monasteries in pagan lands is a perfect symbol of this. They showed that the life their neighbors lived could be lived in greater dignity by being seasoned with divine love.

This also explains the successors of the Benedictines, the mendicant Franciscans and Dominicans. The early mendicants considered themselves monks and contemplatives, but the culture of their time was no longer so closely rooted to a place, so the mendicants went to the cities, and travelled throughout Europe — in imitation of the secular culture. But within that culture they gave witness to the beauty of religion, which led them to their own forms of hospitality, for poor and rich alike, of intense fraternal charity, and of intellectual and cultural excellence. They were leaven: profoundly different from the world around them, yet deeply embedded in that world, transforming it from within.

The failure of the Jesuits, I propose, was in failing to integrate. The Jesuits were the first movement to be exclusively priests, rather than predominantly lay brothers. They were the first to have no sisters. They were the first to go as active individuals, rather than living in contemplative communities. They were the first to put their priority in commanding the culture. The Benedictines commanded the culture simply by being the best. They led, as it were, by default: not because they took anything over, but because they were excellent. The Jesuits set themselves up to control and to demand followers. By being predominantly active rather than contemplative, they put the cart before the horse, trying to preach and lead before they showed how to follow and live. They set themselves up as heroes rather than models.

This, I propose, is the key to the Benedictine strategy. Today, the Benedictine strategy does not mean heading for the hills and abandoning the culture. Rather, it means embedding ourselves within the culture, being contemplatives in the middle of the world, doing what the world does in a more excellent, more beautiful way. The world around us is no more pagan than the Germany of St. Boniface. Different, to be sure, since it is post-Christian rather than pre-. But let us not underestimate the challenges of a pre-Christian culture. It was enough to defeat the Jesuits at every turn.

And that, I propose, is why Pope Benedict began with encyclicals on charity and hope. Our goal is not to take control of the world, but to season it with Christian hope and love, to live in the middle of the world as ones who hope for a lasting city. We are not to shout at the world and demand our rights, but to show the world the only true goodness.

Perhaps that is also why Benedict XVI compares himself to the silent, obscure Pope Benedict XV. This quiet man, welcoming the wounded, speaking gently of peace and truth, embedding himself in prayer—here is a model of the Benedictine strategy.

Abolish the Property Tax!

Too often gentrification is confused with economic development. There's nothing wrong with economic development, with wealthier people moving in and new businesses starting and buildings being cleaned up.

I would like to urge in particular that there's nothing wrong with neighborhoods changing. Indeed, an urban neighborhood is an organism; if it does not change and grow, it dies. Neighborhoods are not museums. Change and development are not the problem.

The problem is what Jane Jacobs calls cataclysmic change. Put it this way: the problem with gentrification is not new things moving in, but old things, and old neighbors, being pushed out. Cataclysmic change is bad for the same reason making a neighborhood a museum is bad: because the urban neighborhood is an organism, and life means development with continuity.

Concretely, the problem is that a neighborhood full of new people is a neighborhood without culture, without institutions, and without community. For a neighborhood to succeed, new things need to be integrated into the old, so that the newcomers, while bringing change to the neighborhood, also benefit from the neighborhood's accumulated wisdom. New neighbors need to become part of the community, because a community is essentially a set of coordinated parts. It takes time for people to learn what to expect from others, so that they know whom to ask for what kind of help, whom to trust, whom to watch out for. A neighborhood needs particularity: its own feasts and fasts, festivals and memorials, institutions and traditions. Without these, there is no neighborhood.

This is morally important as a duty to the old neighbors, because neighborhoods are people's homes. If cataclysmic change destroys someone's home, it does an injustice. But it is also practically important for the new neighbors, because neighborhoods are neither safe nor interesting without these webs of relationships. And webs take time. Neighborhoods have to change gradually.

There are two causes of cataclysmic change. One is straight-out bigotry combined with government power. In my neighborhoods, for example, the newcomers, who are richer, whiter, and more powerful, don't like neighborhood traditions such as fireworks and having a beer on the front porch, so they mobilize government to make these things illegal. They don't like certain businesses that serve the poor, ranging from some kinds of restaurants to payday loan services to wig shops, so they mobilize government to evict (or "redevelop") these businesses. Note that this can only be done with government power. More on that another time. For now, suffice it to note that the tools of gentrification are a strong police force and government zoning: big government.

But the other, indirect force for gentrification is the property tax. Property tax is interesting because the income tax, and even more, consumption taxes, are based on your own valuation: the money you actually receive or spend. But the property tax is based on how other people value you: what your property is worth on the market, and thus to competitors. If your income is worth more on the market, you can choose to get that income (or choose not, and therefore not pay the higher tax). Not so with property taxes. And the assessment of others is double, because first the market affects it, then a government official makes his own determination of how the market applies to your house.

The biggest factor driving cataclysmic gentrification is rising property taxes: when development comes to your neighborhood, it makes your taxes go up, even though your income stays the same. The dynamic works the same in urban neighborhoods and in the country. According to the Wikipedia article on the property tax, farms are routinely shut down when a development comes next door, because the farm generates the same income but is subjected to higher taxes. And we watch every day in our neighborhood how rising property values push the poor -- read, the people who have always lived here, the culture and institutions of this place -- somewhere else.

But this dynamic has an indirect effect, as well. It incentivizes government-sponsored gentrification. A municipal income tax is a financial incentive for the government to bring jobs to the city. But a municipal property tax is a financial incentive for the government to bring in rich people who make their money elsewhere. It encourages cities to choose business over residents and tourism over locals. (Note that the reverse is not true: the income tax encourages cities to lure residents, but part of the lure for residents is jobs nearby, so there's no incentive to push business out.) The property tax is a perverse incentive.

What's the solution? Just replace it. Cities need revenue, but they should collect that revenue based on the actual earnings or spending of actual citizens, not based on how other people who make their money elsewhere value your home. Income or consumption tax? That's another essay, but I guess the question is whether a city thrives more by bringing in spenders (who pay the consumption tax) or people (the income tax), and then whether raising a certain tax effects the city more directly (by driving out people who pay the tax) or indirectly (by encouraging the government to bring those people in). I guess on this calculation I'd choose a sales tax, but that's another essay.

Of course gentrification of a sort will still happen. When property values in a neighborhood go up, some old residents will choose to take the money and run. But it will be their choice. Rising property values will be an economic incentive to locals instead of a threat to their way of life. That is an incentive we can live with.

Abortion and Communion

In the wake of Pope Benedict's visit to the United States, there has been another flap about giving communtion to politicians who support abortion rights. John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, and Rudy Giuliani -- all vocal supporters of abortion rights -- received communion at the Papal Masses in Washington and New York, apparently from the hand of the Papal Nuncio (ambassador to the US), Pietro Sambi. It seems that some of them even announced beforehand that they were going to do it.

For the record, I stand with the rigorists on this. Those who make a career of directly contradicting the Church's most basic teachings in the public sphere are objectively in grave sin, and should not be given communion. I can understand the argument for why this might be hard to implement -- can every extraordinary minister be expected to know all the details of every politician? -- but in this case it was some of the most public advocates of abortion in our country, receiving from the man whose entire job is to be a liaison between the Vatican and the US government. There is no excuse, in my opinion, for Archbishop Sambi's decision. (And I do not understand the argument made by some that Archbishop Wuerl, of Washington, and Cardinal Egan, of New York, are the real ones to blame. Sambi is the papal nuncio!)

But I write this post not to give my opinion, but to examine the opinion of the Holy Father. This is a good opportunity, I think, to make a critical distinction in thinking through who Pope Benedict XVI is and how he thinks about papal policy.

We have been reminded in the recent weeks of a letter the future pope, Cardinal Ratzinger, sent to then-Archbishop of Washington Theodore Cardinal McCarrick in 2004. The full text is available on Sandro Magister's webpage, where it was originally leaked (intentionally?) in 2004. Cardinal McCarrick was leading a commission of American bishops in deciding what to do about giving communion to the pro-abort, nominally Catholic presidential candidate John Kerry. The letter is very clear:

in the case of an intrinsically unjust law, such as a law permitting abortion or
euthanasia, it is therefore never licit to obey it, or to 'take part in a
propoganda campaign in favour of such a law or vote for it' . . . . This
cooperation can never be justified either by invoking respect for the freedom of
others or by appealing to the fact that civil law permits it or requires it. . .
. Not all moral issues have the same moral weight as abortion and
euthanasia. For example, if a Catholic were to be at odds with the Holy Father
on the application of capital punishment or on the decision to wage war, he
would not for that reason be considered unworthy to present himself to receive
Holy Communion. . . . Regarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia, when a
person's formal cooperation becomes manifest (understood, in the case of a
Catholic politician, as his consistently campaigning and voting for permissive
abortion and euthanasia laws), his Pastor should meet with him, instructing him
about the Church's teaching, informing him that he is not to present himself for
Holy Communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin, and
warning him that he will otherwise be denied the Eucharist. When 'these
precautionary measures have not had their effect or in which they were not
possible,' and the person in question, with obstinate persistence, still
presents himself to receive the Holy Eucharist, 'the minister of Holy Communion
must refuse to distribute it'."

The letter was originally private, and Cardinal McCarrick directly misrepresented it, claiming that Ratzinger had told him it was fine to give communion to pro-abort politicians. McCarrick is a disgrace.

But the question now is, what does this letter tell us about Pope Benedict? It has been quoted of late as evidence of the Pope's opinion on this matter. I disagree.

It has often been noted that Ratzinger's successor as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, William Cardinal Levada, is not especially impressive. (CDF is the most important office of the Vatican, in charge of making clear what is and what is not in line with Catholic doctrine.) And it is generally agreed that Ratzinger picked Levada to be more of a secretary than a "prefect": to be a mouthpiece for the Pope, and to let the Pope make the real decisions, rather than doing much of his own volition. I think that analysis makes good sense.

Where I disagree, however, is in the suggestion that this constitutes a change. Strictly speaking, CDF, like every other office of the Vatican, is nothing but a mouthpiece for the Pope. Cardinal Ratzinger had absolutely no authority except as John Paul II's mouthpiece.

Now obviously one can give one's mouthpiece more or less leeway. Take as an example CDF's two fantastic responses to liberation theology, from 1984 and 1986. These documents, which amount to a repudiation of the liberation-theology movement, are beautiful works of theology, expressing an alternative vision of what liberation theology can and should be. It is generally agreed that they bear a strong imprint of Cardinal Ratzinger.

But their fundamental orientation, and 100% of their authority, come not from the Cardinal Prefect but from the Holy Father himself. We'll probably never know how much John Paul and Ratzinger collaborated in writing these documents, or who else was involved. But we do know that by their very nature, their authority came from John Paul.

In the case of the letter to Cardinal McCarrick, this is all the more the case. The letter is strictly disciplinary, not theological -- and thus I think we should take it as more directly the voice of John Paul. The CDF is, in a sense, no different from the White House spokesperson: he might be given leeway to explain things in his own words, but the spokesperson is never at liberty to announce policies that do not come directly from the President. The words in that letter, in other words, might have been written by Cardinal Ratzinger, but they are the words of John Paul II. I think it safe to assume -- and perilous to doubt -- that the letter was the direct product of a personal conversation between the Prefect and the Pope. (They dined together once a week.)

What does Pope Benedict think about giving communion to pro-abort politicians? Well, the logic of the letter still stands. Now, as then, the Church teaches that abortion is a grave moral evil; that a politician who promotes abortion rights participates directly in this evil; and thus that such a politician is objectively not in communion with the Church and therefore should not receive communion.

But there is room for interpretation on how such things are implemented. There is room for interpretation, for example, on the question of who makes the judgment. (Archbishop Wuerl wrote an interesting article arguing that as bishop of Washington, these are not his decisions, but the decisions of the bishops of politicians' home dioceses.) There is room for interpretation on how "public" a figure has to be: should every priest know Nancy Pelosi's record? What about Steny Hoyer's? How about a liberal city council member? All may be directly participating in the same evil, but where do we draw the pastoral line on deciding who counts as a "public" figure? And related, whom do we expect to know these faces? Should every priest in Washington be studying the pictures of every member of Congress? Should every extraordinary minister? If somebody sort of looks like Nancy Pelosi, should you withold communion just in case?

Let's be clear: I agree that John Kerry should have been denied communion, and I think someone like Archbishop Sambi ought to know who Nancy Pelosi is and not give her communion. And I think, based on that letter to Cardinal McCarrick, that John Paul probably would have agreed. But the question here is what Pope Benedict thinks. And what I wish to assert is that the letter "he" -- as prefect of a Vatican congregation -- sent to Cardinal McCarrick is not evidence of his personal thinking.

As a friend said when Benedict was elected, "he may still turn out to be a softy."

Holiness in the World

Last night, after the kids went to bed, I was babysitting while my wife was out with a friend. I've been reading a Catholic historical novel, The Man on a Donkey, about the English "Reformation," and the armed response in the North, "the pilgrimage of grace". The narrative is a little clunky -- the characters are more historical types than real personalities -- but it does effectively portray the horror of what Henry VIII did to the Church in England.

Last night, in fact, I was quite moved, more inflamed than usual for the truth of the faith, the freedom of the Church, and the conversion of souls, and of society. The Pilgrimage of Grace is quite a challenge: how does one respond to the forcible repression of the true faith? Henry VIII really paints it in stark colors, where heresy is enforced purely to indulge the passions of a secular ruler. It's easy to believe in passive resistance -- and indeed, I mostly believe that in matters of faith, martyrdom is more powerful than arms -- but here, a whole nation was being forced to renounce its faith. It's not easy to condemn the Pilgrimage.

I set down the book to pray, and to pray for my friends and family who still bear the bitter fruits of King Harry. For indeed, Protestantism succeeded almost entirely by the force of Henry's arms. I guess it can sound petty to be anti-Protestant -- but Protestantism has effected my family so deeply, and it really stunts the faith. So many things they are opposed to, so many beautiful expressions of faith that they scorn, and so much grace that they are indoctrinated against. It breaks my heart -- I hope I am not a Pharisee.

But I believe, too, that individuals are not entirely at fault: they believe what has been handed down to them (as indeed should we all), and their inheritance has been shaped by Henry's oppression. It breaks my heart that their faith is stunted because of social forces, because of the social repercussions of heresy.

Inflamed, I set aside Man on a Donkey and picked up St. John of the Cross, for I know that the only solution is holiness. How can I be lukewarm when the faith is so overwhelmingly beautiful, when the Gospel must be proclaimed? And St. John drew me upwards -- but also outwards, for I saw the beauty of holiness, and its necessary connection to true doctrine.

Everytime I read John of the Cross I think of a Protestant student who once came to us, speaking of the frustration of her spiritual life. She was, not to put too fine a point on it, entering the dark night, a place of tremendous spiritual growth. But as John so powerfully points out, too many people believe, and are told, that the darkness is a falling away, instead of a falling into. Bad doctrine makes people turn away from spiritual growth just when they are being called deeper. And in my experience, Protestants have no way of dealing with the mystical depths of the Dark Night. Again, my heart was broken . . . .

Then my nineteen-month-old daughter woke up, and I spent the rest of the night trying to get her back to sleep, and when that failed, trying to keep her laughing so she wouldn't miss Mommy. We played with a flashlight, we put blankets over our heads, we made faces, we played peek-a-boo.

And I saw, more clearly than usual, that it is all one. Where is holiness? In my vocation! How can I be a co-redeemer with Christ? By caring for my little girl!

I've been reading about mortification, both in the Imitation -- my favorite spiritual book of late -- and in John of the Cross. True mortification, true contemptus mundi, is not about rejecting our family for "spiritual" things. It is not hating the world straight out, or killing all our desires straight out. It is, rather, a purification. Last night, mortification meant putting down my spiritual reading to giggle with my daughter.

Mortification is greater love, not lesser -- it is putting to death the lesser loves when and only when they conflict with the greater. For when they do not conflict, they are expressions. The Lord calls me to holiness through my vocation, through the little joys and sorrows and above all loves of my life. He calls me to redeem the world not by turning away from it, but by giving my heart to him within it. This is what it means to be in the world, not of it: not that we don't care about the world, but that we care about the world with divine love, a love that draws us, and everything around us, upward into the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

That, may I say, is the point of this blog.

Old Buildings

In her landmark The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs defines the success of a neighborhood in terms of people on the streets. A healthy neighborhood, she argues, has people on the streets, doing things and going places, through all hours of the day. This is important, first of all, for safety: as long as there are reasonably responsible "eyes on the street," crime will not be a problem. (She notes that these eyes don't need to be especially responsible: you don't need heroes, you just need people who are awake enough not to let someone get beat up. Despite the horror stories the press likes to blow around -- stories that are very rare and have mostly proved to be be simply untrue -- ordinary people don't stand by while people are getting raped. Criminals know this, and any city dweller knows that the only dangerous street is a quiet one. Note that the grisly murders and rapes happen in Central Park at night, not in "dangerous" Harlem during the day.)

These eyes on the street provide the context for a vibrant street culture, with places to go and things to do. Jacobs calls this "secondary diversity": if you have the right mix of urban fundamentals, the little things that make life interesting pop up. Harvard Square has jugglers and fire-breathers because there are people there to watch them. And any decent neighborhood gets coffee shops, used-book stores, and parks full of people only when there are enough people around to frequent them. (A point Jacobs does not particularly ponder is that there must also be the proper economic conditions. I recently read that to open a home hair-breading salon in Detroit, you need no less than seventy permits: government can squash even healthy neighborhoods.)

Jacobs identifies four material requirements for a vibrant urban neighborhood: density, mixed uses, small blocks, and old buildings. The first two are obvious enough. The first thing a vibrant neighborhood needs is enough people to support all that "secondary diversity"--and indeed, people packed close enough together that you can walk places, stopping to look at things, instead of having to drive.

"Mixed uses" simply means that you have people there during business hours and after-business hours. It's hard to run a restaurant -- or anything else -- in a single-use neighborhood that is empty half the time: you need a lunch crowd and a dinner crowd if you want to make ends meet. And if the sidewalks are mostly empty half the time, they will be taken over by derelicts. Without eyes on the street, bad people move in.

Small blocks are less obvious but equally important. The point is simply that you must be able to walk from point A to point B in various ways. Super-blocks require a person to walk to work -- or the bus stop, or the park, or wherever one goes -- the same way everytime. In so doing, they effectively counteract density. Imagine a dry cleaner's, or a coffee shop: if you can't plan a route from A to B that goes past, you're probably not going to make use of these businesses. Super-blocks effectively build walls through neighborhoods.

But perhaps least obvious is the need for old buildings. Or rather, old buildings are often valued for the wrong reason. Partly claiming Jane Jacobs as an authority, neighborhoods like mine have established "historic districts" to preserve antique beauty. They place all sorts of requirements on owners -- effectively driving out all but the super rich, who can afford wrought-iron fences, manicured gardens, brick walks, and old-fashioned shingles.

But this is exactly opposite to why Jane Jacobs says old buildings are necessary. Old buildings are necessary, she says, because they're cheap. New stuff always carries the price of construction in the mortgage. That's why, for example, malls and strip malls are filled with high-turnover box stores: a poky ma-and-pop place can't afford the rent. Jane Jacobs's greatest fear for her neighborhood was that some do-gooding urban renewer would knock down all the "derelict" old buildings and replace them with brand-new stuff: effectively driving out all but the box stores and fast-food restaurants. Ironically, Jane Jacobs thought a neighborhood could only maintain the beauty of life by having crumbling old buildings for artists, ma-and-pop stores, and all the eccentricity that makes city life great. Those who drive out all but high-priced antiques change the city from a living organism to a museum -- and drive out the middle class in the process.

Old buildings is, I guess, the one place where Jane Jacobs almost understands free-market economics. Frankly, the market is something she never seems to have pondered, libertarian though she was in most respects. Indeed, in standing for old buildings, she partly stands against capitalism, almost begging for the government to protect us from "cataclysmic" development. But even there, Jacobs knew that the real threat to a diverse neighborhood is the government: only eminent domain can clear out blocks at a time.

The real way to stand by Jane Jacobs' old-buildings criteria is not by piling on highfalutin' government museum mandates, but by telling government to leave us alone so that the little guy can have a chance to contribute his necessary two cents to the margins of the neighborhoods. Only the government can take away all the cheap places to do business.

Traditional City Living

Civis has been away for some time, to finish his dissertation in theology. With any luck, I'll be back on-line now and blogging regularly. Thanks for your patience the last few months. Please pray for a successful dissertation defense on May 5!

Many orthodox Catholics (and other people of traditional sensibilities) agree that country living is best because it is most traditional. I agree with the major premise of this argument: it is best to live according to tradition. Or rather, it is best to live in line with tradition. It is not right, I think, to reject everything modern, which would ultimately be a rejection of human reason, but neither is it right to break entirely with the past. A truly Catholic understanding of tradition, whether ecclesial or social, reads with what Pope Benedict calls a "hermeneutic of continuity" instead of a "hermeneutic of rupture." Vatican II referred to this as "organic development": not breaking with the past, but growing naturally from it, with firm roots.

Although there are obvious religious and moral implications to this -- human nature and divine religion do not change! -- tradition is important even from a secular perspective. The political philosopher Friedrich Hayek, in fact, argues for small government precisely to preserve the wisdom of the ages, which is far too rich for any social planner to understand. Miss Manners teaches us not just conventions, but the little means tested over centuries to help smooth social interactions. Tradition means preserving the wisdom of the ages. Traditional living means a lifestyle that can benefit from our traditions: religious, moral, and merely social.

Here, however, I want to challenge the minor premise of the "traditional living" argument. Modern "country living," I would like to argue, is far less traditional than city living. I'll approach the question through literature, because literature gives us a glimpse of what "normal" life looked like. I'll have to be brief in order to scan a lot of literature, but I hope this will provide a lens for further reading.

Let's start with Nathaniel Hawthorne, a representative of life in New England in the first half of the nineteenth century. I wish only to note that the entire milieu for The Scarlet Letter is intensely communal. The story would be meaningless if Hester Prynne lived in rural isolation. Indeed, the ultimate punishment is to be banished from the company of the broader community -- not just immediate neighbors, but the town. I note that the opening chapters, "The Custom House" and "The Marketplace," set a scene that is not only urban but commercial: life is lived in close contact with strangers. There are problems, to be sure -- perhaps the point of the book is to challenge the way people dealt with this communal life -- but there is nothing of isolation, except in punishment.

I have no representative of Southern literature at hand -- only because I'm working on the fly -- but I would note that Jefferson wrote his romances about "yeoman farmers" with the leisure gained from slave labor. Indeed, as any visitor to Monticello can tell you, the best thing you can say about Jefferson's life is that he lived as master of a town, in close contact -- not just with his favorite neighbors (though the Madisons did often drive over and spend the night) but with people whose relationship to him was primarily commercial. The people of Monticello shared nothing in common except a place and a set of commercial interactions.

Let's move to the West. Here is Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy. It's been years since I read it; I believe Almonzo later ended up her husband, out West. But he grew up on a farm in rural New York: a good contrast to Hawthorne's more urban setting. Just flipping open the book, I see it begins with the children walking to school. It's not clear how far the walk was, but it was close enough that a nine-year-old child with only two pairs of socks could get there through an upper-New York snowstorm without suffering any ill effects. This is not city living, but it is even less like modern "rural" life. How many rural children walk to school today? Opening the book this way sets a scene of life in community: these are not people who live as rural recluses, but small farmers in close contact with their neighbors. Nor are their neighbors members of a commune: they are drawn together not by a desire to live in intentional community, but by the need to exchange commercial goods.

This economic community sets the stage for higher kinds of community. Chapter 16, "Independence Day," tells the story of riding the wagon in to "the Square," a space defined by the railroad station, to hear the band play and the Congressman give an address. On the way there through the "countryside," the streets are crowded. There are friends to be seen in town, of course, but the backdrop is strangers: "Hundreds of people were there, crowding to watch."

Like many, of course -- though far from the majority! -- Alonzo eventually went West, to where he met Laura. Little House on the Prairie (I picked it out of her many books only because it's most familiar) shows us true rural isolation. Chapter 17, "Pa Goes to Town" says it was a four-day journey, requiring a neighbor to come over every night and tend the family. This, I think, is a much better parallel to what modern traditionalists consider "rural" living: no contact with anyone but friends.

But is it desirable? The chapter ends with the joy of Pa having purchased glass windows. Discussing these things with agrarian traditionalists, I have often been pooh-poohed for my crass materialism: isn't family more important than stuff? Of course it is. But let me note that traditionally, "stuff" wasn't seen as such a bad thing -- and the stuff came from town. Even the most rigorous agrarians of the American West still pined for the latest modern conveniences, and treated them as nothing but joy. Meanwhile, the threat of Indians, wild beasts, health crises, and natural disasters define most of the chapters -- and I think it's pretty well agreed that Laura Ingalls Wilder played down just how threatening their life was. Nowdays people flee the cities for safer places, but traditionally, there was nothing more dangerous than rural isolation.

(An aside: to my knowledge, none of the recent school shootings has been in an urban environment -- most have been in suburbs, one hit the Amish. The terrifying Washington, DC, sniper stayed outside the city limits, preferring places of greater seclusion in the suburbs. Gruesome murders, from what I can tell, are pretty evenly distributed wherever there are human beings; they usually happen within families, so fleeing the city won't help you there.
The only "danger" of city living is gang violence. If you're curious about how "random" this violence is, check out this crime map of Philadelphia: look at how many people got murdered, then limit it to only white people. Modern-day urban crime isn't random, it's a scourge on the black community, which white people have chosen to run away from. Consider this statistic: last year, 1 in 7,500 Americans across the country died in a car accident (42,284 fatalities out of roughly 300 million). Philadelphia, the most violent of America's ten largest cities had 61 homicides among 680,000 white people, less than 1 in 10,000. So the average American is more likely to die in a car accident than to get killed, if they're white, in an especially dangerous and depressed city. And that's leaving out the role of behavior in determining which white people get murdered. If you want to survive this next year, move somewhere where you don't have to drive, stay out of gangs, and make sure you aren't black. Compared to other places, cities are no more dangerous now than they were in the past.)

Back to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Little House on the Prairie opens with their reason for going to the prairie: "Pa said there were too many people in the Big Woods now." Urban sprawl is not a new thing. Even in nineteenth century Wisconsin, the flood of people trying to live in seclusion meant not many places were secluded. Just like now, everybody moved to the "edge of civilization," and the wilderness was swallowed up. Why did Pa keep running away? Laura says he liked wild animals. But an awful lot of people went West because, like Hester Prynne, they had social problems. Traditionally, rural seclusion was a rare thing and not an entirely healthy thing.

Even in the West, Tom Sawyer is a more typical setting. Who can forget Tom running into his friends while painting the fence in chapter 2, "The Glorious Whitewasher"? Even running away down river brought them into continual contact with strangers. Characters like Becky Thatcher, Injun Joe, and the slave Jim (in Huckleberry Finn) are strangers, met on the way. From what we can see in Mark Twain, life in the "small town" of the old American West was not about seclusion and not about associating with just the people you liked. Traditional living meant constant contact, on foot, with strangers. I think this is a lot more like modern city life than anything in the country.

Of course, the US is strange, because for most of our history we had a wilderness. To conclude, let's take two glances at traditional life in England. First, consider the novels of Jane Austen. I just reread Emma and have it beside me, but I don't know how to make a good selection. For fans of Jane Austen it will probably be sufficient to say this: her drama revolves entirely around people walking from house to house and running into people they didn't expect to see. Reduce life to seclusion and only voluntary contacts, and Jane Austen's world is gone. I wish I could say more, but I don't want to go on all day.

For our last reading, let's go back a few centuries. The setting is London, around the year 1500. This is our first look at a Catholic country: although Henry VIII and his love-child Elizabeth were soon to impose a Reformation, I think scholars are now pretty well agreed with Eamon Duffy's thesis in The Stripping of the Altars that the Reformation was entirely forced on the people of England, who were deeply engaged in their faith. Our window into this world will be the research of Peter Ackroyd, one of the great writers about the City of London, in his vivid biography The Life of Thomas More. Here he's talking about the seven-year-old More's walk to St. Anthony's school on Threadneedle Street. I don't want to be pedantic, but this is great stuff, and Ackroyd has done his homework, so I'll quote at length (I'll summarize at the end, so you can skip the quote if you prefer):

On his customary journey of a few hundred yards from Milk Street to Threadneedle Street the young More passed the church of St Mary Magdalen near the corner of Milk Street and Cheapside; there was a cross in its churchyard which was 'worshipped by the parishoners there as crosses be commonly worshipped in other churchyards'. When he walked into Cheapside itself, or more accurately 'West Chepe', there stood in the middle of the thoroughfare a tall water fountain made of stone and known as the 'Standard'; here for two hundred years the citizens had filled their basins and pitchers with water, lately being taken from the River Tybourn. It was also a place of execution, and in More's childhood sentences of beheading and burning were exacted on this spot only a few feet from his house. Violent death was not hidden from the gaze of children. On the other side of West Chepe, beyond the Standard, stood the church of St Mary-le-Bow. The famous Bow Bell was rung each evening for curfew; this was the time for the shutting of the city gates and, to the delight of the apprentices, the closing of the shops. In More's childhood the tower was actually being rebuilt and was not completed until 1512 but still the bell tolled, according to season, at eight or nine o'clock. The tower had been brought forward to front 'West Chepe', and beside it stood a stone building with a gallery on its first floor known as the Seldam or the 'Crown slid'. It had been erected at the command of Edward III as a convenient site from which royal guests might watch the various pageants and triumphs that procedeeded down Cheapside on ritual occasions. But by More's time it had been leased out as business premises and was itself surrounded by other 'slids', sheds or shops. These were owned principally by mercers and haberdashers, together with the goldsmiths mentioned by the Venetian diplomat [in the previous chapter]. The old 'Chepe' had been crowded with street-stalls and street-sellers, but much of its atmosphere still survived in the late fifteenth century. With the ancient and familiar cries of 'satin!', 'silks!', 'foreign cloth!' and 'courchiefs!', it is appropriate to imagine the surroundings of an eastern bazaar or souk; the fifteenth-century city was closer to contemporary Marrakesh than to any version of post-Restoration London.

Thomas More turned left and walked down this relatively wide thoroughfare of mud and cobbles towards Poultry and Threadneedle Street. On his left hand he passed St Laurence Lane and Ironmonger Lane, among stone buildings with figures placed in niches, gilded and painted signs, timbers decorated with carved fruits or flowers, painted walls and gables, roofs of red tile, wrought iron poles bearing lamps, piles of dung and chips from firewood which had been chopped in the street before being taken indoors. In St Laurence Lane there was a large inn for travellers, known as Blossoms Inn, and in Ironmonger Lane there was a small church named St Martin Pomary on account of the apple trees which had grown in the vicinity. The whole quarter had once been the home of saddlers, tanners and tallow chandlers, but mercers had displaced them in one of those changes of commercial activity which are explicable only in terms of the city's own organic and instinctive growth.

There was, however, one other important former inhabitant. On the corner of Ironmonger Lane and Cheapside had stood the site of Thomas Becket's birthplace, now his church of St Thomas of Acre or Acon. So the young More passed each morning the memorial to the most famous of all London saints and martyrs. He proceeded east, past the Mitre tavern and the church of St Mary Colechurch which was 'built upon a wall above ground, so that men are forced to go to ascend up thereunto by certain steps'; it took its name from the coal and charcoal trades, like that of the smiths and ironmongers themselves, which had grown up around it. As he passed Old Jewry (from which the Jews had been expelled two hundred years before) he would have seen on his right hand, in the middle of Cheapside, the Great Conduit which had been erected in 1240 to provide sweet water from Paddington, carried in pipes of lead. In a contemporary map, it is possible to see the vessels of the water-carriers lying on the ground beside it.

Thomas More then took the left-hand turning towards Poultry and the Stocks Market; the poultry of Poultry are self-evident, but the 'Stocks' was actually a covered market-house for fishmongers and butchers. It took its name from a pair of stocks, for punishment, standing in the open space beside it. These were the streets and alleys among which More would spend most of his working life; he attended sessions, as under-sheriff of London, in the Compter or prison by Poultry and was also a member of Doctor's Commons, which met within the Court of Arches in the crypt of Bow Church. So the young Thomas More walked by Poultry and the 'pissing conduit' at the south end of Threadneedle or Three-neadle Street, passing several more parish churches and many 'fair and large' houses, until he came to a well at the meeting of Broad and Threadneedle Streets; just behind it, on the corner, stood St. Anthony's School. . . .

At the end of the day, after his release from school, it was a short journey from Threadneedle Street to Milk Street. The city surrounded More once again, and he noticed everything: his prose works are filled with brief but vivid intimations of London life, from the sigh of someone squatting against a wall in order to 'ease hym selfe in the open strete' to the beggars who display their cancerous or cankered legs on 'frydays about saynt sauyour and at ye Sauygate', from the 'meretrix' [prostitute] and her 'leno' or procurer to the wrestlers at Clerkenwell who take 'so great fallys'. He made his way among the pumps and springs and water conduits, past the gardens and the markets and the almshouses, along small lanes and even smaller footways, between the stables and the carpenters' yards and the mills, past brothels and taverns and bathhouses and street privies, under archways adorned with the images of saints or coats of arms, into courtyards filled with shops, beneath tenements crammed with the families of artisans, moving from the grand houses of the rich to the thatched hovels of mud walls frequented by the poor, hearing the cries of 'God spede' and 'Good morrow!', past nunneries and priories and churches. . . .

To be sure, the London of Thomas More's day was thoroughly Catholic; that's very different from the modern city. But I suspect encountering Protestants is the last of the modern parent's worries about bringing children to the streets. In his short walk to school, Thomas More saw extreme violence: not only the stocks where criminals were humiliated in the streets, but also the place of frequent executions and "wrestlers"--I think we're talking about open violence on the streets; this was a city where bear-baiting was considered good fun. He saw people defecating in the streets and people who were not just miserably poor but poor and ulcerous. And he openly viewed prostitutes and brothels as part of his daily walk to school. This is the very neighborhood where not just one but two of England's greatest saints were raised.

Along with the sex, the violence and the foulness, however, look at the crowds! On his short walk to school, he passed the cite of frequent pageants, street markets, businesses of every kind, and rooming houses of travellers. And I love Ackroyd's decision of the harmonious tumult of business: "those changes of commercial activity which are explicable only in terms of the city's own organic and instinctive growth." The old Catholic city was alive and changing, crowded, dirty, and glorious.

Of course, not everyone grew up in the cities. Medieval Europe was dotted with farms. In the time of Jane Austen, the farmers were tenants of great lords. In earlier times, they were "serfs," a friendly translation of a word that means nothing but slave. Of course, some masters were kind, just like some masters in the US South were kind to their black slaves. But let's not romanticize feudal serfdom. There's a reason they sang "the city air makes you free."

Now, I haven't proved that city life is good. You might still say that you want your children to grow up like Laura Ingalls Wilder, not St. Thomas More. All I want to argue here is that city life is much more traditional. Rural seclusion is not traditional. Complete control of who you see is not traditional. Traditional life, whether on a farm in upstate New York, on Thomas Jefferson's plantation, in Mark Twain's Missouri, in Jane Austen's English countryisde, or in Thomas More's London, was life on foot, among strangers, with the cry of the marketplace all around you. If it's traditional living you want, come join us in the city!