Religious Intolerance

December 28, 2018 (808 words)

Let’s review the facts of the case: Separation of church and state is the best thing that ever happened to us. It allowed early American colonists to leave the religious strife of Reformation Europe behind, all those years ago. And it set the stage for the next two centuries of unprecedented prosperity.

Our special brand of liberal democracy has long since become the gold standard around the world. Only a few backward nations continue to resist this proven model, and as a result still find themselves riven with sectarian violence.

But is it really that simple? Is the path the modern world has taken really so above reproach?

The presumption of intolerance implies only religious differences were ever the source of armed conflict. It takes but a moment’s reflection to realize what an absurd premise that is. War is built in to the human DNA.

European combatants of the 16th and 17th centuries may have favored various denominations, but the parties were at each other’s throats long before the ‘Dividing of Christendom.’ And they continue to be at each other’s throats today, even if such contentiousness rarely rises to the level of military engagement anymore.

Ah, you might say, it is ideological differences that have taken the place of the old, religious differences. The only real threats we face now are from those countries that refuse to embrace Western-style liberal democracy. So what we used to classify as religious intolerance has sort of morphed into a resistance to individual liberty and economic freedom.

And we have been taught to think of any such resistance as representing a form of tyranny. We Americans have made it our business to “export democracy” around the world, either by means of economic gerrymandering, or outright military intervention.

It would seem that we, the champions of liberal democracy, are the intolerant ones at this point in history. We want access to natural resources or to vast untapped markets for our goods and services. And we are relentless in our pursuit of both. We typically unleash all this benevolent pressure in the name of “fighting tyranny.”

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… discarded as an impediment to the social order

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By adopting a strictly materialistic definition of progress, religious belief and practice has been downgraded and left for dead. We in the West, starting with the nascent United States, have set religion off to the side as no longer necessary to the proper functioning of society. In fact, it has been deemed an outright impediment to such a proper functioning.

As one half of a very popular song-writing duo once sang, we should “imagine there is no religion.” Then “the world can live as one.” But this is merely a simplistic reflection of how we, as emancipated individuals, refuse to have any governing body – either political or clerical in nature – tell us what we can-and-cannot do.

The thorough emancipation from authority, law, and tradition is what defines “classical Liberalism” (as distinct from the more commonly referenced left-leaning political sense of the word “liberal.”) This ideology – which has been wholeheartedly adopted by liberals and conservatives alike – is what kicked off the modern era, and is what has been at odds with traditional morality (a.k.a. Catholicism) for the last 500 years or so.

Liberal democracy is the political expression of this classical liberalism, and pluralism is the heart and soul of a liberal democracy. While political pluralism and religious pluralism are technically two different things, in actual practice one reinforces the other.

Both types of pluralism recognize and affirm diversity of opinion as the highest good. There is no longer a single right answer to any question, since everybody gets to chime in on every subject. The very idea of right-and-wrong cannot exist in absolute terms, since such arbitrary designations can only be arrived at through a broad consensus.

When we all get to decide for ourselves what reality is, to believe in the idea of moral absolutes is hopelessly passé. To think that morality is objective, rather than subjective, and is but practical reason in action, is not just out-of-fashion, but is currently held in outright contempt.

It’s odd how “reason” has been set up in opposition to “faith,” with faith being synonymous with religious intolerance, when it is a peculiar lack of reason at work in the world that denies the existence of an objective reality.

Without necessarily endorsing the political structure of any nation that continues to resist the moral free-for-all of a liberal democracy, I suggest that we in the West, and particularly those of us here in the Unites States, should be more discerning of the generally-held assumption as to what constitutes a good life, and whether we have, in fact, cornered the market on such a life.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.
December 28, 2018

A Brand New Day

December 25, 2018 (167 words) The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwell in the land of gloom a light has shone. You have brought them abundant joy and great rejoicing, as they rejoice before you as at a harvest, as people make merry when dividing spoils. For the yoke that burdened them, the pole on their shoulder, and the rod of their taskmaster you have smashed, as on the day of Midian. For every boot that tramped in battle, every cloak rolled in blood, will be burned as fuel for flames. For a child is born to us, a son is given to us; upon his shoulder dominion rests. They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, Father-Forever, Prince of Peace. His dominion is vast and forever peaceful, from David’s throne, and over his kingdom, which he confirms and sustains by judgement and justice, both now and forever. Isaiah 9:1-6 (b. 8th century BC, d. 7th century BC) Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr. December 25, 2018

Business Owner as Teacher

December 21, 2018 (1,004 words)

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime. While this is undeniably true, it’s still a lot easier to just hand over a cod filet and leave it at that, since teaching is damn hard work.

Teaching students in a classroom is a challenge. Teaching adults in a workplace setting is something else altogether.

Any individual who starts a business and nurses it along until it can stand on its own two feet has probably been endowed at birth with certain innate capabilities. Those would likely include an above-average level of native intelligence. With a hardy constitution impervious to illness, and a motor that never stops, so as to be industrious to an extreme. Along with a unique mindset that allows him to function as a natural-born problem solver.

The general population that forms the pool of said business owner’s potential co-workers and employees, on the other hand, may not be similarly blessed, at least not to the same extent. This deficiency leads many a novice business owner to expend an inordinate amount of time and energy being disappointed and upset with his co-workers and employees, because “they are not more like me.”

The key to overcoming this rookie frustration is to understand that you as the business owner are essentially a teacher, whether you like it or not.

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… at first you resist the idea

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At first you resist the idea. There is so much that needs doing, with the financial viability of the entire operation usually hanging in the balance. Every mistake, every misstep, could spell doom.

This sense of dread can prompt even a battle-tested boss to lose his patience and raise his voice. The floundering employees are usually not entirely sure what they did wrong, and are equally unsure of what they should be doing differently. Because they don’t have the benefit of the boss’s specific background, his years of industry experience. They are not able to read his mind.

If he’s lucky, the business owner will end up with a handful of employees who are a quick study. They do not need much follow-up or oversight, once the foundation has been properly set down. But there are only so many of those people to go around. As the staff grows, the more likely the boss’s co-workers will not have the same cognitive ability as the brothers and sisters he was raised with, or the neighborhood classmates he grew up around.

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… but these other can still be potential contributors

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At a certain point in the evolution of many types of businesses, the role of the owner changes from being point man driving sales, to more of a back-office operations manager, making sure the wheels turn as smoothly as possible.

Unless one has a stable of superstars, much of one’s expanded staff will require extensive coaching up, which of course is just another name for teaching.

The essence of teaching is being able to communicate with a target audience. Becoming an effective communicator requires empathy, among other things. The trick to not talking down to someone is quite simple: It’s learning to recognize and appreciate their inherent dignity as a human being, regardless of what they currently know, or what they can currently do for you.

The looking-straight-in-the-eye, rubbing-elbows-with type of teaching is obviously the most impactful, and is easier to pull off in a smaller organization. But large companies, even giant corporations, can accomplish the same feat, if they are willing to commit the necessary resources to seeing that the close interpersonal connection is maintained between each successive link in the managerial chain of command.

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… when another motive comes into view

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While a business has to be profitable in order to exist, making money is not the only thing a responsible business owner should be trying to accomplish. Once the rudimentary objective of profitability is achieved, it frees one to drill down a little deeper. Another motive comes into view, especially as one grows older.

For instance, instead of maintaining a payroll that keeps a tight lid on wages and benefits in order to enhance the bottom line, a responsible business owner will not only decipher how to make money, but also how to distribute the profits equitably among his co-workers and employees.

Instead of merely trying to provide the public with desirable goods and services, it becomes okay to focus on providing goods that are truly good, and services that truly serve.

Organizing and directing activity is the essence of artistry, and isn’t that what a business owner does every day? One might say the highest form of business artistry, if the reader will permit such an awkward formulation, is expressed via the initiative a trained staff brings to its daily functions. The natural ebb-and-flow of how employees interact with each other, and with the company’s clientele and suppliers, represent the fruit of a business owner’s instructional efforts.

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… more than just an engine of material prosperity

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The immediate goal of any good teacher is to make the world a better place, by respectfully and patiently seeking to increase the awareness and competency of the one being taught. When an owner embraces his role as teacher, business can be a boon to society, and not just as an engine for material prosperity.

Once a business owner has figured out how to keep the doors open and the lights on, there should be a more profound – dare I say altruistic – motivation behind the messy, stressful work he has taken on. Simply making some extra coin is a sorry excuse for getting up in the morning.

In the end, the best use of one’s innate capabilities is to create an environment in which one’s employees come to see themselves as co-entrepreneurs, responsible for and sharing in whatever meager success one’s lemonade-stand of a business is able to achieve.

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.
December 21, 2018

Taxation without Representation

December 16, 2018 (1,248 words) Our youngest is a senior in high school this year. He is studying the War of 1812 in History, and writing about it in English. The other night we both found ourselves standing in the kitchen, waiting for the water to boil for pasta, and I asked him how things were going. The following transcript is a reasonable facsimile of the exchange that followed. Son: The War of 1812 is generally considered the “Second American Revolution.” Father: Yes, that’s true. But it’s really not, that war is really the third. The second American Revolution was the Whiskey Rebellion. S: No kidding? You don’t hear too much about that one these days… F: Because it has been sort of swept under the rug. AR#1 (1775-1783) was when rich white guys rebelled against George III. AR#2 (1791-1794) was when poor farmers and distillers in western Pennsylvania tried to rebel against the rich white guys who had successfully thrown off the yoke of English rule a few decades earlier. S: Wait a minute, there weren’t enough rich white guys to fight the American Revolution. It was a cause that attracted widespread support. F: Well, yes, there are never enough rich white guys to fight any war. This is not to suggest such advantaged men do not serve and bleed. Only that proportionally speaking, the majority of combatants are always the common rabble. Wars are fought to protect or advance economic advantage. Most who fight and die, or who are irreparably harmed as a result of their participation, have no compelling economic interest at stake that prompts them to go to war, and they gain no long-term economic advantage from serving in such conflicts. S: Then how did the American Revolution gain such popular support? F: That’s a good question. How does any war gain popular support: through propaganda and rabble-rousing. S: That doesn’t sound right. We’ve all been taught it was the dramatic Boston Tea Party that occurred on December 16, 1773 at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts that sparked our revolt against England. It was everyday American colonists – members of the Sons of Liberty, disguised as Mohawk Indians, and not the landed gentry or business class – who were frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” and who dumped 342 chests of valuable British tea into the harbor. F: Yes, I remember. I was there that night. S: Come on, it was a popular uprising. We showed Great Britain that Americans wouldn’t take taxation and tyranny sitting down. It helped rally American patriots across the thirteen colonies to fight for independence. F: Sorry, son. I am really not trying to be argumentative or disagreeable here. But the taxes we were so worked up about were levied to help pay for the French and Indian Wars the British had already fought on our behalf. And the lack of representation we wanted to remedy would require a three-month boat ride just to check into Parliament and say “hello”. That all this came to a boil in the way it did was most certainly the result of propaganda and rabble-rousing. (Editor’s Note: For more on this subject please consult Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic. The author is Matthew Stewart, and his fine piece of writing was up for a National Book Award in 2014. Mr. Stewart and I disagree over whether the revolution was a worthy cause. He thinks it was, while I do not. Nevertheless I owe him a debt of gratitude for educating me on the under-reported ideological strains of that revolution.) S: Okay, but it all worked out for the best, right? We got the Constitution, and that’s a good thing, right? F: Well, let’s look at that particular chain of causality a bit more closely… England had rebelled against the Catholic Church in 1534, when its Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, declaring Henry VIII the “supreme head on earth of the church of England.” The Founding Fathers were, with one or two minor exceptions, British Protestants who had long-ago bought into their mother country’s walk-back from any sort of clerical oversight. Our most prominent founders, such as the ones who penned the Constitution, were not just Protestants, but enthusiastic followers of the Enlightenment. That was the hot new intellectual movement at the time, which took the old Protestant idea of “individual conscience” quite a few steps further down the road of “there is no such thing as an objective moral order to the universe, no such thing as an objective right-or-wrong.” The rejection of an objective moral order has been enshrined for us as “the separation of church and state.” The men who founded our country thought religious belief and practice to be a strictly personal matter that should not infringe on the public square, and should specifically not impede economic behavior. This, of course, is a direct violation of Catholic social teaching.

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… the freedom to pursue one’s own aggrandizement

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And in the end this is what the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment have amounted to: the freedom to pursue one’s own aggrandizement. (Even though the first wave of Protestant proponents thought worldly success was an earthly indicator of their eternal salvation). Our country is based on an amalgamation of Protestant and Enlightenment philosophy. The distillation has produced a strictly materialist premise: the protection of individual freedom, and the pursuit of individual happiness. This ideology, this founding philosophy, has admittedly been wildly successful in allowing a large swath of the general populace to improve their material circumstances, with a noticeably small minority amassing a truly incredible level of wealth. Neither of which is necessarily a problem, by the way. But here in the early years of the 21st century, after two hundred years of unprecedented prosperity, family ties and the social fabric are in tatters. The emotional-mental-spiritual equilibrium of many otherwise successful people is experiencing a not-so-subtle sense of malaise. What we have unwittingly accepted is an awkward, unfortunate trade-off: a tangible improvement in material well-being, for a faltering sense of spiritual well-being. As an example of this trade-off, we of a certain age now enter our final years questioning why we have spent our lives the way we have, chasing the next shiny bauble. We own everything we could possibly want, and then some. Yet our search for meaning is coming up short. This is the modern dilemma, writ large. Even limiting my political analysis to the secular benchmarks of liberty and democracy, our country is still not the unmitigated success of popular legend. For all the talk of American Exceptionalism, and of our being a shining city on a hill – for all the freedom we are so proud of – we have not yet figured out how to make the grand material improvements accessible to every strata of society.

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… the common good eludes our economic formula-makers

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The common good continues to elude our economic formula-makers. There are still large pockets of disadvantaged and dispossessed sprinkled throughout our great nation. Here in the densely populated Northeast Corridor, in many cases the forgotten ones carry out their meager existence mere blocks from where we ourselves have chosen to live. (Editor’s Note: This is the kind of casual conversation my off-spring are forced to endure on a typical spaghetti night, which may explain why they tend to move out at the earliest opportunity.) Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr. December 16, 2018

Why Must Everyone Be So Mad?

December 3, 2018 (1,168 words)

I seem to be out of step with just about everything these days. The most recent trend to have passed me by is “Catholic Outrage.” Any serious practitioner that hews to a traditionalist slant is supposed to be thoroughly fed up with Pope Francis by now, to the point of being spitting mad at everything the man says or does.

The latest papal transgression is the decision to “suppress” any vote or action on the clerical sex abuse scandal by the U.S. Bishops at their annual meeting which took place a few weeks back in Baltimore, MD. We are told by informed sources this has caused great disappointment and dismay among many in the clergy, to say nothing of the distraught laity.

While this disappointment is understandable, I see no reason to get overly worked up about it. All the Vatican’s Congregation of Bishops did was ask that the U.S. bishops not take action until after a planned worldwide meeting of Church leaders in February 2019.

That this request/directive was made known to the assembled in the opening minutes of the three-day Baltimore gathering was surely less than ideal timing, as it caught most of the 196 bishops in attendance by complete surprise. Especially considering they had decided – in an unusual move intended to display strength and empathy with survivors – to devote most their agenda to the burgeoning crisis.

Be that as it may, the larger point would appear to be how the Pope is looking to develop a coordinated, world-wide response at this stage of the crisis, rather than suffer the consequences of a possibly disjointed, country-by-country piecemeal one.

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…the prerogative of a Pope to pull rank

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Isn’t that his prerogative? While no one in a position of authority ever likes being told to cool their heels by a superior, why paint this fairly commonplace (if poorly timed) instance of a Pope pulling rank as some sort of dastardly “suppression” of a vote?

American Catholics, and the American public, are on the edge of their seat in anticipation of a concrete and comprehensive response from the U.S. bishops. The Vatican’s responsibility, on the other hand, is to try and assure that what the universal Church does next on this issue is as concrete and comprehensive as possible.

Having concerns and finding legitimate things to question about a papacy – or a civil authority, for that matter – is only natural. Every papacy has had its critics. The new aspect here is the way our 24/7 total access internet news cycle takes what is standard-issue concern and turns it into open disrespect, which then too easily veers into blatant ridicule.

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… tarring Pope Francis as Public Enemy Number One

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Anyone hell-bent on tarring Pope Francis as Public Enemy Number One certainly has that right, as a rugged, independent-minded American. But now, almost six years into his papacy, it seems we traditional Catholics enjoy discovering new things to complain about. As though we can only find our equilibrium once we settle on a certifiable villain.

We started off commenting ruefully on the way loose-cannon Francis would shoot his mouth off at every opportunity. Lately we are aghast at how he has suddenly decided to keep his own counsel, choosing not to respond publicly to the dubia (Latin for “doubts”) submitted privately to the Pope by four esteemed, international Cardinals after Amoris Laetitia (“The Joy of Love”) was promulgated in April 2016, or to Archbishop Vigano’s emotionally-wrought 7,000 word “testimony” released this past August. We shake our fist and wonder when the arrogant Francis will “break his silence.”

To the devout and well-intentioned who defend the faith by citing, chapter-and-verse, what they have been told are Francis’s imprudent transgressions, consider that every palace and political capital swirls with intrigue. Every career-minded bureaucrat or courtier on the outs – be they of the ecclesiastical or civilian variety – conspires to advance their position so as to obtain power. And the noisy disparagement of on-high leaders and rulers remains a favored pastime of commoners the world over.

While we can all agree the Church is going through a very dark time at the moment, I’m at a loss to understand those who claim Pope Francis is nothing less than the diabolical eye of the storm. He just got here in March 2013, for Pete’s sake. The clergy abuse scandal, for one thing, has been a half century in the making.

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… a canonical sanction, or a gentleman’s agreement?

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As to this past summer’s shocking revelations about Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, the infamous Uncle Ted was a harmless, over-the-hill octogenarian by the time Francis was elevated/elected to the papacy. McCarrick’s so- called “canonical sanction,” said to have been imposed by Benedict XVI in either 2006 or 2008 (apparently no one is quite sure when), turns out to have been more of a gentleman’s agreement, and not the iron-clad banishment Francis’s detractors now accuse him of rescinding.

Lest we forget, being Pope is a damn hard job. Regardless of how ambitious, manipulative, or “reform minded” one might be, no unworthy poseur gets to sit in the chair of Peter without at least a smidgen of support from the Holy Spirit. Each occupant will inevitably have his own personal style, and bring his own emphasis to bear on what he thinks is important to stress. This style and this emphasis will be attractive to some, and serve as a boon to their belief and practice. While at the same time it will be off-putting to others, and seen as a source of scandal verging on heresy.

This, by the way, is no different than what we encounter with our local parish priests. We may wish our pastor – to use a close-to-home example – would be a little more this, and a little less that. But the man can only be who he is, and despite his many flaws has consciously decided to devote his life to the pursuit of our eternal salvation the best (and usually only) way he knows how.

Concerning yet another area of papal behavior that has recently come under the microscope, each Pope will also have his own way of relating to the byzantine Vatican bureaucracy. It is now fashionable to write Francis off as a “dictator Pope,” while forgetting the last guy was seen as a bit too much of a push-over in this regard.

One hates to have to say it, but caterwauling about Pope Francis has become a reliable, rally-the-troops storyline for Catholic media outlets that seek to burnish their street cred as being ever so “traditional” and “orthodox.”

In a similar vein, according to the most recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, Pope Francis’s approval rating has plummeted among American Catholics. What an odd sentence that is to read. A Pope’s “performance in office” being evaluated on a moment-by-moment basis via a public opinion poll…

Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr.
December 3, 2018

Prosperity Happened

December 1, 2018 (55 words) Toward the end of his life my father developed a pithy, two-word answer to the question that continues to vex us. How did the culture go so far astray, and why did so many Catholics lose themselves in this wayward culture? Robert J. Cavanaugh, Jr. December 1, 2018