Who's Your Daddy? The State!

          "We are normally obliged to live for another entity which imposes itself on us - that means for the powers that be (the mother-father power, the husband-wife power, the boy-girl power, the power of the teacher, the power of the police, the power of the great economic potentates, the Power). Power - this is the enemy of the eyes and of the heart and of the lips that express the heart in words. There is no alternative: either we ourselves choose the other, which means still choosing ourselves, (and we will be submerged in the abyss of our insubstantiality), or the choice will be imposed upon us, and that means we are the slaves of power; or - and this is the right way - we live for another who by the nature of his being is ontologically the means, the road to our destiny. And  Only One Other said: "I am the Way". He did not say: "I will show you the way". Luigi Giusani,  He is if He Changes, pp.21, 22

Good to see that Msgr. Giussani included Big Business in his list ("great economic potentates"). I was wondering why he didn't include the State in his listing. Maybe because quite often Big Business is the force behind government. Here in the USA the power of the State is becoming Sovereign, removing the Church from the Public Square, all in the guise of being Beneficent Big Brother to us needy people who have to be taken over for their own good. People don't see how they are manipulated by the cliches and slogans from both political parties. So they don't get all that excited about the absence of the Church from society and culture. All they hear is about the fearsome dangers that result when the wall of separation between Church and State is violated. With the Church, there is still a chance we can come to see that ever act has a moral dimension, every financial transaction, every political policy decision. With the Church there is still a voice that speaks up for the rights of the poor, the dignity of human life, the fair and just distribution of wealth, the Social Justice Gospel in all its dimensions, especially the inalienable rights placed in each individual by the Creator.  Without the Church, with the Sovereign State as the only authority, totalitarianism in one form or another is the inevitable result.  The State makes itself into the god we serve and live for. That means Mammon, Money, becomes the Economic Potentate that rules our lives.

Book Worth Reading

Title:  Black Man You Are on Your Own
Author: George Sombe Mukuka
Publisher: www.publishamerica.net/product47859.html

            What did I like about this book? 1.) The subject matter: Apartheid in South Africa, in the Church, in the seminary, in the priesthood, and how Black Consciousness fused with the Gospel message of Christ to change institutional structures and make the Church more the family of God it is called to be. 2.) The methodology: the depth of research, the documentation, the interviews, the oral history, the scholarly organization of the materials, and the impartial presentation of a raw slice of life that is part of South African history, which deserved to be preserved, and would otherwise have been ignored and forgotten.  3.) The style: direct, clear, objective  narration of explosive issues that could easily have been mishandled by a less competent writer.

New Wine, old wineskins

         "...The first Christians were well aware that everything happening in them and among them - the new and exceptional compared with the lives they had led before, the revolutionary compared with the lives so many others around them were leading - was not the fruit of their adherence, of their intelligence, or of their will, but a gift of the spirit, a gift from on high, a mysterious energy with which they were invested."   Luigi Giussani, Why the Church?  p.89

Just like what makes us Christians so different from everybody else around us today, right? Of course not. The newness of the Christ event doesn't come through to so many of us Christians today because we are old wine skins,  and Christ is always  New Wine. With our set ways of thinking and feeling inside secure Comfort Zones we reduce Him to sentiments, ideas, rules, and acceptable norms that cannot contain Him. And if perchance, by a miracle of grace, He does slip inside, how furious we get when He bursts the wine skin apart. 

Counterfeit Compassion

".....Camus' hero cannot accept the divinity of Christ, because of the massacre of the innocents. In this popular pity we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss in vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber."  Flannery  O'Connor, Mystery and Manners, p. 227

Quote: Jacques Leclercq on the Humanity and Humility of Christ

"Come to bring men salvation, he subjects himself to the laws of nature: he preaches, and his voice travels as far as the human voice; he knows all nature's secrets, he would have been able to pre-empt the discoveries of this age of ours carrying man's voice through space, and he did not want to; the men of his day did not speak to each other across continents, and he did not want his voice to travel further than the voice of others. .... 

          He speaks in the language of his time, he expresses himself according to the customs of his country; his manner reflects the manner of thinking an of feeling of his country and his time. ...There are miracles, yes, ...The miracles are the manifestation of his transcendence, and in the ordinary course of his life, they do not stop him from accepting the human order and submitting all he does to it." Quoted in  Why the Church,  Luigi Giussani, p.146

    

Giussani Quotation: Love for Truth

"In effect, an individual must possess a profound desire for truth in order to overcome the scandal of the instrument communicating it."  Why the Church,  Luigi Giussani, p.130

"A gold prospector would never have been  daunted by the mud of the river bed where he hoped to find nuggets. Rather he would have been motivated by the probability of finding gold, not  by the conditions he would have to face in order to come across it." p.131

Machiavelli comments on Chief Justice Roberts

 SR: What do you think of Chief Justice Roberts’ ruling?

M: First, why don’t you tell me how you feel about the ruling?

 SR: How do I feel?   Let down! Disappointed!  I was hoping for a much different outcome.

M:  Oh you poor thing, you wanted Roberts to be your savior, did you? He was to strike down the law, eliminate the problem and solve your Church-State dilemma? You had a bunch of unreal expectations, didn’t you!? Roberts is not God, you know. 

SR: I don’t expect him to be God! At least he could have acted the like so-called Conservative he is supposed to be!

M: Well, he didn't do what you wanted, did he? Instead of playing God, he played Solomon. He neatly dodged the complex problems the law creates by following his Conservative policy of judicial restraint.  He left no side a total winner, and no one a total loser.  So the struggle remains. And the question too:  which side wants to win more?  And what will the victory cost?

SR:  Well, we can’t let the law stand. I think it is a heck of a stretch to establish the law by calling it a tax.

M: Yes, this accommodation by Roberts is a stretch, maybe even a “bending over backwards”. But so what? The real question is what do you do next? How will this ruling affect the lawsuits your Church has before the court?

SR: I don’t know.  Also, with the presidential campaign going on and the economy still shaky, almost anything can happen.

M:  Right! No one knows what’s coming. That is what makes the soap opera of American Politics so amusing.  But of course, you Catholics have no cause for worry, do you?

SR: What do you mean?

M: You people believe that Jesus is the Lord of History, do you not? You believe He uses evil to accomplish good! He turns defeat into victory! Ultimately He makes sense out of all the suffering and disasters you run into in life, right?

 SR: Yes, but the way you put it is an oversimplification.

M: Not really. You believe you end up in heaven or hell, and that is all that matters. So now all you have to do is throw yourself into the fray, because even if you lose, you win.

SR: What do you mean?

 M: Perhaps your Church in America could be going through its version of the French Revolution.  I don’t mean that the clergy and nuns will be guillotined necessarily, but that the State will disestablish you, take over your schools, hospitals, and service agencies and make them into truly American institutions that give the Public what it entitled to by  the law of the land. 

SR: That would be a travesty of justice! It would be against everything the Constitution says and the rights we are guaranteed!

 M: Perhaps. But then again perhaps not, given the “evolving” way the Constitution is being read in your times.  It is quite likely that the Sovereign State will continue to expand its reach in society and eliminate the Church from Public Life. It has happened time and again in the past. You know that from history, don’t you?

SR: Yes, but what is the point of your argument? Where are you going with this?

M: It is very simple, really.  If Obama gets re-elected and Obama Care gets strictly enforced, then the Church loses what little influence and power it has in society. You believers can always say the Church’s defeat was God’s way of purifying the the institution, much as He used Israel’s enemies to grind His rebellious people into submission. 

SR:  What if Obama loses the election, and Obama Care gets struck down?

 M: Then for the time being you have “dodged the bullet”, as the expression goes. If your Church wins its lawsuits, and Romney  wins the election, then you can all breathe easy and continue on your complacent way until new crises occur. Either way, what does it matter? Win or lose,   eventually you will all be swept up in the sands of time, right?

 SR: As usual, I don’t totally agree, but don’t know exactly what to say in response. 

M:  So then,  say nothing for now. I always enjoy having the last word.

 

Quotation: Giussani

       "The human being is a relationship with the eternal mystery of the Trinity, which we know as the humanity of Christ. The humanity of Christ is what allows us to keep our eyes, hearts, and minds open, directed to the true goal for which our parents conceived us and gave birth to us. Our relationship is with the infinite." The Risk of Education, p.107

Quotation:Giussani

        "...the unknown is the most fascinating aspect of the Great Presence. The unknown maintains its provocative quality, even when, having been blessed with grace,  we dare to address the Presence in intimate terms, calling it "you.'"

Quotation: Marcello Pera

        "The only thing worse than living without roots is struggling to get by without a future."

Quotation: David L. Schindler

      "We belong to the truth before the truth belongs to us. Although both of these statements are true, a reversal in their order changes the meaning and integrity of both the truth and ourselves."

Quotation: Giussani

Christ is not "something" alongside but something "inside", inside your joy, inside your tiredness, inside your connivance or your common life, inside your repulsion, or inside your liking. Awareness of the Mystery Present makes our life a constant stream of novelty. With the acknowledgement of this dramatic presence in which the divinity dwells in the flesh, something new "begins"- today at 11 o'clock, at 1 o'clock, tomorrow at 3, or at 4. At any moment at all, something new begins.

Quotations: Christopher Dawson

     "But, it will be asked, is not the idea of a return to Christian civilization irreconcilable with the conditions of the modern world which are accepted today by Christians as well as secularists? Certainly there can be no question of a return to the old regime of the alliance between Church and State or the ecclesiastical domination of society. But this does not mean that we can afford to reject the ideal of  a Christian civilization...The kingdom of God is a universal kingdom: there is no aspect of human life that stands outside it or is not in some way tributary to it. It is the nature of Christianity to be a world transforming movement. "  Christopher Dawson, The Historic Reality of Christian Culture  (New York: Harper and Brothers,  1960),  42