The Life and Death of Gabriel Fernandez

Gabriel Fernandez was just eight-years-old when he died two weeks ago. His mother and her boyfriend are the ones who have been arrested for causing his injuries, but it is the county child welfare agency that is shouldering much of the public blame for his death. Unfortunately, the outcome of such outrage, according to a Los Angeles Times editorial, "is too often a cycle of invective, firings, discipline and policy changes that may satisfy a hunger for action, but only of the wheel-spinning sort."

I wrote about such "hunger for action" last month, and here it is once again. A child is dead. Something must be done. Now! Something will be done, we will feel better, for a moment, until the next time. And there will be a next time, because we always manage to avoid the truth of such matters: We failed Gabriel Fernandez.

"You are my sibling. We are family. This is the essential truth of life. It is the only moral truth that really matters."

Being family means that we are responsible for one another. It means operating as a community that gets involved in one another's lives, not as a collection of individuals who simply happen to coexist in the same geographic area. It means that when one of our siblings is needlessly killed, we all share in the blame and shame.

Is that last sentence unfair or just uncomfortable? Look into Gabriel's face in the family photographs published by the Times. Have we truly done everything in our power to ensure the safety and well-being of all children? Why does our "hunger for action" only seem to materialize after children like Gabriel are dead, rather than while there is still a chance for them to escape the abuse? Is it only the social workers' fault? For me, it is the photo in which he is wearing a yellow t-shirt. That is the one whereby Gabriel asks me to accept personal culpability, no matter how minuscule, for his fate.

The Times editorial on this matter concludes thusly, "There may always be tragic child deaths. But we can do better." That means all of us. All of us.

Rest in peace Gabriel. I am so sorry that we failed you.

Forsaking the Masquerade

Another late post. Another week where the planned topic crumbles, because it turns out to be nothing more than "ripped from the headlines" garbage. Another opportunity to forsake the meaningless noise in favor of something wonderful.

Two unrelated articles: a Washington Post feature on three peace activists who broke in to a nuclear weapons facility to stage a protest; a First Things commentary on our brave new digital world's desire to turn a profit from doing good. Two unrelated sets of people and causes, yet the latter offers up the key that allows me to make sense out of my discomfort with the former: "hype masquerading as idealism".

I know, how churlish of me. After all, I should admire those who risk death to call us to peace, especially an elderly nun. And yet, and yet … At the end of the day, what have those activists achieved, other than getting a security guard fired and the government to spend more money on protection for the very arsenal they denounced. As I wrote three weeks ago, we insanely chase a peace we will never catch, because the peace within our grasp demands things that are just too frightening to comprehend.

"Hype masquerading as idealism." It happens when we forget that after all the swords are turned into plowshares we can still kill one another with the farm tools. It happens when we forget that our lust for profit has caused much of the misery we are trying to alleviate with our good. It happens when we leave the fallout from our noble intentions as a mess for someone else to clean up. It happens when we are so eager to play a part in building our chosen utopia that we fail to see the fully constructed Kingdom in our midst. It happens far more often than we care to admit.

"Why are you so anguished? Life unfolds as it should. Stop and enjoy the process ... that is why you are here, that is why you were created."

We are an impatient species. We believe that love involves action. It is a dangerous combination, because oftentimes the action that love demands is internal, not external, especially in those moments when our animal instincts and our peers are urging us to hurry up and do something already. So what will we choose to unleash: a whirlwind or a gentle breeze? And whose guidance will we choose to trust?

Protecting Our Family

In his homily for the papal inauguration Mass earlier this week, Pope Francis declared that the human vocation is to protect creation and one another. Evidence of our failure to live out this calling is not difficult to find. And it is easy to wallow in that failure.

All this week, I have struggled over what, if anything, to say about all that has unfolded in Steubenville, Ohio. Given the date of this post, I have not been very successful in coming up with coherent thoughts. It is such an unholy mess and I just want to ignore it, but there is something about that mess that keeps drawing me back.

We have failed to protect one another in a colossal way in this instance. It starts and ends with the evil done to a young woman by her peers. But in the middle of it all, we have created a circus. Our brave new world may provide us with the tools to enmesh ourselves into the lives of people we will never meet in person, but it cannot expand our willingness to actually listen to those people; that is up to us.

In trying to understand this mess, I continually return to the many voices speaking of a "rape culture" that they believe permeates our society. I can see the truth in what they see, and yet I still find myself uneasy with such attempts to package human behavior. Do these constructs help us to see one another as we truly are, or do they reinforce pre-conceived expectations? Are they a cure for what ails us, or just an aspirin to treat the symptoms? Would I see this differently if I were a woman?

And then into this mix steps Pope Francis, who will celebrate Mass on Holy Thursday at a juvenile prison. The man who told us to protect one another is going to wash the feet of boys and girls not all that different from the ones in Steubenville. We are being called to protect absolutely everyone, both the young woman who was violated and those who violated her, everyone. But will we be brave enough to even speak up for this kind of love, let alone live it out? More personally, will I?

But will it even make a difference if we do? Today is the anniversary of the murder of Oscar Romero. Last weekend, my wife and I watched the movie version of his three years as the Archbishop of San Salvador. What struck me, in a way that it never did before, is the reality of failure in Romero's life. He did not end the oppression and the killings. El Salvador's civil war continued for more than a decade after his death. What was the point of it all? What good did Romero's love do?

It is easy to look upon martyrdom as an act of futility. Who can the martyr protect after he is dead? But as I wrote two weeks ago, martyrs are meant to be confounding. They preach a truth with their lives that, in the end, our contribution of faith, hope, and love is the only measurement that counts. Is it a coincidence that Romero was assassinated while celebrating the Eucharist, or a sign of what our vocation should look like?

Perhaps that is where my unease with Steubenville lies. We want to fix it, but it cannot be fixed. We want to end violence, sexual or otherwise, but it cannot be eliminated. So we scream in holy rage. But does that rage draw us closer to love or does it simply fuel more rage? I keep thinking about the washing of feet and I see Monsignor Romero with a basin of water and a towel, kissing the foot of his killer.

"There is no ultimate triumph in creation, just more life and more love."

Harry Potter and the Simplicity of Love

Pearls of Wisdom from Professor Albus Dumbledore

1. Humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.
2. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
3. The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed.
4. We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided.
5. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.
6. Once again, Lord Voldemort fails to grasp that there are much more terrible things than physical injury.
7. Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

My wife and I finished re-reading the "Harry Potter" series earlier this week. And once again, I was captivated by how much the novels teach about the truth of life, love, and, yes, even God. In an odd sort of way, they also mirror the journey of faith: what starts out as a children's story becomes, in the end, a very adult affair.

For "Harry Potter" does not preach about the sappy love of greeting cards or the misty love of self-help gurus. No, it unflinchingly tells us that self-sacrificial love is the most powerful magic of all. It drills that message into us with the deaths of Regulus, James, Lily, Albus, Dobby, Severus, and so many others. And then it asks us to feel pride as we accompany Harry through the forest and stand watch while he allows Voldemort to cast the Killing Curse without a fight. As someone else once said, "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."

And speaking of Jesus, it has never been lost on me that the wizards and witches in "Harry Potter" celebrate Christmas and Easter just like their Muggle neighbors. God is never mentioned by name, but there he is nonetheless, hiding in plain sight. We could dismiss this presence as meaningless background scenery, or we could take it as sly evidence of a Presence that is the source of love and magic alike.

"For us, there is simply our way of being, which is a path of great power. This power takes many forms, but it always produces what we desire."

Many will scoff at the idea of a children's book about magic being a font of theological wisdom, but I think God delights in showing up in unexpected places. Besides, what good is Truth if you need a doctorate to understand it? It seems to me that our Parent wants to converse with all of us, not just those in graduate school. "Harry Potter" is a great reminder that the Gospel isn't so complex after all.

"Why do you babble so much about me? So much time and energy, for what purpose? What more is there to understand about us than love?"

On a side note, I am once again publishing on Friday instead of Wednesday. I fear this is not going to be an easy Lent for me. But perhaps that is a not such a bad thing. For as J. K. Rowling has so admirably shown us, the most difficult path to a destination is sometimes the only one that will actually get us there.

1.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", Page 297

2.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", Page 333

3.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban", Page 426

4.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", Page 723

5.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", Page 826

6.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", Page 559

7.   J. K. Rowling, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows", Page 723

Poverty & Greed

Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents. Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, "Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury. For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood." - Mark 12:41-44

3 December 2012: Almost time for children to learn a valuable life lesson. Santa loves rich kids more. - GS Elevator Gossip (Twitter)

The U.S. Catholic bishops declared January to be Poverty Awareness Month. In that spirit, two recent articles from the Los Angeles Times are instructive. Last week, we were introduced to Shahbaz and Shahzad, two children who, along with their parents and millions of other Pakistanis, are indentured servants. They are forced to accept loans from their employers to survive, but are not paid enough for their work to be able to repay them. The family debt, currently a mere $200, is the only inheritance Shahbaz and Shahzad are likely to receive. On a brighter note, luxury house flipping made the front page on the day after Thanksgiving. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

We are a nation in love with greed. In a commentary on the Gospel passage above, Professor Beth Haile wrote about a class discussion on tithing. One student said “If Jesus wanted us to give all our money away, why should we work so hard to get an education and a job?” I heard many similar remarks when I taught high school. It's all about the money. We seem to be comfortable with a world where some are trapped in a lifetime of servitude over a $200 debt, and others flip multimillion-dollar homes to sell to "house hobbyists" "looking for second and third homes." We may not say it out loud, but our actions state pretty clearly a belief that God loves rich people more.

There's no simple fix for poverty. Throwing money at it has not and will not work. We need to make an attitude adjustment. Jesus praises the widow for donating "her whole livelihood" not because poverty is good, but because sharing everything that we have is an imitation of the divine. The Truth is that God loves Shahbaz and Shahzad every bit as much as our own children. The only question is do we?

"Family is about loving one another, not using one another. Family is about sharing all that we have, not hoarding it. We do not earn anything; it is all a gift from our Parent. Family is about supporting our siblings, not controlling them. Family is about hope, not fear. It is time for us to embrace our family."

Poverty & Consumerism

“It is foolishness and a public madness to fill the cupboards with clothing and allow men who are created in God’s image and likeness to stand naked and trembling with cold, so that they can hardly hold themselves upright ... You are large and fat, you hold drinking parties until late at night, and sleep in a warm, soft bed. And do you not think of how you must give an account of your misuse of the gifts of God?”

... St. Chrysostom is not St. Francis. He does not ... give away all that he owns -- or urge his listeners to do so. That would be easier to dismiss ... He just insists, with ferocity, that Christians give away every single drop of excess. Chrysostom’s requirement is not absolute poverty, but a trickier, sometimes more elusive, ideal: enough.

"St. John Chrysostom and What We Really Don’t Want to Hear"
Holly Taylor-Coolman, Catholic Moral Theology

Tomorrow, local TV news will be full of stories about charity Thanksgiving dinners for the poor and homeless. Only to be replaced the next day by stories of people being trampled at the Black Friday opening of some big box retail store. The real tragedy is that we will pat ourselves on the back for the first images and shake our heads at the latter ones, when we should be thoroughly ashamed by both.

In a nation as prosperous as ours, why the hell should anyone be poor or homeless at Thanksgiving? And given that so many of our brothers and sisters are suffering in this way, how the hell can we be so obsessed with getting a bargain on meaningless toys and gadgets? What is wrong with us that we feel so little shame about this?

Poverty is not some strange disease for which we haven't discovered a cure. It is the natural byproduct of an economic system driven by greed. That is what I see in both the Thanksgiving and Black Friday news stories: greed. We believe it is acceptable for some to live in unnecessary luxury, while others scrape by. Throwing a few dollars or volunteer hours at the poor may cover up the stench and assuage our meager guilt for a short time, but it does not erase the stain on our collective soul.

"Family is about sharing all that we have, not hoarding it. We do not earn anything; it is all a gift from our Parent."

It is time to stop defending an economic system and start standing up for our brothers and sisters. All we have to do is say: I have enough; I've had my fill and I don't need any more; Let someone else have their fair share.

I know, easier said than done. As Taylor-Coolman says, "Chrysostom’s requirement" is tricky and elusive. I am certainly no expert at it. But truth is truth, even when it goes unacknowledged or is being proclaimed by a hypocrite. And the truth is this: "The gifts of God" belong to all of us, not some of us, and our Parent wants each of their children to have enough. Can we create a society that honors and lives by this truth? Not a snowball's chance in hell. But that's not really the point now, is it?

"It is time for us to embrace our family, even though we will fail, and probably fail miserably. This is another paradox of our Creator. We can never truly be one family in this life and yet they compel us to try, they demand that we make the attempt."

At the end of the day, it's not about ending either poverty or consumerism, it's about standing with our brothers and sisters.

"Yes, this path will be terrifying. It is uncertain and full of risk. But we owe it to our family to embark upon the journey. It is who we are and why we were created: to love our family, all of it."

Our Love of Violence

"Americans of faith today need to be challenged by a very direct question: do you trust God or guns more?" This was the response of Susan Thistlethwaite to the massacre in Aurora, Colorado. The people's answer to her query seems to be clear.

Mass shootings are not incomprehensible, despite what we tell ourselves. They are a natural by-product of our belief that war, abortion, capital punishment, and other forms of violence can successfully resolve our societal and individual problems. As long as such attitudes are the norm, some people will turn to violence as an outlet for their own frustrations. They will spew it like vomit, and no one will be left untouched.

This chaotic violence is not a modern phenomenon. Technology may have increased the destructiveness of the acts and our awareness of them, but this sort of violence has been with us since we first chose to use death to "fix things." Which, according to the Bible, was right from the beginning. And in spite of all that humanity has learned in the centuries since then, we cling stubbornly and insanely to that attitude. As much as I abhor the "culture of death" label, perhaps John Paul was on to something.

So how do we begin to trust God more than guns? We could start by actually listening to Jesus when he tells us to love our enemies. He is not being naive and impractical. He is telling us that violence is a weed that flourishes easily and chokes even those who think they can use it righteously. Only love can truly fix anything.

"Our brother calls us to love, love God, love your neighbor, love. How hard is that? What are you afraid of? If he was willing to die to love you, what’s your excuse for not loving those you fail to understand, those you despise, those you hate?"

We cannot embrace both God and violence. So which will you choose to trust?

"Conspiracy" (2001)

On January 20, 1942, a small group of Nazi officials met at a villa near Berlin. Known to history as the Wannsee Conference, the meeting was called by Reinhard Heydrich to solidify control over and ensure support for his plan regarding the "final solution of the Jewish question." It was a key moment in the execution of the Holocaust.

"Conspiracy" is a dramatization of this event. The screenplay was based on the lone surviving copy of the minutes prepared by Heydrich's deputy, Adolf Eichmann, and does its best to be faithful to the actual timing and content of the meeting. This is not a typical war movie, as it is driven entirely by dialogue, mostly of the officials around the conference table. A YouTube user summed it up best: "No blood, no CGI, no make-up effects ... and still a very bone-chilling horror film!"

When my wife and I first saw it, she was disturbed by the way that it humanizes the meeting's participants. They are presented as a variety of personalities, each of them possessing a mixed bag of qualities, ones both admirable and vile. To her, Nazis were inhuman and should be portrayed as such. For me, this depiction is what makes the movie so powerful. It is a reminder that we are all capable of evil.

We tend to label evil acts as senseless, monstrous, incomprehensible. We approach them as if they confuse us. It is our way of pretending that evil is the work of demonic forces, rather than the actions of our fellow human beings. We want to hold evil as far away from us as possible. If it gets too close, if it looks too human, we might have to confront the evil we ourselves have tolerated or even participated in. The scary truth that "Conspiracy" reveals, one we so desperately want to avoid, is that the Holocaust and other genocides were perpetrated by people not so different than us.

Check out this movie on IMDb, Wikipedia, or YouTube.