When my Superior General ordered me to address this memorable gathering, I, in obedience of course, accepted to his decree. Unlike Father Drinan who was “silenced”, so to speak, I was commanded to talk. So here I am, full of fear and trepidation as the saying goes, but at least executing my General’s orders. Sargents are mere enlisted men, said Father Richard A. McCormick, S.J., when be ordered me into verbal action. Let us hope that he was wiser than I think he was.
Anyone with even a modicum of historical knowledge would hesitate to expose his or her intellectual resources, or lack thereof, before the Society of Jesus, -- the most formidable array of intellects and saints ever assembled on a permanent basis in Western history. Not Oxford, or Paris, Bologna, or Heidelberg, not even Cracow, has ever surpassed the continuous brilliance of the widely dispersed (geographically speaking) yet intensely focused (spiritually speaking) membership of your miraculous company.
From its very beginnings our country has been the beneficiary of the Jesuit presence. Your own Andrew White celebrated the first Mass ever offered on the soil of the thirteen-original colonies. My home state of Maryland has been the locus of Jesuit mission work since 1634. The debts we owe to the Society of Jesus are incalculable: -- education given overseas in the 17th Century to our founders like John Carroll and Charles Carroll; Woodstock; Georgetown, Loyola and all the high schools; Gustav Weigel, John Courtney Murray, John LaFarge, and hundreds more. Yes, Maryland especially, but the whole of our land, has been different because of Jesuit martyrs, writers, explorers, theologians, brothers, parish priests, and yes, politicians. I am acutely conscious of their faith, their works, their love, as I speak to you, the living bearers of their tradition, the living incarnations of the spirit of St. Ignatius and of St. Francis Xavier.
What can I say to such a community? Not much I fear; but then, I dare to hope, perhaps the needs of a layman may interest you. What does the average man, woman, child need from the Society of Jesus today? Do you have anything rare or perhaps unique to assist ordinary people with their problem today?
About ten years ago I was in Paris as the U.S. Ambassador to France. One day I spoke with a priest who had sought me out for advice on his career. He had decided to leave the priesthood and his position as head of a large order working in an African country. He wanted to join a career service like the international career system of the United Nations; or the U.S. Government’s civil service. I willingly helped him. I think he ultimately got the job he was seeking. But before he left my office I asked if he would answer a question I couldn’t get out of my head.
“Why,” I asked him, “do you want to leave the priesthood and your position in charge more than 150 members of your order working in Africa to join the U.S. government civil service or the United Nations?”
Presumptuously, egotistically, I said,--- “No matter how successful you are in this new work, you will never be as successful in it as I already am. You will never get the power or influence in government I already have. Yet, (I told him), every day I need what a priest has. You are giving up what I, and other government officials, need most to become as needy as we are.’'
Today I still feel the same way. Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini needed Christ more than power. The slaughtered heads of states in Africa, The Latin America. Europe, in the USA, in this 20th Century of progress and enlightenment, have all needed something more than power. And so have their followers. But what have we offered them? For the most part, I fear, the suggestions they have received from the Church, and from the Jesuits, were traditional suggestions, devotions, and learning rooted in the philosophy of the Middle Ages, the political structures of the Middle Ages, the social practices of the Middle Ages. Our Catholic language, music, thinking, liturgy, were not in tune with the times or the mindset of the politics, science, economics of the modern world. We were a Roman in structure as the Imperial Romans themselves. Then came Leo XIII and Rerum Novarum—almost 100 years ago! Since then, and especially since Vatican II and Paul VI, our Popes have issued document after document, our Bishops (for the most part) have urged our people onward into the new era now emerging before our eyes. But most lay people have little awareness of what’s been happening. They feel little responsibility for, or engagement in, efforts being made to bring modern people, with their modern problems, face-to-face with Jesus Christ, and His Way of thinking, His Way of acting, His Way of resolving problems.
Why is this so?
I am not sure, but I’d like to share a few reflections on this question and offer a few suggestions.
Let’s start with our Catholic colleges and universities.
If I were to study economics at Detroit, John Carroll or Georgetown, would I get any understanding of Christ as an economist? Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I’m guessing that graduation with a BA or MA or possibly a Ph.D. in Economics from Detroit, John Carroll or Georgetown can be achieved with courses and papers and treatises similar to those acceptable at Yale, Columbia, Chicago, Harvard or Ohio State. If Marxists, however, controlled departmental requirements in Economics, the students would be studying some theories and organizational structures for society far different from the ideas taught in our American colleges today.
Do Christian economists have no alternatives to capitalist or Marxist economics? Do we all agree with Michael Novak and the American Enterprise Institute that competitive market forces and the free enterprise system are God’s greatest gift to economic man?
Pedro Arrupe wrote in 1977, “An attitude in harmony with the Gospels should be austere and anti-consumerist in nature. We are being called upon today to live much more simply as human individuals, families, and social groups; to halt or at least, slow down the spiral of luxurious living and social competition. We must realize that to have enough is enough. If we accept the logic of the Gospel we are also bound to renounce what we need because someone else has a greater need than ours.” Father Arrupe is not an economist; but if he’s right about “the logic of the Gospels’’ and its requirements, I wonder in what Catholic University that logic is being taught in the economics department or business school.
Do we offer courses analyzing contemporary advertising from the viewpoint of “the logic of the Gospels”? Do any advertisements urge us to renounce our needs? Do we analyze contemporary finance, both government and private, for its impact on the poor?
In recent years one or two “alternative budgets” have been proposed for the U.S. Government, but I have yet to see a Christian Alternative Budget proposed for the USA. Our Federal Budget reveals more about our true national priorities than any other document. Foreigners look at our national budget and see that the USA has reduced aid to the poor countries almost every year for the last decade, and we continue to do so. We now rank fifteenth among the industrial nations in the percentage of GNP allocated to the Third World. Right alongside tiny land tacked socialist Austria is the leader of the free world!
Are our defense expenditures in accord with “The logic of the Gospels?”
Are our expenditures for gasoline, cosmetics, contraception, abortion, sterilization, travel, guns, extra clothes in accordance with “The logic of the Gospels?”
When we close Catholic schools in our inner cities are we acting with “The Logic of the Gospels”?
Merely to pose the questions is almost to provide the answers. But where are the Catholic economists who offer alternative Catholic budgets for America based on “The Logic of the Gospels”? Do we ever propose alternative budgets for Catholic families? Or for our Catholic dioceses?
Only neo-conservatives and neo-Marxists seem to be providing economic visions alternative to what we have. Jesus Christ seems irrelevant to most in the marketplace. But is He and His logic of life so empty of message and meaning to the specific ways we live in the USA, the ways we organize our business practices, our legal practices, our medical care?
Let’s look at the History Departments in our Universities. How many History Departments have courses on “The History of Salvation” Not courses in the Religion Department on the Bible, whether Old or New Testament, but courses in the History Department? Pope John Paul II’s opening sentence in his first Encyclical was: -- ''The Redeemer of Man, Jesus Christ, is the center of the Universe and of History”.
Do we really believe that? If we believe it, how do we Catholics incorporate Jesus Christ into the. curriculum of our History Departments? How can we teach History intelligently if Jesus Christ is the Center of History and we never discuss that fact in the History Department? If He is the Center, what happens to our understanding of History-- especially Western History-- if we leave out the Center?
I know we have sections in our History textbooks devoted to “The Age of Faith”. I love that phrase. It’s always applied to the 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. But haven’t the succeeding centuries—the 15th through the 20th -- been Ages of Faith? Not faith in “The logic of the Gospels”, but faith in progress, faith in science, faith in technology, faith in pluralistic, secular democracy’s ability to resolve all problems without recourse to “The logic of the Gospels”.
I pose these questions not to be critical or argumentative. I pose them as a layman in whose life there has been a profound, unmet need for a Christian, a Catholic view of economics, of history, of political science.
When President Lyndon Johnson ordered me to organize a war against poverty, I remonstrated with him. I said I knew nothing about poverty; others would be better qualified generals for his war against poverty. Typically, he brushed me aside saying that no one knew for sure how to get rid of poverty and that I could succeed as well as anyone else. We made significant progress, I believe, but among other initiatives we had to start the first Institute on Poverty in academic America. All the economists in all the Universities had never focused on poverty, yet there were 30 million poor people right under our eyes here in the USA. Overlooked, rejected, they were unseen by us. It took a socialist, ex-Catholic, Michael Harrington to reveal them to us.
At this point I can almost hear someone saying that the Church does not have a mandate to propose concrete solutions to technical problems in the temporal order. With that thought I am in complete agreement. The ecclesiastical leaders of the Church do not have any such mandate; but we do, the laity, we the professors and practitioners of economics, history, medicine, law, business, etc…"We” are also part of the Church. The Church, we are being told, is all the people of God. Ecclesiastical leaders alone are not the Church. But when ecclesiastical leaders manage Universities to educate laymen, the graduates are going to be “sawed-off Catholics”, sawed-off at the shoulders, with their bodies going physically to Mass and Holy Communion but their heads remaining in the 1st National Bank; or with Proctor and Gamble; GM; Firestone; in the State’s Attorney’s office; or in the 8th Ward, unless, that is, Catholic Universities introduce Christ’s logic into all the classrooms. The ecclesiastical leaders who have no mandate to propose concrete solutions to temporal problems paradoxically must educate a laity which does have precisely that responsibility.
Now, I wasn’t educated by the Jesuits, so that may be one of the causes of my present plight. But I don’t think I’m exceptional in my sense of inadequacy and ignorance about the moral, ethical, and religious aspects of many modern problems. I think that laymen and women have been permitted to believe that “since it does not belong to the Church, insofar as she is a religious and hierarchical community, to offer concrete solutions in the social, economic, and political spheres they, the laity, have no responsibilities as Christians for justice in the temporal order. The laity thinks there is no specific Christian or Catholic approach to law or medicine or finance since “The Church” has frequently said that “the Church” should not offer specific solutions. But that idea, I submit, is wrong.
Fortunately, I’ve got a good man on my side! Or more modestly, the captain of the team where I am the altar boy is an exceptional, holy and learned man: -- Pope John Paul II. Let us listen for a few sentences to what he says:
“Man’s situation in the modern world seems indeed to be far removed from the objective demands of the moral order, from the requirements of justice, and even more of social love.” Man’s dominion over the visible world given to him by God at the first moment of creation consists, according to the Pope, “in the priority of ethics over technology, in the primacy of the person over things, and in the superiority of spirit over matter.” Man cannot relinquish himself or the place in the visible world that belongs to him; He cannot become the slave of things, the slave of economic systems, the slave of production, the slave of his own products. A civilization purely materialistic in outline condemns man to such slavery. So widespread is this phenomenon that brings into question the financial, monetary production and commercial mechanisms that, resting on various political pressures, support the world economy. These are proving incapable of remedying the unjust social situations inherited from the past, or of dealing with urgent challenges and ethical demands of the present. We have before us here a great drama that leaves nobody indifferent. The person who on the one hand is trying to draw the maximum profit and, on the other hand, is paying the price in damage and injury is always man. The drama is made still worse by the presence close at hand of the privileged social classes and of the rich countries, which accumulate goods to an excessive degree and the misuse of those riches very often becomes the cause of various ills. Add to this the fever of inflation and the plague of unemployment which are further symptoms of moral disorder in the world situation, we can see that resolves in keeping with man’s dignity are necessary. “The indispensable transformation of the structures of economic life is one on which it will not be easy to go forward without the intervention of a true conversion of mind, will and heart”. Theologians, writes the Pope, and all men of learning in the Church today “are called to unite faith with learning and wisdom. A task (which) has grown enormously both in the exact sciences and in the human sciences, as well as in philosophy”.
We could not have a more clear, trumpet call to action by men and women of learning, and of faith. But where and how are young Americans being educated in this conception of society, science, law and faith?
Such education is not going on at Yale where I went to college and law school, and it may not be going on anywhere, at least on a systematic, sustained basis. But it should be under way in every department of every Catholic institution of higher learning. And it must go on. I fear, for a long, long time. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We have come a long, long way, but we have a long, long way to go”.
But where are the teachers who are men and women of faith and science, of faith and medicine, of faith and law, of faith and business, of faith and nursing, of faith and finance? We see many teachers with faith in science, faith in medicine, in law, in business, in finance. Yet Christianity and Judaism tells us not to put our faith in “idols” or “graven images”.
Mao-T’se Tung and Lenin in their open tombs are surely idols before whom millions pass in awe and reverence if not in actual adoration. It’s probably true that more millions of human beings today put their faith in the gods of Communism than in Jesus Christ and His Father in Heaven.
Some Americans say they would “do anything” to acquire a million dollars, or a Nobel Prize or a Hollywood Oscar. Are they worshipping “graven images?”
In education, The Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown is a good example, I think, of an unusual effort to re-introduce philosophy, theology and other humanistic disciplines into medical education, into nursing education, into legal education. That Institute has an immense amount of work before it can claim to have even part of the answer to the problem of re-inserting the “Logic of the Gospels” into the teaching and practice of the professions. But the Jesuits, and their colleagues of many faiths at Georgetown, are trying.
Approximately one-half of all the students, both under-graduate and graduate, in the Philosophy Department at Georgetown are now pursuing studies-and even Doctorates in Bioethics. That’s progress. The Medical School, for the first time, now requires ethics for all its students. These courses are being taught by Doctors of medicine as well as by experts in theology, philosophy, and ethics. That’s progress. The Law School is studying bow it can best reform or transform the teaching of the law in accord with Judea-Christian ethics. That’s progress. With sustained effort we may produce, some day, a genuine Catholic qualified in law and philosophy and ethics for appointment to the Supreme Court. Maybe the appointee will be Black and a mother with a Spanish surname! Wouldn’t she be a miracle, -- especially if she had a husband with whom she was still living in love?
Yesterday’s newspaper carried a story of deep irony, a Kurt Vonnegut morsel, a Woody Allen tid-bit. I refer to the new organization founded in New York by prostitutes. The New York prostitutes are demanding freedom of choice, freedom to pursue their lucrative jobs without harassment by prudes, police, and repressive laws. They call their organization-- “Coyote” -- an acronym for their slogan, - “Come off your old tired ethic”!
I guess you know whose ethic they’re talking about. It’s that old tired ethic Jesuits believe in.
Are you entirely now exhausted by this long and rambling soliloquy? Can you hardly wait to tell Father McCormick -- “Go back to Washington with your idea of letting a layman loose in our midst?”
I wouldn’t be surprised if those were precisely your sentiments. So let me close quickly with an anecdote and a reason for hope.
During the great purges under Stalin when famous Communist leaders were executed along with the poor and unknown, many of those life-long, confirmed Communists on their way to death asked, out loud, “Why? Why am I, a loyal Communist, being killed?”
For 30 years many inside and out of the Soviet Union have asked the same question. “Why were these devoted Communists killed by Stalin?”
Adam Ulam, the famous biographer of “Stalin” says, “We can now give an answer. They died so that life should prove the truth of dogma. Life must not be allowed to appear a placid affair, with real treason and sabotage only extraordinary occurrences. Life must be seen as a constant struggle between the forces of darkness and light. Stalin-- a restless, rebellious man- -sensed this universal, religious existentialist craving in human nature because he felt it so acutely himself. And that is why he was able to build a system of terror, unprecedented in modern history. The terror was necessary, not only to keep men obedient, but even more to make them believe”.
Jesus Christ and the Jesuits who follow His Way know the difference between the Communists, and other terrorists, willing to kill for dogma, and Christians willing to die for dogma. Our Lord died on the Cross for dogma, for “the tired old ethic” which teaches that love conquers everything, even death. Communists love power; capitalists love profit; Christians love people. That’s why Jesuit education will always be able to produce men and women of learning and of faith, of science and of faith, of law and medicine and business, and of faith-- because you forswear power and profit and concentrate on people.
Pope John Paul II on his recent trip to France said: “I am a man of poverty. I have nothing to give except faith.”
Let us all try to follow his example of poverty, chastity and obedience and thus be able to give all men faith, in that tired, old but true, ethic of Jesus Christ! That’s what every man, woman, and child needs from the Jesuits today. Give us faith!
