Tag: Values

If Foundations Are Destroyed . . .

We’re inundated by the huge variety of points of view, opinions, practices, teachings, values, principles, and life-styles of our day.
Almost overwhelmed by them, we are tempted to question the who, what, where, and why of our lives—and what’s right and what’s wrong.
It’s important not to forget the grounds on which our lives have been founded, the solid bases for our judgements and actions. Once we start to drift away from them, we’re confused, at sea, and miserable.
Here are some of those grounds that probably are a part of your foundation—and, if not, that could be integrated into it:

• Matthew 22:36-40:  “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

• John 13:34:  “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”

• Matthew 25:40:  . . . “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.”

• Acts 17:28a:  For “In him we live and move and have our being,” . . . [St. Paul quoting the poet Epimenides of Cnossos]

• Romans 14:7-8: For if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.

• Lucius Annaeus Seneca:  “You must live for another if you wish to live for yourself.” (Roman stateman, first century, AD)

• Declaration of Independence:  We hold these Truths to be self-evident: that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness . . .” (Second Continental Congress, July 4, 1776)

• Abraham Lincoln:  “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us . . . that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. (Gettysburg, November 19, 1863)

• Baltimore Catechism:  Why did God make you? God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in heaven. (Question 6 of Lesson I, April 6, 1885)

• Pledge of Allegiance:  I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. (August 1892 and later modified)

Beware of becoming unfounded, drifting away from the values that formed you! Sort the wheat from the chaff! Stick to your guns! Have courage! You have the guiding Spirit and power of God within you!


21 June 2020

Respect

Respect vt. [from the Latin respectus, past participle of respicere, to look at, look back on, respect] 1. a) to feel or show honor or esteem for; hold in high regard. b) to consider or treat with deference or dutiful regard. 2. to show consideration for; avoid intruding upon or interfering with. 3. to concern; relate to.

As a young priest, I spent two summers on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, learning conversational Spanish and Puerto Rican and Hispanic culture. Weekends, I would help out in various parishes on the island, including the hearing of confessions.
At home, in New York, I was used to children confessing, for example, that “I disobeyed my mother ten times. I disobeyed my father five times. I disobeyed my teacher three times.”
However, in Puerto Rico, the children — in Spanish of course — often confessed, “I didn’t respect my mother ten times. I didn’t respect my father five times. I didn’t respect my teacher three times.
What a difference! In Puerto Rican culture, respect is a basic and important value — and the lack of respect or, worse, disrespect is a serious offense.
Respect is a value throughout the entire Hispanic and Latin worlds. Not surprisingly, in view of the long Moorish presence in Spain that helped mold that country’s culture, it is an equally important value throughout the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Even American Rap music offered a backhanded endorsement of the value when it popularized the slang term “dis.”
Upon careful analysis, there is a theological basis for respect. It is rooted in the innate dignity of every human person as a creature made in the image and likeness of God and endowed with certain inalienable rights.
That is why to seriously disrespect another person can even be a sin.

For a large percentage of the human race, respect is such an important value that often death is preferable to dishonor. Shame can be unendurable, whether the shame falls upon an individual person or upon his or her family, clan, tribe, caste, nation or culture.
In many languages, before addressing another person, one has to be aware of the degree of respect that is due — for, unlike in modern English, the speaker has to choose from more than one form for “you.”
Long-lasting feuds have been triggered by disrespectful words. Wars have started over real or perceived insults. The demands of honor often lead to death and destruction.
According to the nursery rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” Maybe they should not, but, as a matter of fact, they often do.
An important part of the art of diplomacy is skill in choosing the words that are spoken and the deportment that is displayed.
Every culture has it norms of politeness and its unwritten rules governing social interactions and personal behavior. A stranger who does not know and understand them can never effectively communicate, even if he speaks the language well.
It is not hypocrisy to be concerned about things like “saving face” or “bella figura.” Although they can be exaggerated, they stem from respect for the other’s dignity.
Minimally, it is pragmatic and practical to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And, if we truly are followers of Jesus who teaches us to love our enemies, the least we can do is respect them.
Perhaps St. Francis would have prayed, “O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be respected as to respect.”


(Published in
one, 35:4, July 2009)

O My God!

Rightly or wrongly, when I was a child in school, I was taught that in 1492 Columbus “discovered” America. We were always learning about great discoverers, but they never included the one who “discovered” God.
According to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, it was a discovery made a few thousand years ago by a nomadic Mesopotamian shepherd called Abraham — at least that was the beginning of the discovery, for the discovery of the one God was a long, gradual process.
Abraham lived in a society where the existence of many gods was taken for granted. From his point of view, he was called by a god who promised great things to him in exchange for his special worship.
Isaac reverenced this same family god as the “God of Abraham”; Jacob, in turn, worshiped the “God of Abraham and Isaac.”
When Moses sought to know how he should identify the god who spoke to him on Sinai, he was told it was “The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.”
Moses, too, grew up in a world of many gods, but his great insight — the great revelation he received — was that they were all of no account compared to the God of his fathers.
The God of Moses demanded exclusive worship: “You shall not have other gods besides me. You shall not carve idols for yourselves … you shall not bow down before them or worship them.”
It was not until centuries later that the prophet Isaiah taught that other gods were not only of no account but that they did not even exist.

We are the heirs of these great discoverers; their insights should be our precious inheritance. Alas, it isn’t so.
In practice, worship of family, clan, tribal, and national gods still continues in our modern world — although it isn’t called by that name.
For example, in parts of the Middle East honor demands that a sexual misadventure by a woman be punished by her family with death. This is placing family “honor” before God and his revealed will.
A few years ago in Rwanda, Catholic Hutus and Tutsis slaughtered each other for no better reason than tribal dominance — clan loyalties were more important than God.
The world still remembers the horrors wrought by Hitler’s National Socialism in the name of Aryan purity. What a jealous idol Nazism was, for millions of believers were killed in its name.
Even though Christian communities flourished in South India before classical Brahmanism was established there, extreme Indian nationalists forbid conversions to Christianity because it is a “foreign” religion. For them, the nation must be placed over all.
And you and I, what idols do we worship — possessions, security, health, esteem, power? If we carve anything out of life and make it our overriding value, we betray the greatest discovery of all — the loving God.


(Published in
CNEWA World, 30:1, January 2004)

Virtual Reality and Worms

Some recent American movies treat the theme of virtual reality. This is a phrase that is becoming more popular as a result of ever more sophisticated computer simulations of reality, whether for training purposes or for games.
In two of these movies, The Matrix and The Thirteenth Floor, the protagonist discovers the world he lives in isn’t real at all, but a computer simulation. In the latter movie, the main character discovers even he himself isn’t “real,” but an ultra-sophisticated computer program.
Of course, all of creation is a kind of program of the divine programmer, so in one sense these fantasies aren’t so absurd as they may first seem.
When it comes to computers and computer programs, from time to time there is something close to world-wide panic when some clever and malicious computer programmer devises and releases a “virus” or a “worm.”
Computer viruses are subtle programs that infiltrate the operating system of a computer or a computer network and alter, wipe out, or destroy valuable and perhaps irreplaceable records.
The expression “worm” is sometimes used to describe an even worse type of destructive program that modifies and adjusts itself to new situations as it pursues its destructive path.
In the modern world, it seems that we have begun to live in a kind of virtual reality, a fantasy universe. That is to say, all over the world, people are becoming used to operating their lives with systems that seem to have departed completely from the designs of the divine programmer.

For example, the sweeping movements of this past century from communism to consumerism all seem to be based on the wrong notion that the most important thing in life is material goods and free access to them.
Every so often we begin to hear about a new kind of “right”. but most of these have little at all to do with those inalienable rights that are part of God’s very design for human nature.
Waves of violence crash through societies all over the world. Thousands of people are killed, maimed or injured in the name of national or ethnic superiority, although we were all created equal in dignity by the one Creator.
We don’t seem to be living in the real world anymore. Real values are being overridden by unreal ones, logic is being replaced by illogic. Even our information about the world around us and the people in it is being systematically distorted by much of the mass media.
How did these “viruses” make their way into God’s program for human existence?
Where did the “worm” come from that seems to be replicating itself in new and subtle ways in its course of evil and destruction?
Beneath the apparently simple and figurative story that opens the Bible is the profound answer — so familiar that we hardly pay credence to it anymore.
Meanwhile, the worm turns!


(Published in
Catholic Near East, 25:4, July 1999)

Intercultural Communication

Forty years ago, Francis Cardinal Spellman, then Archbishop of New York, responded to the great influx of Puerto Ricans into his diocese. He made a radical decision — to send half of his newly ordained priests to Puerto Rico for the summer, to prepare them better for ministry at home.
They studied conversational Spanish all day for eight weeks. Weekends, they were sent to help out in parishes and practice what they had learned.
The most important lessons they learned were about the nature of culture and cultural differences.
Every culture has it own customs, rules, and sense of what is right and wrong. The challenge for these young priests was not only to speak the Spanish language, but also to be sensitive to the cultural differences between Americans and Puerto Ricans.
They had to learn how to communicate, in the fullest sense of the word, across the barrier of cultural difference. Only to speak the language was not enough.
For example, here’s a typical scene in a city like New York:
The teacher, Mrs. Jones, may be reprimanding little Juan. “Did you do it?,” she says. “Look me in the eye and tell me the truth.” Juan hangs his head and looks at the ground. “Aha,” thinks Mrs. Jones, “he’s guilty for sure.”
Not at all! For Juan, to look a superior in the eyes is disrespectful. Proper behavior for him is to look down to the ground out of respect for the teacher.
You may speak the person’s language very well, but if you don’t know the nuances of his or her culture, you may well misunderstand what is being said or done.

Perhaps inadequate intercultural communication has a lot to do with the stymied peace process in the Holy Land.
For example, when speaking with a Palestinian Arab it is important to be respectful as he understands it. In the Arab culture, a polite person speaks with elaborate courtesy and indirection. Although there is a word for “no” in Arabic, “no” is usually communicated by how weakly one says “God willing”.
Ordinary greetings are very expressive. An Arab man normally greets another Arab man by embracing him and kissing him on both cheeks. A recent photo of Yasser Arafat embracing a Hamas leader doesn’t mean friendship or endorsement of his position. It’s mere politeness — it doesn’t mean anything more than a handshake does for many people in the West.
Israeli Jews are usually far more informal than Arabs. Those who come from Europe and North America are used to speaking very bluntly and openly. To speak strongly and sometimes aggressively is normal for them — for one speaker to interrupt another is not considered bad form or necessarily impolite.
Often what is esteemed in one culture — e.g., blunt speech — can be offensive in another.
In Israel and Palestine, there are many people who are bilingual, speaking both Hebrew and Arabic. Unfortunately, they may be using the right words, but really not communicating effectively at all.


(Published in
Catholic Near East, 23:6, November 1997)

Well Grounded

Pope John Paul’s encyclical, The Gospel of Life, released on 30 March, contains both an impassioned plea for respect for human life, dignity, and rights and a clear exposition of absolute and nonnegotiable values which must be the basis for all practical moral judgments.
Immediately some people reacted to the Pope’s teaching by saying, “Well, that’s his point of view, but I don’t agree.”
That, of course, is exactly what the encyclical was all about. The Holy Father was strongly teaching that not everything is relative.
God made us to be free, so we’re free to make whatever choices we wish — but, not all choices are equal. Some choices are right and some choices are wrong.
In the contemporary world, what seems preeminently acceptable is to build your life on shifting sands. The one who chooses to stand on certain and solid ground is criticized as rigid, old-fashioned, and closed-minded.
In the book of Exodus, it tells how, when Moses first came to Mount Sinai, God appeared to him in fire flaming out of a bush. As Moses approached, God told him, “the place where you stand is holy ground.”
It was later, at that same mountain, that God made a covenant with Moses and the children of Israel and gave them a code to live by — the Ten Commandments.
Before Sinai, the value of human life and respect for human dignity and rights was a matter of the customs of each society or of the will and decisions of each ruler.
After Sinai, the value of human life and respect for human dignity and rights was a matter of the revealed will of God.

Now, as we confront anguishing decisions involving respect for human life, dignity, and rights — whether they concern mothers at risk or unborn children, threatened regimes or oppressed peoples — we have certain, solid, and holy grounds on which to take our stand.
To be well grounded, of course, does not give us automatic or infallible solutions to all problems. But, it does give us clear and sure principles to utilize in the search for those solutions.
I don’t know how best to overhaul the American welfare system, but I do know that you and I may not be indifferent to the stranger in great need whom we encounter on our path
I don’t know how best to achieve peace in Bosnia or Azerbaijan, but I do know that deliberately to violate, maim, or kill any innocent man, woman, or child is certainly and always inadmissible.
Even if we have no solutions to offer, we shouldn’t be afraid to witness to the principles which guide us in seeking to find them.
When Moses led the people out of bondage and slavery in Egypt, he brought them to the holy ground that had been revealed to him.
On that holy ground they discovered the rules which would ensure their freedom and found the principles to shape their lives
We are their heirs. That is our inheritance.


(Published in
Catholic Near East, 21:3, May 1995)