Getting to the Point: dignity

Showing posts with label dignity. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Works of Mercy: Clothing the Naked

With the parish mission I’m giving this week, I will probably be away from wifi access later in the week, so I thought I’d better do my blogging while I can. I’ve been going through the corporal and spiritual works of mercy on the blog, in preparation for the Year of Mercy which begins exactly one week from today. It is so important that ‘mercy’ not remain on some vague abstract level of ‘well, let’s try to be nice to people’, or some vague theory about inclusivity or tolerance.

No, the Church has always spoken of doing works of mercy, and has provided us with a helpful list of same. We probably cannot each do all of them, but take your pick of them, according to what you can do, and do it.

We have reached this week the work of clothing the naked. Now, this is where the list reflects its origin in an older age, pre-Industrial revolution, when cloth was hand made and costly, and there would actually be serious issues around having covering for the body.

In North America, at least, this is not exactly the case. Between Value Village, Walmart, Goodwill and the local Vincent de Paul, there is a glut of cheap clothing – not the best quality, mind you, but clothing none the less. This happens to be something we of MH know quite a bit about, as here in Combermere and in our houses in Edmonton and Regina we have clothing rooms. The receiving, sorting, and distribution of clothes donations is a significant part of our work, actually.

On a humorous side note, where I grew up nobody had ever heard of ‘Madonna House’, but everyone knew about ‘Combermere’, which was the place you sent someone’s clothes when they died. Little did I know when I heard references to this magical land of dead-people’s-clothes-disposal that I would be making it my life’s work.

Anyhow, that being said, may I say as something of a professional in the matter that, while there is an insane glut of women’s and children’s clothing that comes in donation, men’s clothing is much less. Women recycle their wardrobes, and children of course grow out of them, but men on the whole tend to only have as much clothes as they barely need, and wear said clothes until they are raggedy. So, my brothers (and those who are married to them!), be mindful of that, and maybe go through your closets from time to time to give good men’s clothes to the local outlet. They will be very grateful, I promise.

Aside from the fact that the Goodwill and the Vincent de Paul (and Madonna House!) do need those ongoing donations of Good Quality clothes (it is not a work of mercy to give some worn out torn frayed thing to the poor – seriously!), and many of us do have more clothes than we really need, what else is there to say about this work?

At the risk of veering in the direction of abstraction and theory, it seems to me that clothing has something to do with human dignity. Food and drink are elemental needs of the body, without which we die. And certainly in a cold climate like Canada, adequate clothing is almost equally necessary.

But there is a whole other element to it, that food and drink do not possess. Without decent clothes, it’s hard to get a decent job. The homeless, even if they don’t have other issues around mental health and substance abuse (which is tragically the norm), will find it hard to get off the streets and into a better way of life simply because they look so shabby, so unkempt. Life on the streets is rough—rough on the body, rough on one’s possessions, and yes, rough on one’s clothes. Not a lot of shoe trees in the alleyways and shelters of the big city.

A way of clothing the naked, not available to everyone of course, but one that people in a certain social position can do, is to offer a decent job to a struggling person. So many people, especially young people, are slipping through the cracks right now in our dicey economy. So much basic dignity is assailed by this – by not having work to do, by being unable to earn at least some money, maybe be able to start saving, buy some decent clothes for oneself, take a hold of one’s own life and start living it.

So many people—young ones is particular—are finding it very hard to do this. And so, while not everyone is in a position of hiring anyone to do anything (I’m not, for example), those who are might have a care for mercy in this Year of Mercy, and take a chance on someone who may be feeling quite naked, quite stripped of dignity. And maybe if you are not someone who is in the way of hiring people to do stuff, you probably know someone who is, and maybe you can be a sort of liaison in that situation.

It’s a bit of that ‘give a man a nice shirt, you’ve given him dignity for a day. Give him the means to buy his own nice shirts, he has dignity for a lifetime.’ So… let’s think about that for this year, and see what we can do about it.

Friday, March 20, 2015

Madonna House Movie X: The Fire Still Burns

So I'm back from retreat with the ladies of MH Vancouver - a very fine four days at Westminster Abbey in Mission BC. Back with the blogging, and the next installment of our MH movie series.

This one is a bit unusual, reflecting on the reality that Madonna House has been around long enough that we have a large cohort of older members, and that this has shaped our apostolate very seriously in the last decade especially. Like so many people and so many families in our aging and increasingly youth-scarce world, we are confronted with the challenges of caring for the elderly, sick, and dying in our family.

Here is the video where we reflect on our experience:

It is especially poignant and beautiful that Kathy Rodman is able to reflect so deeply on her own experience of infirmity. I am very struck watching this video in light of the current agenda of physician assisted suicide--euthanasia by another name, as far as I'm concerned--that in MH we are trying to walk another way with one another in these most serious and difficult realities of life and death.

Anyhow, we don't claim to have the 'big answer' on these questions--as I say, like everyone else we struggle to know how to best serve and love our elders and the dying. We do know that the answer is not an injection of lethal chemicals, but something more human, something more dignified than that. And this little seven minute video at least begins to talk about some of that more human approach to the matter.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

God and Human Freedom

Transferring to humanity the prerogatives which Christians acknowledge to be God’s, positivism, by that very fact, reverses in the social field the attitude of Christianity, whose heir it means to be.

Without rights vis a vis God, since he receives his whole being from God, the individual thought he had rights vis a vis society: however organically incorporated in it., however subject to its authority in all things temporal, however sincerely devoted to its welfare, he was aware of transcending it by his first beginnings and his latter end.

He knew that, by what lay deepest in himself, he formed part of a greater and vaster society and that, in the last analysis, everything rested with an authority that was not human…

But, if temporal society is an adequate manifestation of the only true deity, from whom the individual receives all that he is, how can he have any right as against society? That notion of right is essentially ‘theological-metaphysical’… the positive faith, everywhere substituting the relative for the absolute, substitutes ‘laws for causes and duties for rights.’

Henri de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism

Reflection – Well, it’s been a while since we had a ‘difficult’ text on this blog, and it’s good for us (that is to say, me) to flex some intellectual muscle once in a while. All my fancy book-larnin’ has not been for nothing, after all.

De Lubac’s book is, I believe, still one of the most important books of the 20^th century. It has held up extraordinarily well in its analysis of the tragic dynamic of atheism, its false promise of liberation and human fulfillment, and its subsequent collapse into tyranny and human destruction. It’s a slender little book, and for the most part quite readable; I recommend it highly.

This quote is taking that discussion to the field of human rights and society. If you find it a bit convoluted, let me un-convulate it for you. Essentially, de Lubac is saying that human rights either come from God by virtue of His creation of man and the inherent structure, nature, and dignity of the human person, or human rights come from society and the social contract—a shared consensus of values among those living in the community.

But since ‘society’ is an abstraction and human rights are concrete, what this latter concept of right really means is that our rights are granted us by the state. And this is no true right, but a concession, a privilege, which can then be revoked by government fiat.

In other words, either our rights are from God and dwell within us ineradicably, or we exercise whatever freedom we have at the good pleasure of our social masters. It is either God or the president/prime minister/congress/parliament/courts.

There is a great irony here. De Lubac is quite right that, if our whole being is from God, then we have no rights vis a vis God—this would imply some higher power to which we could appeal against the One who is All in All. So humans would seem to be in a state of radical subjectivity and bondage towards God, which is the position of Sartre and Nietzsche.

But God is changeless, eternal, not subject to flux. Once we grasp that God’s creative will towards us is for our freedom and dignity, our capacity to genuinely act and move freely, then the whole notion of human rights becomes very secure.

If we reject God and His dominion, we are indeed left with the highest power being the government. The changeable, fluid, political, malleable, intensely corruptible, say-whatever-will-get-us-elected next time government—and this is the guardian of human rights, freedom, and dignity?

What Caesar can give, Caesar can take away. If the state is the source, or even (since in our post-modernity frivolity and folly we are allergic to metaphysical statements and avoid them whenever possible) simply the final arbiter of human rights, our freedoms are very perilous indeed. We have to think about these things: atheism tends towards tyranny and arbitrary exercises of state power; religion tends towards rule of law, at least (the historical record at least bears this out), which itself is an absolutely necessary pre-condition for democracy.

De Lubac (and his good friend Joseph Ratzinger) have diagnosed this situation with great perspicacity and clarity. The phrase ‘the dictatorship of relativism’ is relevant here: if there is no God (or God is irrelevant) and hence no absolute truth (or none that we need to consult), then there is no such thing as a human right, only human arrangements that are suitable to those who exercise power at any given moment.

The only way to secure human freedom is to assert timeless and unchanging truths about man and his nature, and the only way to coherently assert those truths is to acknowledge the changeless and eternal nature of God and His laws. And without delving into a lot of controversial subjects that I have no time or energy to treat of right now, this is all rather relevant in our days, don’t you think?

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

The Custodian of Human Dignity

The look I freely direct to the other is decisive for my own dignity, too. I can acquiesce in reducing the other to a thing that I use and destroy; but by the same token, I must accept the consequences of the way I use my eyes here.

These consequences will fall on my own head: “You will be measured by the measure with which you measure.” The way I look at the other is decisive for my own humanity. I can treat him quite simply like a thing, forgetting my dignity and his, that both he and I are made in the image and likeness of God. The other is the custodian of my own dignity…

How is it possible for a man to use his eyes in such a way that he perceives and respects the dignity of the other person and guarantees his own dignity? The drama of our times consists precisely in our incapacity to look at ourselves like this – and that is why we find it threatening to look at the other and must protect ourselves against this.

In reality, morality is always embedded in a wider religious context in which it ‘breathes’ and finds its proper environment. Outside this environment, morality cannot breathe: it weakens and then dies.

Joseph Ratzinger, Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures, 69-70

Reflection – I was musing just the other day that it is a bit odd that I went from the first year and half of my blog being exclusively dedicated to the writings of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, to almost never having anything by the man on it. A careless reader would think I had grown tired or disenchanted of the man, which is anything but true.

So I thought I would remedy that with at least a couple of days of good old school ‘German Shepherd’ blogging. I have always recommended this book in particular as a good ‘starter’ book for anyone interested in the thought of Pope Benedict. It is topical, timely, weighty without being overly ponderous, and (best of all!) short.

This passage speaks to the heart of our alienation from one another today, the fracturing and fragmenting of humanity into at best little tribal alliances, at worst into sheer atomized units. To look at the other, to see that the other person is just that—a person—endowed with dignity, rights, humanity, someone with whom I can at least potentially enter into communion with—this is increasingly difficult in our secular, polarized world.

It has been the consistent argument of Ratzinger that to really maintain and live out the dignity of the human person, and indeed our own dignity, we have to locate this dignity in something greater than humanity itself. In other words, in a religious context. We are creatures worthy of being treated with dignity, with inalienable rights, because our being is from God, in the image of God, and destined for God.

It is no accident of history that the theory of intrinsic and inalienable human rights emerged in 16^th century Europe and was first posited by Dominican friars. They were motivated to draft this theory by the discovery of the New World and the dawning of the age of colonialism, the discovery of vast numbers of human beings who were outside the social order of Christendom, which prior to this had been seen as the necessary matrix of mutual obligation and just treatment.

De las Casas and others developed the theory of human rights directly from Christian theological principles. Sadly, the subsequent colonial history marked so tragically by exploitation, enslavement, and brutality shows that their theories were not adopted as principles of action, which speaks more to the weakness of Christian faith and practice in that era than anything else.

It is nonetheless the case that human dignity, human freedom, and human rights are best held firm, made intellectually viable and given vitality and freshness from a lively faith in a Creator God who is the author of life, and who has endowed human life in particular with a divine significance, vocation, and destiny.

Without this faith—and I believe this is what we are seeing happening in our society now—we see a gradual erosion of the very notion of rights in favor of the exercise of power in service of this or that agenda, lip service paid to rights such as the right to life, to assembly, to religious freedom or freedom of speech, which are quickly trampled if the person in question is inconvenient, costly, or is saying or doing something opposed to the prevailing mores.

Unless civil society is held in being and grounded by something Bigger than civil society, something that holds all human society and culture to judgment, something that makes possible the question ‘Is justice being administered justly?’ (this very question is meaningless in a strictly secular and materialistic world, where there is nothing higher than the law of the land), then the threat of tyranny and ultimately anomic anarchy is always upon us, as I believe it to be in our time.

But - and this where Ratzinger is very strong - the remedy is as near and immediate as how I treat you today, and how you treat me today, and the 'look' towards the other in which the dignity and worth of each person is fully and freely acknowledged. The problem is not 'out there' or 'up there' in places of power and influence, but is right and squarely with you and me and the choice to respect and reverence the other person in his or her otherness.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The Heart of St. John Paul II

The father's fidelity to himself - a trait already known by the Old Testament term hesed - is at the same time expressed in a manner particularly charged with affection. We read, in fact, that when the father saw the prodigal son returning home "he had compassion, ran to meet him, threw his arms around his neck and kissed him."

He certainly does this under the influence of a deep affection, and this also explains his generosity towards his son, that generosity which so angers the elder son. Nevertheless, the causes of this emotion are to be sought at a deeper level. Notice, the father is aware that a fundamental good has been saved: the good of his son's humanity. Although the son has squandered the inheritance, nevertheless his humanity is saved. Indeed, it has been, in a way, found again.

The father's words to the elder son reveal this: "It was fitting to make merry and be glad, for this your brother was dead and is alive; he was lost and is found." In the same chapter fifteen of Luke's Gospel, we read the parable of the sheep that was found and then the parable of the coin that was found. Each time there is an emphasis on the same joy that is present in the case of the prodigal son. The father's fidelity to himself is totally concentrated upon the humanity of the lost son, upon his dignity. This explains above all his joyous emotion at the moment of the son's return home.

Going on, one can therefore say that the love for the son, the love that springs from the very essence of fatherhood, in a way obliges the father to be concerned about his son's dignity. This concern is the measure of his love, the love of which Saint Paul was to write: "Love is patient and kind.. .love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful...but rejoices in the right...hopes all things, endures all things" and "love never ends."

Mercy - as Christ has presented it in the parable of the prodigal son - has the interior form of the love that in the New Testament is called agape. This love is able to reach down to every prodigal son, to every human misery, and above all to every form of moral misery, to sin.

When this happens, the person who is the object of mercy does not feel humiliated, but rather found again and "restored to value." The father first and foremost expresses to him his joy that he has been "found again" and that he has "returned to life. This joy indicates a good that has remained intact: even if he is a prodigal, a son does not cease to be truly his father's son; it also indicates a good that has been found again, which in the case of the prodigal son was his return to the truth about himself.

Pope John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia 5-6

Reflection – This will be my last post from St. John Paul II on mercy – I really do recommend reading the rest of the encyclical, folks, as it is quite beautiful. In my opinion, the first two encyclicals of St. John Paul’s papacy are necessary to understand the rest of his papacy. This is the heart of the man, the core of his doctrine and his own presentation of the Gospel. In particular, we cannot understand his writings on human sexuality and the theology of the body without grounding them in the anthropology of Redemptor Hominis and the theology of Dives in Misericordia.

Indeed, why should we care what God says to us about morality and sexuality and humanity unless first he is holding before us the very pattern of fullness of human life in Jesus Christ, and unless he is doing so because of the richness of his mercy and love for us, his fatherly care and solicitude? Really, if that were not the case, why on earth would we bother with this God of ours and his rules?

It is never about the rules; it is always about the person, and the true dignity and value of the human person. The mercy of God comes to each human being, not to leave them exactly where they are living exactly as they choose to live—the father in the parable waited for the son, but he did not go live in the pig sty with him. The mercy of God comes to each of us to call us home, to call us to our true dignity as sons of God, a dignity only found as we are conformed to the pattern of sacrificial love and holiness of the Son Himself.

This is the joy of Easter, you know. Not that it’s finally spring, or that we have ended the time of fasting and can eat nice foods, or that the liturgy has lots of alleluias in it—all good things, mind you. The joy of Easter is that God is merciful, and in that mercy has raised us up with Christ to life, and that mercy is given freely and fully to the whole human race, and that wherever this mercy is received new life is given, sin is consumed in the fire of mercy, and the true dignity and beauty of each human person is restored and shines forth. And that is the joy of Easter, shining from the Cross and the empty tomb, reflected in the human person who enters into that joy.