Two Kinds of Naïveté

Isn’t it interesting that so many people consider it naïve to think that belief in and the practice of the virtues of charity, humility and forgiveness are one way to save this troubled world. It is more fashionable to believe that small-government or trickle-down or tax-and-spend economic policies or trade protectionism, or trade liberalization, will save us. We just have to elect that other guy, not the loser we elected last time, and we'll be back on the right track headed toward prosperity and economic security. We prefer to put our trust in governments who tell us that tightened airport and border security or gun control or sending young people to fight in foreign wars will keep us safe from the threat of terrorism. We think that all we have to do to be happy and safe is to make our country stronger and richer (than those other countries) by spending more at Wal-Mart (on credit, of course).


No, no, we are not naïve. Everyone knows that the only way to win is to beat the other guy. Those old sayings like “Love thy neighbour” and “Turn the other cheek” are for dreamers and wimps.

It just might be time for us to open our eyes and look around at what our lack of naïveté has brought us. If we are truly not naïve, we will quickly see that it ain’t prosperity, it ain’t security, it ain’t happiness.

We are, in fact, profoundly naïve. If we think that the politicians we send as our representatives to state/provincial and federal governments have our interests at heart, we have not been paying attention. If we believe that the increasingly large corporations from whom we purchase our goods and services hold up excellent customer service as their chief ideal, we have not been paying attention.

When Barack Obama’s stimulus package went to a vote in the U.S. Congress earlier this year, not a single Republican voted in favour of the bill. Are we naïve enough to think that every one of these representatives believed that it was in the best interest of his or her constituents to vote against this bill rather than put individual political aspirations to one side and enter into a dialogue with the Democrats in a spirit of selfless service to the people of the United States in a time of great crisis and need? I wonder what the outcome might have been if every Democrat and every Republican had practised the virtues of charity, humility, and forgiveness in the process of dealing with the economic crisis.

The other day I received an e-mail with the following (unverified) information about Wal-Mart:

• At Wal-Mart, Americans spend $36,000,000 every hour of every day (and Wal-Mart is not only in the U.S.)
• This year, 7.2 billion different purchasing experiences will occur at Wal-Mart stores
• Wal-Mart now sells more food than any other store in the world, including Safeway. In the fifteen years it took to accomplish this end, 31 supermarket chains sought bankruptcy
• The value of products for Wal-Mart passing through the port of San Diego each year is a larger sum than 93% of ALL countries’ Gross National Product (GNP) ...and that is only ONE port ...one way that Wal-Mart gets its stuff
• Of the 1.6 million Wal-Mart employees, only 1.2% make a living above the poverty level
• There are more millionaires per square mile in the city of Bentonville, Arkansas, the location of Wal-Mart's head office, than any place on earth
• Wal-Mart, and MOST large companies, takes out life insurance on its employees, without the employees’ knowledge. If an employee dies, all the life insurance benefits go to the company. For example, if an employee making $18,000 per year dies, the company could reap as much as $1 million. This money is usually paid out to executives as bonuses
• According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is responsible for calculating the consumer price index (CPI), Wal-Mart’s prices are not significantly lower than those of other retailers

Even if this information is only somewhat true, the situation is still shocking. In our naïveté we are contributing to the concentration of more and more wealth in the hands of a few corporate moguls. Even we are not naïve enough to think that Wal-Mart is a charitable organization.

And while it may be the largest, Wal-Mart is not the only corporate entity that relies on our naïveté to make its executives and shareholders rich. Yet we continue to shop in these places while the local shopkeeper is forced to live hand to mouth or is driven out of business altogether.

I realize that we live in a democracy and in a capitalist economic system, which is generally understood and accepted as the best available system at the moment. But we have failed to recognize that the freedom this system affords us in order to prosper and live well must be balanced with the responsibility to be moderate in our appetites for material wealth. Our naivete is actually the gullibility that is the result of our greed.

Our greed has led to a state in which we believe the false claims and promises of politicians who, for the large part, represent no one other than themselves. We should know by now that only certain types of people enter politics; such awareness should inspire us to keep a careful watch on their activities. Our greed has led us to a state where much of our lives are controlled by very large corporations. The quality of the food we eat, the programs we watch on television, the working life of the appliances or automobiles we purchase, the money we entrust to banks—the list is endless—are all controlled so as to maximize profits and return on investment. There is no concern for the individual customer.

Our greed has brought us to this state, so there is no point in blaming the politicians or the giant corporations because they are better at being greedy than we are.

We must get off this treadmill and retake control of our lives, first by recognizing the mess we have made and then by embracing the other kind of naïveté, the sweet one that Jesus taught. We must admit to ourselves that our greed has not brought us happiness. We must understand that, regardless of whether we are Christian or not, whether we belong to a church or not, practising the virtues of charity, humility, and forgiveness will put us on the path to true joy.

Photo Credit

Mother-Teresa-collage by Peta-de-Aztlan

Creative Commons: Some rights reserved

Bishop Dowling, the "cappa magna," and humility

The blog of America Magazine has re-posted a piece that appeared on the site of the Independent Catholic News. The piece is the text of an address “given by Kevin Dowling CSsR to a group of leading laity in Cape Town, South Africa on 1 June." [Note: the text has been removed from the site of the Independent Catholic News but has been posted on the website of the National Catholic Reporter, with the bishop's permission.]

Bishop Dowling’s address essentially takes a metaphorical scalpel to a trend that has developed over the last 30 years in which all Church authority has steadily become concentrated in the hands of the pope and the “Curial Departments and Cardinals.” Much of this authority, according to Dowling, rightfully belongs in the hands of the People of God at the level of the local churches and of the local episcopate, and of the Synod of Bishops. The letter and spirit of Vatican II, which reaffirmed this horizontal paradigm, has been replaced by

“the mystique which has in increasing measure surrounded the person of the Pope in the last 30 years, such that any hint of critique or questioning of his policies, of his way of thinking, his exercise of authority, etc. is equated with disloyalty. There is more than a perception, because of this mystique, that unquestioning obedience by the faithful to the Pope is required and is a sign of the ethos and fidelity of a true Catholic.”

For Dowling, a potent symbol of the “restorationism” that has been taking place these 30 years was the “cappa magna” worn by Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa, Oklahoma as he celebrated a Tridentine Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine in Washington in April. Dowling describes the garment as “the 20-yard-long brilliant red train behind a bishop or cardinal that has become one of the symbols of the revival of the Tridentine Mass.” The wearing of the cappa magna and the elaborate processional pageantry that preceded the Mass in Washington “bore the marks of a medieval royal court, not the humble servant leadership modeled by Jesus.”

Dowling laments the disappearance of

the great theological leaders and thinkers of the past…and the great prophetic bishops whose voice and witness was a clarion call to justice, human rights and a global community of equitable sharing….Again, who in today’s world “out there” even listens to, much less appreciates and allows themselves to be challenged by the leadership of the Church at the present time? The moral authority of the Church’s leadership today has never been weaker. It is, therefore, important in my view that Church leadership, instead of giving an impression of its power, privilege and prestige, should rather be experienced as a humble, searching ministry together with its people in order to discern the most appropriate or viable responses which can be made to complex ethical and moral questions—a leadership, therefore, which does not presume too have all the answers all the time….

The concentration of authority in the hands of the Pope and the Vatican Curia and “the policy of appointing ‘safe’, unquestionably orthodox and even very conservative bishops to fill vacant dioceses over the past 30 years” has made it very unlikely that the College of Bishops “will question anything that comes out of Rome, and certainly not publicly.” How courageous it is, then, for Bishop Dowling, a single voice in this deafening chorus of orthodoxy, to raise it in respectful and humble dissent and to point out, however indirectly, the hubris of those who would take it upon themselves to reject the spirit of Vatican II and scorn the legacy of Blessed John XXIII by usurping the authority of the local churches and thus the People of God.

And how clever the bishop is to use the words of Joseph Ratzinger himself to demonstrate how far we have strayed from Vatican II:

Over the pope as expression of the binding claim of ecclesiastical authority, there stands one's own conscience which must be obeyed before all else, even if necessary against the requirement of ecclesiastical authority. This emphasis on the individual, whose conscience confronts him with a supreme and ultimate tribunal, and one which in the last resort is beyond the claim of external social groups, even the official church, also establishes a principle in opposition to increasing totalitarianism.

(Joseph Ratzinger in: Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II ,Vol. V., pg. 134 (Ed) H. Vorgrimler, New York, Herder and Herder, 1967).

Among the many things about this article that impress me is its call for greater humility on the part of the leadership of the Church—“the humble servant leadership modeled by Jesus.” Church leaders would do well to return to the New Testament accounts of the life of Jesus so that they might learn the true meaning of humility. Surely a man who regularly ate with sinners, with the impure, and with the marginalized; who, unlike “foxes and the birds of the air,” had “nowhere to lay his head;” and who allowed himself to be subjected to the most degrading punishment of his day, has by his very way of life and death something to teach the wearers of the “great cape.”

When will they attend?

Photo Credits

IMG_5985: "Cardinal Rode in Cappa Magna"

IMG_5937: "The Cardinal assumes the Cappa Magna at the throne"

by jdbradley

Creaative Commons: Some rights reserved