Capuano Speaks

“George Bush is brilliant; he’s sitting in the White House with less than one-half of the vote.” This tribute to the president comes from a member of Congress who agrees with hardly any one of Bush’s policies. That congressman is Michael Capuano, a Democrat who represents the Eighth Congressional District of Massachusetts.

Two weeks ago Representative Capuano spoke and fielded questions from some 100 interested constituents. As the words quoted above indicate, he readily acknowledges the president’s political skills and sees the Democratic Part badly outmaneuvered. He sees his party too often more interested in “being right” than in winning elections.

Capuano locates the source of his difficulties more with fellow Democrats than with Republicans. “My problem is with us,” he explains, because members of his party so often choose to adopt a pure position, as for instance on gun control, rather than one that will win success at the polls.

However, the Republicans who currently control the Congress also trouble him. Speaking of their efforts to pass their agenda he goes so far as to say: “This is a jihad of the right wing.” He does not hate these leaders; rather, he admires their skill in winning seats in the House and Senate from a national electorate that polls show to be evenly divided between the parties.

But, if these Republicans continue to control both houses of Congress and George Bush gets elected to a second term, Capuano foresees disaster for his own priorities. “Every issue my constituents care about is under attack,” he says. “It’s going to make the last four years look like kindergarten” he adds. “They will do everything they can to destroy our programs.”

For fear people think him simply anti-Republican in general, this congressman points out his admiration of the Massachusetts Republicans who flourished when he was a young man. He cites Frank Sargent, John Volpe, and others who represented a Republican tradition very different from that of Tom DeLay, Bill Frist and other leaders of the Congress now. He regrets seeing the few progressive Republicans being marginalized in their own party.

The last straw came for him when a proposal was made when “they tried to take away overtime pay.” According to him, legislation was introduced into the House to abolish overtime in certain circumstances and, to his shock, the proposal got 204 votes. He regards such legislation as un-American.

He also worries about the Medicare bill that would provide some coverage of prescription drugs for older Americans. “Within 10 or 15 years,” he warns, “the entire Medicare system would be gone.” The proposed legislation, still in conference committee, would set up competing health private health programs that could undermine Medicare as we have known it. (As of this writing AARP has endorsed the bill, much to the distress of the legislation’s critics among whom I count myself.)

To him, the leaders of Congress have become wilier than previously. “They have given up direct assaults,” he says. Instead, they cleverly insert what they want in bills that have good things too. One of his biggest complaints is the way so many moves increase the federal deficit because “every penny of the deficit comes out of the Social Security Trust Fund.”

During the course of the hour-and-a-half meeting, Capuano offered his views on many other issues. Of the so-called partial birth abortion act recently passed with much hoopla, he says “not a single abortion will be prevented” by this legislation.

This congressman has developed such low expectations as to say: “I think it’s a successful Congressional year when nothing happens.” He is convinced that the American public wants stalemate at the present time and, given the way things are, he welcomes it himself. The alternative is bad things happening.

This former mayor of Somerville says: “I am proud to be a hard-nosed politician.”  He does not shy away from a description of himself that many Americans would judge unfavorably.

You may wonder why this columnist is writing about the political views of a congressman speaking to members of his district. My rationale for doing so is my belief in the importance of older people staying in touch with issues of local, national, and international significance. I took the session with Mike Capuano as a sobering lesson in civics.

Some people, I realize, think later life is a time for standing aside from politics and devoting oneself to travel, leisure, reading, spirituality and other such interests. I cast a vote in favor of all of the above, but I also feel concern about the legacy we are leaving to our children and grandchildren, and their descendants.

Frankly, I feel anxious about the directions in which our country has been heading. My spirituality pushes me toward an active concern for the wellbeing of our fellow citizens and for the world community. For me, at least, advancing age cannot be used as an excuse for throwing up one’s hands and disavowing involvement in the issues that shape the world we ourselves live in and, one day, will pass on to others.

Richard Griffin

Visiting Birthplace

Have you ever had the experience of visiting the house where you grew up?  Or, better yet, the house in which you were born?

Most normal people, of course, were born in a hospital but no one has ever accused me of being normal. Though a product of the 20th century, I take my place with Abraham Lincoln and millions of other American worthies of previous centuries, in entering the world within the confines of a domestic structure.

The house I was born in stands at 4 Smith Street (I have changed the name), in Peabody, Massachusetts, a place I stopped by to look at recently. The first thing I noticed was a disturbing absence: there is no plaque on the side of the house to commemorate the event. What further must I do to become distinguished enough to deserve my name on a blue oval sign?

I also noticed how small everything looked. That is what people are always said to think when they return to their first house after many years away. Things appear to have shrunk, to have contracted.

Home turns out not to correspond with your imagination of it. The ceilings are not so high, the rooms so spacious, or the yard so sweeping. My birthplace definitely did not look grand enough to have produced me.

On arriving there, I walked around the side of the house, looking for signs of my past. But there were more fences and gates than used to be there. I could not see into a neighbor’s yard that I wanted to check out.  The driveway did stir one association: there my father and I were playing catch in the brilliant sunlight. But was it only the photo of this event I remembered, not the actual being there?

It was a dream that drew me to the house. I dreamt about the back porch of the house and about the people next door. My grandmother and aunt, who lived upstairs at number 4, were friendly with the next door neighbors and I wanted to stir up memories of their going back and forth between houses. But a gate barred my access to that part of the house and I did not want to disturb the current householders.

I fantasized about those neighbors catching sight of me, however, imagining them welcoming me warmly to my ancestral home. But, on sober reflection, I knew better: they might even have called the cops and accused me of trespassing. The pieties of past associations may have had no place at all in their hearts.

So my visit on a warm Sunday afternoon turned out unsatisfactory. The place that occupies such a warm spot in my heart seemed uninviting and almost drab.  No one cared about my being there and the place did not speak to me as my dream had indicated it would.

On further reflection, however, the visit does now say something. It stirs spiritual values that continue to loom large in my life.

Above all, that house is the place where I received the gift of life, a gift that I continue to give thanks for. And I love and appreciate my parents, many years after their deaths. My grandmother and aunt who lived upstairs and cherished my arrival also still excite in me warm affection.

It was from that house that I was taken to church for my baptism. There my father’s uncle poured water over my head and, with the Spirit’s action, drew me into the soul’s life that continues today. It would be my introduction to a spirituality that expresses the deepest meaning of my life.

That house first put me in touch with other members of my extended family and to the life of the city where I was born. My maternal grandfather, dead long before my birth, was a presence there. Born in Ireland, he came to the port of Boston where he was only 12 years old. Then he joined other family members in Peabody, went to work in a leather factory, and became successful enough that, when he died, he owned another such factory.

Perhaps the experience of dropping by my birthplace proved the old adage “you can’t go home again.” However, for me it also proved a spiritual encounter with a past rich in meaning and filled with people of grace.

Richard Griffin

The Fateful Day 40 Years Ago

Where were you on November 22, 1963?  Perhaps you are too young to remember that fateful day; maybe you were not even born yet. But for those of us now relatively aged, the event that happened forty years ago this week remains seared on our psyches.

That, of course, was the infamous day on which John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The graphic events that inexorably unfolded in Dallas that day have long since become part of American history. Like so many others of a certain seniority, I long ago internalized the dreadful sequence of happenings connected with this death.

For a time, however, I thought the wrong man had been shot. I had spent that day in Liverpool, sent off from my monastic retreat in Northern Wales on a mission to a parish church. On arriving back home to St. Beuno’s College in St. Asaph, I was greeted in the corridor by a colleague who asked if I had heard the news. In reply to my ignorance he announced: “Kennedy has been shot.”

For me it was a shock to think that my spiritual director, Father Kennedy, had been killed. Why would anyone wish to shoot such an inoffensive and loving man, I wondered? This English Jesuit priest seemed not to have any enemies at all, much less someone who would kill him.

When I realized my mistake, I began to grieve for the American president with whom I had most identified. Jack Kennedy was not much older than I and came from the same Boston Irish Catholic background as I. My father had known his father well enough for him and my mother to be invited to Jack’s wedding in 1953. Besides, Jack Kennedy struck me as a thoroughly attractive man, handsome, articulate, a person of style and, I believed, substance.

In the days after his death, by way of special permission I was allowed to watch television along with my colleagues at St. Beuno’s. We saw dramatic scenes of the  events leading up to the state funeral and felt the range of emotions that Americans at home were then feeling. Horror, pity, sorrow, fear and other feelings flooded my heart. I also felt some frustration at being so far away from home when events of such importance were taking place there.

My Jesuit colleagues at St. Beuno’s had come largely from European countries for a year of spiritual training in Wales. Natives of France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, along with some half dozen natives of England, they formed an international community along with a few of us Americans.

The grief that they all felt at the death of Kennedy moved me deeply. It was as if they had lost a friend, this American president with whom they had identified as a person who expressed many of their ideals. The experience of loss bound us together as a more closely knit community, united in an uncommon loss. They, too, could weep that an American hero had been struck down in the prime of his life.

Jack Kennedy had been formed in part by his own experience of Europe. In addition to saying “Ich bin ein Berliner,” with some justification he could have said he was an Englishman or a Frenchman. During some of his growing up years he lived in London and his first –  – highly critical –  –  book was called “While England Slept.” His frequent trips to the continent gave him a familiarity with other European countries.

His wife Jacqueline was well known for her love of French language and culture. On a state visit to France, her husband proudly identified himself as the man who had brought Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris.

St. Beuno’s was located at the margins of this European world. But it was in a climate of solidarity and ancient national friendships that we watched the news together. I realized more intensely that week than ever that we belonged to an international religious order, brothers who had suffered a common loss.  

Until the last few years I still found it too painful to watch television replays of the awful events of that November 40 years ago. The loss that we suffered as a nation continued to stir melancholy feelings in me.  But time has its way of healing and I no longer feel the sting so intensely now. From the vantage point of four decades’ distance the assassination does not stir the same pain in me that it did for so long..

Of course, I still regret the wounds inflicted on us all by the assassin. His deadly action robbed us of a leader who gave hope to much of the world. The emotional impact  may have grown weaker with the passage of so many years, but his terrible death continues to reverberate in my memory as one of the most searing public events of my lifetime.

Richard Griffin

Two Little Words

How can two short words provoke such controversy far and wide across America?  The phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance has become the subject of a national debate that will soon reach a climax with a decision by the Supreme Court. The court will rule on whether or not it is a violation of the First Amendment to have public school teachers lead students in reciting the pledge when it includes those two words.

The Pledge of Allegiance was first used in public schools in 1892 and did not contain the now disputed phrase. Nor during all of my years as a public school student, did these words  form part of the pledge. My schoolmates and I simply said “one nation, indivisible, with freedom and justice for all.”

It was in 1954 that the Congress at the request of President Eisenhower, added “under God”. He took his cue from a Catholic fraternal organization, the Knights of Columbus that lobbied for the change as a blow against communism. Eisenhower was glad to endorse their effort because the world seemed dangerously poised for possible nuclear war.

In October 2002, President Bush signed legislation confirming the use of these words as part of the pledge. For good measure he also approved the motto “in God we trust” on United States currency.

Though belief in God has always loomed large in my life, the explicit mention of God in this statement of allegiance to our country has from the beginning seemed to me an outside intrusion. I have never felt the need to include it among the words that express a commitment to the United States.

As a believer in God I am in good company: nine out of every ten Americans share this belief, polls show. Michael Newdow, however, is not among them. Newdow, a resident of the Sacramento, California area, has sued his local public school district, on the grounds that his son should not be exposed to the formula. The father professes himself an atheist and does not want his son to be indoctrinated with any religious beliefs.

It may be worth recalling an earlier Supreme Court ruling in 1943 that said students could not be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance at all. However, in practice, almost everybody, of whatever age, finds it difficult to resist group action, especially when it is endorsed by authority. To be the only one not saying the pledge when all around you are reciting the words makes most of us feel very uncomfortable.

I approach the issue with mixed feelings. On the one side, I appreciate our country’s history of honoring God publicly and praising the Creator for the blessings we enjoy. What has been termed “civil religion” seems to me valuable in itself and a glue that helps bind us together as one people.

And yet, the separation of church and state holds great importance for me and those of my Catholic tradition, as it does for those of other faiths. We all benefit from the constitutionally guaranteed freedom to practice our religion. The law protects us from governmental interference so long as we are not doing anything that infringes on the rights of others.

Ultimately, it seems to me not of great importance whether the phrase “under God” remains part of the pledge of allegiance or not. I can argue both ways but, whatever happens, people of faith are not going to lose that faith or grow up without it simply because of two words found in the formula.

What remains of greater importance is the quality of one’s love of God and country. Patriotism cannot be allowed to become a substitute for God and made into a religion. To make of the Pledge of Allegiance a statement of ultimate concern would be to violate the spiritual traditions that most Americans believe in.

With or without the phrase “under God,” the pledge raises vital questions for those who recite it.

Can we love God as one who is for all people, no matter their skin color, economic condition, or country of origin? And can we love our own country, not because it is rich and powerful or because it allegedly acts with more altruism than other nations, but rather because we keep alive the hope of achieving liberty and justice for all?

Richard Griffin

Prayer for Light

“Shine on me, Lord, and I shall be light like the day.” So goes one line of an ancient prayer from the Syrian Orthodox tradition. I found it in a 1998 book called “Gifts of the Spirit” co-authored by Philip Zaleski and Paul Kaufman.

This prayer, when repeated often in the early morning before dawn, can build anticipation of daybreak. Then, when the sky lightens and the sun rises, it comes as a blessing. The day has started with an act of worship the influence of which can be felt throughout the day’s remaining hours.

In its root meaning, the word “day” has a vital connection with light. It comes from an ancient Indo-European root meaning “burning” or “shining.” Making this radical association between day and fire and illumination can lead us to a deeper appreciation of what each day can be.

All traditions value inner enlightenment as one of the great spiritual goods. Any day that brings greater light to one’s soul has special value. It counts as a privileged time among the many days we experience.

Last weekend the season of daylight savings time came to an end and we entered a period when we will see less natural light during the day. And as the winter months approach, the days will become shorter still, rationing the daylight hours. It can test our spirit to lack longer periods of light for week after week until the spring arrives.

How can we live by the light under these conditions of diminishing availability?  Perhaps by asking in prayer for inner illumination. That’s what the next line of the prayer does: “The creation is full of light; give light also to our hearts that they may praise you with the day and the night.”

It’s not only people who can see with their eyes that can receive this light. People who are physically blind can, of course, hold that light within them.  My friend Paul strikes me that way. At a recent meeting in a subway station, I was again impressed with his spirit of buoyancy and concern for other people.

Paul is the same person who, in his days as a college student, took part in a peaceful demonstration against the Vietnam War and when the police refused to take him with the other demonstrators, demanded that they arrest him too. That took courage, a sign of inner light, as he prepared for handcuffs and a jail cell.

The request to have the Lord shine on you will perhaps remind you of one of the blessings frequently given at the end of a liturgical service. “May the Lord make his face to shine upon you,” the liturgical leader prays. Again, the underlying image is of light flowing from God to the upturned countenance of the worshiper.

The Syrian Orthodox prayer expects more, however. In saying “I shall become light,” the person praying anticipates a personal transformation. It’s as if, through God’s action, the darkness in him or her will be reduced and the newly available space taken over by light. It’s a way of becoming a sun, and thus becoming able to shine one’s inner light on everyone you meet.

Philip Zaleski suggests that few people actually greet the day joyfully and live in the light. Instead, he writes, “Most of us, I suspect, wake up in a fog, go to work in a funk, come home in a fuss, and fall asleep in a fret.”

Many people undoubtedly have some days like that, 24-hour periods when everything goes wrong. But as a description of an average day this strikes me as unduly pessimistic. After all, many Americans begin the day or end it by meditation, prayer, or reflection about God in their lives. They perform other spiritual exercises, too, as they call to mind the divine presence. The day may turn out to be not all light but, at some moments at least, we can feel ourselves illumined by it.

“Shine on me, Lord, and I shall be light like the day.”  Those who made this prayer their own many centuries ago knew its power to transform their lives. Perhaps it can serve us, too, their fellow seekers after enlightenment so many years later.

Richard Griffin

Boston Transformed

To anyone with a long memory of the place, it comes as a shock to hear Boston praised as a “cool” city, a place where “hipsters” wish to settle. To read how Forbes Magazine in recent years chose Boston as the best city for singles seems unreal to us veteran residents of the area.

Social critic Richard Florida goes so far as to to call Boston the third most desirable city in the country for highly talented people. He does so because this place can boast diversity – “bohemians, technologists, and other cutting-edge types” – who find it a comfortable place to live. Professor Florida of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University cites the presence of gays in particular as a sign of a stimulating urban environment. Beyond tolerance of differences, he also places high importance on the city’s acceptance of human diversity as a value.

Talent attracts more talent and that is why cities like Boston and Austin continue to flourish at the present time. They have transformed themselves into “talent magnets” attracting others whom Florida refers to as “the creative class.” The presence of a varied gay community and its acceptance by the local populace also makes a difference, he says.  

The Boston I remember from my growing-up days seems located on a different planet from the one described above. The Old Howard burlesque theater and the Scollay Square district in which it lived were among the few sections of the city that defied convention. The city’s mainline institutions – the Boston Symphony, the Museum of Fine Arts, and hotels such as the Parker House and the Ritz – upheld the tradition of decorum and solidity.

Looking back, I recall a time when the city seemed to be sleepwalking, in absolutely no danger of being called cool or hip or the then equivalents. Yes, Boston had its charms but they were largely of the classical sort, without the dynamic diversity and experimental spirit of other places.

A Boston dowager, refusing to buy a hew hat, said that she had her hats. Like our hats we had our buildings too, and the Custom House retained its dominance while other cities (notably Chicago and New York) grew structures that were imposing and often architecturally distinguished. We allowed the wrecking ball to destroy the Boston Opera House on Huntington Avenue. Though the building may have been past its prime, it still hosted the annual visits of the Met and featured the greats like Caruso and company.

The highways and streets remained unmodern, with the city apparently committed to the charm of its slow-moving traffic. Before Storrow Drive took shape, the main arteries did not offer great  views of the Charles and other beauty spots of the area. And the Southeast Expressway was about to despoil central parts of the city.

The district that I found most congenial was Newspaper Row, that narrow section of Washington Street where the Boston Post, my father’s paper, faced the Globe directly across the way. The Post was housed in five thin ramshackle buildings tied together by no one knew what. When, during one of my college summers, I came to work as a copy boy at the Globe I found it a sleepy tradition-bound publication, filled with cigarette and cigar smoking city room editors and reporters, some of them hung over from the night before.

For lunch I would often hasten down to Durgin Park, the fabled restaurant near Faneuil Hall where the waiters took pride in almost throwing the food at you. Even by Boston standards the food was plain and simple but I used to gobble it down with pleasure. Or sometimes I would go to Thompson’s Spa, a favorite hangout for local newspapermen (and a few women) where gossip about politics reigned.

As in my pre-college days, the only people I knew were much like me. Irish Catholics and Yankees constituted my whole social circle and I never remember the presence of people of color. Protestants made for about as much diversity as I ever experienced in that era of apparent uniformity. The only variant on this sameness I remember came from the trips I used to make to a club on Mass Avenue in Roxbury where jazz musicians like Fats Waller performed with great style.

My memory remains sharp enough for me to resist nostalgia for those days. By and large I find the new Boston much more dynamic and entertaining. That we now have so many immigrants from other countries I see as a revitalizing force. Thankfully, Boston is much more like the rest of the world than it used to be.

The terms hip and cool now applied to the place may strike me as forced but I welcome many of the changes that the transformation of Boston has brought. Though I do not live within Boston’s narrow city limits, I enjoy sharing in the lively atmosphere of the region. The place certainly has formidable problems as always, but it has grown into an area that is indeed worth living in.

Richard Griffin

Coles and Eck

Ruby Bridges, at age six, had to be escorted to school in New Orleans by federal marshals. As she walked toward her classroom under heavy guard, she endured verbal taunts and jeers from crowds of white people opposed to integration of the public schools of that city in the deep south.

Asked about her feelings at the time, Ruby, an African-American child, said: “I feel sorry for those folks.” In response to a further question, Ruby added: “I pray for them because Jesus said ‘forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing.’”

This ordeal of the child Ruby Bridges occurred forty years ago. Robert Coles, psychiatrist and Harvard professor, recently recalled talking with Ruby shortly after the events and hearing the responses we have quoted here. From the perspective of almost a half century later, Dr. Coles still expresses amazement at the spiritual quality of her re-marks. He considers her one of America’s hero’s.

That such a young girl could have forgiven her persecutors and have joined with Jesus in pitying their ignorance is indeed worthy of wonder. This precocious child had a  spiritual life even then, an inner life deep enough to dare threats to her safety. She  was even able to find humor in her grim situation. Of her tormentors she said, “Just because of me, their whole schedule is ruined.”

What she did stands over the intervening decades as an inspiration for Americans of good will everywhere. In fact, Dr. Coles considers her one of this country’s  most im-portant citizens.

Dr. Coles used this memory in a talk to parents of college undergraduates to stress the importance of moral teaching in a college and university education. He points out that education without a spiritual dimension shortchanges students and can even endanger a whole nation. After all, he says, “Germany in the 1930s was the most educated nation on earth, a sober reminder  to us all.”

Speaking to the same audience of parents, another Harvard professor, Diana Eck, talked about the new religious landscape in America. Using a CD ROM, she displayed the astounding variety of religious groups that can be found in the cities and towns of the United States. Many of the sites where people come together, however, remain invisible to the casual observer because the places of worship or gathering are often located in nondescript buildings.

In recent decades, ancient traditions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam have grown at a fast rate. Currently, for example, Muslims have increased so as to outnumber the Jewish population. Newer traditions such as the Mormons and the Ba’hais have flourished and grown. America has moved far beyond the 1950s when a leading writer, Will Herberg, called the United States a “three-religion country – Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.”

But this new religious diversity has not been embraced by all Americans. In fact, it has put us to the test. As theologian Harvey Cox says, “It’s a brand new experiment in human history – whether we are going to make it or burst apart is still a question in my mind.”

Two incidents cited by Professor Eck dramatize the possible outcomes. In one case, a woman in Norwood, Massachusetts, looking at a new center established by the Jains, said approvingly: “That’s what makes America.”

In the other anecdote, an angry woman in a mall parking lot, turned to a Muslim woman, whose head and body were veiled by a black chador , and lashed out at her: “Why don’t you go back home to Iraq or wherever you come from?” (The Muslim lady’s response is worth noting here – “I am at home.”

This is the spiritual and civic issue that now confronts those who belong to major-ity religions. Can we accept those who differ from us religiously and find a spiritual kin-ship with them?

To do so, it might help to accept Professor Eck’s image for the most desirable outcome. Instead of the earlier figure of “melting pot,” she suggests that we use the im-age of “symphony” to indicate how all of us can make spiritual music together without losing the distinctive contribution of each religious tradition.

Anyone looking for further information on Professor Eck’s work can consult her web site. Its address is http://www.pluralism.org.

Richard Griffin