Catholic Worker Movement Is 75

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The Catholic Worker Movement, which Dorothy Day (photo above) helped to found, is 75 years old this year. Day's fine autobiography, The Long Loneliness, sheds light on the movement's origins. There is also a nice biographical film about Day and the movement, featuring Martin Sheen.

A link to the CWM's web site:

http://www.catholicworker.org/#

On Proposition 8; or, Live and Let Live; or, What Would the Dude Do?

By now I reckon anyone who cares knows that Proposition 8 passed in California (my home state, although I haven't lived there in many a moon.) The effect of the proposition is to define marriage as something into which only a woman and a man enter. I'm not sure what the retro-active effect is on gay or lesbian couples who already married in California, but I'm assumming the retro-active effect will be nil.


I understand some of the correlatives related to homophobia, partly because I grew up in the 1960s and early 1970s, and because I grew up in a very small town in the High Sierra where heterosexuality was the norm (to say the least) and where there were definite ideas about marriage. Oddly (or not oddly) enough, however, two gay men operated an antique store in that town in the 80's, and before that, two gay men ran a resort near the river, although I have to say that the latter two men behaved in a way that I'd now describe as "pre-Stonewall." They weren't exactly closeted, but at the same time, their public personae was one of "business partners." Also, a very good friend of the family (she lived in the Bay Area) loved to visit the town to hunt and fish. She did not bring her lesbian partner with her, nor, as far as I know, did she ever come out of the closet, but everyone knew what the deal was. She was born circa 1920, however, so her generation just had a different attitude about what you disclose about your private life. I've lost count of those in my extended family who went fishing with her; she always brought much fishing gear, much food, and much booze. I think she'd grown up on a farm in Wisconsin. That she ended up out near Oakland was probably a good move for her.



All of which is by way of saying that I simply don't understand the impulse to guard marriage jealously on behalf of heterosexual couples or "conservative" faith-traditions. Let the alleged joy of marriage be universal, is what I say. As far as I can tell, the logic behind the assertion that "gay marriage threatens traditional marriage" doesn't obtain. Many gay and lesbian couples have married in recent years. I have felt no effect from these marriages on my marriage to a woman. I mean, nothing--not the slightest tremor.



I happen to be a Catholic (having converted rather late in life, in the year 2000), but I attend a parish that welcomes gay and lesbian parishioners. Nonetheless, the Vatican's official position is contra "gay marriage." However, the history of Catholicism is one of tension between Rome and "the church out there" in various lands, countries, and territories. Author Garry Wills is especially good on the subject of the loyal opposition, disagreements about dogma, and so on. Me, I stick to the Apostle's Creed (which is silent on the subject of marriage) and the Lord's Prayer (also silent on the subject), with the occasional Hail Mary. I go to mass, I read stuff by Dorothy Day, Chesteron, and Wills, and I give money and food to the "cause" of hunger. In other words, I try to keep it really simple.



Yes, I've read Paul and Leviticus on the subject, although what exactly "the subject" is is open to debate. Paul seems upset by men having sex with men in Rome. So be it. Leviticus says something about a man not lying with a man as he lies with a woman. But that just covers lying (being in a prone position, or not telling the truth), not even sex, really, and certainly not marriage. (That part about not telling the truth is a joke, by the way.) I know you can't get to that translation from here. And anyway, this paragraph begs the question of whether unions governed by a secular state like California or the U.S. (these are not religious entities) should have anything to do with faith-traditions. People may marry in any faith-tradition they wish, but they get a civil marriage-license from the state (or, literally, the city).

I think I have a solution, which of course is not original. If people want to get married in a faith tradition (or a sector thereof) that strongly opposes "gay marriage" or has problems with homosexuality, they should do so. If gay or lesbian couples want to get married, they should do, after obtaining a license from city hall. They should probably not try to get married in a church that is hostile to such a marriage, chiefly for logistical reasons. I think this is what we call a win/win situation. Adults who want to get married can and may do so. People who feel like believing in a Supreme Being (etc.) can and may do so. I just don't see any downside to this arrangement, and I hope Proposition 8 goes the way of the 8-track stereo--a clumsy idea, at best.







I suppose this point of view makes me one or more of the following: a) a progressive and therefore suspect Catholic, b) a liberal college professor, c) a secular humanist, and d) a bad person. I admit to being a basic, entry-level Catholic who likes the writings of Dorothy Day, so I guess that makes me progressive. I am a humanist by profession: I teach English. I admit to being a professor, but my politics don't fit either "liberal" or "conservative" all that well. They're just too eccentric and eclectic. I think my being a Catholic calls into question the purity of my being secular, even though I spend a lot of time doing secular things. I wouldn't say I'm a bad person, but I've made loads of mistakes, and to say I'm imperfect is an example of generous phraseology.







People, we need to move past this issue. Adults should be allowed to fall in love with and marry other adults of their choice, assuming they want to fall and love and/or marry at all (they may not, and they may be on to something: who knows?). Adults should be allowed to follow any faith tradition they want as long as it doesn't obviously break some serious laws (like the one against homicide), or to follow no faith tradition, if that's their choice. The cost of marriage-licenses, regardless of the sexuality of the applicants, should not be allowed to sky-rocket.







The paths (marriage/faith tradition) need to converge only if it works for both parties. If there is a church (for example) that's glad to have a gay or lesbian couple get married in it, and the couple wants to do that, fine. Otherwise, just keep the paths separate--like one of those California freeways, with all the oleanders in the middle. On one side, adults who want to get married. On the other side, faith traditions. The two don't need to concern each other at all. If they decide to have a happy convergence, they can take the same off-ramp. Otherwise, live and let live--in that most commonsensical Californian way: being laid-back. (Consider The Big Lebowski. The Dude would not have voted for Proposition 8.)

What I'm Reading Now

Not that you asked, but here's what I'm reading (and I usually have 5-6 books going at once, a practice that drives some people with different reading habits figuratively crazy):

The Long Loneliness, Dorothy Day's autobiography--of interest to those wanting to know more not just about her but about radical politics in the early 20th century (socialism, anarchist-movements, organized labor, "distributism," anti-war movements, etc.), the Catholic Worker movement, whether politics and religion can intermingle effectively, women and religion, working-class life in Chicago and New York City, and the progressive/populist strain in Catholicism. Oddly enough, Day experienced the great S.F. earthquake, although she and her family were living in Berkeley, so their home wasn't destroyed. Apparently, the quake-proper lasted over 2 minutes. Of course, animals felt it coming as early as the evening before, she and others report.

Early Christian Rhetoric, Amos Wilder--older brother of Thornton.

The Beggar, by Naguib Mahfouz--Egyptian novelist, winner of the Nobel Prize.

The Walls of Jericho, a novel by Harlem Renaissance writer Rudolph Fisher. This partly for work, as I agreed to write an article on Fisher.

Selected Poems, A.R. Ammons. He was born in North Carolina but is associated, too, with New England. Free verse, but highly attentive to sound; rooted in everyday life, as W.C. Williams's poetry is, but Ammons strays from imagism and often writes tight little conceptual or meditative poems. I rather like this philosophical aspect of his poetry. He's also a master of very short poems. He can be whimsical, like cummings.

My books were finally paroled from storage, but they are in a half-way house situation--still sitting in boxes, awaiting the construction of shelves. More slowly than the tortoise, I'm cataloguing them on LibraryThing.

That's my bookish update. I'll leave you (or someone) with an epigram from Oscar Wilde: "A cynic knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."

What's The Matter With God?

I was reading a fine blog I've added to my list--it's called the Hyperborean--in which the author was discussing agnosticism, more specifically agnostic materialism, which might be defined as a state of accepting what science tells us about reality (a.k.a. matter) and of not believing much else, except that we have to keep on keeping on (breakfast, job, sleep, blogging, philosophy, golf, video poker, scratching itches, etc.) The blog included a nice paraphrase of an observation by Lyotard (French writers get all the great names, those bastards--emphasis on the second syllable):

"As Lyotard wrote in The Postmodern Condition, even the story we tell ourselves about the progress of science to deliver mankind from veils of ignorance has failed to foster the confidence that we really know what we're talking about when we try to explain what matter is made out of."

Put another way, it's amusing to observe Science coming up with new explanations that not only replace old explanations but also sometimes replace the premises of old explanations. "Did I say the visual model of the atom was 'planetary'? I'm sorry. I meant to say that it wasn't planetary; also, trying to draw a model of an atom is folly. There. Now we can proceed!"

Since I'm self-centered and a poet (was that a redundancy I just heard go off?), the Lyotard/Hyperborean idea made me think of a short poem I've posted here before:

Units: An Introduction

Everything is made
of little units, which
are made of even smaller
units. The smallest units,
undetectable by us, are
reality. All units larger
than these are rearrangement,
illusion, phony structure.
They constitute a kind
of molecular cinema
watched by us and
understood by God,
who is exempt from
the unit-arrangement.

--Hans Ostrom

And then I thought of the "agnostic" context of Hyperborean's blog, so I recalled a self-interview poem (I refer the reader to the comment concerning "self-centered" above):

Self-Interview on the Subject of God

Have I seen evidence of God?
I think so. Have I seen
God? I don’t know. Will
I see God? I think so. How
will I know? Oh, I’ll know.
What does God have to do
with anything? Well, God
has to do with everything, so
anything must be no trouble
for God. Do I have doubts?
Yes. Are my doubts a threat
to God? Be serious. On what
basis do I believe in God? Yes.

--Hans Ostrom

When asked, I describe myself as a Catholic because I became one in 2000, but because I arrived late to the Judeo/Greco/Roman/Jesuit party, and also for temperamental reasons, I'm a Catholic of the Keep It Simple, Stupid variety (my name for it, not the Pope's, in case you hadn't guessed): Apostle's Creed, Mass, the Lord's Prayer and what else Jesus had to say (he wasn't meek; remember: he was a threat to all established power in sight), social justice, and keep a close, unamused eye on your self-importance (especially, but not exclusively, if you're a self-centered poet). That's it. Nothing fancy. If the Vatican writes my parish and orders that something in the Mass should be done this way and not that way, my parish and I make the adjustment and move on.

My parish is a Jesuit one, therefore suspect, socially minded, and quirky. A person who moved to another parish in Tacoma was once quoted as saying, "I'm sick of St. Leo Parish--all they do is talk about helping poor people!" The Parish did not take the remark personally but had a good collective belly-laugh at the ironic truth. A colleague told me that some 25 years ago, he went to Mass at St. Leo, and a person from the Puyallup Nation "processed" (walked) into the Mass with the priest, in full head-dress, etc. The colleague found this outlandish, distasteful, risible, and wrong and apparently hasn't been back to St. Leo since. I don't quibble with his choice, and I'd only observe that the parish no doubt simply had invited the man to be a guest that day. I doubt if anyone in attendance except my colleague saw anything remarkable, disruptive, or radical about the guest's presence; that is, it would not have been seen as a protest an act of heresy or a quasi-political performance. Mass would have proceeded apace.

I spend almost no energy on the disputes that often seem to fracture and distract the Church, and I leave the serious Judging up to God (including who is in God's favor and who isn't; for instance, I would never assume that anyone who is not a Christian or a Catholic wouldn't be in God's favor; to do so would be mightily presumptuous, obviously, as would assuming that Christians/Catholics are in God's favor). I have to confess--no, not that kind of confession, which Catholics don't do much any more, by the way; they reconcile--that I'm also influenced by the writings of Baruch Spinoza (who amused neither the official Catholics or the traditional Jews of his era, and maybe not of this day, either), Dorothy Day (the Catholic Worker Movement; she was decidedly un-meek [wink], too); Henry J. M. Nouwen; The Cloud of Unkowing; and Jack Miles, who wrote God: A Biography, one thesis of which is that the arrival, appearance, work, life, and death of Jesus represented "a crisis in the life of God." I'll let Jack explain that one.

Keep It Simple, Stupid. Today I'll need to get help to construct the Latin for that. It will make a nice pairing with Rene's (I told you they got all the great names) Cogito, ergo sum.

God works in mysterious ways, for at least two reasons. First, why on Earth (so to speak) wouldn't God's ways be mysterious to us? Second, look what God has to work with. Just ask Lyotard.

By the way, to any poets, self-centered and otherwise, out there who derive pleasure from writing poems based on prompts or "challenges" given to them: a self-interview poem, on almost any topic and certainly in any form, comes highly recommended.

(poems from The Coast Starlight: Collected Poems 1976-2006).