Ambivalence

I note this week, for the first time, I needed to mail a note to the Catholic Worker to stay a subscriber. Before, if you'd sent in 25 cents, once, you were in for life. Even now, they're not asking for the money to cover their higher printing and mailing costs, just committment. How very like these naieve fools for Christ.

Ric Rhetor, for one, writes in this edition's Book of Notes column, "If you come in the front door, or up the dining room steps at Maryhouse, and continue apace to the first floor, your eyes are likely to catch sight of a banner hanging way down toward the end of the auditorium stage. It reads, in large black letters, "WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE."

Are we? For what? Connie asked last Saturday I buy 8 shrimp at Giant. As I stood at the fish counter, a fella ahead in line ordered 2 lobsters drawn live from the tank. On the scale, their antenni twitched; their claws grasped until they were taped shut. They'd soon be boiled alive. I'm no vegetarian; am I responsbile for their sufferring?

I love to shop at Wal-mart. I own an extensive wardrobe of $7 shirts, $14 pants and $19.99 boots. On a recent newsworthy tv show, they said in order for Wal-mart to sell clothes at that price, they force wholesalers to produce goods in China. In an interview, a man in Ohio said his factory shut down. I refuse to buy a foreign car. I own a Ford Ranger. Am I responsible for the unemployment of the Ohio man and the employment of Ford employees in Minnesota?

Alan Dershowitz has a compelling theory of rights. He writes while people can disagree on cases such as the merits of vegetarianism or shopping at Wal-mart, i.e., what does or doesn't constitute perfect justice, it's easier to start from the bottom up. Most of us agree on what constitutes perfect injustice: genocide, torture, dictatorship, etc. So if we focus on the rights of citizens that prevent perfect injustice, our system will leave room for open debate on important but less vital issues.

I've been reading the works of theologian, Karl Barth. From out of the university library treasure trove, I first read a 1930 general explanation of his theology. Then I happened across a mid- 1960's little book called "Why I Changed My Mind." This had me excited and I'll tell you why.

As far as an independent reading can take a person, I'm led to understand he's a proponent of a Great Gap - that there can be no analogy between God and man other than an analogy of faith. Believers can aspire at best to receive the Word of God. History proves, indeed, there are no ideologies or 'ism's that humanity can create which approach a perfect concept of what constitutes God's actions of creation or ideas of justice. I know also that Barth was forced to resign his professor's post in Germany in 1935, and leave the country, for his insistence on the supremacy of God over any other gods of human imagination.

Yet, I was disappointed Why I Changed My Mind contained no mention of the Holocaust. It's indicative of the nagging criticism of the Hitler-era German Confessional Church that it's otherwise courageous members, even Bonhoeffer, never adamantly condemned the Jewish persecution. Their advocacy addressed the supremacy of the Christian God, and some paid for that with their lives, but it skirted the travails of non-Christians. (I've mentioned before on this blog, I've personally encountered this underlying festerng literlist malevolence when I attended a once-Episcopal, now Nigerian-Anglican, fundamentalist church.) Though, Barth, mentioned in passing a 'German' cultural problem extending from Frederick the Great through Bismarck, through Hitler, and referred to some assistance to someone else who aided Jewish refugees from within the safety of his exile in Switzerland, he failed utterly to confront genocide head on (or anywhere else, as far as I can yet ascertain, though I've just checked out Prospects for Post-Holocaust Theology which contains a Barth-chapter, so more on this later...).

There is nothing more inviting than reading, discerning and writing theology even if it's merely an end in itself. In this, and more, if I understand him correctly, I agree with Barth and his advice to get serious about God; also that people would do well to concentrate on Last Things (and I'd add) rather than First Principles. Since I already philosophically accept the existence of God (and oh my, Barth would hate that notion), and sense and revel in the presence of the Holy Spirit in community and at prayer, my relevant, rather than simply enjoyable, studies must consist of post-Holocaust literature. It doesn't have to be addressed forthrightly, but if the book was written prior to it, it's absence as one critical event renders a certain incompleteness to any work, espcially if there's no 'after,' to complement the 'before.'

At an Elie Wiesel lecture, he answered the, 'I'm-sure-not-unexpected,' question at every event, about belief in God after the Holocaust, by saying, "I don't know." That doesn't equate with a desire to end theological studies; it means rather than certitude, any answers to questions you derive, may only be ambivalent at best.

I note this week on the anniversary of the deaths of the Amish schoolchildren, the unmarked land upon which the school once stood, has been allowed to remain fallow. How unlike the modern world not to erect a public memorial. I always stop to wistfully read the obituaries in our local rag that proclaim "Joe was a farmer all his life," or in the recent case of a nun, "she did domestic work for her order." Those are well lived lives of honest labor and prayer that did not overtly touch on the larger issues of the day, but beckon, as gentle and organic.

Is that farmer, this nun, myself, or are you, implicitly responsible for cruelty to animals, unemployment in Ohio, the Holocaust? I don't know. Perhaps, the next batch of books, from Kierkegaard, Pannenberg, Lewis, hold keys to unlock the mystery. It's fall; school's in - the thrill of discovery permeates the air; let's find out together. We'll hold our own on-line 'discussions for the further clarification of thought,' as the Catholic Workers have done every week for decades despite the fact we'll never know what we know for sure.

Folks like the Workers embody service; no one is turned away from their houses, their farms; no one judged; all welcomed and affirmed. In their world, responsibility is justice, personified; no ambivalence.