Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Numbing

Posted on August 16, 2023 by Bill Schmitt

This is the complete, two-part commentary published today in “Phronesis in Pieces” at billschmitt.substack.com. On Substack, part two was published as part of the “Phronesis Plus” supplement behind the paywall for subscribers. Please consider subscribing to support this work.

Hear Bill talking with Matt Swaim about this piece on “The Son Rise Morning Show” on Aug. 21: Click here for the archived audio and scroll to the 1 hr 37 min mark in the program.

“All the world’s a stage” rings true today even more than it did in Shakespeare’s time. The business of America is entertainment. Our civic life is increasingly driven by narrative and performance. And our scripts are tragicomic.

Our commercialized popular culture gives the entertainment industry an outsized influence on how we think.

Act One: The Fault is Not in our Stars, But in Ourselves

Members of the industry pack their ideas into a cavalcade of engrossing products, shaping messages and media. These inseparable forces, which media scholar Marshall McLuhan analyzed decades ago, roil our politics, our economy, our psychology, and our values.

The lessons and illusions, meanings and emotions, conveyed by these forces often earn our applause for excellence. But they can also gaslight us, or spark dubious approaches to social interaction. Oscar Wilde explained the cause for concern: “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”

Our culture of escapism, with its positive and negative aspects, is simply the water in which we swim. The risk of poisoning does not come from responsible portrayals of principles and truths. And censorship is not the answer to any portrayals.

But we must acknowledge that some amusements unleash dangers in the public square.

Where are the viral exposures occurring? In films and in the on-demand menus of our home theaters. Plus a metaverse that serves up social media, artificial reality, video games, and porn.

Effects from our screens are now more complex and numerous than they were in 1995, when a Frontline documentary titled “Does TV Kill?” examined the contagion of violence.

“Before the average American child leaves elementary school, researchers estimate that he or she will have witnessed more than 8,000 murders on TV,” says the online summary of that report. “Has this steady diet of imaginary violence made America the world leader in real crime and violence?”

The quantum leap in “mature-content” programming since that documentary must be taking an even bigger toll today. Our entertainment ecology arguably can breed crime, cultural coarseness, oversexualization of the young, and the epidemic of mental illness and psychological impairment.

Sadly, we perpetrate that ecological hazard. Much of the destructive or numbing content is made on our smartphones and posted on platforms like Instagram and TikTok. We form our own Hollywood, making videos that betray human dignity. We traffic in brief “messages” that embarrassingly resemble vaudeville or farce.

Yet, we seem to treat all these influences as a given. We debate about other cures for crime and crazy behavior, or we normalize the problems.

During a recent two-hour “town hall meeting” presented on the Cuomo news program to address America’s growing challenge of crime, I heard only two or three brief mentions of perpetrators’ “values” as a contributor to violence.

The infusion of harmful media messages into the lives of our youth seems to be a truth we can’t handle. When a Modesto Bee editorial this month complained about convenience-store workers taking a vigilante-like stance toward a shoplifter, it quickly passed over the possible role of entertainment:

“Street justice may be popular in movies and among frustrated citizens,” the editors said, “but it has no place in a society governed by the rule of law.”

This raises the question of whether our proclivities can indeed be tamed by a respect for law, order, and civilized behavior if we catechize the population with alternative rules.

Those are based on power, greed, explosive emotions, anything-goes attitudes, carelessness about the past and future, and the manipulation of  facts. Add to the list: cruel conflict, self-centeredness, oversimplification, materialism, relativism, utilitarianism, victimhood, and quick fixes.

We need to ponder this broad catechism of entertainment because of the broad truth about humans. We are inveterate imitators, eager to learn popular ideas and copy popular experiences.

“Man is the creature who does not know what to desire, and he turns to others in order to make up his mind,” wrote René Girard (1923-2005), a social theorist who studied this search for meaning under the rubric of “mimetic desire.”

Our copy-cat instincts intensify in an environment where realities change rapidly and many are trapped in a vacuum without rock-steady principles or authoritative guidance.

We retreat to online “communities” which comfort us with confirmation bias or mindless titillation. And we rely on movies and shorter visual bursts to tell us what the in-crowd is seeing and thinking.

Our opportunities to be influenced are abundant.

Of course, messages we receive may be straightforward and beneficial—with content that informs or inspires, whatever its perspectives and politics. Many movies and programs tell great stories, whether funny or sad, romantic or shocking.

Hollywood, like life, can explore many genres of experience with excellence.

What exploration do we prefer? A recent issue of Christianity Today noted a 2022 study of young adults in Gen Z and their favorite film genres. Comedy came in first, with “action” and “horror” essentially tied for second place. Twenty years ago, “drama” was the favorite in both TV and film.

There is also a deeper, or perhaps shallower, layer we explore. Much of our entertainment obsesses about compelling images, symbols, and appearances, consumed with brief, partial attention.

The characters are often stereotypical and predictable.

Mass-market programs showcase diversity, but we seldom penetrate the complicated life of a unique character dealing with darkness and light over time (with the exception of some dramas).

Relationships are frequently turbulent and shaped by tragedies against which we harden our hearts.

Many of those portrayed are mere spectators or victims in battles of “good vs. evil.” These must be won at all costs so the world can be saved—especially if a superhero is involved.

Superheroes typically represent a person’s independent formation of a new identity, an easily understood “brand.” They are loners with powers that win them allies and enemies. Their problem-solving goes to extremes.

Alas, they don’t seek time-consuming solutions through the technicalities and nuances of the justice system or mediation. Even this moderated approach is being further radicalized as “lawfare.”

We leave the theater only to view, up-close or on the news, neighborhoods that remind us of Gotham City post-Adam West. Looking for safety, we desire to become superheroes, to “do something” for our suffering planet, or at least for our children.

Lots of parents want their kids to have superpowers and cloaks of protection, not run-of-the-mill lives handling their joys and sorrows with traditional utility belts of purpose, family, prudence, resilience, and valor.

Kids may grow up seeing vampires, video-game enemies, and the walking dead around every corner. Some assume nearly everyone is a villain until proven “normal.” Deep down, kids know they have a dark side too, but that can be covered up with a colorful costume and signals of virtue, or with a hasty retreat from the turmoil.

Narratives encouraging these thoughts tend to replace authentic (but boringly detailed) stories of simple human heroism retold by elders and friends. Pre-digested, dystopian scenarios also replace the classic movies, TV shows, and books to which kids were never exposed. There’s so much new information (and potential deformation) to consume!

We risk winding up as “poor players” in scenes of silence or fury, not as agents aspiring to better roles in a brighter future. Even political “leaders” are sometimes selected as cookie-cutter avatars who will deliver their assigned lines to preserve the scripts of a mediocre, partisan, performative machine.

We need to earn and share the spotlight, as Pope Francis instructed in his 2020 message for World Communications Day. “With the gaze of the great storyteller—the only one who has the ultimate point of view—we can then approach the other characters, our brothers and sisters, who are with us as actors in today’s story,” he said. “For no one is an extra on the world stage, and everyone is open to possible change.”

Act Two: Hope is a Lover’s Staff; Walk Hence with That

We already have painted the picture of a theater of war. A broader view will suggest happy endings. But entertainment still has more tricks up its sleeve.

Using Marshall McLuhan as a guide, we observe film as a ”hot” medium which immerses one individual at a time, leaving the impression that you have been told everything you need to know.

It also creates a mood that sticks with you. Think of Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo, where an actor leaves the movie screen to pervade a fan’s life with mindless anticipation—and ultimate emptiness.

McLuhan saw the TV of his day as a “cool” medium, which provides fewer details and makes fewer connections, inviting the family in the living room to engage, to “fill in the blanks,” leaving space for thought and the development of empathy. But nowadays, TV 2.0 is more likely a lonesome and customized circumstance where we either browse or binge.

We easily get the feeling that reality and truth are best farmed out to a scriptwriter—not placed in the hands of The Scriptwriter.

Too much of our entertainment requires a suspension of disbelief. That’s a dangerous habit to form because it heightens our indifference and weakens our critical thinking.

A post-truth culture does not encourage consistency or coherence regarding the details of a story. That’s why we quickly shut down arguments if we don’t know the facts or if we fear contradictory facts. We want the general narrative to be sufficient, and we even allow it to get twisted and tangled as necessary.

Our originality veers away from the participation in God’s creativity which we can see in human procreation or in co-creation that builds upon and highlights the teamwork of special talents. Instead, ideas blurted from isolated minds verge on absurd excess, with the intention of being edgy or creating a buzz.

The mind frame of entertainment ideally responds to the genuine tastes of the audience, which include a hunger for beauty, wonder, insight, and relief from the world’s trivialities.

This “wow” factor makes audiences truly appreciative. In his “Letter to Artists” in 1999, Pope John Paul II said art should “give voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption.”

What can we do to cultivate this voice?

Champions for common sense must use the media at hand to edify the masses through fields like history, philosophy, theology—all the disciplines of liberal arts, humanities, and the sciences which shed light and raise questions. Rather than chastise a “dumbed-down” populace from our sheltered libraries, we need to extend a joyful interest in the pursuit of knowledge that gets us all thinking.

Of course, this is already being done in plenty of cases, as witnessed in Oppenheimer and many long-form podcasts, for example. Some of what we see and hear is positively brilliant. But we must plan, produce, and present such work more intentionally, in organized, engaging, and well-funded ways.

Hold more group-watch parties and town-hall meetings that are actually sponsored by groups and towns, not news networks.

Philanthropists, support scintillating extroverts, not secluded exhibits! Don’t surrender the work of assembling communities to pop-music stars, activists seeking power, and influencers seeking fame.

It would be great if channels like A&E, Bravo, and The History Channel returned to their original missions and used additional media to spread “premium content.”

A “PBS-2” network could celebrate civics, citizenship, religions and philosophies, and enlightening debates about domestic and international affairs—real “reality TV” without cooking or antiques.

If some programming is derided as propaganda, so be it. The public now recognizes that information/formation with a point of view is indeed the water in our think tank. Subjectivity is fine, so long as the free marketplace of ideas stays dynamic in a spirit of conversation, not cancellation. A cry for “objectivity” might only trigger more charges of misinformation and disinformation.

Let’s not reduce society to a battleground of narratives. Machine-made “talking points” disempower us; we aren’t sure how these arguments are supposed to end. Without visionary goals, there’s no progress to celebrate together.

Instead, amplify the voices of a full spectrum of people, including the marginalized. Liberate them as storytellers. Their parables, with actual beginnings and ends, will drive home points which wake us up and draw us closer.

Too much of our entertainment is about “special cases” and extraordinary conditions. Miracles happen all the time in our fiction, but they’re dismissed as magical realism. If we are our brother’s keeper, we must set our eyes on the grit of everyday life, which has its own miracles, so we can advise each other what to watch out for, and what to elevate toward.

The Catholic Church should use pews and “mass” media alike to comment with gusto at the intersection of popular culture and our fondest dreams.

Old-school diocesan newspapers carried movie reviews warning us, “You shouldn’t see this.” Now, the reasons why some entertainment content is undesirable, even unhealthy, need to be spelled out—as insight, not indoctrination: “Do you see what we’re doing to ourselves here?”

Pastors and church members should promulgate homilies and other critiques not as curmudgeons, but as resources of faith and reason. Raise awareness of media and messages which otherwise will shape us unconsciously, for good or ill.  

If we’re swimming in amusement and performance, churches can be part of an EPA for the human spirit, testing the water and reporting toxins.

Relevance has a built-in audience. Our mimetic desire to learn from others can be met by a chaos of confusion and ticket-sales statistics. Or we can share smiles and adventures we want to emulate.

We may all be actors in this world, but we should not leave it to entertainers to set the stage.

Images from ClipSafari.com, a collection of Creative Commons designs.

Posted in Education, Spirit of communication, Writing | Leave a comment

Hold My Bier: It’s Boomer Time

Posted on July 28, 2023 by Bill Schmitt

This commentary was published today in “Phronesis in Pieces,” found at billschmitt.substack.

“Generational theory” fascinates me. Think of it as sociological analysis that attempts to interpret America’s story by understanding the subplots interwoven over time by various age groups. These segments range from the “Greatest Generation” (the World War II victors born between approximately 1900 and 1925) to “Gen Z” (born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s).

The segment I call to mind, with mixed feelings, is the “Baby Boomers,” who burst forth in the 1946-1964 range. That’s my group, so I know something about the story we have written for ourselves and others. But we all need to understand it better.

See Bill Schmitt’s new article about Jesuits in the Diocese of Brooklyn, past and present. Published in The Tablet, July 22, 2023, by DeSales Media. You can also read it below in this blog.

I realize that every generation’s story, including its birth-date ranges, grossly oversimplifies.

Nevertheless, generational theory offers a context for reviewing key events and conditions that influenced us all in the public square. Such context can also help to assess how groups interact productively in the present day—and to seek wisdom about future contributions.

What’s the Diagnosis?

I have become restless about the road Boomers are traveling as years go by. What lessons have we learned and taught? What legacies are we leaving? What shall we make of our “retirement”?

Just like the Social Security Trust Fund promised by top officials, much of the zeal and hope for constructive change our generation anticipated generating has proven transient.

Obviously, the blame for dreams that became too big or small must be spread across multiple generations, time spans, and social conditions. Only the endpoint of earthly life will clarify the moral of each individual’s story.

We can acknowledge that Boomers have undertaken many noble endeavors.

Hey, we also gave the world a lot of great music, including countless songs celebrating love, freedom, and peace.

But turn to Jackson Browne for a sobering song about us: “The Pretender,” from a 1976 album.

He mused about the carefree “laughter of the lovers … leaving nothing for the others/but to choose off and fight/And tear at the world with all their might/while the ships bearing their dreams/sail out of sight.”

A prototypical (or stereotypical) Boomer, idealistic but spoiled, was “caught between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender.”

Browne called me and my gang happy idiots. We surrendered to greed, even though we aspired to spread “true love” and even though a great generation before us pursued nobility during cataclysmic travails.

Are we Boomers the “Pretender Generation”? Did we glimpse a 1960s-1970s trajectory which, despite its many flaws, pointed toward greater compassion and community, only to drop the ball by staking out turf in suburban cul-de-sacs?

We gravitated toward class divides and got pretty good at virtue-signaling before that term was invented. No doubt, some of our signals spotlighted actual virtue. But many of us opted for “another Pleasant Valley Sunday … here in status-symbol land”—quoting now from a Monkees tune.

Our timeline proceeded from the hippies to the yuppies to the elite Establishment—from a “summer of love” to “the me generation,” prompting Saturday Night Live to mock the 1980s as “the Al Franken Decade.”

Perhaps we set a tragic stage for our successors, Generation X, as previewed by a troubled talent named Freddie Mercury, born in 1946. His masterpiece, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” debuted in 1975. One might say this became a theme song for nihilistic disenchantment that has grown with each decade.

If so, we provoked a spirit summed up by a grand, albeit uncommon, word: disestablishmentarianism. Loosely defined, akin to relativism and deconstruction, this has become a driving force on campuses and in politics, popular culture, and religion.

Please forgive my Boomer blues, but they have been nurtured by many recent books employing generational theory. I haven’t read them, but I suspect the authors don’t like us. My favorite title is Boomers: The Men and Women Who Promised Freedom and Delivered Disaster (2021).

Numerous Boomers who have made it into the Establishment have held on for dear life, and for their children’s lives—frequently because our hopes are no longer anchored in the joy of an eternal afterlife or the responsibilities of a pilgrimage to that Kingdom. We feel threatened and guilty, and we’ve forgotten that God forgives.

It’s almost embarrassing how tightly the Pretender Generation has clung to power—and perhaps to pretension.

We cannot judge people’s souls, and we know plenty of folks of all ages, across the political spectrum, who care deeply about other persons and the common good. They readily sacrifice time, talent, and treasure to make society better.

But we don’t hand over the reins, or the reigns. America had twenty-eight consecutive years of Boomer presidents—Bill Clinton (born 1946), George Bush (1946), Barack Obama (1961), and Donald Trump (yep, 1946). Then we voted for greater maturity—Joe Biden (born 1942), from the cohort theorists label the “Silent Generation.”

Furthermore, George Soros is 92. Charles Koch of the activist Koch Brothers is 87. Pope Francis is 86. Klaus Schwab is 85.

The rising age-groups of influentials include many women who did not make the Boomer cut-off. ‘Tis the season for women and men of younger cohorts to bring their own experiences and insights into varied positions of leadership.

What’s the Cure?

How shall the Baby Boom, especially those with resources for a comfortable “retirement,” contribute in ways that resemble neither Ebenezer Scrooge nor Mao Zedong, the former octogenarian Chinese Communist Party chairman?

How might we escape the quotable critique of Napoleon—that “he was as great as one could be without being good”?

First, we must celebrate the fact that people today are living longer, or at least staying active longer in the public square—in the job market and/or the marketplace of ideas.

We should shape this activity with purpose and meaning, so the next step is clear. The Pretender Generation is due for another examination of conscience.

We can enjoy countless “Pleasant Valley Sundays” of wealth preservation, golf games, and plastic surgery, but there is no better moment to get busy enriching our legacy, as a group and as individuals.

Up-and-coming leaders will be immersed in, and hopefully determined to heal, a divided society with a plethora of needs, complex issues, and debts coming due.

Some will think the answer is to hastily “fix” what’s broken—by limiting freedoms, forcing consensus, downsizing aspirations, silencing deplorable troublemakers, pandering to emotions and appearances, and breaking a few more things so a more powerful, but more appealing, elite can take charge.

I hope more imaginative leaders will opt to inform and encourage all segments of the population, asking them to pitch in, echoing JFK’s inaugural address.

We Boomers in particular should demand leaders who know accurate history, emulating the good ideas and not merely condemning the bad. We have learned from both, so let’s remind them: Canceling the past cancels us.

Meanwhile, since our whopping population has allowed us always to play with an abundance of friends our own age, we must open our Overton window wider to appreciate those born after us, and before us.

As philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel put it, “The wise man knows himself as debtor, and his actions will be inspired by a deep sense of obligation.”

Boomers can help to revive, and to model, the principle of subsidiarity, where a hearty mix of “locals” identify problems, participate in solutions, and contribute an authentic diversity of abilities and perspectives.

Digital natives hold blurred notions of place, of identity rooted in relationship. Whether or not our cul-de-sacs were idyllic, we can be champions for the “neighborhoods” we grew up in—or at least for the idea of neighbor.

More bits of advice: To encourage an all-in attitude, we must make people of all sorts less fearful of speaking up and getting involved. Call out any rhetoric of disenchantment and distrust.

Many former anti-Establishment types now are well-Established. Keep planting our heirloom seeds of “love, freedom, and peace” within centers of power, promoting “power to the people.”

Do not applaud schemes to disestablish the institutions and traditions which sustain continuity amid chaos, but acknowledge from personal experience how “the system” needs repairs and maintenance.

One primary structure to re-establish is the family. Boomers should be suns around which nuclear, extended, intergenerational, and welcoming families orbit.

Reconnect our loved ones to the Church, civil society, and communities as sources of support. Those structures will also support us when we eventually have to press the “Life Alert” button.

The concept of “senior citizen” as a separate demographic category deserves an extra dimension—the role of “elder.” Actively educate, guide, and listen to children and grandchildren, nieces and nephews. Exhibit cultural literacy and emotional intelligence.

Admit our mistakes so others can avoid them. Point out examples of coarsened or dumbed-down conversations, not by stopping them but by upping the game. Help younger people experience face-to-face fun, injecting humor, finding common ground.

Advise against artificial realities, fantasy lives, and manipulative lies—while boasting that “my pretending days are over.”

Before our “Life Alert” days arrive, we can hone our skills as storytellers, making isolated minds more alert to life.

It helps if we were well-educated. Emulate teachers who got us excited about new knowledge. Say repeatedly, “That’s a good question.”

If we studied philosophy, we learned to love thinking, reasoning, and seeking the good, the true, and the beautiful. Rebuke those “Bohemian” lyrics, “Nothing really matters.” Affirm that, looking back now, even little things matter a lot.

Everyone will be asked to sacrifice more in the America of the future, and Boomers with resources must join in. Ponder an in-extremis example we can identify with. An inspiring squadron loosely known as the Fukushima Fifty, although they actually totaled hundreds, ventured into a radioactive hellscape to help control the 2011 meltdown in Japan. They included 250 senior volunteers with special skills.

Such emergencies are fortunately rare. But there are many ways to keep going when the going gets rough.

Consider tackling difficult, unglamorous tasks or positions where “elders” can provide qualities related less to age than to a wealth of ability, maturity, humility, sympathy, and familiarity with suffering.

This is where my head is during my semi-retired Boomerhood—enjoying some rest but seeing the value in restlessness.

All this stuff about generations is largely theory. But it recalls memories (and music) which can liberate and activate us. Recognizing the truth about where we have been, how we have changed, and how we can spark further growth is a habit which ages well.

Image from ClipSafari.com, a collection of Creative Commons designs.

Posted in Education, Spirit of communication, Words | Leave a comment

Jesuits See Lives Touched by a Close Call 250 Years Ago

Posted on July 28, 2023 by Bill Schmitt

This article was published in The Tablet, the newspaper of the Diocese of Brooklyn, on July 22, 2023. See the piece at thetablet.org, in a slightly revised form. I have been a freelance writer and editor for the newspaper, published by DeSales Media, since August 2021.

A story of international intrigue, religious upheaval, and institutional crisis will be retold from the Church’s history books on July 21 as the Jesuit order marks the 250th anniversary of its near-death experience.

Members of the Society of Jesus, globally and locally, including in the Diocese of Brooklyn, recall this month that their predecessors suffered much when Pope Clement XIV officially abolished, or suppressed, the society in July 1773.

But the experience, which ended in 1814, has borne long-term fruit.

Crediting that earlier generation’s prayer and trust in Christ for a rebound into action, the order now looks back on its 41 years of suspension—a kind of shadow existence—as a distant, but still meaningful, memory.

Most Jesuits in the United States served temporarily as diocesan priests from 1773 until [MM1] Pope Pius VII reauthorized the society worldwide with a “restoration” decree. Free from government intrusions in the matter, even the order’s underground period still left leeway for the making of Catholic history during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783).

Based on the recommendation of Benjamin Franklin, Rome appointed Father John Carroll, one of the former Jesuits, as the first bishop leading the Church in the U.S.

He soon convened meetings of clergy to develop a college. In 1789, Bishop Carroll purchased the property in Washington, DC, which became Georgetown University—an early entry in U.S. higher education and the country’s first Catholic college.

Advancing the Church’s ministry was much more difficult in Europe during this time. Political chaos and government pressures led to Pope Clement’s reluctant decision to declare the suppression.

Monarchs, eager to strengthen their own reigns and influenced by Enlightenment philosophies to resist Catholicism, targeted the Jesuits in attempts to constrain the pontiff. Many leaders saw the society as a widespread, powerful, and arrogant force, fiercely loyal to the Church hierarchy.

Portugal, Spain, and France took the lead in expelling the society. In this era when traditionally strong church-state bonds were erased and the values of the modern state were up for debate, Pope Clement feared that whole swaths of Europe might officially reject the faith, not unlike King Henry VIII’s break with Catholicism in England in 1534.

This time, the situation was even more complex. Portugal and Spain saw the Jesuit missions ministering to indigenous peoples in South America as threats to the royal colonizers and their grip on authority.

Jesuits championed a concept of moral order that had natural and supernatural roots, according to Father Michael Maher, a Jesuit professor at Marquette University and expert on the order’s history.

As creatures of God, this natural-law philosophy held, the colonized peoples—and all persons—have unique dignity, and a nation should respect their pre-existing rights and freedoms.

But many leaders on the world stage—contrary to the Jesuits and to the American founders, among others—argued that rulers have the authority to create, parcel out, and deny people’s rights. In this “laws-of-nature” approach, power was the decisive factor, Father Maher said.

Amid that feud and others, anti-religious sentiments were bubbling up in France. The upheaval of the French Revolution (1789-1799) closed the country’s churches, as well as additional Catholic orders.

A few countries took different courses. Catherine the Great of Russia ignored the suppression decree. She preferred to allow the Society of Jesus to continue operating schools in her country. [MM2] 

At the time of Pope Clement’s sweeping decree, the Superior General of the Jesuits, Father Lorenzo Ricci, motivated his men to adopt a distinctly Christian frame of mind, accepting humiliation, swallowing their pride, [MM3] and pursuing peace.

In a 2014 homily looking back on those years of tumult, Pope Francis praised Father Ricci for the tone he set and guidance he gave.

By the time the abolition was reversed, the remaining and soon-to-return Jesuits “knew how to invest, after the test of the cross, in the great mission of bringing the light of the Gospel to the ends of the earth,” Pope Francis said.

“The Society, even faced with its own demise, remained true to the purpose for which it was founded,” he said. Though the structure was dismantled for a while, the Pope described the “Jesuit identity” which survived: one’s loving trust of [MM4] Christ and dedicated ministry to others, modeling belief and hope.

Today, approximately 20,000 Jesuit priests (along with consecrated brothers and “scholastics” preparing for their vocation) serve in some 100 countries.

The Society’s largest presence in New York City is Fordham University, established in 1841, with about 17,000 students now enrolled. The U.S.-based Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities lists 28 member institutions.

Education is the Jesuits’ largest missionary endeavor, among many others. They teach in high schools and prestigious centers of graduate study around the world.

Their underlying message is “that we see revelation as grounded in reason,” historian Father Maher told The Tablet. Combining philosophy and theology, the society has followed Christ’s love for creation in both body and soul, centered on “the fullness of the human condition.”

“One of the big mental transitions the Jesuits had to make” was that the “repository” of human dignity “no longer was in monarchy; it was in republic,” Father Maher said. Responsible for fostering and respecting individual rights in everyday life, God’s people need a complete education.

But Catholic values go beyond education to outreaches of all sorts, such as parishes. In that ministry, Father Maher said, “we learn by revelation and by worship that God loves us and we are called to a higher plane.”

In the Diocese of Brooklyn, the Society of Jesus began its ministry at Our Lady of the Presentation-Our Lady of Mercy Parish, Brownsville, four years ago.

That largely Black and Latino congregation has roots including West Indian, Nigerian, Puerto Rican, and Garifuna—a people of African and indigenous American ancestry from the Caribbean Island of St. Vincent, Honduras, Guatemala, and Belize, which for a time was a Jesuit mission. The parish offers a monthly Mass in the Garifuna language.

Another Jesuit, Father Carlos Quijano, serves as administrator at St. Paul the Apostle Parish, Corona. Additional priests, based at the order’s community residence in Crown Heights, fan out to celebrate Mass at other parishes.

Brothers and priests at the residence, established in 2017 after the Society of Jesus had been mostly absent from the diocese for some years, accomplish various ministries, such as retreats. They offer personal spiritual direction, using the Spiritual Exercises of their founder, St. Ignatius Loyola.

“I was happy to see our community move here and happy to be part of taking on the parish work,” said Father Vin Sullivan, pastor at Our Lady of the Presentation-Our Lady of Mercy.

He is a Brooklyn native who attended a Jesuit landmark, nicknamed Brooklyn Prep, which famously taught college-bound boys from 1908 to its closure in 1972.

Now, the society is known for Brooklyn Jesuit Prep, East Flatbush, a Catholic middle school serving low-income families of multiple races, ethnicities, and faiths. Its goal is “to develop young leaders who are intellectually competent, open to growth, loving, religious, and committed to doing justice.”

Father Sullivan told The Tablet the order has four priorities in its service to the Diocese of Brooklyn: helping people spiritually as they come to know Jesus Christ; especially accompanying the poor and the marginalized, such as migrants; ministering to young people in their pursuit of a hope-filled future; and “caring for our common home,” in solidarity with Pope Francis’ concern for the environment and a fraternal human ecology.

Plenty of adaptation to changing times, on the streets of New York and around the world, has led the Jesuits and the Church to where they are today, and “the theme is just hope,” Father Sullivan said.

Looking back on the suppression which occurred in a chaotic world 250 years ago this month, one sees lessons learned which brought Jesuits closer to God and closer to the people.

“The whole thing was the experience of death and resurrection,” Father Sullivan said. “That’s kind of what it’s about—somehow trusting in the work of God and the Spirit.”

Image from ClipSafari.com, a collection of Creative Commons designs.

 

Posted in Education, Prayer, Spirit of communication | Leave a comment

Fake Muse? Finding Allies in Voegelin and Cuomo

Posted on July 28, 2023 by Bill Schmitt

This discussion of philosophy–in ancient times and on the nightly news–appears in the current edition of “Phronesis in Pieces,” my Substack publication at billschmitt.substack.com.

Eric Voegelin

I want to point out a link I have added to the “Defining Phronesis” section of my Bookshelf of resources. A paper by David D. Corey, Ph.D., professor of political science at Baylor University, deserves special attention in this Substack because I found especially insightful his analysis of a noted scholar’s writing on phronesis.

That scholar is the distinguished political philosopher Eric Voegelin (1901-1985), who “devoted his life to understanding the spiritual disorders and political violence which began in the fifteenth century and reached their apogee in our own time,” as described at the website of the Voegelin Society.

Corey points out that a seminal essay by Voegelin, “Right by Nature,” found in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, approaches Aristotle’s concept of phronesis (“prudence” or “practical wisdom”) with a special appreciation of its spiritual dimension.

Most contemporary scholars, including Corey himself, see this wisdom discussed in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics as a virtue of ethical and political reasoning that is essentially secular.

But Corey says Voegelin’s spiritual insight into phronesis is “nevertheless worth taking seriously.” It raises questions “about the extent to which Aristotle’s ethical-political theory is, or is not, transcendently oriented.”

Readers of this Substack already know my non-scholarly embrace of phronesis understands the virtue as a driving force for exploring the pursuit of wisdom in contemporary public affairs; wisdom is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (CCC 1831). As described in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, those gifts make man responsive to the Spirit’s leadings and sustain a Christian’s moral life (CCC 1830).

Prudence is listed as one of the four “cardinal virtues,” derived from the wisdom of God for all those who “love righteousness” (CCC 1805).

I understand that the Catechism’s descriptions and definitions of wisdom and prudence stand separate from Aristotle’s, It is hardly my goal to misinterpret or rewrite his philosophy as “fake muse” adapted to my tastes. But I eagerly accept any intersections that might enlighten a Catholic’s engagement in, and contributions to, important discussions of public policy and the common good.

Not only is the participation essential at this time when much of the reasoning in society veers away from reality and responsibility, but reminders of the Church’s values and virtues bring evangelization and encouragement to people in search of God and authentic meaning.

Allow me to use my Catholic imagination—and faith in Christ’s incarnation in our minds and hearts—to “take seriously” the Voegelin interpretation of phronesis, which you can read about in the excellent critique from Corey.

Chris Cuomo

NewsNation anchor Chris Cuomo, in an opening monologue for his nightly show Cuomo, recently demonstrated that my aspiration for more vigorous applications of phronesis in public affairs is shared by some thought-leaders in the secular world. He did not use Aristotle’s term, and I do not know whether he was consciously engaging his own Catholic imagination, but he made a compelling appeal for deeper, values-centered reasoning in America’s media and citizenry.

The plot of the new Hollywood film Oppenheimer helped to launch his commentary. He said the movie reflected how serious moral questions, particularly about the use of the atomic bomb in this case, simply don’t get publicly addressed. In the present day, politics functions largely to generate engagement through enragement, with stories focusing on relatively unimportant developments which divide voters and help only the few who are manufacturing opinions.

“We’re ignoring the big questions,” Cuomo said. “There’s no philosophy. There’s no real talk about what the principles are that matter.” Those in power avoid dealing with key issues “because they’re allowed to make mountains out of molehills—even if it means ignoring actual volcanoes.”

He continued, “When does life begin? Instead of a cheap argument about who respects life, and ‘I’m pro-life’—like anybody’s anti-life—why don’t we deal with the hard part of defining what that actually means and how it’s reflected and what we allow in our society that goes way beyond a single medical procedure?”

Recalling Oppenheimer, he said, “It reminds me of how we have abandoned the aspect of moral responsibility in the name of progress for self-defense or some temporary suggestion of principle or advantage, just like we did” in developing nuclear weapons.

Cuomo concluded that, in lieu of real leaders, we’re “replacing principles and philosophy and methodology with popularity and pressure from opponents.” By avoiding “de minimis divisions,” he advised his viewers, “give yourself a chance of making better determinations going forward.”

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Quoth Bob Dylan, We’ve Gotta Serve Somebody

Posted on July 13, 2023 by Bill Schmitt

“Ask what you can do for your country.” If a U.S. president said this today, as President Kennedy did in 1961, it would trigger a negative reaction in some circles. What would we call that reaction, clinically speaking?

Depending on what we were asked to do, our reaction might be algophobia—a fear of pain (not of algorithms). If we feared losing out on a luxury, the acronym for that is well-known: FOMO.

But no name exists for the pushback against an action that countries, religions, and life in general ask us to take all the time—namely, to sacrifice.

To fill this glaring language gap, allow me to coin the term sacriphobia.

To spell it as “sacrophobia” would erroneously imply a fear of the sacred. A word already exists for that: hierophobia (pronounced hi-ero), where “hier” (as in hierarchy) has Latin and Greek roots meaning holy.  

Many people harbor such a fear today, but I imagine sacriphobia is more widespread and visceral. It’s embedded in our egos. Our culture is out of order.

God’s Chosen People Made Their Choice

An excellent podcast series called “Exodus” presents intellectual Jedi knight Jordan Peterson as he leads scholars in discussing the second book of the Bible. In one video episode, they explored what people should do as caretakers of the social order.

The discussants mused about sacrifice not as something that is feared or avoided, but as a truth at the crux of our relationships. From this perspective, an epidemic of sacriphobia constitutes a secular and spiritual crisis.

In the podcast, an analysis of the Egyptian pharaoh prompted Peterson to remark that “the essence of tyranny” is the lack of restraint by such factors as loyalties or concern about the implications of one’s actions.

“You might think, well, you get to do whatever you want! You’re free from the constraints of society,” the eclectic psychologist said. But having no ties that bind or guide you means “you’re not free.” You’re trapped by chaotic thinking and a hardened heart.

“And that’s why it’s so interesting that God keeps insisting,” as He unleashes multiple plagues, that the pharaoh must free the Hebrews so they can “serve Him” through sacrificial worship in the desert.

“Real freedom,” Peterson continued, “is to be found in the proper ordering of things and the proper subservience to things.”

Their special relationship doesn’t make the Hebrews pitiable slaves to Yahweh. In Exodus 10:9, Moses explains that God’s people should be liberated “for we must hold a feast unto the Lord.”

One of Peterson’s interlocutors, Jonathan Pageau, pipes up: “Sacrifice is always a feast. We forget that even when you offer a sacrifice, you eat the meat. So sacrifice and communion are always related together. You get the body [of the sacrificial animal, consecrated to God], you offer up the smoke … and then you join together in eating the same food. It’s a really primordial symbolism.”

The communal sharing of that body as food is done in the service of God and makes those at the feast recognize themselves as one body—“the nation as a body or the family as a body,” Pageau pointed out. When that meal is shared with strangers, they can expand the community and introduce healthy diversity into it.

Because it is a sacrificial meal, “you do have this idea that the vertical sanctifies the horizontal, as It were—the family and the community” in a ceremonial relationship with God, another discussant said.

“When you give of yourself, you give what is yours, you give what you have received, you give what is under you … you’re participating in a kind of profound reciprocity with the way things are,” he continued.

In contrast, “when you say no, I’m keeping this all to myself, you can’t even have what you had. The locusts eat it.”

We Have Our Ups and Downs

People today have been willing to sacrifice in ways that seem basically horizontal and distanced—as in wearing masks or enduring inflation for causes like climate change and Ukraine expenditues. But these are often motivated by fears, appearance, and government rules, not love of a higher authority or one’s neighbor.

Our most profound sacrifices, like feeding the hungry and caring for the sick, are ideally vertical in disguise.

The tenth and ultimate Exodus plague—in which God says the firstborn child of every family in Egypt shall die, potentially including the Hebrew families—drives home the point that everyone must be willing to deny oneself in intense ways for heartfelt reasons and vertical purposes.

This requires us to ponder “the manner in which reality exists through sacrifice itself,” according to Pageau. “The first fruits, the firstborn, are normally offered to God because that’s how the world works. For something to exist, the highest aspect of it has to be given up to the level above it…. You have to give the best of you up.”

This Exodus truth is profound, but not crushing. “The final Christian answer will be that, no, you offer yourself,” not your firstborn, Pageau explained. “It’s sacrifice to God….You’re giving it up to purpose.” If we join together in this offering, we focus our attention on God and unite in submitting to Him, and His purposes.

It makes sense to me, and it seems to promise community and good order through doing what is “right and just”—cushioned by mercy.

We’re not giving in to a cruel taskmaster. In that tenth plague, a loving God spared the firstborn children of the Hebrews through the Passover. In Genesis, He asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but then spared the boy.

In the New Testament, the Son of God died on the cross to offer Himself as a sacrifice to His father’s love and for our salvation (CCC 2100). He told us to remember this—to join in the offering, and to be one with God in service to the vision of mercy and justice for all. For Catholics and others, this remembrance takes the forms of a meal and a community missioned to spread the Good News.

Take Up the Offering

As a wordsmith, I now have a deeper understanding of the phrase, giving up. In any earthly contest, we “give up”to the victor. God is not competing with humanity, fortunately, but He wants us to see what we can, and can’t, do.

The Catholic maxim I learned in my youth—to offer it up when I suffered—now makes more sense, too. A life surrendered to God means offering everything up. This grateful, constructive habit creates common ground with others, plus the hope that losses can be redeemed.

But this perspective comes with responsibilities. Reality really does “exist through sacrifice.” The Olympic athlete gives up plenty in order to bring out the best of her talents. Military “service members” and first-responders are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. Even hobbyists go “all-in” for the sake of an avocation—their “passion.”

The sense of good order can break down when we slip into sacriphobia, which we all do from time to time. This phobia can become rampant in a materialistic culture where politics, greed, narcissism, fear, and half-heartedness overshadow the Bible’s advice to “think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” (Colossians 3:2)

Nowadays, taught to value our personal freedom and flourishing above others, we resist constraints from authorities of all sorts, much like the tyrants Peterson mentioned.

We’ve learned to preserve and impose our own “truths,” so we’re not willing to endure listening to opinions which might tamper with our minds.

We avoid ridicule, or acknowledging our imperfections, in the Pinterest-perfect marketplace of megalomania. Indeed, psychologists do have a term for this: atelophobia.

Elitists who don’t want to admit any guilt or responsibility for unjust conditions perpetrate virtue-signaling and distractions so they can retain their privileges in an increasingly suspicious world.

People portray themselves as victims for whom others should sacrifice. God instructed that the good we do for those who suffer, we do unto Him. But we feel manipulated by martyrs who want us to do unto them.

Our leaders have de-emphasized responsibilities as the necessary complement to rights. We need inspiration from institutions and individuals who help us envision the best we can be, for society’s sake. But scorched-earth deconstruction has eroded trust in traditional sources of motivation, so it’s less likely we will make the inquiry President Kennedy prescribed.

Many people are lonely, anxious, sad, and angry, but they avoid the reconstructive (even progressive!) sacrifices that can come with reaching out to others, making  commitments, falling in love, making discoveries through disagreements, and investing in the future.

Phobics Can Be Friends

Secular and religious folks alike see that suffering is everywhere today. In politics and prayer, media and meditation, we need to admit and address it more directly as a fact of life, one we can strive to heal together. We need to speak frequently of the vertical aspect of our activities—why we do things and how we find some peace.

Our humble and practical confrontations with everyday troubles, especially if we can joke about them or gratefully welcome others into our journeys. Forbearance can substitute for blame games and escapes into artificial reality.

When we ask each other “how are things going,” let’s be ready to tell, and hear, the truth. We’re all in this together—and to gather.

It’s time to elevate the plague of suffering, to raise it up as an opportunity to sacrifice for higher purposes of unity and order, to look for good news amid the mess.

The best cure for sacriphobia, or any phobia, is behavioral / exposure therapy, where we confront our fear face-to-face. As our necessary nationwide support group scales up, we then can enjoy the second-best cure—when the sacrifice is accompanied by a feast.

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Let this Conscience Examine Us

Posted on July 13, 2023 by Bill Schmitt

He Who Acts Against His Conscience Always Sins — Aquinas

Sometimes our courts are our conscience. We should examine our consciences, and we should let our consciences examine us.

Our news programs have never been so filled with accounts of how lawyers are arguing, and judges are judging, the right and wrong of particular cases—applications of practical wisdom, or phronesis, which are quite intriguing and often very important. These are great opportunities to explore the content and the context of the state of our Union.

Exhibit A,, your honor: The recent US Supreme Court decision on affirmative action. We owe it to ourselves to ponder this subject. As a good start, read the concurrence by Justice Clarence Thomas and the dissent by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

The entire decision is found here.

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Songs That Made the Hit Parade

Posted on June 26, 2023 by Bill Schmitt

I felt like giving my daughter a present for Father’s Day. It’s the thought that counts, and my thought was about the joy and hope that Mary Schmitt, now 26, has already given not only to me on any given day, but to countless family members and friends over time.

Like fatherhood itself, the tasks related to this present required some work, but I knew this was no day to skimp on the effort of imparting knowledge and experiences. They will come in handy. And anyway, it was fun.

I prepared a list of links to 20 YouTube videos featuring some of my favorite songs from decades past. To make this an even more transcendent family affair, I also linked to 11 videos containing songs that I knew were important to my now-deceased dad—because of ideas they expressed, or who performed them, or simply the memories they evoked.

In consultation with Eileen, I added two “bonus tracks”—songs that she remembered had brought a special smile to her own dad. Thus, two great grandfathers (not great-grandfathers) received a voice allowing them to sing and laugh with Mary.

This whole exercise highlighted for me the importance of intergenerational conversation, passing important-ish wisdom down from the Boomer generation to the Millennials and Gen Z. Our digital tools make this purpose-driven browsing an easy, interactive experience, even though we often neglect or trivialize the internet’s archive of authentic pleasures.

Fathers (and mothers) can play a stewardship role with these legacies which help form and inform those we love, spanning the past, present, and future. My service was pro bono, with the only “cost” being my safari-like quest through YouTube for the most impactful video versions of each song. And the occasional tears triggered by my own nostalgia.

I also got to celebrate the talent of performers from different eras, the gift of YouTube as a digital medium of analog exchange, and the power of music in packets of sharable values. My venture sent me down several fruitful, upbeat rabbit holes offering additional facts and inspirations. Plenty of songs about affection and appreciation.

You are welcome to see and play the eclectic and eccentric list I delivered on Sunday. I welcome your comments. And I wish a Happy Father’s Day, unbounded by time, to all of you.

Songs my own dad liked:

I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General

Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime

A Shanty in Old Shanty Town

Paper Doll

Maxwell’s Silver Hammer

“Lawrence Welk Show” Closing Theme

Thanks for the Memories

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together

“All in the Family” (Opening Song)

Ed Sullivan and Topo Gigio

Bonus: Songs Papa Joe liked:

King of the Road

Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass

Songs I like:

Allentown

Uptown Girl

You’re My Home

Maybe I’m Amazed

Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road

Bohemian Rhapsody

Trying to Get the Feeling Again

Africa (live! wow!)

It Had to Be You

A Whole New World

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

A Friend Like Me

Superman Theme (John Williams)

Superman Love Theme (from film)

Disney Girls

10,000 Reasons

California Dreamin’

Panis Angelicus (Pavarotti)

You’ve Got a Friend

Shower the People You Love with Love

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Let’s NOT Play “Jeopardy”?

Posted on June 21, 2023 by Bill Schmitt

Was there something strange about the June 7, 2023 episode of the Jeopardy! game show? Here’s the answer, in the form of a question.

Like so much of American popular culture, this TV episode–where nearly two dozen clues became “triple stumpers,” eliciting no guesses from any contestant—yielded plenty to ponder among seekers of practical wisdom.

On a recent “Inside Jeopardy” podcast, host Buzzy Cohen suggested the episode’s clearly bright players—Suresh, Kristene, and Collete—might have been sleepy or hungry because the taping took place late in the morning. The obvious, and very rare, level of silence among the buzzers during the half-hour had peeved numerous fans.

(In a previous podcast, Buzzy had hinted that Jeopardy! participants in general might be wagering too timidly.)

My reaction, as a loyal viewer and amateur social critic, was concern that the June 7 threesome accidentally spotlighted mega-trends our culture needs to monitor.

By not even venturing long-shot attempts, possibly fearing they would send their dollar totals into the red, the trio reminded us that the game of life won’t produce excellence (or excitement) unless we grab for the gusto. Repeat after me: “Make it a true daily double.”

We’ve got to be in it to win it. But, in various settings, too many of us are losing our zeal, holding our peace, becoming more defensive, settling for “good enough.” We lack confidence in what we know, and indeed many of us fear we know less than we should.

The Jeopardy! meritocracy symbolically shakes its finger at the insufficient, narrow, and self-centered education some kids—and parents–receive these days, even as torrents of new data emerge about everything. How shall we explore, and think about, reality?

“Old” facts, remembered or forgotten on the Alex Trebek Stage, create their own controversies. Some fans reportedly sniped at one episode’s trio of competitors who all failed to buzz in with the word “hallowed” to complete “be thy name” in the Bible quotation/prayer. They had no guesses.

As our shared pool of common knowledge shrinks, we hear calls for fewer merit-based pursuits so that kids aren’t embarrassed or disempowered. Should our culture, or a game, force people into traps of failure perpetuated by supremacy, outmoded expectations, and systemic racism?

(The best answer in any showdown between a cold-hearted meritocracy and a diversity-equity-inclusion paradigm is probably something in the middle. Jeopardy! reminds us of the ancient wisdom that humans need to play; their competitions bring sustainable growth as a form of fun. They benefit both the striving individual and the team-spirited group.)

Even in this successful show’s dedicated fan community, one hears occasional allegations that the hosts and judges are making mistakes. Idealistic perfectionists may fear TV bosses are risking carelessness as they expand the franchise with spin-offs and tournaments, requiring the crew to take on extra assignments and hours. Nobody wants to place Jeopardy! in jeopardy!

One former contestant ventured into social media, opining that the show did not reflect a broadened, awakened culture of “quizzing.” He wondered if the program was a meaningful test of intellectual attributes, or merely a glorified reality show with contrived conditions.

These trending dramas call to mind increasingly common observations about American society.

Are meek contestants guilty of “quiet quitting” (or “quiet quizzing”)? A recent Gallup report on the state of the workplace estimated that close to 60 percent of employees in the country are quiet-quitting in one form or another, partly because they do not find their work satisfying or rewarding. This happens not only in offices, but in daily life.

Are we also watching the “dumbing down” of the population due to personal insecurities, distracted mindsets, and one or another sort of intoxication/addiction?

Might the profit goals of bosses lead to “skimplification” that erodes quality and frustrates audiences? Our media frequently hyperbolize and oversimplify, using sensationalism to glue us to our screens. But podcasts and other formats suggest that wise audiences also will stick around when content probes subjects diligently, in depth.

More folks nowadays seem to be guilty of sloppy work—or sloppy thought about the purpose and rewards of work. Some management mavens fear we are less attentive to detail. In a world where truth is relative, objectivity is prejudicial, and screen-assisted multitasking is commonplace, are would-be gladiators persuaded not to sweat the small stuff, especially when that stuff is called “trivia”?

Although fewer people affiliate with religions or believe in God today, this game show has a liberal-arts and humanities tradition of elevating our brains through “answers” tied to particular faiths. Will this lens of meaningfulness guarantee fewer correct responses—and increased fan allegations of offensive irrelevance?

Emotions, self-conceit, and “tribal” identification powerfully shape what we learn about and care about. Some contestants may be deterred from brandishing their knowledge if they fear being judged by current criteria akin to clickbait.

Given all this gravitas I am imposing on a TV show that grew from humble roots in 1964 (see video), perhaps it’s time to take a break for some “potent potables”!

Should such a program—especially one that pursues high standards, honors diverse and beautiful minds, and inspires nightly family gatherings nationwide—burden fans and foes alike with all these risk analyses, so many galvanizing questions?  

Yes! That’s the whole idea of Jeopardy! … and of any arena for boldly inquiring whether our culture can handle the truth.

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When Cents Make News, News Can Make Sense

Posted on June 2, 2023 by Bill Schmitt

The following commentary is a preview of a soon-to-be-published edition of “Phronesis in Pieces” at billschmitt.substack.com.

This is newsworthy if it’s true: The U.S. Mint has ceased producing pennies.

I have reason to believe this might be true, and many Americans have reason to be interested in the possibility. After all, a cessation has implications for everyday business transactions, for our assessment of policies enacted by our government, and for our treatment of pennies we have indifferently hoarded—or carelessly lost under the couch cushions—for many years.

Journalists on the federal government beat could check this story out with a brief phone call. Indeed, in theory, I could, too—assuming a “public information” staff member at the Mint or the Treasury Department would take a call, and respond meaningfully and promptly to an inquiry, from a member of the general public like me.

There is no need for me to take on this assignment because (a) I’m confident there are no facts being “hidden,” so this humble story will emerge from Washington reporters in due time; and (b) I have already found the “news angle” that feeds my own exploration of practical wisdom, or phronesis, in our public affairs.

My admittedly non-aggressive “reporting” on this matter of “common cents” followed this timeline:

  • While perusing the economic news online, I captured a fact. I should say the fact captured me. We should let that happen more often—if our perusals are purposeful. Pope Francis has written in his World Communications Day messages about the value of robust curiosity.
  • In a search-engine time warp that didn’t equate a story’s relevance with its date of origin, I saw a headline from the Market Realist website teasing me: “Why Do We Still Have Pennies? U.S. Mint Plans to Phase Them Out.” Robin Hill-Gray reported in January 2022, “The U.S. Mint announced that it will start to phase out the production of the penny by the end of 2022. The last batch of pennies will be minted on April 1, 2023.”
  • The latter date suggested the presence of a fresh “news hook.” Hill-Gray also revealed reasons why this event could be important: “The national coin shortage and the emergence of digital currency are making economists question the value of real money, specifically pennies.” The government spends more than two cents to produce each one-cent coin. A cessation of this waste could be done in a way that minimally eases the federal budget deficit. Meanwhile, those who favor keeping the penny argue that charity organizations still receive many donations in that form.
  • I checked a website that told me Market Realist, a publication I had not known about, was generally reliable. I looked for other sources to confirm the story and to bring it up-to-date, hopefully affirming the Mint had implemented the stoppage foreseen almost 18 months ago. But I could not find any government news releases or major journalism outlets confirming or denying real action. (If I simply have missed such a report, sorry, my bad.)
  • I asked the artificial intelligence-powered search engine in my Bing browser: Did the Mint end penny production in April 2023? “Yes,” it said, but the AI chat tool provided only a half-answer that would leave dogged journalists dissatisfied. It repeated the announcement seen in Market Realist, citing the publication and two others which had run similar mentions in 2022. I followed up, asking if there was any proof that the Mint had indeed stopped making pennies. Bing credulously referenced the same, old announcement as its “proof.”

So this is my “story behind the story”—or my incomplete story behind the possible non-story.

I offer a few reflections on this experience of a human brain fishing in the information ocean, guarding against misinformation, and trying to update and verify the facts of an intriguing clue. My conclusions:

  • First, there is news here—parts of a puzzle that could spark lots of interest, even though the story hardly ranks as “page one” stuff. We need more of the “truth-love” and big-picture thinking that make people newshounds as they surf each day’s waves of media content. We need to imagine how something might affect those around us, not just ourselves.
  • The planned change in U.S. currency (no pun intended)—a change similar to coinage modifications other countries have made—has linkages to overall Treasury practices and the real-world economy: A species of “tax” for consumers who would have to “round up” their purchase totals? An upcoming burden for storekeepers and charity organizations? A possible facet of the evolving story of “central bank digital currency” (CBDC)? Overall, I believe such a policy would be smart, probably inevitable, but replete with subtexts the American public should ponder productively. (For example, there’s talk of a “Pennies for Freedom” initiative that would collect some of the trillions of pennies now stockpiled in our households to benefit good causes.)
  • We see here a microcosm of everyone’s hobbled pursuit of truth and new knowledge. Early indications of something meaningful get reported—often by a small, specialized organization—but they go unnoticed, or forgotten, or buried under the flow of easier stories drawn from Twitter or Tik-Tok. By the time the details of the denoument are fleshed out, the chance for widespread discussion—deliberations which could foster democracy and the citizenry’s collective wisdom—has passed. Too much of today’s news creation and consumption is partial and passive because we drift in our space-time distraction, then awaken to an official announcement, and then parrot it without a context of history and implications.
  • We must approach the digital world—and the analog public square—more wisely as tools for education and understanding. In principle, we have endless potential to engage with all sorts of people who are following a plethora of “beats.” They need not be journalists on assignment, but merely folks experiencing their unique journeys and concerns. Ideally, they are aware that our insights and interests intertwine. When a problem or policy issue suddenly hits us all as a fait accompli, it is often a failure of our personal communication and media methods. Grass-roots folks have been unduly quiet or uncaring. Or people with power have been unduly secretive and strategic. We can also blame our own passivity and confirmation bias, distracting us from fresh insights and opportunities for inquiry.
  • The Catholic Church’s call for subsidiarity, where society maximizes the sorts of issues we manage at more local levels—in communities which know and discuss what’s going on via personal encounters—is a seldom-applied antidote to the problem. Fewer facts would slip like fish through the nets of our modern “mega” and “meta” viewpoints. Our media tend to focus on wide-scale information and emotions, marketing and controlling them for profit and power. Through these screens, news produces impacts, but it doesn’t nurture imagination or problem-solving.
  • Here’s a fact that we dare not bury: In many cases, an AI search system will not make a good reporter. Its learning consists of explosive regurgitation (and we hope that it stops there). In my case, a chatbot drew primarily from one article with an authoritative quote from more than a year ago and considered it sufficient present-day proof. The AI mission of providing a definitive-sounding, packaged answer did not allow for imagination on my behalf. It neither hunted down updated answers nor conceived new questions—the inquiry and wonderment we hope would emerge every time we are learning. If the Market Realist article had not been written, or if someone had modified it, or had canceled it as disinformation, my access to reality could have been shortchanged.

As Pope Francis has said, we all must be stewards of truth, good stories, and healthy information flows over time. In a world where so many artificial realities challenge the virtue of wisdom, we can’t afford to farm out our pursuit of things which are definitive—sometimes so definitive that they transcend our understanding. And that’s okay.

We can give AI a penny for its thoughts, but we need to love our own thought processes much more, as individuals and as humanity. That requires our dissatisfaction when purveyors of facts give us only easy answers and partial explanations. Those must be seen as invitations to ask more questions and to seek more news hooks upon which we can mount our curiosity.

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12 Top Quotes from World Communications Days (2018-2023)

Posted on May 21, 2023 by Bill Schmitt

Listen to my conversation with Matt Swaim on the Son Rise Morning Show (5-22-23), discussing World Communications Day. Click here and jump to the 1:39 mark.

This commentary was also published 5-21-23 in “Phronesis in Pieces” at billschmitt.substack.com.

Today is the 57th World Day of Social Communications, an annual “teachable moment” established by the Vatican shortly after the Second Vatican Council. Pope Paul VI began the tradition of offering timely reflections on the application of Catholic values to the various technologies for sharing information.

During six years of special attention to Pope Francis’s annual messages for World Communications Day, I have stockpiled these favorite quotes that sum up his guidance for journalism, the media, and our responsibilities as Catholic participants in humanity’s pursuit of truth and wisdom:

From the 2023 WCD message — “Speaking with the Heart: The Truth in Love.”

  • Communication should “never separate truth from charity.” … We need respectful dialogue especially at this urgent time of war. Communication must not be hostile. “Overcome the tendency to discredit and insult opponents.”
  • Communication must be “a genuine antidote to cruelty.”

From the 2022 WCD message – “Listening with the Ear of the Heart.”

  • “We are losing the ability to listen to those in front of us, both in the normal course of every relationships and when debating the most important issues of civil life.”
  • “The greatest need of human beings is to be heard.” … (This harkens back to “Faith comes through listening” or hearing. (Rom 10:17) Listening is a humble and freeing act. God “inclines his ear” to us.)

From the 2021 WCD— “Come and See: Communicating by Encountering People as they Are.”

  • Original journalistic investigation into the hard and full truth of situations “is being replaced” by reporting built around simplified and “often tendentious” narratives—rather than complex stories honoring human dignity …. The staffs convey what advocates want us to know “without ever hitting the streets” to gather and verify facts of life face-to-face.
  • A prayer: “Teach us to go where no one else will go, to take the time needed to understand, to pay attention to the essentials, not to be distracted by the superfluous, to distinguish deceptive appearances from the truth.”

From the 2020 WCD—“That You May Tell Your Children and Grandchildren: Life Becomes History.” (Importance of storytelling.)

  • We need stories that “can reveal the interweaving of the threads which connect us to one another.” … “The human capacity to ‘weave’ (Latin texere) gives us not only the word textile but also text. The stories of different ages all have a common “loom”: the thread of their narrative involves “heroes”, including everyday heroes, who in following a dream, confront difficult situations and combat evil, driven by a force that makes them courageous, the force of love.”
  • “With the gaze of the great storyteller – the only one who has the ultimate point of view – we can then approach the other characters, our brothers and sisters, who are with us as actors in today’s story. For no one is an extra on the world stage, and everyone’s story is open to possible change. Even when we tell of evil, we can learn to leave room for redemption.”

From the 2019 WCD— “We Are Members One of Another: From Social Network Communities to the Human Community.”  (Dangers of Social Media)

  • “God is not solitude, but communion; He is love, and therefore communication, because love always communicates.”
  • “The Church herself is a network woven together by Eucharistic communion, where unity is based not on ‘likes,’ but on the truth, on the Amen.” This agreement encourages us to welcome others as brothers and sisters.

From 2018 WCD— “The Truth Will Set You Free: Fake News and the Journalism of Peace.”

  • “Preventing and identifying the way disinformation works also calls for a profound and careful process of discernment. We need to unmask what could be called the “snake-tactics” used by those who disguise themselves…. This was the strategy employed by the “crafty serpent” in the Book of Genesis, who, at the dawn of humanity, created the first fake news.”
  • “A weighty responsibility rests on the shoulders of those whose job is to provide information, namely, journalists, the protectors of news. In today’s world, theirs is, in every sense, not just a job; it is a mission. … I would like, then, to invite everyone to promote a journalism of peace. … I mean a journalism that is truthful and opposed to falsehoods, rhetorical slogans, and sensational headlines.”

Image from ClipSafari.com, a collection of Creative Commons designs. Note that some quotes have been paraphrased; the actual papal texts are available online.

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