Chevalier de la charité

Abraham Lincoln and my granddaughter Emma have gotten me curious about Jesus. More specifically, curious about Jesus’ curiosity.

It started when I was reading a review of a new biography that noted that Lincoln’s closest friends and associates « recalled him as a man of boundless curiosity for whom ‘life was a school.’ « 

That reminded me of Emma. She’s just turning 4, and she’s always been filled with an inexhaustible desire to take in and understand — to touch and feel and experience — this world she’s found herself born into.

When she was 2, we were at the park one day, she and I, and she was riding on a swing, an activity she delighted in. From her perch on the moving swing, she spent the time looking all around her: at the street nearby, where she’d note every truck passing; at the slide where the older kids were playing; through the buildings where she could glimpse elevated trains on their way to or from Chicago’s Loop; at every doggie — « goggie » — she could spot.  

Emma was taking it all in and relishing the fun of putting together all these pieces of life into patterns and arrangements to comprehend how this connects with that, how these are like those and more important, her own place in this place called Earth.

Curiosity is a hallmark of humanity. Even so, I’ve known people who weren’t very curious, people going through life with blinders on. That strikes me as a narrow way of living.

When I think of the saints, official and unofficial, I have the sense that they were as open to the fullness of life as Emma has always been, as Lincoln once was — Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day, Martin de Porres, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux, to name a few. They woke up every day with fresh eyes, eyes hungry for the world God created — and for the people in this world, all the people, old and young, poor and rich. 

I’m no mystic, but I try to be as open to life as I can be. And that’s how I picture Jesus.

Remember the story in Luke’s Gospel about how, when Jesus was 12, his family visited the Temple in Jerusalem? When Joseph and Mary headed back to Nazareth, the boy, unknown to them, stayed behind and spent at least three days with the teachers there, sitting in their midst, « listening to them and asking them questions. »

I think this story (Luke 2:41-52) is usually used to show that Jesus already knew a lot at that age, and I’m sure there’s something to that. But for me, it’s more a story of the boy’s curiosity.  He was, like Lincoln, hungry for « every morsel of human existence. »

Consider the parable Jesus tells about the mustard seed (Matthew 13:31-32). As I picture it, he’s sitting there and maybe holding one of those tiny seeds when he says, « The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that a person took and sowed in a field. It is the smallest of seeds, yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants. »

How does Jesus know about mustard seeds? He’s a carpenter after all, not a farmer. And how does he know what happens, as he relates in another parable, when seeds are sown on different types of soil?

The answer is his curiosity. I imagine him listening to farmers grousing about trying to plant seeds in rocky ground. I imagine him, at some time well before he told this parable, pondering a mustard seed in his hand and marveling — enjoying the thrill of realizing — that it explodes, in the slow motion of nature, into a huge tree.

He’s open to revelation from the smallest of God’s creation, and to people of all sorts — even those who were outcasts in his Jewish culture.

This openness of heart and mind that Jesus models is a key element of curiosity. My granddaughter will never learn anything if she isn’t open to learning.

Jesus was a human being who had to learn about life, just as Emma is learning — and the learning didn’t stop in childhood. Even as an adult, he maintained this openness, this profound curiosity. 

Picture Jesus at the wedding feast at Cana, for instance. I see a single guy in his early 30s who is intensely interested in all that he sees, hears and smells. He takes in the feel of the party, its rhythm, the mood of the people who are dancing, the emotions on the faces of those men and women along the wall. He is alive to all that is around him, including, with a nudge from his mother, the dwindling wine supply. He is attentive, curious.

Or consider Jesus on the cross: Amid the suffering, dejection and the knowledge of his approaching death, he looks out and gazes at faces he loves. He sees his mother, the other women and John the beloved disciple there. He looks among the crowd, noting the variety of emotions and positions.

Even in dying, Jesus is intensely alive, observant of what is happening around him. What is the point of becoming human if not to be fully present to all life brings, even death?

Jesus walked through life with his eyes wide open — and faced his death with the same wide eyes. As his follower, I am called to the same intense engagement with the world and its people, called to share the curiosity of Christ.

Congress and the White House have until the end of the month to raise the debt ceiling, which means that the rest of May will be consumed with a high stakes game of chicken. At a time when our politics is a toxic mix of outrage, ideology and braggadocio worthy of Mussolini, this fight will test whether our nation is up to the task of self-governance.

Unlike most policy battles, a fight over the debt ceiling vote dominates everything else. At 6 p.m. on Tuesday night, on the Politico homepage, the first six articles all focused on the debt ceiling fight. « Biden starts to throw some punches in the debt ceiling fight » was in the hero position, followed by « Former Biden adviser Tribe: Just use the 14th Amendment now, » « Raskin: Biden has a ‘constitutional command’ on debt, » « Podesta: Cut energy permitting talks from debt ceiling fight, » « Debt ceiling brawl jams up  the Pentagon’s mega policy bill » and « Debt anxiety falls a little on the Hill. It might not be enough. » 

As is common in our political life, both sides articulate principled positions. President Joe Biden is not wrong to argue that the debt ceiling is so important, it deserves a vote untethered to other policy considerations, a « clean vote. » House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is correct when he says that the nation must come to terms with its ballooning debt. 

The problem with Biden’s position is that you can never really disassociate any policy from politics and the problem with the McCarthy position is that his own party is largely responsible for the nation’s debt because of its addiction to tax cuts. In short, the principled positions are not really on point for the issue at hand.

No one knows what would happen if the U.S. government were to default on its debt. The Bipartisan Policy Center states: « Failure to extend the debt limit in a timely manner would likely have catastrophic consequences for global financial markets and Americans across the country. » The center has a useful history of recent debt ceiling fights. 

What we know from history is that when an economic crisis occurs, the poor and the marginalized are the first to suffer and the worst to recover. For all the problems with inflation today, and those problems are real, the fact that our economy attained a record low unemployment rate for Black Americans this spring is an enormous accomplishment. That achievement would be imperiled by any kind of economic downturn. 

The history lesson is useful, but with a caveat. Political games of chicken in advance of a debt ceiling cliff have happened before, but they have never happened at a time when a speaker of the House relies on the votes of his caucus, many of whom are drunk on the Trumpian belief that blowing things up is a good thing. 

Whether it was our NATO alliance or respecting the results of an election or the Iran nuclear deal, former President Donald Trump has shown again and again that there is a lane, perhaps a winning lane, for a politician who builds on the distrust of institutions that is engrained in the contemporary American psyche to advocate not just throwing the bums out but torching the house too. 

Wednesday night, on CNN, Trump was asked about the debt ceiling. 

« I say to the Republicans out there — congressmen, senators — if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default. And I don’t believe they’re going to do a default because I think the Democrats will absolutely cave because you don’t want to have that happen. But it’s better than what we’re doing right now because we’re spending money like drunken sailors. » 

Trump’s time out of office has not taught him the value of prudence or caution. It is all about winning or losing the political game. Politics is not a game.

At the Brookings Institution, Sarah Binder argues that recourse to a discharge petition is not a likely option. That is a shame. A discharge petition allows a majority of the House to force a vote on a proposal that is bottled up in committee. The hope would be that the Democrats could peel off the five Republicans they would need to pass a clean debt ceiling bill. 

Binder points out that « lawmakers have successfully discharged less than four percent of the 639 discharge petitions introduced since 1935. » Apparently, there are not five GOP House members willing to do the right thing.

There are ways to put the government on a more sustainable financial path, but that would involve steps that one or the other party finds anathema. Democrats rightly refuse to cut social programs. Republicans refuse to raise taxes. Neither party is willing to confront the bloated defense budget. 

The Democrats need to do a better job looking for ways to bring spending down and Republicans need to get over their anti-tax orthodoxy, and then the outlines of a compromise would emerge. With highly gerrymandered districts, however, the only political pressure most members of Congress face is from their flank, not from the center. 

The looming fiscal and economic crisis is, therefore, best understood as one more eruption in our political crisis. Neither party is blameless, but there is no moral equivalence in this comparison. Today’s Republican Party depends on people who are fundamentally irresponsible. 

As evidenced by the reaction to Trump from the GOP voters in Wednesday night’s town hall, they root for their guy even when he is obviously lying. It is politics as professional wrestling. It isn’t pretty. It might be about to send the world economy over a cliff.

Until the pandemic began, the U.S. economy had grown for decades without the curse of high inflation. There were bumps along the road, especially the 2007-2008 financial crisis, but nothing like the days of runaway inflation in the 1970s. But when COVID-19 restrictions caused supply shocks and when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought fuel shortages, inflation reappeared.

To curb it, the Federal Reserve Board has been raising interest rates, making it more difficult for individuals and businesses to borrow money. With less borrowed money to spend, demand for goods and services goes down, eventually resulting in lower prices. Reduced demand also results in layoffs. Unemployed workers have less money to spend, which puts further downward pressure on prices of consumer goods.

Raising interest rates, however, is a blunt instrument, and only one way to fight inflation. Another is to tighten fiscal policy, but Congress has shown that it is unwilling to use this tool. Fighting inflation using only higher interest rates is tantamount to fighting with one hand tied behind your back.

Everyone agrees our inflation woes began with interruptions in supply chains caused by the pandemic. Many factories and businesses closed; transportation became difficult. Shortages led to price increases.

In addition, as workers stayed home, consumer patterns changed. More money was spent on goods and less on services. Online sales went up; in-store sales went down. Suppliers that packaged goods for restaurants, schools and businesses lost their clients, while grocery stores ran out of toilet paper. All these disruptions resulted in higher prices for goods.

Raising interest rates does not solve supply chain difficulties.

Everyone also agrees that a housing shortage is afflicting many parts of the country. In the short run, increasing interest rates may reduce demand and prices for home purchases, but higher rates also make it more expensive for builders to borrow money, making the housing shortage worse. Housing shortages contribute to higher home prices and rents.

International turmoil contributed to U.S. inflation as well. COVID-19 shutdowns in China exacerbated shortages. OPEC decided to increase prices. The war in Ukraine disrupted Ukrainian grain exports and led to a cutoff of Russian oil and gas to Europe. Increasing interest rates will not solve these problems either.

What increasing interest rates has done is slow the economy and cause turmoil for those dependent on credit. Banks are suffering because they invested in long-term mortgages and bonds with low interest rates that are now worth less than their face value. Consumers are being hit with higher interest rates on credit cards.

Conservative economists argue that the real cause of inflation is that government aid during the pandemic put too much money into the hands of consumers. But while some people may have received money they didn’t need, without these subsidies the pandemic would have led to a deep and painful recession.

One COVID-era measure, the child tax credit, showed that it is possible to lift millions of children out of poverty if we want to. Expanding SNAP, the government food stamps program, reduced hunger, and expanding Medicaid protected the health of millions of poor people. This was all necessary to pull people through the pandemic.

It’s true that in inflationary periods, governments should reduce deficits, but the real problem here is that Congress is showing itself to be incapable of adjusting fiscal policy to fight inflation.

Fiscal policy can be more targeted than monetary policy. While cutting deficits, the government can still fund programs to increase housing. It can support alternative sources of energy that eventually will reduce energy prices. It can also enact taxes that hit people and companies who have prospered before and during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, we have a political stalemate in which Democrats support expanding government social programs while Republicans support cutting taxes. The American people like both Democratic programs and Republican tax cuts, even though the two are incompatible.

This leaves the unelected Federal Reserve Board as the only party that can take action. 

The failure of our democracy, in other words, is the greatest threat to our economy. The latest example of this is the Republican attempt to use the debt ceiling to force Democrats to accept budget cuts.

Democrats rightly object and argue that the congressional budgetary process is the proper place for budget negotiations. But the congressional budgetary process is broken. Congress is unable to enact a reasonable and flexible fiscal policy.

Congress must act decisively to rationalize the budgetary process to restore confidence in government. Perhaps Congress could learn something from the Catholic Church — specifically, how it elects popes. Papal electors are locked in the Vatican until they elect a pope. In the old days, if they did not elect a pope they were put on bread and water.

I would not put the members of Congress on bread and water, but I would have them dine in the congressional cafeterias and confined to Capitol Hill if they do not approve all appropriation bills before the beginning of the fiscal year. No visits to their home districts, no campaign or fundraising trips. If they leave the Hill for anything other than a health emergency, they should lose their seats.

If it’s May, that means it is time for colleges and universities to scramble to find a commencement speaker, a fruitless annual endeavor that serves only to distract from the students graduating, cause controversy or boredom (depending on the choice of speaker), and indicate any shifts in the phalanx of culture warrior avatars.

This year, the most interesting choice comes from Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian school in Michigan that was recently the subject of a New Yorker profile by the inimitable Emma Green. She focused on the school because of its growing prominence in the culture wars. 

« [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis has said that he probably wouldn’t hire someone from his alma mater, Yale. But ‘if I get somebody from Hillsdale,’ he said, ‘I know they have the foundations necessary to be able to be helpful in pursuing conservative policies,’  » Green wrote. « In January, DeSantis’s chief of staff told National Review that the governor hoped to transform New College of Florida, a public liberal-arts school, into a ‘Hillsdale of the South.’ « 

Hillsdale is the perfect fusion of conservative Christianity with an aggressive and unsophisticated Americanism of a kind we do not normally associate with higher education. Their ads on Fox News tout their online courses in which the Founding Fathers rank right up there with the apostles in terms of cultural authority. Mind you, I am a big fan of the founders, and of their handiwork, but wrapping the American founding in Christian theology is bad history and bad theology, just as ignoring the role of religion in shaping the worldview of the founders is also intellectually suspect.

Before its current status as the ideal college for conservative culture warriors like DeSantis, Hillsdale was most known for its decision to withdraw from all federal tuition assistance programs. Their website states: « To maintain our independence in every regard, Hillsdale does not accept one penny of state or federal taxpayer funding — even indirectly in the form of student grants and loans. » High points for integrity but low points for attention to the common good.

So, of course this year’s commencement speaker will be — drumroll, please — Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota. Pity he is not going to bring his dog-and-pony show with Canadian provocateur Jordan Peterson to the Hillsdale campus. Barron is increasingly willing to cozy up to wealthy conservative culture warriors, which is disturbing in anyone, but frightening in a bishop.

To be fair, Hillsdale gets a thumbs up for its recent decision to sever ties with a private academy in Florida after the school board forced the principal to resign for failing to alert parents their children would be exposed to Michelangelo’s statue « David » in all his nude glory. « Of course, Hillsdale’s K-12 art curriculum includes Michelangelo’s ‘David’ and other works of art that depict the human form, » said a spokesperson for the college. Lest you think Barron’s appearance is an endorsement of Renaissance art, Davidgate happened months after the announcement about Barron being the commencement speaker.

My alma mater gets the win for worst choice of graduation speaker by a prominent Catholic university. Catholic University of America graduates will get to listen to Arthur Brooks, who served as president of the American Enterprise Institute from 2009 until 2019.

In announcing the choice, CUA neglected to mention his tenure at AEI, which exists to defend the kind of neoliberal economic policies that have long been a reverse image of the kind of economy envisioned by Catholic social teaching. Instead, they describe Brooks as a « New York Times bestselling author, columnist at The Atlantic, Ph.D. social scientist, and ‘happiness expert.’  » Happiness expert?

As luck would have it, as I started preparing this column, I received an email notification from the Napa Institute that in advance of its annual summer conference, the organization would be offering « a unique and intimate experience with Arthur Brooks to learn from his extensive research on happiness and how to apply these insights to your life through a Catholic lens. » Are we to assume that some of the plutocrats at Napa Institute are unhappy? The email recounts Brooks’ recent visit with the Dalai Lama. I confess, every time I read about the Dalai Lama, I am reminded of an interview on Australian TV when the host told the Tibetan holy man a joke about himself: The Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and asks, « Can you make me one with everything? » Every time I watch that video I crack up.

Brooks’ connection with Napa, if not with the Dalai Lama, makes sense of the CUA commencement address: The business school at CUA is named for Tim Busch, the founder of the Napa Institute, and his wife Steph. It appears my alma mater was « sold » to the Busch family at some point. The right-wing lurch at the school under its previous president John Garvey was appalling, and hosting a champion of neoliberalism as a commencement speaker just adds to the evidence that the school has lost its way.

Who needs all the distraction? Let’s do away with the tradition of having a commencement speaker at all. I am all for tradition when it enriches our minds and ennobles our morals, but this tradition does none of that. Notre Dame’s Laetare Medal achieves that ennobling of our moral sense but most Catholic universities are not Notre Dame and most speakers are not worthy of a Laetare Medal. Basta. Let one of the graduating students speak, or let there be a moment of silence.