In search of authentic politeness

“Alleluia! Alleluia!”

For decades, I have loved the repetition of this word. Liturgically, it only occurs during the period between Easter Sunday and Pentecost. The point of repeating the word “Alleluia” is to remind Christian believers that the Easter event – Christ’s resurrection – is such an overwhelming moment (i.e. because He rose from the dead, we have the opportunity to enter Heaven) that our joy should be impossible to explain without repeating “Praise the Lord” (a rough English translation of the Hebrew term). At the same time, I also wonder why this expression of joy shouldn’t be repeated throughout the year. I suppose it’s the flip side of my difficulty with the forty days of Lent – I simply don’t like the obligation to refrain from eating meat on Fridays. Yes, I understand the purpose of the practice – to remind me of the importance of Christ’s journey to Calvary – and the subsequent joy I should experience at His resurrection; but I find myself becoming impatient with a liturgical period which requires that I have to wait for the better part of six weeks before I can celebrate something every Christian takes for granted.

In a sense, I realize that the whole point of the liturgical cycle of the Church is to remind us of the need to stay faithful to Gospel imperatives – and I certainly recognize that I need reminding – but I struggle with the notion that penitential practices (like not eating meat on Fridays) will get me closer to the achievement of this ideal. So, imagine my surprise, when I came across a column by Jesuit, John Conley in the most recent issue of America Magazine (https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2017/04/19/politeness-forgotten-virtue) in which he offers an outstanding defense of the role politeness should play in the social arena.  Okay – wait for it – how does this line up with my annual gripe about Lent and Easter? Here’s the thing – we repeat the word “Alleluia” because we believe that the Easter event transformed the world we experience…but the world we experience consistently disappoints us…leading to the obvious question – how do we reconcile the excitement of Easter with the facts of what we will face tomorrow? Father Conley’s column helps me to face that conundrum. Here’s his take on the day-to-day dilemma we all confront:

Behind all the gestures of politeness lies a fundamental respect for the dignity of other persons. A mature moral agent does not use language or gestures that insult another person. One can vigorously disagree with another person’s positions. One cannot demean the person himself or herself.

And that’s my problem with the world we – and the students entrusted to our care – occupy. Disagreements no longer represent differing views of the world. They have become fundamental road blocks to how we talk to others who don’t share our perspective. It has taken me a long time to get to the point, but the philosopher, Stephen Hayner said it best (for me):

“I believe in objective truth, but I hold lightly to our ability to perceive truth.”

There can be no question for an educator – or a parent – that the search for objective truth must be paramount; but I challenge each of us to define the concept in advance. At La Salle, we expect students to suspend disbelief in the search for Truth. More importantly, we expect them to recognize that the search for Truth is an ongoing experience that will take the rest of their lives.

And, for me, that’s the point of repeating “Alleluia.” Christians rejoice because the Easter event made Hope possible. Yes, we are struggling through a difficult time…but when was it the case that we haven’t? We are all on a journey to Calvary – but we won’t experience the Easter event until after our time here comes to end…which helps me to appreciate Father Conley’s wisdom:

Politeness … respects the debt one owes to other persons for one’s own happiness and achievements. It is striking how many current television programs specialize in the glamorization of resentment. A procession of angry people unleash their criticism of their parents, their teachers or their doctors in front of a cajoling host. Where are the programs where we thank that patient parent or devoted teacher? Without gratitude, our soul shrivels and our civic life deteriorates into mutual recrimination. Authentic politeness springs from the gratitude we acknowledge for the gifts given us by other persons.

And for that, I say “Alleluia, Alleluia.”

The real problem with fake news

Fake News has been in the news a lot lately…and it’s not just because the President and the mainline news media are engaging in a war of words. The well-researched role of Facebook’s Newsfeed in enabling “alternative news” to go viral resulted in that organization being inundated with a storm of criticism in the month following the presidential election.  According to Forbes Magazine, Facebook’s algorithm encourages “engagement,” which gives priority ranking to sensational stories that attract more “clicks,” causing the story to continue to rise in the rankings on Newsfeed. In a highly polarized society such as the one we are now experiencing, it should come as no surprise that biased, misleading and incorrect stories rise quickly to the top.

              With 62% of adults reporting that social media is their primary source for news and two-thirds of Facebook users relying on its site for news (Pew Research), is it any wonder that a bitterly contested presidential election became even more contorted by internet memes promoting false stories about the candidates (and their supporters) that subsequently went viral? It is estimated that, in the run-up to the November presidential election, 30% of all fake news traffic could be linked back to Facebook. According to the same Study, 23% of those polled admitted they had personally shared fake news, whether knowingly or not.

Candidly, I hadn’t really considered the impact Fake News is having on how some segments of the electorate perceive the veracity of information passed on to them via social media sites until I came across these Fake Headlines:

"Pope backs Trump"

"Hillary sold weapons to ISIS"

"FBI Agent Suspected in Hillary Email Leaks Found Dead"

I’d like to think that most informed citizens would find the latter two Fake Headlines so absurd as to be dismissed out-of-hand; but the first Fake Headline gave me pause. As a practicing Catholic and an unabashed fan of Pope Francis, I couldn’t believe that His Holiness would enter into the tempest of American politics; but the American Church has more than a few Bishops who skirt that boundary from time to time, so it piqued my curiosity. Not surprisingly, Factcheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, debunked the headline by tracing its origin back to a Fake News TV station/web site WTOE5 News­ – which acknowledges its purpose is to create satirical news stories around controversial issues (Think: The Onion).

Here’s the troubling part: all three Fake Headlines went viral on Facebook in the run up to the election. How can two patently absurd statements and a claim written as satire gain so much traction so quickly? I recognize this is a rhetorical question, but I grew up in an era when a news anchor, Walter Cronkite, was considered “the most trusted man in America.”

Since Cronkite’s retirement, his replacement, Dan Rather, resigned in humiliation after he broadcast an inaccurate story about George W. Bush’s war record. Fast forward, ten years later, and NBC News Anchor, Brian Williams, is fired for misrepresenting his experience as a reporter in the Iraq War. Meanwhile, Fox News’ “fair and balanced” approach gains traction with America’s middle class just as the Internet picks up steam as a source of “unmediated” news. In the 30+ years since “the most trusted man in America” retired, broadcast journalism has not only become an increasingly unreliable source of information (Think: how many pollsters and pundits got the Presidential Election of 2016 wrong), but is steadily being replaced by an equally unreliable output of Internet “news.”

Readers of this space know that my concern isn’t about who won or lost an election, but how that tortured process impacts the ways in which the students entrusted to our care make sense of the world around them. I worry about their ability to distinguish fact from fiction – especially when terms like “alternative facts” and “fake news” – bandied about on both sides of the political spectrum – inevitably create doubt in their minds as to who they should believe. I worry about how they process the deluge of opinion masquerading as news which confronts them whenever they log-on to the Internet. I see this dynamic at play every time my Mentor group discusses controversial political and social issues in which their young perspective is so clearly being shaped by the latest unmediated newsfeed.

I am particularly concerned about how our young people make sense of this barrage of misinformation because, as a Lasallian school, we expect our students to acquire habits of:

§  Faith in the presence of God

§  Concern for the poor and social justice

§  Respect for all persons

§  An inclusive community¨

These core values are under assault in the current toxic political and social climate. Our students are too young to intuitively know how to balance fundamental human values with what they see on the daily newscast and the latest Internet meme. They do not experience a framework of trust whenever they turn on the television or log on to the Internet. And, because they are young and impressionable, they are inclined to accept at face value what they encounter in these arenas where, frequently, shouting and name-calling dominate the message. How can they acquire a “respect for all persons” when they encounter disrespect for those who hold a different opinion from commentators who claim to speak for the majority encountering television and the Internet? How can they appreciate the importance of creating an “inclusive community” when they are exposed to political strategies which emphasize exclusion rather than inclusion? And, most importantly for a Lasallian school, how can they nurture a “concern for the poor and social justice” when they are barraged by messages which claim that they should take care of themselves first?

              I’m not sure how to respond to these rhetorical questions, but I do know that, as educators and parents who are committed to Lasallian values, we cannot rest until the young people entrusted to our care are able to distinguish “fake” news from its real counterpart.

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¨ Core Principles of a Lasallian School

Whose President is he?

Readers of this space will know that I’ve been focusing on the aftermath of the recently concluded presidential election. My attention to this significant development in our Nation’s political evolution hasn’t been so much on who won the election but on how this historic moment came to be.  In particular, I’ve been scratching my head on how pundits and pollsters could get the outcome so spectacularly wrong. The Media have offered what I consider to be glib explanations for this dichotomy between prediction and outcome: the “Tom Bradley effect,” angry white voters, vanishing middle-class jobs, class/race dysphoria; to name a few. I’m confident that historians will offer a variety of theories to explain the 2016 Election, and I’m equally confident that they’ll be arguing about which theory is correct ten – and surely – twenty years from now.

What I’m not confident about is the – symbolic – challenge to America’s historic peaceful transfer of power represented by the appearance of “Not My President” signs at the various protests popping up across the Nation.  It’s bad enough that this was, probably, the nastiest presidential election in modern times; but to reject a constitutionally valid candidate raised to the highest office in the land by claiming he’s “not my President” is to abandon the fundamental principles upon which our Republic was founded. Like it or not, the system produced a validly-elected president. Individuals do not have the option of rejecting the outcome because they disagree with it.

I worry about this tendency to refuse to accept the outcome of a valid election for the same reason that I worried about the nonsensical “birther” rejection of the last two presidential elections – either the system works or it doesn’t – and those who find the outcome unacceptable don’t get to redefine the rules that produced an undesirable result.

Needless to say, I worry about these behaviors because of their potential impact on the students entrusted to our care. At La Salle, we seek not only to “produce good students and good people,” but thoughtful and dispassionate students and responsible, balanced adults as well. Suggesting – as “Not My President” signs do – that one can reject the outcome of a valid presidential contest is to tell our young people that they don’t have to care about – much less pay attention to - rules governing social norms which underpin the fundamental elements of how we negotiate our shared space in a democratic republic.

I want to be clear: my concern about “Not My President” signs isn’t to argue for or against the outcome of the November election. It is to articulate a basic principle of our democratic enterprise: it doesn’t matter who wins an election – it matters that the outcome was legitimately derived.

We can applaud or boo the results of the November eighth contest – that is our right as American citizens. What we don’t get to do is to challenge its legitimacy. This is what I worry about when I see “Not My President” signs. I want our young people to trust the system that was put in place 240 years ago. I want them to understand that democracy means that some people are happy with the outcome of an election and others are not. I want them to appreciate that Truth (yes, with a capital “T”) is not the exclusive provenance of any one group, but a product of the ebb and flow of decades of electoral cycles that – only over time – begin to form a pattern out of which we can make sense.

I worry about our country at this point in time – not because of who was elected president – but about how that outcome has polarized the electorate. Somehow, we must get past this agonizing moment in a way that enables our young people to embrace the elegant complexities of the American democratic experiment without succumbing to narrow partisan perspectives.

I’m not sure how to accomplish this task, but I know that it was never more important than right now.

The Face of Prophecy

              

  I am a big fan of Reverend Ronald Rolheiser, OMI, currently, the President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX and a prolific writer and columnist. He has been writing a weekly column in the Archdiocesan newspaper, The Tidings (now called Angelus) since before I arrived at La Salle in 1999.  His columns tend to focus on the challenge individuals have in connecting with institutions – church, state, social organizations and business, to name just a few. One of his October, 2016 columns caught my attention because it sought to reclaim the stereotypical notion of Prophet (one who shouts in the wilderness to a disbelieving world – think, John the Baptist) for a more nuanced understanding in which the prophetic voice understands the complexity of the audience listening to his/her message. Here is how Father Rolheiser positions this dichotomy:

Anyone can be angry. Anyone can be one-sided. Anyone can be in somebody else’s face. Prophecy requires more. It requires the capacity to listen, to respect, to have critical balance, to carry complexity, to walk in unresolved tension and to empathize with those who do not agree with us.

Unfortunately, that’s not the current vision.

The recently concluded presidential election cycle has troubled me for some time, precisely because, echoing Father Rolheiser’s observation: it has focused on anger and being in somebody else’s face.  Regardless of one’s political affiliation, I think we can all agree this election hasn’t been about balance, the ability “to carry complexity, to walk in unresolved tension and to empathize with those who do not agree with us.” Rather, as Father Rolheiser goes on to note:

Today we pride ourselves instead on being one-sided, on being so on fire about something that we refuse to consider anything else. This is true on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Everyone, it seems, is a warrior for truth, and few seem to recognize that one person’s freedom fighter is another person’s fanatic. The line between prophecy and militant fundamentalism can be very thin.

I don’t know if the American political experience has ever veered towards balance and empathy, but I do believe the current moment is a toxic one that will entail long-lasting reverberations, not only for “Millennials” but also for the young people entrusted to our care here at La Salle. Over the course of the last year, our young people have been exposed to a steady diet of anger, intolerance for alternative world views and an inexorable drive to castigate those who disagree as wrong-headed fanatics. This has not been an easy time for anyone – students, teachers and parents.  I am reminded of Yeats’ poetic commentary at the end of World War I:

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world …

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

These sentiments aren’t a function of who won the presidential election; rather they are a commentary on the process which produced this outcome. How did our politics become so toxic? How did left and right ideology become so polarized that no one is listening? How did name calling and reputation bashing become normative in our society? How, in the words of Rolheiser, did one person’s freedom fighter become another person’s fanatic?

These are rhetorical questions, but they must inform how we work with the young people entrusted to our care. Our charge is to equip them to be responsible citizens when it is their turn to take ownership of civic, religious and social structures.  How we heal the national fault line that this election cycle rammed into place is a crucial responsibility for all of us who hope our young people will be better able to manage the world we will leave behind.

If Father Rolheiser is correct that prophecy is about balance and empathy, then the Acts of the Apostles got it right when Saint Peter quoted the Prophet Joel:

…your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions;

and your old men shall dream dreams…

Let’s help those entrusted to our care to prophesy, envision and dream of a future which fosters the ability to listen, to respect, to have critical balance, to carry complexity, to walk in unresolved tension and to empathize with those who do not agree with us.

Why Advent Should Matter

I’m not much of a Facebook fan – I subscribe to it because it’s the only way I can keep track of my extended family’s activities – so when I stumbled on one of those social media quizzes that purport to demonstrate one’s expertise (“You know you are a native of X if you can correctly answer these 10 questions…”), I surprised myself by being lured into taking one designed to test how much I knew about the Catholic religion. With questions like:

·         What was the name of the last Pope?

·         What color represents Ordinary Time on the Liturgical Calendar?

·         When does Advent occur?

I quickly realized that it was not a serious exercise in religious knowledge. Needless to say, I answered all the questions correctly, producing this breathless statement by the author of the test: “You aren’t one of those people who calls themselves Catholic without knowing the religion really well – you know all there is to know!”

Would that were true.                           

Like all of the world’s great religions, Catholicism seeks to steer a line between knowing its principles and practicing them…between the facts of the faith and spirituality. It’s not unusual for many, if not all, churchgoers to err on one side over the other. I imagine most of us know someone who likes to assert: “I’m spiritual but not religious.” I suppose that statement is intended to mean that the individual eschews the institutional world of religion in favor of a vague sense of being “spiritual.” The problem with that approach is its assumption that the terms “spiritual” and “religious” can be separated from each other. At some level, someone who is spiritual (acting out of a belief in a divine being) is, to a greater or lesser extent, also religious (understanding a system of behaviors which flow from a belief in a divine being). One may only weakly follow the tenets of organized religion or even reject specific religious institutions and their practices, but being spiritual and religious go hand-in-hand.

As a Catholic school, La Salle, for example, emphasizes the importance of being both spiritual and religious. I am fond of saying that, at La Salle, we welcome students of all – and no – faiths out of our firm understanding that Catholic values can make an important contribution to the moral (spiritual) development of all adolescents. This is why all of our students are expected to study Religion each year; and it is why we expect all students to participate in our various Service programs. Knowing the Gospel and practicing its exhortations (“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.”) provide an essential foundation for negotiating the unstructured, often chaotic, world our students will inherit when they leave us.

Christian churches began the season of Advent last Sunday. It is typically understood as a time to prepare for the Christmas celebration on December 25^th. Regular churchgoers know that it is more than just a time of preparation. It is equally a time for us to be both spiritual and religious – to remind ourselves of the need to consciously embrace the values that are continually transforming the world for the better as well as to participate in religious activities which focus our attention on how God can give us the grace to become better persons. Near the front entrance to the School is our version of the Advent wreath, containing three purple candles and one rose candle. A purple candle is lit on the first two Sundays of Advent. The rose candle is lit on the third Sunday (symbolizing that the period of preparation for Christmas is half over) and the final, purple candle is lit on the Sunday before Christmas. On Christmas day, the colored candles are replaced with white ones to symbolize the entrance of God into human history.

I love this beautiful religious tradition because it simply and elegantly reminds me of how important it is for me to live my life as if God were about to arrive any day. It subtly reinforces the facts of my faith and encourages me to embrace them as guiding principles for how to live my life. Saint Anselm captured this dynamic when he adopted the motto: Faith seeking understanding.

So while a perfect score on a Facebook quiz won’t impress even the most casual of Catholics, it reminds me – as does the season of Advent – that it is important to be both spiritual and religious, especially now when our fragile world is beset by so many seemingly intractable challenges.

When making sense of things matters

                 

When I think about the aftermath of the Presidential election, I’m not sure how to talk to our students in order to make sense of things. Clearly the mood of the country is one of widespread anger. And just as clearly, prognosticators and pollsters got it monumentally wrong. What isn’t so clear is the why of the angry mood. While manufacturing and low level white collar jobs have been sent overseas, the Nation’s economy is in the best shape it’s been since the advent of the Great Recession. And, yes, Washington politics are more toxic than ever; but as we’ve seen in Sacramento, a divided legislature and executive branch prevents one party’s agenda from steamrolling over the party in the minority. Even the outcome of the election reflects a divided country; with one candidate winning the popular vote and the other winning the Electoral College.

As a Catholic educator, I find it especially troubling that so much attention was given to themes of exclusion, racial profiling, questioning the right to healthcare access and pursuit of aggressive military action overseas; to highlight just a few of the divisive issues that stoked the growing anger of the electorate. At La Salle, we seek to build an inclusive community in which students learn to examine both sides of complex issues. We don’t support the ease with which political opponents employ uncivil tactics to shout each other down and their tendency to encourage their supporters to do the same. Our teenagers were exposed to a steady diet of uncivil behavior during the nightly news, and on print and social media.  I don’t understand the angry mood of the country today; but I do believe it was, at least in part, encouraged by the way news of the candidates’ behavior were reported in the media. When everyone is shouting, no one is listening.

We expect our students to seek understanding of complex political, economic, social and moral issues by listening to their teachers and to each other. And as an educational community that seeks to include rather than exclude, we expect our students to recognize that, regardless of one’s political views, La Salle stands on the side of immigrants, marginalized people, middle income families and successful families who see a world where everyone should have the opportunity to succeed. I don’t know how much greater a challenge this will be over the course of the next four years; but I do know that for the last sixty years La Salle has been committed to nurturing, inspiring, challenging and motivating the students entrusted to our care to acquire the habits of responsible citizenship.

Which brings me to the purpose of the 2016 Annual Report; in addition to celebrating the financial and philanthropic success of the 2015-2016 school year, we are celebrating our sixtieth anniversary of making the La Salle Difference accessible to an economically, demographically and ethnically diverse set of students. We are proud of what has transpired here at La Salle since we first opened our doors in 1956; and we know that, regardless of the challenges of the next four or ten or fifteen years, we won’t lose sight of our fundamental purpose: to produce good students and good people who understand our commitment to Learn – Serve – Lead.

Knowing how the Dodgers got as far as they did

               

I was at lunch the other day with a group of colleagues and friends when the conversation turned to the Dodgers’ chances of going to the World Series (full disclosure: I used to live in the Bronx, so this conversation was not one that I paid close attention to). One individual asked the question: “Well, how do they get to play in the World Series?” …Really? My (unfiltered) reaction to the group was: “Who doesn’t know this? It’s almost un-American!” As an educator, I know, of course, that I shouldn’t have blurted out that response; but – really – how could anyone – given the omnipresent impact of electronic and print media – not know the answer?

                Which led me to consider this question…recognizing the virtually non-stop attention print and electronic media have devoted to this presidential election’s focus on what constitutes the state of “American Exceptionalism,” [i] I have to wonder, why are the Democratic and Republican candidates hammering the voters with the question: what makes America great? They offer two competing messages:

·         America once was great and is no longer

·         America is great because America is good

My Irish mother would have described both assertions as the intellectual equivalent of “two bald men fighting over a comb.” Really? Why is this the most important issue of the presidential campaign? Why aren’t we talking about rescuing children from poverty and ensuring that teenagers will find middle class jobs when they enter the workforce? These are the issues that concern the community of La Salle – and, in fact, ought to concern every individual of voting age.

                Lasallian values start with the rights of the child. For over three hundred years, we have always understood that success – later in life – is inseparable from a quality education. So, given the fact that this generation of children will, for the first time since the Great Depression, face an economic future that will be less secure than their parents, I continue to ask myself, why isn’t education the front and center issue of this presidential election?

                There are all sorts of facile answers to this question – not the least of which is the complicity of the media in orchestrating crowd-pleasing questions (as I write this, I am watching the third and final debate between the two candidates, and the first two questions were on the Second Amendment and Abortion – really??).  While I recognize that the political world requires politicians to focus on “hot button” issues such as gun control and right-to-life topics, I don’t understand why the electorate allows them to evade more pressing concerns which need to be addressed now in order to ensure that the next generation of voters enjoys economic security.

                Which brings me back to the tired conundrum of “American Exceptionalism.” Australian expert on American History, Professor Ian Tyrell, author of “American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History” defines the term this way:

American exceptionalism contains a complicated and often contradictory set of assumptions…In its classic forms, American exceptionalism refers to the special character of the United States as a uniquely free nation based on democratic ideals and personal liberty…Many aspects of American history may be left out or distorted in the traditional narratives…

While most voters would wonder why this concept is important in understanding the issues being debated in this presidential election, the reality of American Exceptionalism is rooted in the candidates’ belief that their ability to secure votes is inextricably linked to the widespread perception that somehow, America as a great nation is in trouble. Any La Salle student who completed our Advanced Placement course in Civics would giggle at this notion of American greatness. They have learned that America’s place in the world isn’t so much about being “great” as it is about being attentive to the needs of the voters who elect their leadership every four years. This is what is distinctive about the American democratic experiment: the peaceful transition of power continues unabated – even in this most contentious of presidential elections. Which brings me back to, what I believe, is the central – unaddressed – issue of the campaign: how to ensure economic security for today’s teens?

                The eve of the next peaceful transition of power is upon us. It may not result in an outcome that some portion of the voters will celebrate. That having been said, I know that, at La Salle, my colleagues and I are committed to the task of ensuring that the students entrusted to our care learn how to interpret political messages through the (American) lens of social justice: focusing on the marginalized and abandoned and searching for economic security for everyone. They don’t need to know how the Dodgers (inexplicably) get to the World Series, but they do need to know why their vote matters.

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[i]  For more on this concept, please go to: https://iantyrrell.wordpress.com/papers-and-comments/