Category Archives: News

By IHE Fellow Lucia A. Silecchia

It was a tiny, home sewn apron, made for a child of 3 or 4 that I unpacked from a box of miscellaneous memorabilia in my family home. Judging from the small size, the autumnal pattern, the familiar tiny stitches, and some vague but happy memories, I am guessing that my grandmother handmade this apron for either my sister or me so that we would be dressed appropriately for the joyous fanfare that involved making Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother’s house. As I recall, this was a multi-day event that involved a crowded small kitchen, homemade pasta, Neapolitan desserts, fruit canned back in the summer and, I suppose, a turkey less enthusiastically included to add an all-American touch to our otherwise Italian feast.

I was six years old when my grandmother died and a pared down version of these preparations then moved to my parents’ home, the new headquarters for all my holiday memories. My grandmother’s death was the first great loss of my life, and the discovery of the tiny apron she so lovingly made had me missing her all over again — just as Thanksgiving does every year. There is something about the desire to gather together in celebration that makes the missing more acutely missed.

Since I was six, the list of those I miss and yearn for has grown. This is a natural unfolding of events, but one still painful as family ties beckon so strongly during the season of holidays and holy days that is now upon us. Losses of three more grandparents, then parents and the aunts and uncles in their generation are keenly felt this season. To be sure, I am richly blessed with so many who have been added to my circle of loved ones as marriages, births and friendships have expanded the cast of characters that my heart holds dear.

And yet . . .

It takes only an old apron to remind me of what is lost. This year, there are many who are experiencing the loss of loved ones for the first time. Deaths from Covid struck many families very hard, while the other diseases and tragedies that snatch our loved ones from us did not take a break this year. Because of the strange times we have lived through, so many have been unable to bid their loved ones farewell in the comforting rituals of faith, hope and love that I took for granted at the death of my own loved ones.

For many, this will also be a Thanksgiving and Christmas season when, out of love and concern for the safety of friends and family, they will also miss the living who will not gather together as they usually do. A phone call, a Zoom chat and a virtual embrace may be the best that far-flung families can do in a time of travel restrictions and safety warnings. Time and distance so easily keep us apart when seeing, hearing, and embracing those we love is such a deep desire of the heart.

And yet . . .

Every time I go to Mass, I proclaim that I believe in “the communion of saints.” This has crossed my mind more than once in recent days as I yearn for those who no longer walk through life with me and those who must remain far away this year. I do believe in the communion of saints. I do believe that the good and holy people I have loved still love me, and pray for me as I do for them. I do believe that I can see them again, in time, and at a banquet that far exceeds even the happy memories of my grandmother’s table. I do believe that the circumstances that keep me from seeing my loved ones this year will not keep me from loving them — or them from loving me — in whatever ways we can until the time we can embrace again.

The capacity to love each other is, beyond any doubt of mine, one of the greatest gifts God placed in our hearts. It could not have been meant to be a gift temporary or fleeting.  Rather, it endures both on this side of eternity and the next — even when that is beyond my comprehension.

It takes only an old apron to remind me of all the blessings I have in the people who I have loved, do love, and will love, whether or not they are at my table this year. I hold them close in my heart, knowing that we are still together both for these special celebrations and for all our ordinary times.

May God bless you and your loved ones in the days to come.

Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.

By IHE Fellow Daniel E. Burns

By the time you read this, we may know who the next President of the United States will be. At the time I write it, we do not.

Some 150 million Americans have voted, yet we now know that the scales will be tipped by the tiniest sliver of them — possibly fewer, in at least one state, than the total population of The Catholic University of America.

A choice between two very different men, and two very different governing philosophies, is so closely balanced that its outcome will depend on a small handful of Americans who did or did not happen to make it out to the polls last Tuesday. It feels strange that we entrust so much of our collective future to the vagaries of such an unpredictable system.

Of course, this election is so unpredictable precisely because of something we already do know: Americans are just about evenly split over the two parties’ nominees. List all the dire consequences you can imagine if your own least favorite candidate should win the Presidency. Half of your fellow Americans don’t see those consequences.

We should each continue hoping, after all the counting and recounting has been fairly and accurately completed, that our own candidate ends up on top. But this period of waiting has been forced on us because, whatever result you are hoping for, almost exactly half of the voting public is hoping for the opposite. We should all try not to forget this over the next four years.

The winner himself will have every incentive to forget it, and to encourage us to do so. Once he has secured 270 electoral votes, he acquires enormous powers of pushing through his own political agenda. Why would he refrain from doing so, except insofar as he is forcefully checked by our other governmental institutions (or by concern for future elections)? And as Tocqueville observed, the idea of majority opinion exercises such an immense power over our moral imagination that no American politician can resist the temptation to claim full majority support, whether accurately or not.

We will be hearing a lot about the winner’s popular “mandate” in coming months. Let us not forget that that “mandate” is a legal fiction. The presidency will be won or lost because of a handful of voters in just a few states. What we will be measuring over the next few days (or weeks) will not be a nationwide popular mandate.

Educated observers should really try to refrain from the predictable handwringing that we will soon be seeing on the losing side, or the gloating on the winning side, about The Will Of The People as the election results will supposedly have expressed it. The will of the people has already been expressed. It is divided. The final election results will not change that.

The winning candidate will have a precious opportunity to advance his agenda despite the wishes of half the electorate. Supporters of the losing candidate will have other, smaller opportunities to advance their own agenda, because they still comprise half the electorate. This much we know already. Let us not forget it once we know more.

Daniel E. Burns is a professor of politics at the University of Dallas.

By IHE Fellow V. Bradley Lewis

As I write this, the outcome of the presidential election is unresolved, and, most likely, when the votes have been counted, resolution will be only partial. There is likely to be not only anger and recrimination, but complicated and prolonged litigation. The divisions that preceded the election will not have been mitigated by whatever kind of completion the process achieves. Anyone hoping for the sort of decisive result that would calm the passions that roil our politics will be sorely disappointed.

The durability of our political and cultural differences is testified to by perhaps the two most consequential national challenges we have faced over the first two decades of the twenty-first century. The first, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, brought about a unity of purpose as unexpected as the attacks themselves, coming as it did on the heels of an earlier close and divisive national election, but any hope that it would endure dissipated rather quickly. The wars that followed fed divisions that led Americans to retrospectively interpret that terrible day through the lens of partisan loyalties. The, again, sudden challenge of Covid-19, this time arriving not after, but just before what already promised to be an exceptionally acrimonious presidential election campaign, has led to something similar. The main difference is the lack of any real initial sense of national unity. One might have expected that the onset of a global pandemic might cause Americans to pull together, but that has not happened.  The public health crisis has been sucked into the partisan vortex, like almost everything else.  Whether or not one wears a mask reveals, more than anything else, what side one is on.

Tocqueville famously wrote that the freedom with which Americans debated political issues, a relatively new phenomenon in the 1830s, was made possible by their basic agreement on religion and morality. One cannot help but think that the loss of consensus about those things, partly consequent on galloping secularization, is at least somewhat responsible for the absolutization of political conflict. Politics is thus invested with the ultimacy of religion in such a way that compromise is heresy and patriotism has dissolved into mere partisanship. Under our present vexed circumstances, it may be that the most important civic task of Christian Americans is to give witness to the saving truth that there are more important things than politics.

V. Bradley Lewis is a professor of philosophy at The Catholic University of America.

By IHE Fellow Lucia A. Silecchia

On Veterans Day a number of years ago, a cafe chain offered a free coffee drink to any veteran who visited on the eleventh day of the eleventh month. My Dad, a 1950’s Army veteran, went to claim this gracious token of appreciation. He came home, coffee in hand, but a bit dejected because the young man at the café knew nothing about Veterans Day — or the free coffee offer.

This was no mere failure of a retail manager to acquaint employees with a seasonal promotion — although that seemed a bit embarrassing. What was sadder to me was that this showed how painfully easy it has become to forget the place of Veteran’s Day at the heart of our national remembrances.

Originally observed as Armistice Day, November 11^th initially commemorated the 1918 ceasefire that silenced the weapons of World War One, naively hoped to be “The War to End All Wars.”

It soon became painfully obvious that “The Great War” did not end all wars but was, instead, the opening scene in a painfully bloody, violent century of human history. So, in 1954, Congress renamed November 11^th as Veterans Day to honor not only those who served in World War One, but all those veterans who served before and after them.

In his proclamation of the first Veterans Day in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower called this a day for us all to “solemnly remember the sacrifices of all those who fought so valiantly . . . to preserve our heritage of freedom, and let us reconsecrate ourselves to the task of promoting an enduring peace so that their efforts shall not have been in vain.”

Tucked away as it is between the exuberance of Halloween, the abundance of Thanksgiving, the rush of Christmas, and the anticipation of New Year’s, Veterans Day is all too often overlooked — or seen as simply a welcome day off.

Yet, I hope that it is more than that. I hope that it is kept as a sacred time for gratitude or, as President Eisenhower urged, a time for solemn remembrance of sacrifices made and reconsecration to our best ideals for which those sacrifices were made by so many who wore a uniform in the past, in the presence, and in the future.

When my Dad left the service, he was healthy and well. No dark shadows or nightmares of things seen, heard, smelled and felt in a battlefield haunted his dreams. When “Taps” was played at his grave, it was for a beloved grandfather with silver in his hair, a wallet filled with pictures of the children he lived to see grow up, and a beloved wife with whom he shared more than half a century of married life. He was a veteran much blessed — and for his health and safety and the long (but yet not long enough) life he lived, I am so deeply grateful.

But I am also so very deeply grateful this Veterans Day for those whose service came at a heavy price to them and their loved ones.

There are those whose lives were disrupted and whose dreams were deferred. There are those who lost limbs, eyes, peace of mind and more far away from the comforts of home. There are those who came home not to the welcome of a loving family, but to the abandonment of those nearest and dearest, ingratitude and misunderstanding, and a lifetime of suffering in mind and body and soul. And, there are those whose service did not end with a discharge into the arms of their loved ones but into the colder embrace of a grave dug far too soon. To these veterans, my gratitude is of the solemn kind reserved for those who gave me more than I will ever understand.

I am glad that this solemn day falls in November.

The All Saints Day celebration that starts the month reminds me that there were great saints made in the battle field. Indeed, it is surprising how in the most violent of circumstances, great virtue can be found. St. George, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Joan of Arc, St. Sebastian, St. Francis of Assisi (really!), St. Thomas a Beckett, Servant of God Emil Kapaun — soldiers all — pray for us! Pray for peace.

The All Souls Day memorial that follows is a reminder to pray for all those who have left this world and await the fullness of heaven. Maybe, throughout this month, those who died in or after wartime can also be in our prayers — whether we know them or not.

The Thanksgiving festival that wraps up the month is also a reminder of the importance of gratitude to all those who, through the centuries, served selflessly, served with honor, and served bravely. Thank you for all you gave to me because you were willing to risk your own ordinary times.

Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.

By Emmett McGroarty, J.D., IHE Director of the Program on the Constitution and Catholic Social Doctrine

On October 19th — a week ago as I write this piece — the IHE had a great event entitled The 2020 Election and the Future of the Right. Ross Douthat, our Media Fellow and a New York Times columnist, moderated the discussion with panelists Samuel Goldman (The George Washington University), Dan McCarthy (Modern Age), and Ramesh Ponnuru (National Review), all of whom provided thought-provoking insight. In this column, I provide my views on the over-riding focus of the discussion — the state of the post-Trump right-of-center political movement (which I’ll abbreviate as the “Right” for purposes of this piece).

I am submitting this piece prior to the election. Regardless of the election results, I believe Trump’s presidency will profoundly affect the Right for the reasons outlined below.

Prolife. By the 1990s, the prolife grassroots movement had made it very difficult for GOP politicians to be pro-abortion. Trump has raised the bar by proactively discussing the issue in general audience fora and unabashedly advocating for life. This will be the standard for GOP presidential candidates moving forward.

The American Experiment vs. Progressivism and Socialism. In his inaugural address, President Trump declared, “What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.” Since then, President Trump has prominently contrasted the big-government ideologies of progressivism and socialism with liberty, the free market, and government controlled by the people. With regard to tax policy and appropriations, he has railed against using the federal government as an enabler of profligate state spending. Looking forward as to both foreign and domestic affairs, the Trump shift more explicitly exposes socialism as a denigration of freedom and human dignity. As to domestic policy discussions, the shift is towards a reconsideration of the authorities of government, the distribution of power, and political accountability in the bureaucracy.

Military and Defense Policy. Trump’s policy is to have a powerful military but to be wary of interventions leading to long on-the-ground commitments in foreign lands. This draws the ire of neocons as well as those who want a smaller, less-expensive force. Nonetheless, under Trump’s leadership we are extricating ourselves from “endless wars” while still taking a firm stand against foreign aggressors. Trump’s approach, I believe, will be the dominant policy position on the Right for the foreseeable future.

African-American Outreach by the Right. For decades, conservatives in general — and the GOP specifically — have lamented that the party of Lincoln no longer has widespread support among African-Americans. Going against that grain, multiple surveys (see here and here) suggest that the president is polling significantly better among African-Americans than past GOP candidates. Is he showing the Right how to cure its deficiencies?

President Trump can rightly claim credit for the First Step Act, which among other things reformed draconian criminal sentencing rules that disproportionately harmed African-Americans. He also touts passage of the Future Act, which provided meaningful long-term and temporary funding for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). And, he argues that his economic policies have resulted in record employment for African-Americans.

Will part of President Trump’s legacy be a more robust substantive outreach from the right? Are the president’s legislative initiatives and his message of prosperity having a positive effect? Win or lose, if the actual election results show a significant increase in support among African-Americans, then this will also be a component of his lasting effect on the Right.

Certainly, the future of the Right needs to be evaluated with regard to a host of other issue sectors — international trade agreements, public confidence in the media, the effect of the various peace agreements brokered by the Trump administration, and relations with China, to name a few. But, more importantly, the overall Trump effect on the Right is a prominent discussion and defense of the fundamental tenets of Western civilization and the American Experiment.

By Lucia A. Silecchia 

Respect Life Month is an annual October opportunity to recommit to respecting the unique dignity of each human being, made in the likeness of God and created with an irreplaceable part in the human family that no other will ever fill. This year’s theme, “Living the Gospel of Life,” invites a thank you note to all those who live this “Gospel of Life” in their ordinary times by welcoming the most vulnerable. So . . .

Thank you to the elderly couple with full hearts and an overflowing basement bursting with the cribs, strollers,  clothes, diapers,  formula and toys they collect for expectant mothers in need. They know what may seem small never is.

Thank you to the man who sits in a quiet bar while his friend confides that his wife is pregnant with their fifth child and he just lost his job. Hearing this despair and knowing the desperate thoughts that fill the fearful father’s mind, this loyal friend pledges his support. He means it. This friendship means the world and can save a life — or two.

Thank you to the high school teacher with the picture-perfect family life who consoles a student facing an unexpected pregnancy and fearing her bright future is lost. After the standard words of encouragement fail, this teacher takes a deep breath and confides in her student what she has always kept private: “I was once there too.”

Thank you to the woman who carries her child for months, knowing she will place her greatest treasure into the heart and home of another family. She also knows this great act of love will exhaust her body and break her heart in ways few will understand. Thank you to the parents with full hearts and empty arms who adopt children and raise them with a love that, in turn, inspires others to see the beautiful gift of adoption and continue this circle of selfless, aching love.

Thank you to friends who console a mother who miscarries her child.  They understand this grief is deep and raw because a life has ended. So, they do not blithely say “it’s better this way” or “you’ll have another” because they know far more than a dream or a hope died within.

Thank you to those who speak kindly and with respect for women who give birth to and raise children in less than perfect circumstances. The children in their lives will overhear them — and remember their words more than anyone will ever know.

Thank you to all who dedicate their lives to caring for, teaching, employing and advocating for those who live with disabilities. In the opportunities you provide, families facing an unexpected pre-natal diagnosis might just see a glimpse of a promising future for their child. They may desperately need your witness to resist the pressures they are so likely to face as they wait to welcome their child.

Thank you to the parents of boys who teach their sons to respect the dignity of women, the sacredness of sex, and the obligation to support the children they father in every way they can. Thank you to those same parents who care for the mother of their son’s children — regardless of whether she is a beloved daughter-in-law whose pregnancy answers years of family prayer or a frightened teenage girlfriend whose name they do not even know.

Thank you to the religious sisters who, in so many ways, live the radical hospitality that welcomes women in need and their children by offering the love and material support that our busy world pays lip service to say but too often neglects to do. Thank you to the priests who hear the pain-filled confessions of those who carry heavy burdens and lifetimes of regrets. Through the ministry of the Church they grant the pardon and peace that frees so many who are so broken to become some of the best protectors of life I have ever met.

Thank you to the friends of a frightened young woman, abandoned by her boyfriend, who accompany her home when she fears telling her family she is pregnant. Thank you to the friends of an overwhelmed father-to-be when they have the courage to tell him that fathers support both their children and the women carrying those children — and then help him to do this. Extra thanks if those friends also have the courage to tell him that, popular opinion notwithstanding, saying “I will support you in whatever you decide” is not support at all.

Thank you to the friendly Mass-goer who gives a wink and a smile to a crying infant rather than a cold stare and a judgmental glare. The harried parents trying to keep their children corralled in their pew will appreciate this and be grateful that those who celebrate the sanctity of life are not curmudgeons when they see the beauty of that life in the house of God.

Thank you to the knitters and quilters in retirement homes who make baby blankets for infants they will never know and donate them to pregnancy centers. They hold the loving hope that an exhausted mother may derive the strength to carry on just knowing a handmade gift was specially prepared for her unborn child.

Thank you, most of all, to parents who welcome children into the world in so many situations that are unexpected, unsupported, and unappreciated. What you do is sacred — not only on day one, but each and every day.

To all of you, and so many others, my “thank you” seems so small. May God bless you all for all the ways you live the Gospel of Life in all the days of your ordinary times. 

Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.

By IHE Fellow David Walsh

Sometimes we have to be hit over the head to notice what we should have known all along. That was the effect on me of watching Terrence Malick’s new movie, A Hidden Life. Even though I had long paid attention to the role of dissidents in confronting totalitarian regimes, somehow I had missed the extraordinary case of Franz Jägerstätter. His significance as an inspiration to the anti-war resistance in the Vietnam era had also escaped me. Not even the beatification of Jägerstätter by Benedict XVI in 2007 had registered on my radar. Somehow it had all just floated past me as so many of the great and small events of life have done. But now, thanks to the arrival of A Hidden Life, I have gained a perspective on an extraordinary witness who lived far from the fame and notoriety by which we usually judge what matters.

Indeed the whole life of Blessed Franz might easily have been bypassed by history, as it is with many uncanonized saints. Even Jägerstätter himself thought that his solitary refusal to serve in the Nazi army, the only Austrian to do so, would be lost and forgotten. He was, after all, an unknown farmer in the Alpine hamlet of St. Radegund. Who would know or care if he refused to take an oath to Hitler, contrary to the overwhelming consensus of his nation and his church, and was summarily executed for his pains? His was an incomprehensible stand in a society largely inclined to yield to what it would not or could not resist. Within his village he was the only “No” vote against the Anschluss. His subsequent refusal to serve meant certain death and nothing but misery for the wife and children he left behind. What could bring a man to step so far out of line with the whole world in which he found himself?

The movie follows the process by which this very ordinary person became capable of bearing extraordinary witness, for no one just wakes up one day and decides to become a martyr to conscience. It is the story of an inner life, that place where all of the important events emerge long before they become visible in the external world. Becoming a witness to truth is a gradual process by which inner conviction comes to outweigh the whole great world. Franz’s conscience responded to the call of God that convinced him that it was the only direction in which truth and goodness lay. No matter what the surrounding voices declared, he held fast to the reality he knew within. To become an accomplice in the evil perpetrated by the Nazi regime would have been to climb on board the shining train he had seen in his dream. It would have been to ignore the voice that said “This train is going to hell.”

Surely he was not alone in seeing that one could not lose one’s soul even if it meant risking or losing one’s life. Franz’s dream had been the reality many recognized, but few had dared to admit. Even the Church had turned its back on its duty not to temporize with evil. Out of fear for their own lives the local pastor and the bishop failed to support Franz’s determined refusal to serve. He alone held onto the truth of God that outweighed all purely mundane perspectives. Only the Nazi government took any real notice, as they elevated his trial from the provincial court in Linz to the Imperial setting in Berlin. There he was held in the Tegel prison, an institution that held a far more celebrated inmate, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The transfer was surely an indication of the danger that Jägerstätter represented. In A Hidden Life, the light of truth finally shines on the regime that is itself under judgment, as its officials confront the unshakeable witness of one who obeys God rather than men.

Nothing of course was changed by Franz’s heroic stand that would be remembered only by his family and the few people who knew him. Yet his gesture was not lost to history. The reason why he is remembered deserves a place in the story, although it is not part of the film that would never have been made without it. It turned out that an American sociologist, named Gordon Zahn, who had received his Ph.D. in 1952 at The Catholic University of America (no less), went to Germany to conduct research for a book on German Catholics and Hitler’s Wars. Zahn came across the Jägerstätter story and decided to devote a separate book to it, under the title, In Solitary Witness (1964). It was as a result of this work that the case was taken up by Archbishop Thomas Roberts, who hailed Jägerstätter as an incomparable guide to the teaching on war in the Vatican Council document, Gaudium et Spes. Without Zahn’s scholarly recounting of Jägerstätter’s life and death, supplemented by the documents and materials assembled by Erna Putz, one of the most important martyrs of the twentieth century would have been lost to memory. Instead, the effort begun by Zahn bore fruit when Franz Jägerstätter was beatified by Benedict XVI in the cathedral in Linz with his wife, Franziska, children, grandchildren, and greatgrandchildren looking on.

But perhaps the final lesson we must draw from this extraordinary witness can be taken from the title of Malick’s movie. While watching it I had wondered about why he had called it A Hidden Life, since none of the characters made any reference to the phrase. It is only at the end that we are given its source when the director inserts a quotation from George Eliot’s Middlemarch on the screen:

“ . . . for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”

Within a worldly perspective, Jägerstätter had lost it all, without accomplishing anything for himself, his family, or his country. His had been a solitary witness to conscience, apparently without impact. Yet it is on such unbidden and unacknowledged generosity that the whole good of the world depends. The only thing missing from that Eliot/Malick assessment is the condition that explains the conviction itself. That is, that in history nothing is lost from history for all that we do remains under the loving gaze of God, for whom there is no such thing as a hidden life.

David Walsh is professor of Politics at The Catholic University of America and author most recently of The Priority of the Person (Notre Dame Press, 2020).

By Emmett McGroarty

Prior to the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, public discussion was already entertaining the fate of the administrative state. President Trump’s two appointees—Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh—had expressed skepticism of key, long-standing features of administrative government. Some recent Court decisions had reined in the administrative state; was there more to come? Underlying those discussions, though, are broader issues about the relationship between the citizen and government.

The structure of the modern administrative state has been heavily influenced by progressive theory. In the late 1800s, progressives argued that the world was becoming increasingly complex and that, consequently, the structure of government needed to be reformed. As Woodrow Wilson argued in The Science of Administration (Political Science Quarterly, July 1887), the idea of the state was undergoing “noteworthy change” and there were “every day new things which the state ought to do.” Emboldened by advances in science and technology and the rising social sciences and impressed with sophisticated European bureaucracies, progressives advocated for a new discipline of government administration.

In the progressive mindset, the problems in society ought not be a matter of the discussion, deliberation, and decision-making of politics. Experts in the science of administration could better solve those problems if they had sufficient authority and resources. After being given general goals, experts in the new science of administration would administer government and make crucial decisions.

But the traditional Constitutional structure posed a threat to progressive theory. The Constitution’s acclaimed system of checks and balances would have to be altered. Broad swaths of power had to be transferred to the bureaucrats, who then had to be insulated from interference from other branches and even from the president. As Wilson argued, the bureaucrat “had a will of his own” and would be guided by the science of administration. Likewise, the division of power between federal and state government—state sovereignty—challenged federal bureaucratic hegemony.

Throughout the 20^th century and into the 21^st century, progressive structural philosophy influenced statutes, court decisions, and the implementation of laws.  Congress granted burgeoning power to the executive. It limited or diluted the president’s authority over some agencies. For their part, the courts developed rules of deference to bureaucratic interpretations of certain statutes and regulations and allowed the federal government tremendous leeway to dominate state government.

The early progressives were not oblivious to concern that such changes would undermine the Constitution’s system of checks and balances. To counter that, Woodrow Wilson argued in The Study of Administration (1887):

There is no danger in power, if only it be not irresponsible. But if it be centered in heads of service and in the heads of branches of the service, it is easily watched and brought to book. If to keep his office a man must achieve open and honest success . . . and feels himself entrusted with large freedom of discretion, the greater his power the less likely is he to abuse it . . .  [whereas the] less his power, the more safely obscure and unnoticed does he feel his position to be, and the more readily does he relapse into remissness.

At the heart of it, the debate over structural progressivism is one about the nature of the human person. Does the Constitution reflect human nature and do particular progressive reforms and practices enhance that quality or detract from it? Is human nature such that strong political accountability should flow to the individual through their elected leaders and through government that is closest to the individual as possible? Or should government be centralized away from the people and political accountability substituted with other forms of safeguard? Is government more efficacious with decreased political accountability? If so, are there negative consequences such as increased alienation among the citizenry?

At a minimum, the seating of Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court will encourage greater discussion of these questions, more intensive study of the administrative state, and more challenges to many of the progressive practices and reforms.

Emmett McGroarty, J.D., is the Director of the Program on Subsidiarity and the Constitution at the Institute for Human Ecology.

By Lucia A. Silecchia 

The quirky old building that I call home has a temperamental heating and cooling system that cannot both heat and cool at the same time. Thus, every September, when the first crisp fall days roll in, some want to switch it over to heat.  Others, like me, want to believe that summer will make a triumphant — albeit temporary — return.  So, we want to hold out on the switch to heat for as long as we can.

Ultimately, though, the day comes when fall’s arrival becomes too obvious to ignore and the heat comes on. This dance will come again in six months when we debate when and whether a cold winter has loosened its grip and given way to the warmth of spring.

In one sense, this semi-annual debate is nothing more significant than a quest for comfort in the ‘tween seasons. In another sense, though, it seems to mirror the tensions and difficulties that come not only when the seasons, predictably, change on the calendar but also when the seasons change, both predictably and unpredictably, in our lives.

Life is full of such seasonal changes — even for those who do not see their lives as particularly dramatic. Seasons change when the predictability of staying at home gives way to the adventure, or misadventure that is kindergarten. Seasons change when the security of student life is traded for the stress and excitement of the working world. Seasons change when jobs change through the excitement of promotions and new opportunities — or with the abrupt hardship of unemployment.

Seasons change when commitments are made to marriage or religious life or parenting.  Seasons change when the parents who cared for their children become those cared for by their children. Seasons change when a phone call from a physician brings the good news longed for or the bad news feared. Seasons change when a mistake made has unpredicted and profound consequences.  Seasons change when a grudge is released and an enemy is forgiven with a grace that frees the forgiver as much as the forgiven. Seasons change when a fear is overcome, or when a new fear burdens the heart.

Seasons change when a loved one moves away or when a new friendship is formed.     Seasons change when a family home is packed up and sold — and when a new home becomes the backdrop for a lifetime of memories. Seasons change when a parish or a school close and when a new parish home is found.

Seasons change every time a new member of a family is born, and every time a family member breaths his or her last breath. Seasons change in those moments of profound spiritual comfort and also when those moments give way to seasons of the soul’s dark nights

Seasons change when a virus unknown to the world a short while back wreaks havoc on a fragile world and its most vulnerable people. Seasons change whenever a long held view is found to be wrong, or when the conscience gently — or not — calls into question a past or present prejudice, imprudence or unkindness.

All of these changes of season are hard — even when they are the ones that are also joyful and longed for. Right now, I am eager for a crisp fall and the start of a new season.  Indeed, new beginnings seem especially welcome this year. In this spirit, I met a friend this weekend for the first hot cocoa of the season — my annual low-budget welcome to fall. Yet, I am also sorry to see the end of long warm days and the full sunshine that is slipping away as darkness comes earlier each night.

Maybe the tug at the heart that comes with life’s changes of season merely reflects human nature’s affinity for the familiar over the unknown. But maybe it is a little bit more. Maybe the changes in seasons remind us how uncertain life is. They remind us how much we do not know the ways in which the future will unfold as much as we yearn to believe that we do. They remind us how leaving behind the familiar demands a leap of faith — or, at least, a tiny step of faith.

Maybe, as with so many other things, these changes of season are a time to, once again, renew our trust in the God who knows that there is “an appointed time for everything” (Ecc. 3:1) that happens in our lives. This is true of the large dramatic changes in seasons — but also in the small, subtle and gradual ones as well. I know that I want what I want when I want. But, maybe there is a wisdom in watching the seasons change with a bit more patience, and trust. May God bless all the changes that come to the seasons of your ordinary times. 

Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.

By Lucia A. Silecchia 

“I got the job,” she told me. It was news not shared with the exuberance I expected of someone who had worked hard and hoped hard for her new opportunity. Instead, the sharing of this happy news was almost whispered in a guilty, confessional tone usually reserved for sharing less-than-joyful news.

Soon, the reason seemed clear to me. She felt some misgivings about sharing her happiness in a time of great uncertainty, suffering, unrest and pain in the world. In a time when so many cling to employment by a thread, if at all, the joy over a new exciting opportunity seemed to her to be something best shared sheepishly.

I have seen this in others, too, whose kind souls are grieved by the suffering of others.  They do not easily exult in the joys that came into their own lives. I am grateful for the way they have eyes open to the pain of others and hearts that make the burdens of others their own. They have been and are great examples to me.

And yet — please let me rejoice with you.

We are mourning the death of so many. Yet, let me rejoice when a new baby comes into your family.

We are mourning relationships broken and strained by stress and isolation. Yet, let me rejoice at your engagement or golden wedding anniversary.

We are mourning the illnesses and fragility of so many. Yet, let me rejoice when your surgery is a success, or your last round of chemo is finished, or you get the negative test results you longed for.

We are mourning rituals missed and celebrations deferred. Yet, let me rejoice when your granddaughter receives her long-delayed First Communion and your sister’s intimate wedding with a party of ten is a poignant celebration of love beyond her wildest hopes.

We are mourning the inhumanity we see out in our streets and behind our closed doors. Yet, let me rejoice when your neighbor leaves your porch full of groceries and the teenager around the corner mows your lawn unasked and unpaid.

We are mourning the sudden hunger that strikes so quickly when a paycheck is missed. Yet, let me rejoice when your parish or your school or your neighborhood rallies behind those in need with a generosity that strikes back even more quickly.

We are mourning the selfishness and carelessness of those who will recklessly risk the well-being of others in a time of cautious hope. Yet, let me rejoice when you are proud of the way your children put the interests of others before themselves and sacrifice big plans without complaint.

The ordinary times of our lives are filled with both shadows and sun, with seasons of mourning and seasons of rejoicing. So often, though, these seasons are melded together in a way that asks the human heart to both mourn and to rejoice at the same time. One of my favorite scripture passages begins with the command “Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4). I have read this at both the weddings and funerals of my nearest and dearest. Yet, another one of my favorites is the consoling counsel, “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matt. 5:4). Embracing both of these at the same time is hard – and not something that can be navigated alone.

As autumn comes, it brings with it the last quarter of 2020. For those who mourn, this is a year that cannot end soon enough. If you are mourning, let others share your sorrow and your fears and bring to you any comfort that they can. But if you are rejoicing, let others share your joy too — in the sensitive, compassionate way that these times demand.

To the friends and family — and strangers, too — who share with me your joys and sorrows: thank you. You remind me that on our darkest days, there is still joy in the world and on our brightest days, there is still pain in the world. You remind me that my prayers always need to embrace both gratitude and petition. You remind me that both good times and bad are inextricably intertwined and woven into the fabric of our ordinary times.

Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.

By Monica Burke, IHE Graduate Student Fellow

As the novel coronavirus continues to spread, so too we continue the debate over how to reconcile public and private needs. How can we pursue the common good during a pandemic? How can we weigh man’s physical and emotional health against his social and economic well-being, not to mention his spiritual life?

While speculative science is no replacement for concrete political prudence in these matters, philosophy supplies us with a foundation to answer these questions. Let us consider the relationship between the individual and the common good as explained by Aristotle and Aquinas. In Nicomachean Ethics 1.2, Aristotle tells us:

Even though the good be the same for one man and for the whole state, it seems much better and more perfect to procure and preserve the good of the whole state. It is admirable, indeed, to preserve the good of an individual, but it is better still and more divine to do this for a nation and for cities.

At first glance, this passage reads like a blank check for the state to do as it pleases. However, that’s not what Aristotle means by the priority of the common good. The good of the whole does not override the good of its parts, just as a foot or a hand does not properly exist if the whole body is destroyed. The parts of the political community — citizens, households, etc. — can only properly function in the context of the whole.

The key here is to understand in what sense the common good is “common,” as Aquinas explains in his commentary on the aforementioned passage of Aristotle:

Certainly it is a part of that love which should exist among men that a man preserve the good even of a single human being. But it is much better and more divine that this be done for a whole people and for states.

The common good does not override the private good. The same love that prompts us to do right by a single human being can be extended to a whole community. Such love is not diminished by extension — in fact, it increases! This is because the common good is held in common not merely by predication but as a common end.

Yves Simon, a twentieth-century French Thomist, had this insight in mind when he argued that common action is the basis of political life. To pursue a common end, there must be common action unto that end. To unite all of the various parts of society to common action, communities need authority.

Authority’s role is to determine that in which the common good consists and what the state must do to pursue the common good. Our current political situation is no exception: our rulers have a responsibility to formulate general rules so we can act as one people in pursuit of the common good. Think of government regulations on gatherings, university rules on social distancing, and our churches’ guidelines for participation in the Mass. Yet, even with such rules in place, the picture is incomplete. To realize the common good, we need conscientious citizens as well.

Yves Simon argues that particular subjects like you and I also need to will the common good, not only by obeying authority, but by attending to our own particular goods. Society can only flourish if we care for the needs of our families, friends, and neighbors. This care includes their physical needs, like wearing a mask to protect an at-risk relative. However, it also includes “other-centered needs” like friendship and religion. We need to consider how to incorporate socialization and worship safely into “the new normal.” If society is to function, we must continue to attend to the goods entrusted to our care — even when facing difficult choices about how best to pursue them.

There is no easy answer as to how to achieve the common good in the time of COVID-19. This is a challenge of special concern to our political leaders, whose job it is to promote unified action through general rules aimed at the good of all. However, the common good encompasses more than what we traditionally think of as “politics.” It can only come about if we persevere in serving the individuals, families, and organizations that make up society. Such a feat is only possible through prayerful discernment and prudential deliberation. This is no small task, but it is one that all of us, not just politicians, are called to carry out.

By Lucia A. Silecchia 

My grandfather was a gardener.

Over a hundred years ago, he was a young farm boy in the sunny hills of southern Italy.   A long journey later, he found himself shining shoes on the street corners of New York – the city that would become his hometown and mine.

But, once a farmer, always a farmer.  When he grew up and settled in Queens, he recreated a farm as best he could in the yard surrounding his home.  I remember well how, in a small piece of land under the watchful supervision of his dog and my cat, he eked out a rich bounty of tomatoes, lettuce, Swiss chard, rhubarb, squash, sweet peas, green beans, grapes, quince, figs, persimmons, mint, basil, hot peppers, sweet peppers, strawberries .. and ever more tomatoes!

One of the highlights of my childhood was the day my parents bought a swing set for my siblings and me.   But, as it emerged from the Sears Roebuck shipping box in all its red and white gleaming glory, it must have broken Grandpa’s heart a bit.  He knew that, until we all outgrew swings, a prime piece of his garden became our turf.   If ever there was tangible evidence of his deep love for us, it was his willing surrender of at least four rows of tomato plants for the joy of his grandchildren.

I have been thinking of his simple, ordinary garden often these weeks.  It seems as though more and more people tell me that they have tried their hand at gardening this summer.  They are now seeing the bounty of their backyard harvests.   In the trials of these past months, the simple appeal of a garden seems to be in full bloom.   To plan a seed and tend it, to watch it grow and bear fruit (or vegetable or flower), and to cherish the bounty of that small harvest is the most simple of human acts – one undertaken year in and year out since human life began.

Yet, in this ordinary activity is much profound and hopeful truth.   Gardening starts when someone looks at a humble seed and sees in it possibilities that are unseen but hoped for.   It continues when that seed is planted and hidden away for a time when there is no outward sign of anything good to come.  It advances when the first sign of a stem or a leaf or a blade timidly comes forth from the dirt with the promise of new life.   It involves some disappointment when seeds planted do not emerge or when they shrivel and die soon after they peek out from the soil.   It requires a tenacious battle against weeds that somehow, inexplicably, always seem hardier and healthier.  It takes the gentle care of watering and tending young plants as they tentatively mature.   It generates frustration when birds and insects help themselves to the ripe new bounty and exasperation when wind or weather prematurely ends the growing season.

But, after a summer that has been both too long and too short, the intrepid gardeners I know now speak of their ripe tomatoes with deep satisfaction and their herbs with unexpected enthusiasm.  They already plan more ambitious gardens for 2021.  With both generosity and pride they offer to share the harvest from their backyard gardens – or from the planters that blossom on their windowsills and porches.

There is much beautiful hope in the ordinary planting of a garden.

So many of the parables of Christ were parables of plants and gardens.   I have always been told that this was because Christ dwelt among us in an agrarian time and place when the stories of the soil would best resonate with his listeners.

Yet, I think they also touch our hearts today when so many in both city and county turn to the simple, hopeful joy of planting a garden in a summer of uncertainty.  The deep trust, the unspoken optimism, and the joyful hope of waiting for a harvest all marked the summers of my grandfather’s life.    I hope that this will also inspire the search for trust, optimism and joyful hope in all of the non-agrarian corners of our lives in these often troubled days.  With gratitude for their example (and for bringing back some happy memories) I hope that all who are rediscovering the joy of a summer garden will be blessed with a rich bounty to fill their ordinary times. 

Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.

In their recent The American Conservative piece, entitled “Building an Inclusive Post-Pandemic American Workforce,” Steve Wagner and Michelle Steeb make the argument that civil society, as well as federal and state government, should make concerted efforts to bring into the economic fold the 18 million Americans who are neither working nor seeking work but who are struggling with disabilities such as physical handicaps, mental illness, substance abuse disorders, health complaints, criminal histories, and vocational deficits. They are, as the authors note, “human beings endowed with unique and significant potential; they deserve our attention for several reasons.” The article is well worth reading.

Wagner is the former Deputy Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and former Acting Assistant Secretary of the Administration for Children and Families at the US Department of Health and Human Services in the President Trump Administration. Steeb is the former CEO of Saint John’s Program for Real Change, a Sacramento-based program that supports homeless women and children, and the author of Answers Behind the Red Door, a battle plan to help the homeless.

Read their article at The American Conservative.

This past June, in Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Supreme Court held that the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act violated the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine. The decision is sure to invite further cases challenging the constitutionality of various independent federal agencies. In fact, in its opinion the Court discussed two other recently created independent agencies that rest on shaky constitutional grounds.

The salient facts in Seila are straightforward. Congress established the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and vested it with immense powers, including the enforcement of nineteen federal consumer protection statutes. It housed CFPB within the Federal Reserve System as an independent bureau and placed it under the leadership of a single director, appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate.

CFPB opened a civil investigation of the petitioner and, pursuant to that, demanded certain records. The petitioner objected, asserting that the CFPB structure violated the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine—the Constitution’s apportionment of specific powers among the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches. More precisely, unlike most other independent agencies, which are headed by multimember boards or commissions, the CFPB is led by a single director. The president may fire the Director only on the limited grounds of “inefficiency, neglect or duty, or malfeasance in office.”

Under the Constitution, all executive power is vested in the President. The Framers expected that the President would rely on subordinate officers and therefore invested the presidency with the power to supervise them, including the authority to fire them. The Court had previously recognized only two exceptions to this rule. In one line of cases, the Court had held that Congress could provide tenure protections to certain inferior officers with narrowly defined duties (e.g., civil service jobs) and no policymaking or administrative authority. In another line of cases, the seminal case of which is Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, 295 U.S. 602 (1935), the Court found that Congress could create independent, expert agencies led by a group of principal officers removable by the President only for good cause.

In Humphrey’s Executor, the Court had considered structure of another independent agency, the Federal Trade Commission. The Court rationalized that, although the agency was part of the executive branch, it was actually exercising power in discharge of “quasi-legislative or quasi- judicial powers” and that its duties were “neither political nor executive” but instead necessitated “the trained judgment of a body of experts.”

The Court in Seila, in an opinion authored the Chief Justice, held that CFPB’s structure did indeed run afoul of the separation of powers doctrine. The Court noted that, “aside from the sole exception of the Presidency, [the Constitution] scrupulously avoids concentrating power in the hands of any single individual.” The Framers “made the President the most democratic and politically accountable official in Government,” a feature that the Court noted was enhanced by the “solitary nature of the Executive Branch.” The Court found that the “CFPB’s single-Director structure contravenes this carefully calibrated [Constitutional structure] by vesting significant governmental power in the hands of a single individual accountable to no one.” It further observed that, “with no colleagues to persuade, and no boss or electorate looking over her shoulder, the Director may dictate and enforce policy for a vital segment of the economy affecting millions of Americans.”

But rather than overturn the rule in Humphrey’s Executor, the Court merely declined to extend that line of precedent to the facts in Seila. On that part of the opinion, the Chief Justice was joined by Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. Justice Thomas issued a separate opinion in which he dissented in part (with respect to another part of the case—the Court’s finding that the constitutional infirmities of the CFPB statute did not invalidate the whole statute) and concurred in part. Justice Thomas opined that “the Court takes a step in the right direction by limiting Humphrey’s Executor to ‘multimember expert agencies that do not wield substantial executive power.’”

Quoting one of his prior opinions, Justice Thomas called for the Court to be courageous and vigorous in defense of the Constitution: “We have a ‘responsibility to ‘examin[e] without fear, and revis[e] without reluctance,’ any ‘hasty and crude decisions’ rather than leaving ‘the character of [the] law impaired, and the beauty and harmony of the [American constitutional] system destroyed by the perpetuity of error.” With regard to the rationalization of quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative functions, Justice Thomas reasoned:

“No such powers or agencies exist. Congress lacks the authority to delegate its legislative power, and it cannot authorize the use of judicial power by officers acting outside of the bounds of Article III. Nor can Congress create agencies that straddle multiple branches of Government.”

The independent agencies are thus unconstitutional and leaving them in place “subverts political accountability and threatens individual liberty.” Justice Thomas noted that, with its decision in Seila, along with other recent decisions, the Court “has repudiated almost every aspect of Humphrey’s Executor.” He declared that, “in a future case, I would repudiate what is left of [that] erroneous precedent.”

For well over 50 years, the Court succumbed to progressive arguments to corrupt the constitutional structure in order to transfer power from the states to the federal government and from Congress to the bureaucracy and to then limit the President’s authority over the bureaucracy. From the progressive viewpoint, the Constitution, as written, does not leave room for experts to wield the necessary power to manage society. In furtherance of that, from 1887 through 2010, Congress created at least twenty-five major independent agencies (with well over half having been created after 1966). Justice Thomas’s dissenting opinion lays down the marker for a full return to the Constitution.

Emmett McGroarty, J.D., is the Director of the Program on Subsidiarity and the Constitution at the Institute for Human Ecology.

By Lucia A. Silecchia 

Do not leave them by themselves.  Use the inventiveness of love, make telephone calls, video calls, send messages, listen to them and, where possible, in compliance with healthcare regulations, go to visit them too.  Send them a hug.

Pope Francis made this plea on behalf of elders who are facing the burdens of Covid-19 in particularly difficult ways.

Certainly, from a medical perspective, the burden carried by elders is painfully clear.   Over 80% of all Covid-19 deaths have been in patients over age 65.  The preexisting medical conditions that make an individual more vulnerable are more likely to be found in those who have had more years.   More acutely, the staggering thousands of deaths that have decimated the ranks of the elderly living in nursing homes and congregate living settings is devastating.

Yet, it was more than the burden to the body that lay at the heart of Pope Francis’s plea for “the inventiveness of love” (a beautiful turn of phrase!) and a hug for our elders.   These ordinary times of our elders have been heavily burdened with grief to the heart as well.

In nursing homes and congregate care facilities across the nations, there are elders who have not been able to see or touch family members for nearly five months.   The burden of loneliness and isolation is heart wrenching for any of us – but particularly so for those who may not understand why their families cannot be with them and for those in the last months of their lives.   For them, five months may seem more precious than it is for most of us.

In homes across the nations, widows and widowers grieve the loss of spouses with whom they traveled life together – but with whom they were not allowed to be together in the last moments they would ever share on this side of eternity.   Elderly parents passed away without their children and grandchildren at their sides, and so many elders find themselves without some of the siblings, friends, and neighbors who filled their lives five short months ago.   Compounding this is the reality that so many have had to grieve alone without the funeral rituals that gather us together to embrace the bereaved and console one another.

On televisions across the nations, we hear of plans to return to those things we find productive.  We want to know how and when the young will go back to work, return to school, eat out, travel, and enjoy the social and cultural events that tie us together.   All of this is important and good.  However, the needs of those who are no longer working, going to school or venturing far from home must always be kept in mind so that no one is left behind if we ever value the importance of what we do over the dignity of who we are.

On screens of all sizes across the nations, many are trying as best as possible to recreate personal and professional connections through technology.  Nearly all that we do – birthday parties, classes, happy hours, conferences, and medical appointments – seems to be prefaced by the word “virtual.”   Often this is the best we can do, and I am grateful for the technology that allows us to do so.    So many who never thought of themselves as technologically skilled – including many elders (and me) —  have made great strides in using new media.   However, this shift can also widen a divide that leaves elders behind as a world moves on-line too fast.

In houses of worships across the nations, many have gone months without gathering to worship God together.   Even as churches begin to open up, health concerns may keep elders away a bit longer.     In a time when families are far flung, it is so often in their churches that elders find a second family and the deeply profound presence of God.  Sadly, this spiritual family has also been scattered for a time.

At kitchen tables across the nations, so many of us anxiously calculate our financial futures.  For those whose retirement savings are meager and whose income is limited, this future may look particularly bleak.   For those who relied for support on children who now face economic woes of their own, the desire not to “burden” others with their needs can be particularly painful.

Into the whirl of these sorrows, Pope Francis urged the “inventiveness of love.”  So many of the large questions to be answered are beyond the individual capacity of any of us.   However, we have been given the capacity for inventive love – an inventive love we can share with our elders as they bear a heavy load in these difficult days.   We can, in so many different ways, so many ordinary ways, find the best way to send a hug.

It has been a century since a similar pandemic swept the globe and I hope it is far longer than that until the next one.  However, if a pandemic does rage again when I am old or vulnerable or both, I know that I would want a hug to lighten the load of those ordinary times.

Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.

By Lucia A. Silecchia

Late July brings one of my favorite celebrations in the Church year:  the July 26^th Memorial of Saints Anne and Joachim, the parents of Mary, the Mother of God.

I had some early biases toward this feast.   I grew up in a New York parish named for St. Anne.   My parents gave me that moniker for my middle name when I was baptized, and I took it again when I was confirmed.   My family always celebrated our patron saints’ feast days, and I was competitively (but uncharitably) pleased that I had two celebrations rather than one because I was the only one of my siblings to be baptized with a middle name.

However, what I liked the most about this celebration was the thought that Christ – God Himself – had grandparents.   I remember my own grandparents with much love and joy.  These elders of my family were my roots, my heritage, and a cherished center of my early life.

Most pictures I see of St. Anne (and the oft-neglected St. Joachim) show her, or them, in their role as parents to Mary.   They are often depicted teaching Mary to read, celebrating her presentation, or witnessing her wedding.  Occasionally, they are added to portraits of the Holy Family, gazing with love and awe from the corner of a painting of their daughter and her family.

Yet, I also like to think of them as the grandparents of God.  I wonder whether, in that extraordinary role, they experienced any ordinary times.

When Mary and Joseph were planning to marry, did her parents eagerly anticipate becoming grandparents, as do so many parents-of-the-bride?   When Mary told them of the Annunciation, how much did they understand?  Was their joy about their grandson mixed with fear?   Did they worry, as parents do, when their pregnant daughter traveled to visit her cousin Elizabeth in the “hill country of Judea” or accompany Joseph to Bethlehem while carrying their grandson in her womb?

Did they visit their infant grandson at His birth or His presentation and give their daughter, a new mother, advice on caring for Him?    Did they ever watch Him play as a toddler and hear His first words or see His first steps?   Did they ever make a special food He liked as a treat or tuck Him into bed at night?   In those “hidden” years of Christ’s youth, did they watch Him grow in strength and knowledge?  Did they ever have the chance to tell Him childhood stories of His mother’s life as a young girl?  Did they speak of Him to their friends and pray for Him when they worshipped at the temple?

Were they still living when their daughter feared for her lost 12-year old and rejoiced when He was found?  Was their grandson their final thought and last joy when, after their holy lives, they closed their eyes on this world?

I will never know.   But I do know the importance of grandparents.  As parents to our parents, they shape the lives of those who most shape our own.  They are so often the link to a distant time, a foreign land, and a different life.  They are the elders who guard the heritage of a family and who, so often, hold it together in difficult times.  When Pope Francis visited Philadelphia in 2015 he said, “Grandparents are a family’s memory. They are the ones who gave us the faith, they passed the faith on to us.”

I am so grateful for the inheritance of faith and memories I received from my own grandparents.  I am also so grateful that in the extraordinary way in which Christ dwelt among us, he had the gift of grandparents – one of the greatest blessings of ordinary times.

Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor Law at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.

By Lucia A. Silecchia

I am a planner.

Every year, in the heart of the summer, I buy a new calendar because I mark the beginning of my new years not in January but at the start of each new academic year – the cyclical rhythm by which I mark my time.   Planners like I am love the sense of control and certainty that comes from plotting out the course of our upcoming weeks and months.   Usually, class times, committee meetings, family gatherings, travel, school holidays, seasonal celebrations, annual traditions and other commitments make their way into my low-tech, handwritten calendar.  This creates, in a tangible way, my beloved organization and order.

Except when I can’t plan.

As it turns out, when I look at the days, months and weeks ahead, I find myself saying “I don’t know” to the most basic of questions.   What will our fall semesters look like?  When will we meet friends for dinner again inside our favorite restaurants?   When will students come to my office again?   When will the phrases “new normal” and “please mute yourselves” fade from our lexicons?  (I’m hoping soon!)  When will masks no longer hide the faces of friends and the smiles of strangers?  When will we be able to see far-flung family members who live across the country and around the world?   Who is hosting Thanksgiving dinner, and where?  (Yes, I plan that far ahead!) When will “Zoom coffee hours” be replaced with the joy of the real thing?  When can we safely revel in family reunions, crowded school events, concerts and conferences that are real, not sterilely virtual?  When can we gather to discuss the pain that grabs our headlines in person, with each other, not through a screen or a soundbite?   When will we be able to gather to memorialize those who have passed from this life and console each other in a warm embrace?  When will the joy of parish life lived as a family return in its glorious fullness?

I don’t know.

Admitting “I don’t know” is unsettling for me.  I sense this is an experience shared by many – but most deeply shared with my fellow planners.  To lose the control I thought I had has been an unwelcome part of these past months.   Yet, perhaps it was not something lost as much as a realization that the ability to plan and control is something I never really had – even when I had the luxury of thinking I did.

I am not the first to look ahead and sigh, “I don’t know” when wondering about the details of what lies ahead.   I imagine that “I don’t know” was the thought that went through the mind of Mary when she tried to anticipate what her life would be like as the Mother of God.   It likely also went through the mind of Joseph when he contemplated how life would unfold in the unique role he was asked to play in the history of salvation.   “I don’t know” must have raced through in the minds of the disciples who tried to understand what their new vocation would demand of them.  “I don’t know” surely was in the hearts of the crowds who met Christ during His years among them as they contemplated how this encounter would change their lives.

Since then, “I do not know” has reverberated through the centuries as the saints I most admire saw their lives unfold in ways they did not plan, did not anticipate,  did not understand, and, perhaps at times, did not desire.  Yet, by saying yes when they did not know what lay ahead and giving their uncertain futures over to God, they lived the lives they did and left behind the example they did.  The examples they gave living through the big unknowns of their lives is a welcome inspiration for navigating the far smaller unknowns of mine.

I am thinking of these ancestors in faith during this unsettling summer of “I don’t know.”  I hope that they will share with me the serenity they knew when they looked ahead and did not know what would come. I hope they will share with me some of the patience they had when others, frustratingly and honestly, answer my planning questions with their own “I don’t know.” 

Most importantly, I hope that they will share with me the faith that they had as I try to learn that “I don’t know” is, at its heart, an invitation to trust.  It is an invitation to trust that all that lies ahead, for me and for us, is in the hands of God.  More than that, it is in the hands of a God who lovingly does know and care about all that happen in the unfolding of our ordinary times.

Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law at the Catholic University of America. “On Ordinary Times” is a biweekly column reflecting on the ways to find the sacred in the simple. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.

On 3 June 2020, the Collegium Institute’s Ars Vivendi Arts Initiative gathered four distinguished scholars and authors on Zoom to discuss Flannery O’Connor and her relevance during the quarantine. Speakers Amy Alznauer, IHE Fellow Jennifer Frey, Jessica Hooten Wilson, and Christine Flanagan probed into O’Connor’s work as it relates to philosophy, ordinary experience, and creativity, which included a deeper conversation on God’s grace as brought about by solitude, violence, and boredom. Throughout the discussion, the speakers discussed that while these prevalent aspects of life are often avoided or identified as negative, in reality they are opportunities to grow in grace. 

In her initial presentation, Alznauer, author of the soon-to-be released picture book, The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor: A Life, and Artist In Residence at St. Gregory the Great in Chicago, remarked that the original form of solitude is found in childhood. O’Connor knew this from her own youth and incorporated it into her works frequently. Moments of solitude experienced by her young protagonists magnified their self-knowledge in relation to God and the pursuit of truth. Being alone, regardless of age, allows a person to know himself and contemplate, a freedom vital to the reception of grace and truth, especially amid the distractions of modernity.

When the discussion opened for audience questions, the topic of violence prompted another important supposition: is there a tension between enjoyment of literature and the grotesque elements that often appear in O’Connor’s stories? Hooten Wilson, Associate Professor of Literature at John Brown University and the author of Giving the Devil His Due: Flannery O‘Connor and The Brothers Karamazov, asserted that, while people tend to fixate on O’Connor’s violence, the point of the violence is not merely to horrify but to make possible a moment of grace. In both literature and reality, violence is important not for its own sake but for the sake of eventual virtue; it forces society to see its distorted ways and choose to retain or overcome them. Ultimately, the violence of purgative fire is a passage to ensuing grace.

The final question of the evening explored whether solitude, that strange state simultaneously fruitful and boring, is the result of fallen human nature or the appropriate state of a soul that can only be satisfied by God. All four speakers agreed that boredom is good. Flanagan, Professor of English at University of the Sciences and the editor of The Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon, found boredom to be a necessary condition of an artist; O’Connor reportedly would sit at her desk for hours while waiting for ideas. Frey, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Carolina and co-editor of Self-Transcendence and Virtue: Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, and Theology, asserted that boredom is beautiful and “the mistress of receptivity,” being none other than the passive, silent state that precedes inspiration. Hooten Wilson concurred that the resting of heart and mind, which is now called boredom, is actually an openness to deep contemplation and the grace of God.

During this time of national distress, the Christian must not despair but rejoice. Opportunities to develop virtue are present today in the least-expected, even initially distasteful, places of boredom and quiet.