The Rich Man, The Eye Of The Needle, And The Nobility Of The Poor - Self-Perpetuating Myths

Jack Townsend was a rich man, and his wealth was earned honestly - the American dream of enterprise, hard work, discipline, diligence, and opportunity, 

He was proud of his wealth - or rather the fruits of his labor - and felt no shame or guilt or harbored no second thoughts concerning his good fortune. His wealth was not built on the backs of the poor.  On the contrary it was the facilitator of their economic mobility.

He enjoyed his wealth and had no qualms about having houses in Palm Springs and St. Bart's, an all-expenses-paid lifestyle which was his right to enjoy.  Not the wages of sin but the wages of enterprise. 

 

His wealth, as significant as it was, was simply part of the international market moving according to fixed laws of supply and demand in arcane algorithms which in the era of Artificial Intelligence, was operating more according to their own mysterious mechanisms. 

His money was invested, and from Wall Street banks it circulated around the world - money markets, gold and silver exchanges, commodity futures, buy-outs, creative financial instruments, and the growth of businesses.  He was but one cog in an imponderable mechanism, but the thousands, millions of people like him made it turn. 

Wealth was the product of civilization and its enabler. There would be no Renaissance without the Medicis. 

 

Poverty was on the mind of former President Jimmy Carter when he talked about Jesus and the nobility of the poor, and how it was harder for a rich man to get into heaven than a camel to go through the eye of a needle.

The poor, Carter said, were anointed, chosen by Christ because of their simplicity, their lack of worldly temptations, and their profound faith in the Lord.  Carter spent his life in the service of the poor, building houses, speaking compassionately and hopefully about a new age of equality, and working the land shoulder to shoulder with tenant farmers.

 Lyndon Johnson saw poverty as an electoral promise – the more the poor made it out of the backwoods, the more votes would be cast in his favor. He was never a rearview president, looking back on the life that had preceded him, but a doer, and he shook down, intimidated, horse traded and wrangled with Congressional leaders to give him what he wanted – millions in cash for Texas. 

Bill Clinton was a good ol’ boy at heart and hated to leave the General Store, fishing for bass on Lake Ochoa, and hunting squirrels and coons in the foothills of the Ozarks.  He loved his people, never lost an opportunity to share tales on the porch of the general store, before and after church, and coming and going from the revival tent. 

All of them missed the point, for of course there was never any inherent nobility of the poor, nor any particular divine light shining on labor.  They were at best perfect examples of Hobbes’ aphorism about life in general – nasty, brutish, and short – consigned by poor breeding, circumstance, and inertia to the lowest rung, wondering what to do next.  In The Land of Opportunity, they missed the bus. 

America is based on many fictions and this, the nobility of poverty is one of them.  Work is simply a necessity, unequally apportioned, differentially paid.  There is no nobility in factory work, farm labor, office work, or public service.  Facts of life have no inherent value.  Economic variables even less. 

Today the question is moot.  Manual labor is reduced to a few essential industries not yet subject to robotics or Artificial Intelligence, and soon the knowledge economy will become universal.  The idea of the nobility of work or the nobility of poverty is not only a Victorian fiction but totally irrelevant. 

Catholic priests take vows of poverty, and within that narrow framework, individual priests find their calling.  Father Aloysius Brophy of the Church of the Holy Family, found the parable of the rich man, the camel, and the eye of the needle particularly insightful; and as he looked out over his well-heeled congregation, he spun his own parables about the dangers of wealth.  

He stopped short of indicting the rich - that they ipso facto would be denied the Kingdom of Heaven because of their wealth - but issued fair warning.  The path to riches is the road to sin. 

Despite current interpretations of Matthew (Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God) to equate wealth with sinful ignorance and a rejection of Christ's admonition to love the poor, Jesus meant only that a focus on wealth accumulation distracts from spiritual matters.  In fact his admonition was a derivation of ancient Hindu texts, the Upanishads which warn that the material world is nothing but Maya, illusion, a chimera of false promise. 

Townsend had left the church many years ago, not so much for the personalized, subjective blandishments of Father Murphy and his misinterpretations of the Bible but for its false idolatry. The Church, for all the heady intellectualism of Athanasius, Augustine, and Aquinas had fallen on hard moral times, grasping at divine straws while ignoring the undeniability of Darwin, Einstein, and Planck. 

The world was deterministic - random selection, indefinable quanta - and fixed mathematical absolutes.  The church had nothing to say either about the ineluctability of an aggressive, territorial, self-defensive human nature or a quantum physics which led its uncertainty principle to be applied to social dynamics. 

Today's progressivism stuck in Townsend's craw, for it was more idolatrous than the Vatican's facile, temporal interpretation of the foundational precepts of the Early Church. Progressives denied the ineradicable elements of human nature, insisted on social progress when none could be seen over millennia of successive generations, and proposed unfounded, idealist solutions to imagined problems. 

The nobility of the poor, an idea which Townsend thought was long dead and buried, emerged as a progressive precept.  There was not only something wrong with the accumulation of wealth per se, but it harmed the poor, a noble class, a worthy, equal piece of the social fabric. 

Nobility itself does have value as a moral feature of life - men and women of class, breeding, a sense of pride in themselves and a consideration for others were indeed noble - but when attached to a temporal equation like poverty, it loses potency and agency

And so it was that Jack Townsend went about his business, of clear mind and untroubled conscience, a man determined by factors beyond his control, with no destiny other than following those rules, not subject to any higher order of morality but respectful of the randomness of his success. 

Pope Leo And The Hypocrisy Of Vatican Censure - Trump, Iran, And The Crusades

 'God does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war'

In this disingenuous statement, Pope Leo has conveniently ignored Catholic history. The Crusades were not just armies of the West marching to Jerusalem to rid the Holy City of its Muslim infidel; but a militant statement of the power, glory, and rightful place of Christianity in the world.  They were different from the marauding armies of Genghis Khan who rode out of the steppes with a hundred thousand horsemen, laid waste to and then conquered the world from Europe to Asia.  

They were the instruments of God’s will, and as such they would be unstoppable.  Over a period of two hundred years, three Crusades marched out of Europe to the East, each to be the final one, the scattering of Islam and the establishment of the one true church.  While the Crusades ultimately failed in their military objective (the last Christian outpost in Palestine fell in 1291), they accomplished much, much more.

Of course the Crusades were of more than religious purpose.  The popes were as territorial and power-driven as any secular leader, and the agenda of the Crusades was as least as much geopolitical as spiritual.  Nevertheless, the Middle Ages was a profoundly religious period, as close to the imperial church and Constantine as England is to the Norman Conquest, far enough removed to engineer a new, historical Church, but close enough not to have lost missionary zeal.  

The Crusades were at once cultural expressions, political and military expeditions, and the consolidation of papal power. Yet they consolidated the collective identity of the Latin Church under papal leadership; and constituted a replenishable source  for accounts of heroism, chivalry, and piety that galvanized medieval romance, philosophy, and literature.  Most wars are fought by conscripts, and the Crusades were certainly no different, but in an age of militant Christianity and unquestioned belief they were just as certainly led by true believers.

The War of the Eight Saints (1375–1378)  arose between Pope Gregory XI and the Italian city-state of Florence, which opposed papal expansion in central Italy. The war was marked by Florence inciting revolts in the Papal States and the Pope retaliating with military action. The war ended with a compromise peace in 1378, contributing to the return of the papacy from Avignon to Rome.

The Holy Roman Empire - Papacy Wars primarily occurring from the 11th to the 13th centuries stemmed from power struggles between the German emperors and the papacy, particularly over the issue of lay investiture. Key events included the Investiture Controversy, where popes sought to establish ecclesiastical independence from imperial authority. Significant battles and political maneuvers characterized this period, culminating in the Concordat of Worms in 1122, which sought to delineate the roles of church and state.

 

This historical ignorance is just the most obvious reason to wonder whether the new Pope has come loose from his moorings. His deliberate omission of the intricate philosophical debates concerning the nature of just wars is nothing more than political grandstanding, a thinly-veiled criticism of the American war in Iran. 

Philosophers and theologians have always been concerned about the concept and nature of a just war.  Most believed that there was such a thing, and tried to fit conflict within larger religious and ethical constructs. In Ancient Rome, war was always potentially nefas ("wrong, forbidden") and risked religious pollution and divine disfavor.  

A just war (bellum iustum) thus required a ritualized declaration by the fetial priests More broadly, conventions of war and treaty-making were part of the ius gentium, the "law of nations", the customary moral obligations regarded as innate and universal to human beings. 

Augustine, perhaps Christianity’s most influential theologian was one of the first to assert that a Christian could be a soldier and serve God and country honorably. He claimed that, while individuals should not resort immediately to violence, God has given the sword to government for good reason (based upon Romans 13:4).

 

In Contra Faustum Manichaeum book 22 sections 69-76, Augustine argues that Christians as part of government should not be ashamed to protect peace and punish wickedness.



Nine hundred years later, another influential theologian, Thomas Aquinas set forth the conditions under which just wars should be fought:

• First, just war must be waged by a properly instituted authority such as the state. (Proper Authority is first: represents the common good: which is peace for the sake of man's true end—God.)
• Second, war must occur for a good and just purpose rather than for self-gain (for example, "in the nation's interest" is not just) or as an exercise of power. (Just Cause: for the sake of restoring some good that has been denied. i.e., lost territory, lost goods, punishment for an evil perpetrated by a government, army, or even the civilian populace.)
• Third, peace must be a central motive even in the midst of violence. (Right Intention: an authority must fight for the just reasons it has expressly claimed for declaring war in the first place. Soldiers must also fight for this intention.) 

New York Times journalist Jeff McMahan has written about the origins of the just war theory and how it is being challenged by the changing nature of war.  The principles of right wars and right conduct were developed and applied when wars took place between nation-states; but now that armed conflicts rarely pit countries against each other and more often set factions in opposition within a country or a region, these principles may no longer be applicable or appropriate. 

Enshrined in the principles of the Geneva Convention, such wars must adhere to the following principles:

In most presentations of the theory of the just war there are six principles of jus ad bellum [undertaking just wars], each with its own label: just cause, legitimate authority, right intention, necessity or last resort, proportionality and reasonable hope of success.  

Jus in bello [conduct in just wars]comprises three principles: discrimination, necessity or minimal force, and, again, proportionality. These principles articulate in a compressed form an understanding of the morality of war that is, in its fundamental structure, much the same as it was 300 years ago.

The moral argument comes when superpowers have to decide whether to intervene or not.  Surely there was a moral case for a just war for the United States to intervene in the Rwandan genocide and wage war against the Hutus; or to send in expeditionary forces into Sudan to stop the killings in Darfur; or to have intervened far earlier in the war in Bosnia.  

Many argue that in failing to fight that just war, America and its allies were immoral.  Justness or rightness have to be defined within the context of sins of omission as well as sins of commission.

What exactly is the Pope’s ‘wage war'?  America's decision to defend itself after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and to fight Nazi aggression in Europe was a decision to wage war and few historians or philosophers have criticized Roosevelt and Truman for their decisive actions.  Israel has fought not only for its political independence but for the survival of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. 

Leo's simplistic take on conflict is directed at Donald Trump for attacking Iran. Yet from a moral perspective, the pre-emptive military removal of an existential threat - a regime determined to develop nuclear weapons to destroy Israel and threaten the United States - is justified within any of the legal, moral, or philosophical codes of behavior set down in early Christian history.   

The more the Pope wanders in the weeds of geopolitics, the more of an out-of-touch caricature of faux holiness he becomes. 

No Kings, The Ecstatic Moment Of Meaning - Donald Trump As Women's Personal Savior

Vicki Adams felt mopey, listless, and traipsed through the house with an unfamiliar lassitude, flopping around in her slippers and robe. The silk Kimono given to her by her late husband had always picked up her spirits, but today it had none of its old magic.  She felt empty, a shell, a shadow of her old self. 

She shuffled to the kitchen, bumbled through the makings of her morning tea, nibbled an old piece of toast sitting in the toaster, looked out at the empty birdfeeder, and sighed.  It was another day like all the rest - purposeless and empty.  

The oomph and zip had gone out of her step. The angry harridan of her protest days was a woman of the past. Gone were the righteousness, the fellowship, the police dogs, truncheons, and paddy wagons of her youth, and the feeling of joy and fulfillment.  She had been making a difference, making her life count and now nothing. 

She felt insatiably angry at Donald Trump, a man who stole the White House from its legitimate occupant, Kamala Harris, a black woman who would have governed with compassion, consideration, and wisdom.  Now the usurper, the predator, the maniacal autocrat sitting where she should be sitting, was wreaking havoc, taking revenge on those righteous partisans who had opposed him, and destroying democracy. 

For months after his election Vicki festooned her lawn with macabre caricatures of the new President, ghastly, ghoulish, bloody images of him feasting on the bodies of the fallen black, gay and transgender.  She arranged kaffeeklatsches, teas, chat groups, and informal home seminars to discuss the state of the nation, the horror of Donald Trump, and the need for concerted action. 

The ladies of Bethesda were energized by these meetings and left with a new commitment to action.  The evil in the Oval Office must be removed and the country returned to compassionate, progressive rule. 

'I hate him', said Amory Phipps, garden club chairwoman, longtime supporter of the Democratic party, and a very agitated woman, at Vicki's tea party. She stood up, raised her fist, but words would not come.  Choking, splurting, and gasping, she was animate but silent.  The ladies around the table shook their heads in commiseration.  'See what that man has done to us ' Betty said to Sue, who nodded in agreement. 

When poor Amory Phipps finally had gained her composure, but was too moved to speak, sat down, other, calmer but no less passionate women took the floor and denounced the President and all he had done to destroy the very fabric of democracy. 

 

The women all left the tea party happier and more satisfied than when they arrived, but a sour taste lingered in their mouths.  They were still a bunch of old, post-menopausal women kvetching and grousing.  Sound and fury meaning absolutely nothing. 

Then came No Kings - and the brilliance of the idea was mesmerizing. Its core principle - that Donald Trump had imperial ambitions and was a dictator worse than Hitler or Stalin and was the embodiment of all the murderous despots that had come before - was unifying.  Disaggregation into separate liberal causes - the climate, gays, blacks, immigrants, Wall Street, etc. - was unnecessary.  'No Kings' said it all with everyone united under one banner. 

This brightened Vicki's whole outlook on life. This was what she had been waiting for.  No more sketchy, windy protests at the gates of the White House, no more rancid letters to the Washington Post, no more lawn signs, tea parties, and neighborhood camaraderie. This was The Big One, the great protest of the Sixties redux, the one that would spark a nation and force a resignation as stunning and significant as that of LBJ or Richard Nixon. 

The ladies were excited, happy, and expectant as they stepped on the school bus to take them to the National Mall for the nation's premier No Kings demonstration.  On this day hundreds of No Kings protests would take place from coast to coast, but this one in the heart of the nation's capital would be the mother lode, a beacon, the centerpiece. 

The atmosphere on the bus was heady and thrilling.  This was what they had been waiting for, an event that would not only help to remove The Tyrant of 1700 but would revitalize their lives.  This protest of thousands of likeminded women together in one place, united by purpose and passion would be epiphanic and salvational. 

The ladies clucked and crowed with pride and happiness, ready to sing Ninety-Nine Bottles Of Beer On The Wall, so happy were they.  They couldn't wait to get off the bus, set their feet on the grass of the Mall, look eastward to the Capitol and westward to the Washington Monument and feel the pride of protest. 

'Ginny!', shouted Vicki across a clutch of women just off the Gaithersburg bus to her college friend, now a florist and veteran of the protests of the old days.  'Wow!' said Vicki as she made her way through the crowed to give her friend a hug. 'Isn't this wonderful?'

The day couldn't have been better.  The spirit of camaraderie was in the air, a thousand soprano voices singing in unison, a Bach chorus, an Ode to Joy, perfectly orchestrated and choreographed. Vicki felt like a young girl again.  

 

She hugged and kissed strangers, embraced the many women she knew, shouted like a Southern Baptist at a revival meeting, whooped and hollered like a soccer mom at her daughter's first game.  It was more than a gathering.  It was more than a protest.  It was an epiphany and an an experience closer to what she felt at her First Communion than anything else in her life. 

She remembered her First Communion clearly.  All dressed in white, holding a posy of lilies of the valley, looking up at the cross above the altar and feeling the presence of Jesus Christ, she felt close to God himself as the priest put the wafer on her tongue. 

Today was no different.  Her feelings were celestial, beatific, and holy.  She felt a spiritual presence, a soul-residing beauty, a miraculous joy.  She didn't hate, she loved!  She loved her sisters, she loved America, and she loved the world. 

Not surprisingly the sense of joy, belonging, and spiritual purpose faded in the ensuing months.  The No Kings rallies had absolutely no impact whatsoever on the President who went on waging war, herding brown men into cattle cars for deportation and incarceration in Latin gulags, castrating black men, and enriching his Wall Street cronies.  

Alone, disconsolate, missing her husband, and her joints hurting, Vicki returned to her morning shuffles and crust of old toast.  The letdown was unremitting.  She felt emptier than ever, more despondent, hopeless, and dispirited.  

She filled her watering can and carefully watered her geraniums, careful not to spill a drop. Somehow extreme care of things was what her heart required. 

'Where's Vicki?', an old tea party roue asked when the next No Kings rally came around.  

'Moved to Florida', said her companion. 

'Where?' the woman shouted.  Florida? DeSantis, 'The Free State', the heart of the new Confederacy. 'Impossible', but the rumor was true. Vicki had packed up and moved into a condo in Sarasota overlooking the Gulf. 'She must have gone dotty', the woman said, 'otherwise...otherwise....'

There she stopped, thought of palm trees, sundowners on the deck, warm breezes, and retirement. 'Otherwise, nothing'