Will the Surprising New Pope Fulfill Our Hopes?

Pope Francis has been making wonderful surprise gestures. Hopeful signs.

 He has shown concern for people:

 Ignoring security, he leaves his armored car to mingle with the St. Peter’s Square crowd. He urges humility and care for the poor in his homilies.  And in the week this is written, he is conducting Holy Week services at a juvenile detention center rather than at St. Peter’s Basilica.  

What’s more, Pope Francis has opted not to live in the elegant and isolating Vatican papal apartment. He will lodge permanently in the pedestrian hotel when he stayed prior to his election. He wants to be with people—ordinary priests and others doing business with the Vatican.

The changes are inspiring.

For many Americans, though, hope in Pope Francis will be fulfilled if and when he acts to heal the wounds and scandal caused by pedophile priests and callus bishops and when—and if--he leashes the Vatican hounds yapping at our American nuns.

It may be unreasonable to think the Pope was advised of two St. Patrick’s Day broadcasts on American television. Had learned about them, he would have gotten a good idea how U.S. Catholics and others currently feel about the institution he heads.

Meet the Press proved especially revealing.

David Gregory, the NBC program’s host, conversed with four public figures known to be Catholics: Chris Matthews, NBC political commentator and host of his own show; Ana Navarro, GOP political strategist; Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, author and former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, and Frank Keating, politician and former GOP Governor of California.  All expressed the hope that Pope Francis would at last change the Church’s trajectory. They indicated why.

Said Mr. Matthews:

“…A lot of us that go to church talk about it. It really doesn’t sound right on television. But there’s always been a real suspicion…about the way the church handled sexual abuse of altar boys…it was never dealt with quick enough.

“…The slowness made a lot of us suspicious they were covering up more than just this…. every Catholic that goes to church thinks like this. They don’t like talking about it; maybe I shouldn’t have…but the church wasn’t on top of this thing. And people say, ‘Wait a minute, what side are they on, the priests’ or the altar boys?’ They should be on the side of the altar boys.”

 “I don’t think you should be feeling any Catholic guild about talking about this,” Ms. Navarro declared. “We must air it out. And I think this pope needs to understand…. I can tell you, I’m a Catholic who’s grown very distant from the church, and it has been over this sexual scandal.

“I just can’t get over the cover-up. I can’t get over putting the institution above the people. This [election of Pope Francis] is something that I hope he brings me back. And I think there’s a lot of American Catholics who feel the same way. We want that hope. We want the hope from the new pope, and hope that he brings it back. ”

Ms. Townsend has aired her feelings in her book, Failing America’s Faithful: How Today’s Churches Are Mixing God and Politics and Losing Their Way. On Meet the Press, though, she noted that for decades American Church leaders have focused almost exclusively on sexual matters and downplayed the Church’s social agenda.

“That and the scandals leave you suspicious,” she said. “The Church always has a range of issues, and what are they focused on? Unfortunately, in the last 20 years, I would say they focused mostly on sex. And I hope that with this pope, they’ll focus more on something that brings us together rather than individually saying, ‘You’re bad on sex.’ It’s just the church of sex.”

Of course the Church has been more than a church concerned about sex. It has been a church of fear also—the hierarchy’s fear of opinions that challenge current Vatican rules.

Church leaders especially fear outspoken U.S. nuns who declare for the equality of women in the Church.  The nuns have been called “insubordinate,” “radical feminists” who have created a “crisis” and are “undermining the Church.” A censor has been appointed to scrutinize all the nuns’ writings and the words of speakers at their meetings.

 In a nation where free expression of ideas is a prized, insisted-on right, the Vatican’s action against the nuns seems harsh, even churlish.

The CBS program 60 Minutes depicted the standoff between America’s nuns and the Vatican. The program aired interviews with Sister Pat Farrell, head of the Leadership Conference of Nuns, and with J. Peter Sartain, Seattle’s archbishop. The archbishop has been appointed watchdog over the Conference, which represents 80 percent of the nation’s 57,000 U.S. Catholic nuns.

Importantly, 60 Minutes’ videos showed the nuns doing basic good works, doing what many of us call ”God’s will”—feeding the hungry, caring for the sick and dispossessed, counseling addicts, teaching poor children and comforting society’s rejects. Among the nuns there are nurses and lawyers dedicating their talents and their lives to help the needy.

Yet the Vatican chastised the nuns for doing such work to the exclusion of campaigning against same sex marriage and abortion. Many Catholics and non-Catholics were appalled.

If what the nuns do is insubordinate, let’s have more nunish insubordination. I f these educated highly articulate and completely loyal ladies of the Church think they should have equality in Church affairs, well, they have earned it.

And it’s practically certain that  a talented and devoted women running a diocese would have been on the side of the altar boys, as Chris Matthews put it, and not prone to shield monster rapist priests.

                                                                                ----Gus Gribbin

Can Absolute Faith Be Bad? “Absolutely,” a Philosopher Says

“Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.”

               Eric Hoffer, the “longshoreman philosopher,” said that.

 His insight raises a timely question during the Lenten season and when there is so much news about the Catholic faith and faith in general. But is Hoffer correct?

                First—for those who might not remember Eric Hoffer:

 He is the Bronx-born thinker whose ten critically acclaimed books and pithy aphorisms earned him a substantial readership and critical acclaim during the mid-20^th century. In February 1983 President Ronald Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

 Hoffer was born in 1902 and died in May 1983—three months after receiving the medal. He lived a hard-scrabble life doing odd jobs, working as a crop picker, spending time homeless, and working for years on San Francisco’s docks.

 At first glimpse Mr. Hoffer’s observation about faith sounds heretical. It wars with the prodding of clerics who cajole followers to believe “with all their heart, mind, and soul” in the power of God, in the words of the Bible or Koran, in the dogmas and rites of their religions, and, among other things, in the power of prayer, “which can move mountains.”

After all, didn’t Jesus mildly rebuke the apostle Thomas—“Doubting Thomas”—for his skepticism? Perhaps you’ll remember the scriptural account:

                After Jesus’ death and resurrection, he appeared to a few followers. Thomas wasn’t among them. When told of the apparition, Thomas declared he would believe that tale only if he could meet Jesus personally and see the nail marks in his hands and feel the spear wound in his side.

Jesus returned when Thomas was around. He invited Thomas to examine his hands and to finger the wound in his side. Thomas did and was convinced.

  Jesus said “You believe because you have seen me. Happy are those who have not seen and yet believe.”  (In some translations the term “happy” is stated as “blessed.”)

In any event, Jesus seems to allow little room for skepticism.

                Hoffer, on the other hand, likely would give Doubting Thomas high marks. 

Why? Consider the meaning of faith.

Faith is the “confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.” It is “belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence.” So states the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. (Italics and boldface mine.)

Faith has power because believers yield it to the idea, person, or object they vest belief in. Faith is a choice. The believer chooses to accept the validity and trustworthiness of a religion, a political theory, a medical procedure, an invention, a friend--and themselves. Believers reject all arguments or proofs against their choice.

 Faith then is a sort of self-induced blindness. It allows or causes us to block consideration of challenging statements and sometimes even thoughts.

It’s easy to see how power corrupts. Think of Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and any other dictator who committed horrible crimes, yet maintained a fervent following.

And there are bewildering examples of the power of those who inspire faith.

 The Rev Sun Myung Moon, for instance, an electrical engineer from Korea, founded the Unification Church. He called himself “The Messiah,” and said Jesus had failed in his mission, but that he, the Rev. Moon, would fulfill it.

Skeptics might question his qualifications for the job. He divorced one wife, had a child out of wedlock, and remarried a third woman. He was convicted in the United States of tax evasion and conspiracy. He seemed not to live a saintly life. Yet numbers of his disciples—“the Moonies”—begged and sold trinkets on streets and in airports. The Rev. Moon parlayed the funds collected from around the world into successful businesses. He profited hugely and lived lavishly from his followers’ work and donations.

 The Rev. Moon’s power was such that tens of thousands of his followers allowed him and his wife to choose spouses for them and to marry them in mass weddings.

Jim Jones didn’t claim to be the Messiah. He was a Marxist and admitted atheist who believed he could sway people to follow his social principles by creating a religion. So he founded the Peoples’ Temple. Eventually he convinced many of his devoted followers to help him create a utopia in Jonestown, Guyana.

 The Jonestown story and its unraveling is remarkable, but best remembered because of its ending. As Alan Riding wrote in the New York Times, the tale, “…is a gripping account of how decent people can be taken in by a charismatic and crazed tyrant.”

                On November 18, 1978, when reporters and others were demanding an investigation of the Jonestown community and of Jones’ suspected abuses, he took action. He convinced 918 followers to murder their children and commit suicide. He had them drink fruit-flavored cyanide then shot himself. The event shocked the world. It was one of the largest mass suicides in history.

                From 1981 to 2006, in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka some 1,200 persons detonated themselves, murdering 14,599 people. Although a mix of reasons caused the bombers to sacrifice themselves, religion played a prominent part. But whatever the immediate cause, there was fundamental faith that the self- immolation was appropriate. The bombers let themselves believe it.

                I suspect Hoffer might say he had no quarrel with belief. He would caution, though, that they shouldn’t let themselves be buffaloed.

 Which is just common sense.

                                                                                ----Gus Gribbin

Ø  Mr. Riding‘s observation appeared in his October 7, 2011 review of A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown by Julia Scheeres.

Snack Food’s Irresistible, You say? Actually, You’re Right

You don’t know Howard Moskowitz. But Howard Moskowitz knows you.

                At least he knows what kind of food will make you—and especially your children—happy and craving more, and more, and more. That is tremendously important knowledge. As applied, it has much to do with the nation’s current obesity problem.

                A fellow you might know because of his reporting and writing is Michael Moss.

 Mr. Moss, a Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times investigative reporter, has mostly recently done Americans the service of explaining who Mr. Moskowitz is and how he “optimizes” products for such companies as Campbell Soup, General Food, Kraft and Pepsi Co.

The explanation comes in an article adapted from Mr. Moss’ book Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us. The adaptation ran as the cover story of the New York Times Magazine of February 24. Random House is scheduled to release the book this month.

 Judging from the Time’s adaptation, the book will be an easy, fascinating—indeed devastating—read. Hopefully it will become a best seller and, like such books as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, it will awaken the nation to the immense problem the processed food and grocery-store industry are complicit in causing. Perhaps it will provoke action against the processed food industry similar to that taken against the tobacco industry.

Of course, it is not news that so-called junk food isn’t good for us. Mr. Moss doesn’t break ground here. What is new is Mr. Moss’ finding that the food industry is well aware of the problem its manufactured foods are causing, but doesn’t care. The industry has consciously created and just about perfected the ability to alter products to make them addictive.

                Mr. Moss’ article explains how Mr. Moskowitz and other scientists, promoters and marketers have engineered techniques that tend to defeat adults’ will power, prodding them to consume unhealthy quantities of unhealthy foods.  Children, who have yet to learn restraint, are especially vulnerable to craving the food engineers create.

                Mr. Moss spent four years researching his book. He spoke to more than 300 former food industry scientists, marketers, and Chief Operating Officers. He gathered thousands of pages of secret memos, “from inside the food industry’s operations.”

                In his Times’ adaptation, Mr. Moss presents a group of “small case studies of a handful of characters whose work then, and perspective now, sheds light on how the foods are created and sold to people who, while not powerless, are extremely vulnerable to the intensity of these companies’ industrial formulations and selling campaigns.”

                Take Mr. Moskowitz, for instance. He is a Harvard-trained experimental psychologist who runs a White Plains, New York consulting firm. He and his team of researchers pay regular consumers to taste, smell, feel, touch, and react to whatever product is being tested. The consumers give their opinions about a food’s “mouth feel,” and other sensations that range from the item’s “dryness to gumminess to moisture release” and a host of other qualities.

 The consumers’ opinions are fed to computers. Mathematical models are created. From the resulting graphs, charts, and analyses, the Moskowitz team arrives at a product’s “bliss point.” That is the point at which the potato chip, say, has optimum appeal—the point where it is closest to addicting because it has the maximum amount of “crave.” It is the point that yields maximum resistance to an individual’s will power.

Sadly, too many of us cave in to a product’s crave.

As a result, Americans currently overeat to the extent that one third of the U.S. adult population is clinically obese. Worse, a fifth of the nation’s youngsters also are clinically obese.

It’s common knowledge that obesity is a risk factor for Type 2 diabetes. But the incidence of diabetes is increasing. It now afflicts some 24 million in the United States. Seventy-nine million have been judged pre-diabetic. Moreover gout—once fairly rare—is on the rise. The severely painful arthritic condition associated with eating rich foods and with obesity now affects 8 million.

In common usage we refer to an obese person as grossly fat. To be clinically obese individuals must weigh at least 20 percent more than their ideal weight. The trouble with obesity, aside from the inconvenience and outright hardship of lugging the extra baggage, is that obesity is a risk factor not only for diabetes but for high blood pressure and a batch of other unpleasant and threatening diseases.

As long ago as 1999, James Behnke, an enlightened chemist with a doctorate in food science and a Pillsbury executive, contrived to stage a meeting with the Chief Executive Officers and presidents of Kraft, Nabisco, General Mills Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and Mars.  He and other ranking food industry executives wanted to warn the company bigwigs of what was being called a national obesity epidemic. He pointed out that the processed food industry was being accused of causing the fattening of America.

 As Mr. Moss puts it, Mr. Behnke and his cohorts wanted to “warn the C.E.O.s that their companies may have gone too far in creating and marketing products that posed the greatest health concerns.”  Sincere efforts “to be part of the solution” were called for, they said. That way the industry might “defuse the criticism that’s building against us.”

The C.E.O.s rejected the warning. Since then the problems Mr. Behnke and other outlined have gotten worse.

And we Americans have seen greed inspire gluttony.

                                                                       ----Gus Gribbin