Our Excuses for the Boston Bombings

If all of America can agree on one thing, it is that the Boston bombing was a deeply evil act. And if all of America could agree on the one question that needs answering from those responsible for these depraved acts, it is, "Why?"I sat around a dinner table recently with a bunch of Catholic friends and the Boston bombings came up in conversation. There was unanimous agreement; no one could understand how any human person could commit such a large scale and hideously evil act. "How could anyone do such a thing?"

Behind the frantic search by media outlets for any revealing details from the pasts of the two main suspects - anything that would pull back the debris and find a motive - there exists the natural response to intense evil: confusion.

As I watched online live coverage of the manhunt coming from one of Boston's local news stations, I heard the news anchors interviewing one of Dzokhar's high school classmates.

She describes her shock and horror upon finding out Dzokhar is suspected to be guilty of the Boston marathon bombings. After seeing his photo on television she scours her old yearbook to make sure its really him. She remembers Dzhokhar as a normal high school guy.

At the end of the interview the news anchor asks, "But was there anything different or odd about Dzhokhar Tsarnaev that you noticed back then?" He's almost pleading with her.

"No, he was a normal kid like any other high school teenager."

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer, nothing more difficult than understanding him.

Dostoevsky

After hearing that interview, for some reason I was disturbed. So much so that I wrote this article. I couldn't shake the feeling that we are all grasping for an excuse.

Certainly we do not want to excuse the guilty. No one is looking for an excuse that would save killers from just punishment.

I get the feeling we are looking to excuse ourselves.

In the smokey confusion that follows the presence of large-scale evil, we naturally look for a way to distance ourselves from the capacity to commit such acts. We look for a way to  excuse ourselves from the one thing we do share with all those who have ever carried out evil acts - the capacity to commit those acts.

Maybe I'm the only one willing to admit the question that sometimes flashes in the mind when using a large knife, or holding a gun, or driving a vehicle. It is a question I'm sure is intensified by exposure to horror movies, graphic video games, and television shows. But the question is present regardless of our exposure to graphic acts of violence, crimes against humanity, and evil.

Do I have the capacity within me to commit a gravely evil act?

Once the smoke settles on an event like this, there are immediate lines drawn between "them" and "us", "good people" and "bad people", the "stable" and the "unstable". And you will hear the phrase "I just can't imagine..." over and over again. "I could never do such a thing. I couldn't imagine doing anything like that."

But is this the correct Catholic response?

Leaving Divine Revelation aside for a minute, we could turn to science and ask the question "Are normal, ordinary people capable of intensely grave evil acts?"

I don't need to retell the stories of the Milgram Experiment, or the Stanford Prison Experiment, or the Abu Ghraib torturing; you can read about those yourself. All of them though, seem to prove that normal people, mentally healthy and ordinary folk, have a capacity for evil acts such as torture and killing. In all of these instances normal people were placed in situations that resulted in them committing or at least believing they were committing extremely evil acts.

Classically divided, the question of "Why do people behave a certain way?" could be separated into two categories. For us, we could be tempted to excuse the capacity for evil as either an innate personal characteristic, or the result of traumatic personal experiences and environment. Nature versus nurture.

Some might be tempted to suggest that Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev must have some sort of inbred flaw that allows them to commit heinous acts of violence without any empathy towards others. They might suggest a mental illness and chalk it up to simply being psychopaths.

Others might be more sympathetic and guess about the upbringing and environment the brothers were exposed to. Maybe they had abusive parents. Maybe there is some history of childhood trauma. Maybe they were under the influence of narcotics. Maybe time spent in Russia made them somehow capable of evil. And of course people will point to Islam Extremist influences that glorify "martyrs" and violence to further their cause.

The banality of evil is displayed in the details of the bombing. Maybe Dzokhar didn't see the 8-year-old boy nearby when he laid down his back pack filled with high powered explosives, nails, and other shrapnel. Maybe he did. If he did, maybe he has a mental condition that leaves him unable to feel empathy. Maybe he has been conditioned by years of hate and trauma.

Or maybe he is just a normal guy who decided to commit an evil act for various reasons, none of which imprisoned his free will or forced him to do anything.

Notice exactly what I am and am not saying. I am not saying that psychology only excuses evil and sheds no profitable light on what makes an otherwise normal person commit evil acts. But I am also not saying that we should chalk evil acts such as these up entirely to outside forces, internal disorders, or religious provocation.

Do we ever stop and wonder if any murderer who has ever uttered the phrase really spoke the truth when he said "I don't know why I did it." That a man could have no psychological or personal motivations for committing an evil act other than the desire to commit it?

Psychology might be able to provide some insight into the circumstantial ingredients for a mass murderer, but even psychologists will tell you that psychology is not meant to explain away culpability.

And we certainly, as Catholics, shouldn't be surprised by man's capacity for evil. Nor should we try to distance ourselves from "them" who are capable of evil.

"Sin is present in human history; any attempt to ignore it or to give this dark reality other names would be futile." (CCC 386)

In 1907 the Times of London asked a handful of acclaimed philosophers and writers to share their thoughts on the question: "What's Wrong with the World?". A  poignant response came in the form of a characteristically terse letter:

Dear Sir:

Regarding your article ‘What’s Wrong with the World?’ I am.

Yours truly, G.K. Chesterton

We should not be surprised that man has a capacity for extremely evil acts. And we should never forget this. When you hear people confused and wondering how anyone could blow up strangers and shoot a cop in cold blood, don't be tempted to excuse the capacity for evil away.

"Without the knowledge Revelation gives of God we cannot recognize sin clearly and are tempted to explain it as merely a developmental flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure, etc. Only in the knowledge of God's plan for man can we grasp that sin is an abuse of the freedom that God gives to created persons so that they are capable of loving him and loving one another." (CCC 387)

These are not just evil acts. This is sin. And sin implies a nuanced understanding of man. Sin implies free will. If Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were truly free in choosing to sin against God and commit such violence, and I also posses free will, then I am also capable of committing gravely mortal sins.

As odd as it sounds, when we buy into the disbelief of man's capacity for evil, we are only feeding a nihilistic worldview that sees man as merely a sum total of his given genetic qualities plus his circumstances.

This is not the Catholic worldview. And when this worldview is drawn out to its conclusion, the bombings shouldn't be a surprise at all. Viktor Frankl knew this well:

"If we present man with a concept of man which is not true, we may well corrupt him. When we present him as an automaton of reflexes, as a mind machine, as a bundle of instinct, as a pawn of drive and reactions, as a mere product of heredity and environment, we feed the nihilism to which modern man is, in any case, prone.

I became acquainted with the last stage of corruption in my second concentration camp, Auschwitz. The gas chambers of Auschwitz were the ultimate consequence of the theory that man is nothing but the product of heredity and environment - or, as the Nazis liked to say, "of blood and soil."

I am absolutely convinced that the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Trblinka, and Maidanek were ultimately prepared not in some ministry or other in Berlin, but rather at the desks and in lecture halls of nihilistic scientists and philosophers."

Fulton Sheen once during the opening of a speech he gave at a National Prayer Breakfast meeting looked at the President of the United States, pointed, and said "Mr. President, you are a sinner."

He then proceeded to point to himself and say "I am a sinner. We are all sinners."

Do not forget that the greatest moral evil ever committed - the murder of God's only son, caused by the sins of all men - was carried out by masses of ordinary, average people. And the sins that caused this death have our names on them.

When faced with the sobering reality of man's capacity for evil, we mustn't turn away ashamed and detached. Certainly this is not Christ's response to our evil. We must recognize it as an event calling us to greater reliance on God's grace to become who we were created to be, which is a perilous and fragile journey.

Sin is an offense against God, and it is an offense against who we are created to be. This is different than calling it merely an evil act. Sin exists because we posses free will, and can freely choose evil instead of good. I can freely choose evil. Intense and grave evil.

G.K. Chesterton once pointed out that "[t]here are many, many angles at which one can fall but only one angle at which one can stand straight."

And when you hear of Boston Bombings and evil committed by men, pray for the souls of those guilty, pray for the victims, and pray for God's grace.

"There but for the grace of God, go I."

What Pilate Said One Midnight

Hello friends, I pray Good Friday is making you uncomfortable.

Here is an excerpt from an old sermon by Frederick Speakman called "What Pilate Said One Midnight". The first time I heard Ravi Zacharias read this I was spellbound. It is one of the few times a piece of literature gave me a chill and shook my soul. I included a link at the end if you feel compelled to read the full thing.

“It suddenly closed in on me Gaius, the impact of how trapped I was. The proud arm of Rome with all its boast of justice was to be but a dirty dagger in the pudgy hands of the priest. I was waiting in the room, Gaius, the one I use for court, officially enthroned with cloak and guard when they let this Jesus in. Well Gaius, don't smile at this, as you value your jaw, but I have had no peace since the day he walked into my judgment hall. It’s been years but these scenes I read from the back of my eyelids every night. You have seen Caesar haven't you? When he was young and strapping inspecting the legion. His arrogant manner was child like compared to that of the Nazarene. He didn't have to strut, you see. He walked toward my throne; arms bound but with a strident mastery and control that by its very audacity silenced the room for an instant and left me trembling with an insane desire to stand up and salute.

The clerk began reading the absurd list of charges. The priestly delegation punctuating these with palm rubbings and beard strokings and the eye rollings and the pious gutturals I had long-since learned to ignore. But I more felt it, Gaius, than heard it. I questioned him mechanically. He answered very little but what he said and the way he said it, it was as if his level gaze had pulled my naked soul right up into his eyes and was probing it there. It seemed like the man wasn’t even listening to the charges brought against him as a voice deep within me seemed to say `You are the one on trial, Pilate.' You would have sworn, Gaius, that he had just come in out of a friendly interest to see what was going to happen to me. The very pressure of his standing there had grown unbearable when a slave rushed in all a tremble, interrupting court to bring a message from Claudia. She had stabbed at the stylus in that childish way that she does when she is distraught. ‘Don't judge this amazing man, Pilate,’ she wrote. ‘I was haunted in dreams of him this night.’

Gaius, I tried to free him. From that moment on I tried and I always will think he knew it. He was a Galilean so I delivered him out of my jurisdiction, but the native King Herod discovered he was born in Judea and sent him right back to me. I appealed to the crowd that had gathered in the streets, hoping that they were his sympathizers, but Caiaphas had stationed agitators to whip up the beast that cry for blood and you know how any citizen here just after breakfast loves to cry for the blood of another. I had him beaten, Gaius, a thorough barracks room beating. I'm still not sure why. To appease the crowd, I guess. But do we Romans really need reasons for beating? Isn't that the code for anything we don't understand? Well, it didn't work, Gaius. The crowd roared like some slavering beast when I brought him back.

If only you could have watched him. They had thrown some rags of purple over his pulped and bleeding shoulders. They jammed a chaplet of thorns down on his forehead and it fit, it all fit! He stood there watching them from my balcony; lame from weakness by now but royal I tell you. Not just pain but pity shining from his eyes and I kept thinking somehow this is monstrous; this is all up-side-down. That purple is real, that crown is real, and somehow these animal noises the crowd is shrieking should be shouts of praise.

Then Caiaphas played his master stroke on me. He announced there in public that this Jesus claimed a crown and that this was treason to Caesar. And then the guards began to glance at each other and that mob of spineless filth began to shout, hail Caesar, hail Caesar. I knew I was beaten and that's when I gave the order. I couldn't look at him, Gaius. And then I did a childish thing. I called for water and there on the balcony I washed my hands of that whole wretched affair, but as they led him away I did look up and he turned and looked at me. No smile, no pity, he just glanced at my hands and I have felt the weight of his eyes upon them ever since.

But you’re yawning, Gaius, I've kept you up. And the fact of the matter is you are in need of some sleep and some holidays. Yes, sleep. Claudia will be asleep by now. Rows of lighted lamps line her couch. She can't sleep in the dark anymore. No, not since that afternoon you see, since the afternoon when the sun went out and my guards executed him. That's what I said, I don't know how or what or why—I only know that I was there and though it was the middle of the day it turned as black as the tunnels of hell in that miserable city and while I tried to compose Claudia and explain how I had been trapped she railed at me with her dream. She has had that dream ever since when she sleeps in the dark—or some form of it—that there was to be a new Caesar and that I had killed him.

Oh, Gaius we have been to Egypt to their seers and magicians. We have listened by the hour to the oracles in the musty temples of Greece chattering their inanities. We have called it an oriental curse that we are under and we have tried to break it a thousand ways, but there is no breaking it.

Do you know why I kept going, Gaius? Deep within the curse is the haunting, driving certainty that he is still somewhere near, that I still have some unfinished business with him, and that now and then as I walk by the lake he is following me and as much as that strikes terror I wonder if that isn't the only hope. You see, Gaius, if I could walk up to him this time and salute him and tell him that now I know that whoever else he was he was the only man worthy of his name in Judea that day. Tell him that I know I was entrapped—that I trapped myself. Tell him that here is one Roman that wishes he were Caesar. I believe that would do it wouldn't it Gaius? I believe he would listen and know I meant it and at last I would see him smile.

Quiet tonight isn't it Gaius? Not a breeze stirring by the lake. Yes, goodnight. You had better run along. Would you please waken the slave outside the door and tell him to bring me a cloak, my heavy one please. I believe I will walk by the lake. Yes, its dark there, Gaius but I won't be alone. I guess I really haven't been alone—not since that day. Yes goodnight, Gaius."

Read the full sermon here.

The Last Supper Before the Last Supper

This Monday of Holy Week we heard St. John's account of the first Last Supper. Christ prepared us then for today, Holy Thursday, THE Last Supper, and now is urging us: "Remember Lazarus".

In every town Jesus travels through he encounters sinners and the sick. Bethany is no exception. Simon the Leper lives in Bethany. Mary the sinner is forgiven in Bethany. Lazarus is raised from the dead in Bethany.

On Monday Jesus passes back through Bethany, the "House of Misery", to dine with old friends. He is on his way to Jerusalem - on his way to death.

For Bethany, this meal with Jesus is a last supper.

"They gave a dinner for him there, and Martha served, while Lazarus was one of those reclining at table with him." John 12:2

John's Gospel uniquely points Lazarus out at the table with Jesus. Lazarus was raised from the dead during Jesus' previous visit to Bethany (in John 11) and the town is still electric with the story of Jesus' miraculous defeat of Lazarus' death. It was a last straw for the Chief Priests and Pharisees.

"So from that day on they planned to kill him." John 11:53

The Jews travel to Jerusalem to prepare for Passover, and there prepare to arrest Jesus and put him to death once He arrives.

What did Lazarus and Jesus talk about?

Death, I'm sure of it.

No doubt the story of Lazarus, his tomb, his burial clothes, and Jesus calling him from the grave was told again. It is a story that should end in smiling and laughing. But you could imagine this room filled with a soberness as Jerusalem and what could happen there looms, only two miles away. Many could guess the intentions of those who were looking to arrest Jesus. A strange mutual understanding exists between Lazarus and Jesus.

The night of this dinner in Bethany, death is a guest.

Lazarus is a dead man, walking away from death. Jesus is a "dead man", walking towards death. The disciples have a clue at this point, they must have heard the rumors, and Jesus had already begun to speak more often of His death.

Death sits at table with the dying. Death retells his story. His memories, his last thoughts from the cusp of death, and then - what? What happened before awaking wrapped and bound in a tomb?

"I died."

His soul wretched from his body.

Suddenly Jerusalem seems too close.

Jesus will die. Could the Apostles be put to death as well? Could He raise himself from the dead? But there Lazarus sits. Eating and laughing and moving. He is ALIVE. There is no getting around it. Lazarus was dead but now he is alive.

And in the middle of this strange dinner of the dead, the dying, the sick, and sinners, a fragrance like sweet flowers fills the room. Mary anoints the feet of Christ and wipes those sacred feet with her hair.

Mary, Martha's sister, pours out all she has onto Jesus' feet. Three hundred day's wages would have been needed to buy that much perfume. Where did Mary get that kind of money? Could it be the spoils from a past life of sin? Could Mary have, in one act, poured out and died to all that was left of her attachment to the world and her past life onto the feet of Christ? These feet carried this gift and burden to the Cross where they were pierced for Mary. For you and me.

At THE Last Supper, did the Apostles remember Lazarus?

This time, they are without a walking witness to Jesus' power over death. Memory of their time with Jesus is all they have left. Memory and faith. They are on the eve of their Shepard being struck down and them being scattered. What would happen to Jesus? What might happen to them?

Tonight, at the Last Supper before Easter, place yourself at THE Last Supper. Your heart would have been pounding; the fear of death sneaking into the room, assaulting your faith. Jesus speaks of His death. Breaks His bread and shares it with you. Jesus washes your feet. And as the fear of death, yours and that of the Lord who lovingly washes your feet, slips into your mind, you try to repeat to yourself...

Remember Lazarus.

Remember Lazarus.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/kaEQIda0Tds]

Open Letter to Michael Gungor About Heaven Crashing Into Earth

Michael,

I'm going to jump right into the Catholic excitement about your post today. On behalf of all Catholics (and any Christians for that matter) everywhere: Thank you. Thank you for an honest reaction to a moment of worship, and thank you for blurring the lines of denomination and hostile opposition by being unafraid to acknowledge authentic worship of Our God when it happens.

I'm glad you experienced Adoration in all its intoxicating mystery and heavy earthiness. I think you and I have a lot more in common than most Christians acknowledge.  In fact, I once heard Peter Kreeft say that for the church to become one then Catholics have to become better protestants. Better protestants than even protestants. Then and only then will protestants become Catholics - in order to become better protestants.

"The whole reason for being a Catholic is to be the best possible evangelical Protestant. What I mean by that strange statement is that the essence of evangelical protestantism is to be one with Christ, to meet Christ, and that's the best reason to be Catholic. That's the reason for the Mass, for the Eucharist, namely the "protestant" thing of meeting Christ, that's the whole thing of the "Catholic" thing of the Church and the Sacraments and the Saints and the whole thing. Christ is not great because of the Eucharist, the Eucharist is great because of Christ." (You can listen to the whole talk here.)

Catholics believe Adoration is a meeting with Christ. We participate in creation adoring the creator, and take the first step in all worship to the true and living God: acknowledging that HE IS. And in the Eucharist, HE IS.

"Christ held Himself in His hands when He gave His Body to His disciples saying: 'This is My Body.' No one partakes of this Flesh before he has adored it." - St. Augustine

The first moment of any act of love is the moment when the "I" notices the "thou". Adoration takes that moment of enamored eye-meeting and draws it out over minutes, hours, days or years. It is the purest act of the First Commandment. The Mass, then, is a consummation of this encounter where both lovers are united in communion.  Basically, the Eucharist is a pure "Come to Jesus" moment that Evangelical Protestants can really dig.

We should talk more about this whole mystery, metaphor, earthy yet divine encounter with God through worship. Some protestants call it an encounter with Christ, Catholics call it the Sacraments. And if more Catholics believed at least what protestants believed, we would have a revival in our church. And if more protestants could grasp the mystery that you saw in Adoration and that weighs in on some of your music, I think protestants would benefit. It is God making beautiful things out of dust.

Like you said, healing has to start somewhere. The Sacraments, especially the Eucharist as a meeting with Christ, could be a gateway to healing and communion between protestants and Catholics. I think protestants have a lot to teach some of us Christmas/Easter/I-only-pray-at-lunch Catholics about the importance of an encounter with the Person of Christ. And I think us Catholics have a lot to teach protestants about the beauty of the mystery of encounter robbed in the trappings of earth and flesh and smoke and lights and smells and colors and bread.

Thanks Michael, for making me a better protestant.

Your Brother in Christ, Edmund

P.S. If you want to grab a sacramental beer with a young Catholic in Denver who GETS this stuff about Christ and mystery and worship, I've got a friend that would LOVE to buy you a pint.

Gungor Goes to Adoration

Michael Gungor wrote on his blog today about "one of the most beautiful worship experiences I have had in a long time."

It was Catholic adoration in a field full of candles and liturgy.

"We played at a Catholic youth festival in Louisiana, and afterwards we stayed for “adoration.”

Wasn’t quite sure what that was, but we ended up kneeling in silence in a field for like 20 minutes with thousands of young Catholics, all holding candles. It was amazing. A procession of priests came walking through the candlelit masses holding a big golden cross and then they put this other golden thingy in the altar (forgive me for my ignorance of any of the proper terms, and for my use of the word “thingy”), and we all just sat there and adored Christ together in silent reverence for a long time. Honestly, it made me want to be Catholic again.

...

I didn’t really understand everything that was happening last night, but that was part of the beauty of it. That heavy and intoxicating aroma of the incense. The bending flickering flames of the candles in the wind. The bold colors of robes and crosses and crucibles. The use of different languages. It was Heaven crashing into earth."

Read his full post here.