bear – ingn 1 the manner in which one comports oneself; 2 the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~]; 4 pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation; 5 the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].
You know the near-universal recurring nightmare people have of being back in high school or college and there’s an exam you have to take and you realize you forgot to go to class for the whole semester?
For more than 20 years I have had one of those about graduate school. The details vary but the story is always the same: I haven’t really finished the requirements for my degree and I have to go back. Sometimes this comes as a surprise and I have to drop everything in my life and become a student again, occasionally complete with leaving my family and moving into a small apartment near the university. Sometimes it represents a to-do list that has been pending for 20 years, and I struggle to find time and childcare so I can do a shift in the computer lab.
So I had that dream again last night, but it had a new feature that I am sure I never dreamed before:
In the dream, I interrupted my work and said to myself and the people around me: “Wait a minute, I don’t have to do this. I graduated a long time ago. I wrote my thesis, it was accepted, it’s on a shelf at the university library, I passed my defense, I’m done.”
And that was the end of that dream! I woke up. It was about 4 AM. I remembered that. I went back to sleep.
Wouldn’t it be great if, now that my subconscious has gotten the message at least once, I never have that nightmare again?
In this post, I pull out excerpts which address a third theme that runs through the exhortation: What should groups, institutions, the Church, and governments do with their collective power and resources to address the needs of the poor?
Like theme 2, much of this direction rests on ideas found in the first theme, ideas about who “deserves” help, what is meant by “the poor,” and what is the purpose of having possessions that are “ours” in the first place.
Let us see what Pope Leo teaches us we ought to do collectively. I’m going to wind up repeating some of the excerpts I posted in the two previous posts, but looking at them from the collective angle.
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Again, the preferential option for the poor, and how it calls the whole Church to choose in favor of “the weakest”:
This “preference” never indicates exclusivity or discrimination towards other groups, which would be impossible for God. It is meant to emphasize God’s actions, which are moved by compassion toward the poverty and weakness of all humanity. Wanting to inaugurate a kingdom of justice, fraternity and solidarity, God has a special place in his heart for those who are discriminated against and oppressed, and he asks us, his Church, to make a decisive and radical choice in favor of the weakest.
What might that mean? Off the top of my head: Some of your parish funds might need to go to improving functional accessibility for disabled people, or multilanguage materials in the foyer, or whomever among you needs something. “The weakest” is not always the same individuals. The preferential option for the poor is a guide for making decisions about priorities.
Here’s the bit about who deserves help:
[Some Scriptural t]exts call for respect — if not also love — even for one’s enemy: ‘When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free’ (Ex 23:4-5). Here the intrinsic value of respect for others is expressly stated: anyone in need, even an enemy, always deserves our assistance.
I, personally, do not think that undocumented immigrants count as “enemies.” But surely, if, as Pope Leo says, anyone in need, even an enemy, always deserves our assistance, then that should answer this question posed by the Vice President, or indeed by any Catholic.
Governments, indeed, are supposed to defend the weak against the strong and care for those in need. It’s not something that ought to be left to the private sphere, at least when government has been given competent powers. Almsgiving—specifically religiously-motivated, self-giving help—is not the only action to be taken on part of the poor. We must also demand that “competent authorities,” including government, use its powers to care for the poor and secure justice, as is its responsibility:
Those inspired by true charity know full well that almsgiving does not absolve the competent authorities of their responsibilities, eliminate the duty of government institutions to care for the poor, or detract from rightful efforts to ensure justice.
The following message, articulated by Pope Francis, is about the mission of the Church, but we would do well to consider whether as Church we are speaking this truth to the worldly power and demanding that they treat our migrant brothers and sisters as people and not as a problem:
Pope Francis has recalled that the Church’s mission to migrants and refugees is even broader, insisting that “our response to the challenges posed by contemporary migration can be summed up in four verbs: welcome, protect, promote and integrate. Yet these verbs do not apply only to migrants and refugees. They describe the Church’s mission to all those living in the existential peripheries, who need to be welcomed, protected, promoted and integrated.” He also said: “Every human being is a child of God! He or she bears the image of Christ! We ourselves need to see, and then to enable others to see, that migrants and refugees do not only represent a problem to be solved, but are brothers and sisters to be welcomed, respected and loved.
Benedict XVI also called for collective action “capable of guaranteeing” support that would free people from hunger:
Amid the multiple crises that marked the beginning of the third millennium, the teaching of Benedict XVI took a more distinctly political turn. Hence, in the Encyclical Caritas in Veritate, he affirms that ‘the more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbors, the more effectively we love them.’ [88] He observed, moreover, that ‘hunger is not so much dependent on lack of material things as on shortage of social resources, the most important of which are institutional. What is missing, in other words, is a network of economic institutions capable of guaranteeing regular access to sufficient food and water for nutritional needs, and also capable of addressing the primary needs and necessities ensuing from genuine food crises, whether due to natural causes or political irresponsibility, nationally and internationally.’
Although it can make moral demands on worldly powers, the Church is not supposed to be like the kingdoms of this world (which is one of the things that enables it to make those demands, I think!) and should resemble Jesus more than it resembles the world’s power structures:
“[In the early days of the Second Vatican Council] [t]here was a growing sense of the need for a new image of Church, one simpler and more sober, embracing the entire people of God and its presence in history. A Church more closely resembling her Lord than worldly powers and working to foster a concrete commitment on the part of all humanity to solving the immense problem of poverty in the world.”
Doctrinal rigor, promoted without mercy, is empty. It’s a mistake to be concerned only (or even, maybe, primarily) with that rigor, and not concerned with how the poor (of every type) receive it. There is a grave mistake in assuming that if the Gospel is not received well, the fault lies entirely on the hearer.
Many other Fathers of the Church, both Eastern and Western, have spoken about the primacy of attention to the poor in the life and mission of every Christian. From this perspective, in summary, it can be said that patristic theology was practical, aiming at a Church that was poor and for the poor, recalling that the Gospel is proclaimed correctly only when it impels us to touch the flesh of the least among us, and warning that doctrinal rigor without mercy is empty talk.
The Church should see all people as worthy of love:
Christian love breaks down every barrier, brings close those who were distant, unites strangers, and reconciles enemies. It spans chasms that are humanly impossible to bridge, and it penetrates to the most hidden crevices of society. By its very nature, Christian love is prophetic: it works miracles and knows no limits. It makes what was apparently impossible happen. Love is above all a way of looking at life and a way of living it. A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today,
And as autonomous individuals whose cultural expression has value to the wider world—in a bit of a rebuke to Catholics in mainstreamed or wealthy cultures who profess shock when they see faith practices take unfamiliar forms among marginalized communities:
“[C]onsider marginalized communities as subjects capable of creating their own culture, rather than as objects of charity on the part of others. This means that such communities have the right to embrace the Gospel and to celebrate and communicate their faith in accord with the values present within their own cultures. Their experience of poverty gives them the ability to recognize aspects of reality that others cannot see; for this reason, society needs to listen to them.”
There’s a lot to chew on in this document. An entire theme that I haven’t touched is a sort of history of how the saints, and religious communities, have modeled service to the poor, to prisoners, etc. I recommend reading the whole document. It isn’t difficult, and it ought to bear fruit in our discussions of public policy, pastoral mission, and private charity.
“Catholic Chapel, Fremantle Prison,” photo by Mitch Ames. Used in accord with Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0. This historic prison, located in Western Australia, is now a World Heritage Site.
A couple of days ago I posted some excerpts from Pope Leo’s recent apostolic exhortation “Dilexi Te,” that address what we should believe and say about the poor. Today I want to post some excerpts about the responsibility of the individual towards the poor.
Some of this, by necessity, leans on the material I posted in part I. For example:
What we legally possess does not belong just to ourselves, in accord with the principle of the universal destination of goods;
Serving the poor is “an encounter between equals”;
“Anyone in need, even an enemy, always deserves our assistance;”
“the poor” is a broad category, including the materially poor, the socially marginalized, “those…in a condition of personal or social weakness,” those who have “no rights, no space, no freedom.” And also: those who are examples of moral and spiritual poverty: those you might be tempted to call “bad people.”
Here’s some excerpts that have to do with the acts of individuals.
Pay attention, don’t be numbed by your own comfort, don’t “discard others without realizing it,” don’t “tolerate” poverty “with indifference”:
[T]he illusion of happiness derived from a comfortable life pushes many people towards a vision of life centered on the accumulation of wealth and social success at all costs, even at the expense of others and by taking advantage of unjust social ideals and political-economic systems that favor the strongest….
This means that a culture still persists — sometimes well disguised — that discards others without even realizing it and tolerates with indifference that millions of people die of hunger or survive in conditions unfit for human beings.
Do not harden our hearts to what the poor ask of us:
In hearing the cry of the poor, we are asked to enter into the heart of God, who is always concerned for the needs of his children, especially those in greatest need.
If we remain unresponsive to that cry, the poor might well cry out to the Lord against us, and we would incur guilt (cf. Deut 15:9) and turn away from the very heart of God.
No gesture is too small:
The simplicity of that woman’s gesture [anointing Jesus with the costly oil] speaks volumes. No sign of affection, even the smallest, will ever be forgotten, especially if it is shown to those who are suffering, lonely or in need, as was the Lord at that time.
Our works of mercy are a sign, evidence, that our worship is authentic and changes us. The example given is Lk 14:12-14, inviting the poor to the banquet.
[W]orks of mercy are recommended as a sign of the authenticity of worship, which, while giving praise to God, has the task of opening us to the transformation that the Spirit can bring about in us, so that we may all become an image of Christ and his mercy towards the weakest.
In this sense, our relationship with the Lord, expressed in worship, also aims to free us from the risk of living our relationships according to a logic of calculation and self-interest. We are instead open to the gratuitousness that surrounds those who love one another and, therefore, share everything in common.
In this regard, Jesus advises: ‘When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you’ (Lk 14:12-14).
Parable of the last judgment is absolutely not ignorable. We cannot be holy and ignore its demands. (“Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?”)
The Lord’s appeal to show mercy to the poor culminates in the great parable of the last judgment (cf. Mt 25:31-46), which can serve as a vivid illustration of the Beatitude of the merciful. In that parable, the Lord offers us the key to our fulfillment in life; indeed, ‘if we seek the holiness pleasing to God’s eyes, this text offers us one clear criterion on which we will be judged.’
The clear and forceful words of the Gospel must be put into practice ‘without any “ifs or buts”’ that could lessen their force. Our Lord made it very clear that holiness cannot be understood or lived apart from these demands.’”
The Apostles forbid us to grow rich on the labors of others not justly paid, or to refuse help to those in need (remember from the last post, anyone in need):
James goes on to say: “Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter” (5:3-5).
These are powerful words, even if we would rather not hear them!
A similar appeal can be found in the First Letter of John: “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (3:17).
Don’t use your theological reasoning about these texts to give you excuses to distance yourself from their demands, but instead to get closer to the real situations they describe:
The message of God’s word is ‘so clear and direct, so simple and eloquent, that no ecclesial interpretation has the right to relativize it. The Church’s reflection on these texts ought not to obscure or weaken their force, but urge us to accept their exhortations with courage and zeal. Why complicate something so simple? Conceptual tools exist to heighten contact with the realities they seek to explain, not to distance us from them.’
Do not forget, or forget to help, the prisoner:
The early Christians, even in precarious conditions, prayed for and assisted their brothers and sisters who were prisoners, as the Acts of the Apostles (cf. 12:5; 24:23) and various writings of the Fathers attest.
Are we disturbed and bothered by the sight of a poor person? People collected in tents in an urban or suburban homeless encampment, perhaps, or someone injecting drugs on the light-rail train, or a beggar with a sign by the street corner where we come off the expressway? Are we afraid of them, or disgusted by them? Do we avoid eye contact and hurry past?
‘[C]aught up as we are with our own needs, the sight of a person who is suffering disturbs us. It makes us uneasy, since we have no time to waste on other people’s problems. These are symptoms of an unhealthy society. A society that seeks prosperity but turns its back on suffering. May we not sink to such depths! Let us look to the example of the Good Samaritan.’
Are these people not Lazarus to us? Are we hoping they will do labor to comfort us out of our disturbed feelings?
“Every minute we can find a Lazarus if we seek him, and every day, even without seeking, we find one at our door…Therefore do not waste the opportunity of doing works of mercy; do not store unused the good things you possess.”
Consider almsgiving in specific. Maybe we mostly do it by writing a check and mailing it off to a charity with boots on the ground. And that is good, because “no gesture is too small.” But there is another dimension of almsgiving which implies real contact, a social type of almsgiving:
Almsgiving at least offers us a chance to halt before the poor, to look into their eyes, to touch them and to share something of ourselves with them. In any event, almsgiving, however modest, brings a touch of pietas into a society otherwise marked by the frenetic pursuit of personal gain….
Both the Old and New Testaments contain veritable hymns in praise of almsgiving: ‘Be patient with someone in humble circumstances, and do not keep him waiting for your alms.’”
Augustine’s spiritual guide (remember, Leo is an Augustinian) was St. Ambrose, who insisted on the ethical requirement to share material goods:
‘What you give to the poor is not your property, but theirs. Why have you appropriated what was given for common use?’ For the Bishop of Milan [Augustine], almsgiving is justice restored, not a gesture of paternalism.
In his preaching, mercy takes on a prophetic character: he denounces structures that accumulate things and reaffirms communion as the Church’s vocation…. ‘Observing your brothers and sisters, you know if they are in need, but if Christ dwells in you, also be charitable to strangers.’…[Almsgiving] is, so to speak, the ordinary path to conversion for those who wish to follow Christ with an undivided heart.”
That bit, about almsgiving being justice restored, is personally helpful to me. I struggle sometimes with almsgiving (and mostly delegate decisions about our household giving to Mark), because I struggle with gift-giving and gift-receiving.
In ordinary gift-centered occasions, Christmas and birthdays and such, I find it hard to do correctly. This is about me, not about the poor, a self-centered sort of problem, rooted in certain experiences I had growing up and also in a kind of social anxiety. But this concept attributed to St. Augustine, that “almsgiving is justice restored,” may help me disentangle alms from ordinary human gifts. What Augustine says, and what I have had a hard time seeing, is that alms is not an ordinary human gift. It has a different purpose. And thinking on that may help me give alms more… peaceably, I guess, with less worrying about whether I’ve done it correctly.
Assuming that you’ve already made up your mind to give alms, and not deliberately made distinctions about which needy person “deserves” or “doesn’t deserve” your help, it seems that your own feelings of pride or paternalism, or expecting/demanding a certain show of gratitude, would be the main ways to get tripped up.
Yeah, it’s possible to do it wrong. But there are a lot of ways to do it in which “being right” is the last of our concerns.
Last week Pope Leo XIV released an apostolic exhortation, addressed to all Christians, “On love for the poor.” Its Latin title, “Dilexi Te,” is taken from the opening phrase of the document, and means “I have loved you”; it’s a quote from Rev 3:9. Leo makes clear that the context, reaching back into the prior verse, is “I know your works…You have limited strength, and yet you have kept my word… they will know that I have loved you.”
Leo is a very clear and easy-to-understand writer, and he’s laid out a thorough but readable discourse on the responsibilities of Christians to the poor, at both an individual level and a societal level. He has backed it up with Scriptural arguments as well as arguments from the historical writings and practices of religious communities and of individual saints.
I read the document through carefully, and I came away thinking that the document benefits from three separate readings, each attentive to the answer of a different question:
What should I believe about the poor?
What should I, as an individual, do for people who are experiencing poverty?
What should groups, institutions, the Church, and governments do with their collective power and resources to address the needs of the poor?
These aren’t three separate sections of the document, but rather are themes interleaved through it.
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Let’s look at some pull quotes on the subject of the first theme: What to believe about the poor, and by extension, how to speak about the poor.
There exists a preferential option for the poor:
“[W]e can also speak theologically of a preferential option on the part of God for the poor…. This “preference” never indicates exclusivity or discrimination towards other groups, which would be impossible for God. It is meant to emphasize God’s actions, which are moved by compassion toward the poverty and weakness of all humanity. Wanting to inaugurate a kingdom of justice, fraternity and solidarity, God has a special place in his heart for those who are discriminated against and oppressed, and he asks us, his Church, to make a decisive and radical choice in favor of the weakest.”
What we legally possess does not belong just to ourselves (the principle of the universal destination of goods):
“‘In their use of things people should regard the external goods they lawfully possess as not just their own but common to others as well, in the sense that they can benefit others as well as themselves. Therefore, everyone has the right to possess a sufficient amount of the earth’s goods for themselves and their family… Persons in extreme necessity are entitled to take what they need from the riches of others… By its nature, private property has a social dimension that is based on the law of the common destination of earthly goods. Whenever the social aspect is forgotten, ownership can often become the object of greed and a source of serious disorder.’ This conviction was reiterated by Saint Paul VI in his Encyclical Populorum Progressio. There we read that no one can feel authorized to ‘appropriate surplus goods solely for his [or her] own private use when others lack the bare necessities of life.’”
People are not problems, but brothers and sisters:
[Pope Francis] said: “Every human being is a child of God! He or she bears the image of Christ! We ourselves need to see, and then to enable others to see, that migrants and refugees [and by extension, ‘all those living in the existential peripheries’] do not only represent a problem to be solved, but are brothers and sisters to be welcomed, respected and loved.”
We must believe in the dignity of every human person, and feel in response to the knowledge that some are denied that dignity:
“There is no shortage of theories attempting to justify the present state of affairs or to explain that economic thinking requires us to wait for invisible market forces to resolve everything. Nevertheless, the dignity of every human person must be respected today, not tomorrow, and the extreme poverty of all those to whom this dignity is denied should constantly weigh upon our consciences.”
Love everyone, enemies included:
“Christian love breaks down every barrier, brings close those who were distant, unites strangers, and reconciles enemies…. Love is above all a way of looking at life and a way of living it. A Church that sets no limits to love, that knows no enemies to fight but only men and women to love, is the Church that the world needs today.”
A major theme is that we must not think of the well-off as superior to the poor in any way.
Do not regard the poor paternistically, but as fellow human beings equally possessed of dignity and autonomy, and capable of creativity and self-determination—as well as teaching the not-poor:
“[C]onsider marginalized communities as subjects capable of creating their own culture, rather than as objects of charity on the part of others. This means that such communities have the right to embrace the Gospel and to celebrate and communicate their faith in accord with the values present within their own cultures. Their experience of poverty gives them the ability to recognize aspects of reality that others cannot see; for this reason, society needs to listen to them.”
In fact hearing poor is a way of hearing Jesus. Respecting the poor means believing they have something to offer the rest of society, not just that society has something to help them:
“The same Jesus who tells us, “The poor you will always have with you” (Mt26:11), also promises the disciples: “I am with you always” (Mt 28:20). We likewise think of his saying: “Just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me” (Mt 25:40). This is not a matter of mere human kindness but a revelation: contact with those who are lowly and powerless is a fundamental way of encountering the Lord of history. In the poor, he continues to speak to us.”
Another quote on similar lines:
“[T]he poorest are not only objects of our compassion, but teachers of the Gospel. It is not a question of ‘bringing’ God to them, but of encountering him among them. All of these examples teach us that serving the poor is not a gesture to be made ‘from above,’ but an encounter between equals, where Christ is revealed and adored.”
And again, reminding us that people develop behaviors that are adaptive to their circumstances, and to see this adaptation we need to understand the circumstances:
“Growing up in precarious circumstances, learning to survive in the most adverse conditions, trusting in God with the assurance that no one else takes them seriously, and helping one another in the darkest moments, the poor have learned many things that they keep hidden in their hearts. Those of us who have not had similar experiences of living this way certainly have much to gain from the source of wisdom that is the experience of the poor. Only by relating our complaints to their sufferings and privations can we experience a reproof that can challenge us to simplify our lives.”
There is no one in need of whom we can say “They do not deserve our help”:
“[Other Scripture] texts call for respect — if not also love — even for one’s enemy: ‘When you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free” (Ex 23:4-5). Here the intrinsic value of respect for others is expressly stated: anyone in need, even an enemy, always deserves our assistance.’”
The idea of “the poor” actually has broad application, because one person may be poor in one area of life but rich in another.
“In fact, there are many forms of poverty: the poverty of those who lack material means of subsistence, the poverty of those who are socially marginalized and lack the means to give voice to their dignity and abilities, moral and spiritual poverty, cultural poverty, the poverty of those who find themselves in a condition of personal or social weakness or fragility, the poverty of those who have no rights, no space, no freedom.”
This last really struck me: moral and spiritual poverty is a condition that can and often does coexist with material riches, good health, and social status.
Which means that we must still maintain a certain concern for people who appear to have all social and economic advantages, yet are morally stunted; those who seem incapable of spiritual growth or responding to their many blessings with any flowering of virtue are also poor, in a way, and deserve our consideration as God’s poor in that dimension.
This might be the toughest lesson to learn of all. Can we really believe in the common humanity we share with, well, the “worst” people, the ones with no regard for others? Believe that they deserve help? It’s hard to do but also hard to deny that it’s the logical conclusion here.
You know how when you have that one room in your house that’s a huge mess? And it embarrasses you so you keep the door closed? And you don’t even want to think about where to start so you never go in there to try to get it organized? Even though you know that if you just did a little bit of work every day, it would eventually become more and more manageable?
That’s about where I was with my blog’s “Categories” list over at The Old Place.
Too many categories, lots of overlap, no hierarchy (everything top level).
There are also a couple of (mental) categories that I think I might like to purge, or at least, seriously edit the posts in them, or put a massive disclaimer on them or something. But because the categories are so poorly organized, that project is harder than it needs to be.
So. Recently I wrote down all my existing categories on little slips of paper. There are about 100. And I rearranged them and grouped them.
And now, a bit at a time, I’m figuring out what the new categories need to be. So, for example, today I picked up three little cards I had grouped together. I created a new temporary parent category for them. And I’m going through the posts in that group and reassigning them, mostly to one new category, a few to a different one.
As I create categories that actually work, I might be able to add them one at a time to the right sidebar. I hope so. I’ll try it soon.
Anyway, that’s just a little update. Back to more regular blogging soon.
EDITED TO ADD: I put a Categories menu with a single “sampler” category in the right sidebar (bottom, in a menu). Try it out!
A peculiar thing happens to me from time to time; sometimes for no reason at all, and sometimes very clearly because I am two cups into my morning coffee and the caffeine has just kicked in.
I get a sudden rush and a sense of the wide possibilities open to me in the day. A sudden feeling that I could tackle any task I wanted to, and all I have to do is find a place to sit down and get started on it.
(You see why I associate it with coffee.)
But today it didn’t come from my morning coffee; I was driving home midafternoon from an orthopedics appointment for Leo, an appointment that was over quickly and left us with a little extra time in our day. The sky over the highway was an amazing clear blue, and as I was admiring the sky, I felt that caffeinated rush of the possibilities that still remained.
Like this photo I took when I got home, but maybe with a few puffy white clouds.
Generally when I get that rush (especially in the morning, when it shows up on schedule at the bottom of the second cup of coffee) I move immediately to using it. That’s when I grab my notebook and start making a to-do list. Or I consider some project I have been meaning to do and begin planning next steps. Or I look around and see what needs to be done, leap up, and get started.
I can be remarkably productive, sailing along on the crest of the wave of ambition, or executive function, or whatever you should call it. Even if I’m driving, I can start mentally arranging things in my head, and when I get home, I’ll walk in with purpose and (provided I’m not distracted and the wave persists a bit) start getting things done.
Today, though, I had a sudden impulse not to do anything with it but instead to just experience it—to enjoy it.
And… I did! I took a breath, gripped the steering wheel, and declined to open the Notes pad in my head. I admired the clear blue sky and the skyline of downtown Minneapolis swinging into view as I rounded the bend in the highway. I felt the sense of possibilities for the future, and power over it, a sense of choice and openness, wash over me. It felt like an opening up or blossoming somewhere in my chest, a real and pleasurable sensation, a mood that I felt physically in my body, my breath, the sense of my hands on the steering wheel. I didn’t use it. I just felt it, and lived it.
It felt good! I was happy, excited even, as if I was looking forward to something, but without having committed to anything.
And I thought to myself how many times we are reminded that there is joy in ordinary things; that one of the secrets of living a good, happy, rich life is to fully enter into the tasks and sights and sensations of the everyday, to appreciate them and to be grateful for them and experience them. And I thought: hey, I’ve just done that! It worked really well! And thinking that I’d successfully suppressed my internal urge to constantly be doing something useful made me even happier, because that lovely sense of possibilities was now tinged with both gratitude and satisfaction.
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And then I thought, “Ooh! I can blog this when I get home!” and that did maybe take just a wee bit of the shine off it, but I did look forward to doing the writing. And now that I’ve written it, I still feel pretty good, so I suspect that maybe I came out ahead.
The Indicator is a spinoff of shorts from the main Planet Money economics podcast. This week they’re doing a series on financial crime, data breaches, etc. in the current technological environment. The episode I heard yesterday was about AI deepfakes:
REPORTER: A lot of people are falling for these kinds of audio deepfakes. It’s like millions of Americans have lost money to a scam call that uses an AI voice. And the losses from these scams can be in the thousands of dollars.
Banks are a big target of AI voice fraud… One scheme calls people up, it records you talking for several seconds, and then it turns that into a cloned AI voice, and uses that to bypass banks’ voice verification on the phone.
The episode starts out with audio of one of the show’s reporters using a deepfake of his own voice —at least that’s what he tells us he’s doing—to try to trick a colleague. The colleague doesn’t fall for it, but assuming that he really is using an AI-generated voice clone, we can hear that the voice is pretty close.
Audio voice impersonation is an element in crimes ranging from corporate bank theft to faked personal endorsements of “bogus investment schemes” to tricking individuals into thinking that a loved one has called begging for money to be wired to them, according to this recent article from the American Bar Association.
The information presented in the episode would imply that there is considerable risk in speaking on the phone to an unknown caller, unwittingly providing a voice sample that could be cloned.
Screenshot
The longer the sample, the better the clone can be; the episode didn’t mention this, but long and detailed voice (and video) samples could even more easily be lifted from video that people intentionally post to social media, no spoofing required. And of course there’s plenty of that out there; perhaps the phone is a comparatively small risk.
Still, there are plenty of folks out there who haven’t made any social media videos, and for whom the phone is the most likely place that their voice could be captured. Some of them control a lot of money, and others don’t particularly have a lot but would be anxious to send what they can to help what sounds like a weeping, frantic grandchild.
Eventually, technology and regulations may give us ways to protect ourselves by detecting clues in the audio signature of cloned voices. Banks and other financial companies are already doing so. The podcast quotes an owner of a company that makes detection software for banks; he advocates (unsurprisingly) for “all content online to be vetted for whether it was AI generated from text to voice to video”:
SOFTWARE EXECUTIVE: I think we’re going to look back and say, “We can’t believe there was a time when we didn’t have automated deepfake detection.” Our challenge is that technology is moving quicker than regulations.
For the time being, he and other authorities recommend establishing a “safe word” with family members that can be used to establish that they are who they say they are should they ever (apparently) call out of the blue and ask for money. I’m used to this already: I’ve been known to check the identity of my own adult kids when they text me and ask for, say, the Amazon password, either by dialing their number to initiate my own voice call or by asking for a bit of shared info that strangers wouldn’t easily guess.
Note: I’ve no idea whether they think this is cringe, Savvy Old Person Behavior, or just common sense; honestly it doesn’t matter. I’ve noticed a slightly disturbing trend of my younger teenage kid volunteering information to me about Internet Scams He Heard Are Targeting The Elderly. I’m working hard to answer positively (and not, say, with “How new to the Internet do you think I am? Do I look like someone who would meet a ‘CIA agent’ on the sidewalk to give him $50,000 cash in a shoebox?“)
But it’s also got me thinking about how I answer the phone. I get a lot of calls from unknown numbers. My iPhone helpfully marks some of them “Scam Likely” (as in the above photos) and increasingly, “Charity Call.” Unfortunately, it seems that occasionally calls are misdiagnosed: for example, the box office of a theatre where I have season tickets often shows up as “Charity Call,” and my kids’ healthcare providers have occasionally pinged as “Scam Likely” if I haven’t gotten around to adding as contacts. So sometimes I pick those calls up anyway, although it would really be wiser to let just about everything go to voice mail.
I suppose there are probably still a lot of folks out there who would gladly pick up a “Charity Call” and listen to the pitch, and perhaps ask questions, and consider donating to whatever charity was on the line. Giving to charity is a strong value for many, and Mt 5:42 has a broad command: “Give to the one who asks you”; you can parse it carefully and note that it doesn’t say give everyone what they ask for, but the scrupulous might consider it binding.
But increasingly we can’t be sure that the “charity call” is what it says it is (I myself am constantly getting calls from different numbers but the same distinctive voice asking for money for a national lobbying organization that pretends to be a charity and is definitely not, no matter how many times I tell him not to call me) and, it turns out, it could even be dangerous to speak for more than a moment to the callers. Social media is already overrun with donation requests from unvetted sources making highly emotional claims. This last bit is hard to accept, especially since we know that legitimate requests for help from honest people also come to us that way, verified by our own personal networks.
Prudence may, in the end, require us to stop accepting unknown calls at all, and generally to refuse requests for charities that come over the phone or internet in almost any form. But that’s going to be hard for a lot of generous people to swallow, and it does raise the question of when vigilance becomes an excuse to never give at all, or how not to forget about the people who don’t have another way to beg.
And also the Jubilee of Missions and of Migrants. What did you hear at Mass today, if you went?
Our guest homilist was a priest who directs a border ministry in Brownsville, Texas. He told us about what it was like for their clients, waiting for months on the Mexican side of the border for the asylum interview appointments that they had pre-scheduled with the U.S. government, when on January 20 of this year all their appointment were permanently cancelled. We opened up a discussion after Mass the next day, and asked people to tell us how they felt. Devastated. Deceived. Terrified. And one woman said to me: “Father, the last to die is hope.”
Migrants and refugees remind the Church of her pilgrim dimension, perpetually journeying towards her final homeland, sustained by a hope that is a theological virtue. Each time the Church gives in to the temptation of “sedentarization” and ceases to be a civitas peregrine, God’s people journeying towards the heavenly homeland (cf. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, Books XIV-XVI), she ceases to be “in the world” and becomes “of the world” (cf. Jn 15:19)….
…In a special way, Catholic migrants and refugees can become missionaries of hope in the countries that welcome them…Their presence, then, should be recognized and appreciated as a true divine blessing, an opportunity to open oneself to the grace of God, who gives new energy and hope to his Church: “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb 13:2).
Pope Leo also celebrated Mass today in St. Peter’s Square (here’s an article about that Mass), and he preached the homily on a similar theme, anchored by the first reading from Habakkuk 1-–2 and the Gospel from Luke 17.
Brothers and sisters, those boats which hope to catch sight of a safe port, and those eyes filled with anguish and hope seeking to reach the shore, cannot and must not find the coldness of indifference or the stigma of discrimination!
…We are… to open our arms and hearts to them, welcoming them as brothers and sisters, and being for them a presence of consolation and hope.
Pope Leo XIV, Homily, 5 October 2025
I was particularly interested in Leo’s interpretation of the sometimes troubling phrase “unworthy” or “unprofitable servants”:
[S]alvation…slowly grows when we become “unworthy servants”, namely when we place ourselves at the service of the Gospel and of our brothers and sisters, not seeking our own interests but only bringing God’s love to the world.
I guess that means that placing ourselves at that service is only doing “what we were obliged to do.”
My five mostly-homeschooled kids’ high school graduation dates will in the end range from 2018 to 2032.
For the fourth time I’m beginning to teach (really guide a kid through) U.S. civics. Often, even if I plan to supplement with multimedia material, extra books, etc., I like to have a standard high school text as a spine, to make sure I don’t leave anything out inadvertently. The first time I did it, it was a fairly harried year, so I wound up using the textbook’s readings and exercises pretty closely.
That suited us fine since we agreed that really the most important part of the high school course in civics was to learn the fundamentals: how the government is structured, which levels are responsible for what, what are your rights under the law, that kind of thing. Obviously there’s plenty of opportunity to highlight specific areas of interest along the way (I spent extra time on Supreme Court cases and rights of the accused, and one class period on the legal history that culminated in the protection of families’ rights to home education*) but if you can find a relatively no-nonsense textbook, especially if you supplement where needed, it’s probably going to be fine.
Do pay attention to the tone of the textbooks you use, as well as the sides they take or don’t take, and make sure you can work with them according to your values (remembering that no text is perfect and that bringing in other points of view which add context or even contradict the text is itself a good lesson in how to read critically). I don’t particularly like them soaked in patriotism; I sought a politically neutral tone for the spine itself, but I never minded if it rang with a little optimism that the arc of history would bend toward justice and that the constitutional order applied in good faith would generally lead us in the right direction if we remained vigilant.
In 2016, I used the 2008 version of Magruder’s American Government (because all of its supporting materials were abundantly and cheaply available in the used textbook market). I remember making handouts that brought some sections up to date: the demographics of Congress, and a list of landmark Supreme Court cases that had happened in the intervening years. This was a well-designed textbook and I kept my copies; I still make handouts from it, using a feature that summarizes individual Supreme Court cases and encourages predicting how the court ruled.
Later I got the 2016 edition (do not recommend as the book was organized weirdly and the teacher’s edition was unhelpful), and this year I am mostly using 2023’s edition.
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The Magruder’s franchise updates the textbooks every year or two, which is economically convenient if you are selling to schools, but also not unreasonable considering how frequently important things might go out of date. Still, from year to year most of the text is exactly the same. The changes can be interesting. Here’s one from the section on political parties.
2008:
“Political parties… usually soften the impact of extremists at both ends of the political spectrum”
2016:
“Political parties…are very often successful in their attempts to soften the impact of extremists at both ends of the political spectrum”
2023:
“Historically, [political parties] have been successful in their attempts to soften the impact of extremists at both ends of the political spectrum”
I can’t help but notice that we’ve moved from present tense to present perfect tense.
Anyway. I’ve added a few goals to the learning this year beyond the fundamentals—but at the same time, commitment to the fundamentals seems more important than ever before, and the prerequisite is learning them.
I usually bring home some books for myself whenever I travel. Sure, I can order books from anywhere in any language these days, but nothing quite replaces the experience of browsing in a bookstore, picking up books, reading the backs, flipping through a few pages; moving from section to section, seeing which books the employees have featured at the end of aisles or in promotional stacks on tables.
I didn’t have a lot of room in my luggage this time, so I restricted myself to three slim paperbacks. (Of course, there were also three Astérix books for Simon, and two volumes of manga in French translation that I assigned Leo to select for his own edification as he learns).
One of these books is a concise history of the United States. Regardez, bearing in mind that I chose it without any foreknowledge of the author or the series, solely based on it being concise.
I think it’s interesting to see oneself from another perspective or to see something that you are used to reading from one point of view, in another point of view.
I just started it this morning. It began with an interesting reflection on how the “young” United States actually does have a history, and points out that the United States became independent around the same time that France began transitioning from monarchy to republic. It also noted the long pre-independence history of the colonies, something that I think even we don’t often appreciate: that 1607–1776 is about as lengthy as 1776–1945.
Another reflection was on the original motto E pluribus unum. Correctly noting that the reference was originally to multiple colonies forming one nation, the author re-interpreted it—as many have—as the statement of an ideal that we are continually trying to move towards, the generation of unity from a rich diversity of different kinds of people. He describes this as an ongoing, dynamic effort that is always under tension, renewed in every generation of Americans, and contrasts it with the European Union’s motto In varietata concordia (united in diversity) which he describes as “static.”
But the bit that really made me put down my book and laugh came in the opening pages of the first chapter, where the Spanish arrive in the Americas. Let me translate the bit that cracked me up.
Like the Europeans, the Amerindians struggled to comprehend lands far removed from their coasts. Upon the arrival of the Spanish, they did not know whom they were dealing with. They were astonished by…
…here is where, in my memory, every U.S. history I ever read would mentions the big ships, or the armor and weapons, or possibly the strange physical appearance of the newcomers.
What does this French author identify as the astonishing thing the Spanish brought?
…the red wines that the Europeans drank and which they associated with blood.
Now, I’m not saying this is just projection on the part of the French author. I know there are primary sources, such as ships’ logs and diaries, in which the arriving Europeans recorded their perceptions of the people they encountered, including some reactions to European materials. Maybe there is a mention of red wine in some of these!
But I must say I have never read a history in English which included this detail.
The text doesn’t make it clear whether he’s remarking on the Amerindians associating the wine with blood or on the Spanish associating the wine with blood (which they most certainly did). In any case, I thought this was a very French choice of detail.
And maybe the detail I was conditioned to expect, that of being astonished by weapons, is, well, a very American one.
So here’s another utilitarian argument for using conversational, natural language with the chatbots, such as troubleshooting programs. And if “polite” isn’t the right word, let’s say “in a tone that is broadly consistent with social norms for this type of information exchange among humans.”
A friend passed a link to my post on to someone she knows with a background in computational lingustics, and reported back to me a comment he had. I don’t have confirmation of permission to quote the individual, but I’ll try to paraphrase:
There’s something about using human-directed language that affects the information we provide.
This friend-of-a-friend’s comment really hit the nail on the head. I thought of all the times I sat down to untangle my thoughts about a subject, all the times I wrote summaries of textbook chapters I was studying, all the times I made presentation slides or outlined notes of material I was preparing to present. I’ve always written to understand, written to learn, written to teach.
And it might be different if I were speaking with my voice, but when I am interacting with a chatbot via text, I know it’s activating the writing mind. The mind that articulates, clarifies, connects, and does this in a singular act with creating a record of those connections.
Whenever I am writing in that way, even when I am writing purely for myself, I always, always, always am writing to somebody. I might have a real person in mind whom I’ve chosen to be my pretend audience, or if the writing is destined for reading, I might have the real audience in mind. But often I have a wholly imaginary interlocutor in mind—and it’s still useful. As in rubber duck debugging, explaining my arguments “to someone” forces me to articulate clearly and logically and to consider the beginner’s perspective, the starter-from-scratch.
So when I’m writing anything, but especially writing to understand a problem, I’m always thinking: How do I explain the issue to this listener?
And so why shouldn’t I use the same voice that I use to “an imaginary listener” when I write queries to a chatbot?
A chatbot is an imaginary listener!
It is essentially an extremely online rubber duck.
So I’m going to be comfortable from now on using my “imaginary interlocutor” voice when I find myself interacting with chatbots or other LLMs. I think I might have a new favorite image, however, for the entity I’m explaining things to.
My apologies for all that mess that’s on the front page today (if you’re reading this much later, it might be gone by now). I’m going to have to gradually clean things up, but I can only do one thing at a time. Today I changed the theme and fixed my main page header image, as well as make the links at the top go to dummy pages. I’m afraid there’s still a bunch of sample stuff in there that I need to replace with my own material, but we’ll do that another time.
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WordPress has a troubleshooting bot that it calls “your personal AI assistant.” (It also has human helpers, which I definitely unlocked during the migration process. And which were very helpful.)
Today I didn’t need help from any humans. I started working on the appearance of the site. I start with no experience in WordPress’s specific user interface, but I do have experience in desktop publishing of various kinds, some of it fairly outdated: I’ve coded in HTML, I’ve of course used Typepad for blogging for years, and by the way I wrote my PhD thesis in LaTeX, which will give anyone training in troubleshooting issues as they come up.
In the pre-AI-chatbot world, I would learn the new UI on a need-to-know basis, by searching for the topic I wanted to learn in the help files, finding the right instruction documents, and following the steps outlined. I’m comfortable doing things this way. It’s what I typically do when I have trouble making my iPhone or iMac do what I want it to do. It feels like “figuring it out for myself.”
If I happened to have a physical book that served as a manual or tutorial, I might skim through it looking for a general outline of the basics, then consult the index for more specific topics. This is essentially how I learned LaTeX, with Leslie Lamport’s introductory text. I was maybe even more comfortable with this kind of learning. (And I still love LaTeX, even if I don’t have call to use it very often anymore.)
Of course, if I exhausted the help pages or the index, I might seek out help from a human being. I have, for instance, entered support chats with Apple or with Amazon, where I have had a conversation with a human being who is trained to help people like me who were unable to find the answers in the help pages via search boxes.
Now I have access to a chatbot which may seem very similar to those conversations. Instead of typing search terms in a box or looking up topics in an index, I can type a question in natural language, and information (or follow up requests for more specific questions) come back to me in the form of natural language.
I could write very straightforward and simple questions. I am aware that there is no human being reacting to what I say. But I find that if I write the questions very simply, it feels less efficient. I have a sense that in order to give the chatbot enough information in one bite, I would do better to just go all in and write as if I were interacting with a human.
The question is, is this an illusion or is it correct? And if it is an illusion, is it worth doing anyway? Writing as if I were talking to a human.
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So I don’t have a lot of extra time to play with the chatbot or experiment with it. I’m not particularly entertained by trying out ChatGPT and similar programs just to see what they can do. I do not have a job in which I am expected to use LLMs or any such tools. I’m rather irritated by the rollout of AI features in search engines and other places where I didn’t ask for it, especially where it frequently returns erroneous information.
But I do see “advanced form of troubleshooting manual” as a suitable use for this kind of program. Interacting with a help database by querying in natural language, and receiving results in natural language, makes it easier to use most of the time (at least if you read and write its language)! And if the chatbot is programmed to escalate to a human expert once the queries get beyond its capabilities, there are few downsides.
In fact, if we stipulate that I will receive the correct answers (big and important if), I confess that I would rather deal with a troubleshooting chatbot than a human being support assistant. I think there are three reasons for this:
It is related to the fact that I would rather order a pizza online than talk on the phone, which is a purely social preference that I happen to have and don’t have a good explanation for.
Knowing that there is no human being on the other end, I still feel like I am “figuring things out for myself,” which is a kind of learning that I associate with key parts of my identity.
Once I gain some experience of the kind of query language that makes the chatbot issue useful information efficiently, the chatbot becomes more predictable than a human troubleshooter. If I contact the chatbot tomorrow, it will behave very similarly to how it behaved today. If I contact a human troubleshooting line tomorrow, I will be connected to a different human who may behave differently from the one I connected to today.
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So now let’s consider whether I should or shouldn’t converse with a chatbot in a tone similar to what I would use with a human being.
One practical consideration, which rests on a hypothesis that I haven’t tested, is that the tone and word choices that I use might actually give the chatbot relevant information that may usefully change its replies. This might not even be information that I am consciously aware of giving!
So, for example, if a user writes queries in a clipped, hostile tone and includes language that expresses frustration and even anger at having to deal with difficult features of whatever software I’m trying to use, perhaps the chatbot’s programming that will cause it to use language that most people might read as soothing and helpful, which might de-escalate the emotional content that the user perceives. Or perhaps it will cause the chatbot to escalate to human intervention sooner than it otherwise would. If I were designing a chatbot, I think I’d want it to be able to recognize a distinction between, say, a cheerful and open-minded user who was interested in learning lots of details, and a hurried, frustrated user who just wants to get to the point and solve the problem at hand.
I do not actually know whether the chatbot I used today has such a capability. But it does strike me as a desirable quality, which means that if chatbots programmers haven’t produced that yet, they might in the future.
I was nodding towards the possibility of that kind of practical consideration when I added in my introductory query that I had had “wonderful” help from the AI assistant before and also from “pretty great” human tech support (don’t read anything into the “happiness engineer” thing, it’s WordPress’s job title for the tech support people and I just wanted to make sure it correctly parsed who I was talking about). Using those adjectives felt right while I was typing the query, and the reason it felt right was because I believed it was likely an efficient way to get across the background information, that my migration had gone well albeit with significant support. I would have to type out a lot more words if I wanted to do it without cheerful adjectives.
Now, what about non-practical considerations? Ought I write politely to a useful chatbot? Is purely neutral and utilitarian language morally better? Or, taking it to the other extreme, is it acceptable to curse and revile the chatbot if I get frustrated with it, or just for fun?
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Let’s take the anti-politeness argument first. I think the strongest argument for refusing to engage politely and conversationally with a chatbot, eschewing little “thank yous” and “hellos” and the like, is that we run the risk of forgetting that the chatbot is a bot. What we treat as human, we begin to believe is human; what we treat as nonhuman, we begin to believe is nonhuman. This is just something that we observe happens in human nature. Maybe not everyone is susceptible to it; I feel like I am not much in danger from it, but I could be deluding myself. We are certainly seeing news reports that some people, on using an LLM, develop attachments to it and bizarre beliefs that it is sentient. I guess humans in general just have a really strong tendency to see patterns and draw conclusions without passing them through the reason-and-logic part of our brains. So, talking to a chatbot as if it is human does carry the danger that we will start to believe some very incorrect and possibly dangerous things about it. We might, for instance, trust it.
But now I’m going to give a pro-politeness (or at least an anti-cursing and revulsion) argument that is founded in the same sort of pattern-matching. How we behave is who we become. If I interact with chatbots frequently enough, and if I have developed the habit of cursing the chatbot, calling it names, responding to its questions with language that would be considered “rude” and “dehumanizing” if I were dealing with a human…. I might actually be training myself to behave in such a way whenever I am in any sort of context that has the same sort of feel to it. I might be training myself to behave that way even to human beings in human-human troubleshooting chat sessions, since the chatbots are programmed to emulate just that sort of session. I might be training myself to behave that way in texts, even to friends! I might be strengthening the neural pathways that choose rude language instead of the neural pathways that choose kind and polite language. Basically, I run the risk of programming myself to be a worse human being.
So what about a neutral, cold tone? This might seem to be the best choice or at least neutral, but honestly I think it circles back to being a special case of the anti-cursing-and-revulsion argument, since many human beings feel distinctly uncomfortable when they are spoken to in a neutral, cold tone. I’m afraid that if “training yourself to speak in a way that makes other humans feel bad” is a big problem, then writing neutrally and coldly on purpose (as opposed to if you are, well, just naturally a detached sort of person) is still a real problem.
Whether either of those latter outweighs the danger of “speaking conversationally to the chatbot risks you thinking that the chatbot is sentient and trusting it to the point that you do its harmful bidding,” I’m not sure. It may depend on the mental wellness of the user in a way that’s not terribly predictable.
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One thing that we can and should do, though, I’m convinced: we should be careful in how we talk and write about the chatbots and other LLMs to other humans. I argue that we should do our best to default to language that comes from well-established contexts of interacting with computers, databases, and other machines, rather than language that is generally used in human-to-human contexts.
For example, I strongly prefer using the terms “query” or “prompt” rather than “ask” or “tell.” We have been “querying” databases for a long time. “Prompt” is fairly new usage; we do use it for humans, but almost exclusively in describing an interaction where there is a power-and-authority differential, such as an adult prompting a child “Say please.”
The least we can do is speak honestly and not misleadingly to other humans when we talk about what these bots are useful for.
bearing blog 