I know that this is something I struggle with every day. Father Chris gave a great homily in which he told us we should not begrudge people who get the benefits even if they don't earn them. But it is something that has always bothered me.
I will give you an example. Part of the homily was the usual appeal for dough. They are taking a second collection for the suffering Christians in Syria and Iraq and the Middle East. So the people who put the dough in the collection basket are being hit up for another collection. I am happy to put some money in because I know it will be spent wisely. Or least I hope it will be. But on my way out of the church a funny thing happened. A common thing but something that bugs me. I was on line to shake Fathers hand and chat with him for a moment as I do every Sunday. I had missed him the last few weeks because we had a visiting priest from Africa. As I was waiting a big family of obviously Irish people pushed their way into the church. They were all dressed in their Sunday best and were obviously there for a Christening. So they pushed all the regulars out of the way to talk to Father Chris. There must have been twenty of them. Father just looked at me and shrugged. What can you do?
I just left to go open the store.
What got me is that none of the people who were there for the christening came in for the Mass. It seemed that they had stood outside until Mass was over. What was that about? Where they just waiting for the cafeteria to open? These were obviously very affluent people who every expensive clothes and jewels and cars parked illegally outside. Not the widows and working class people who make up the congregation who struggle to put a few bucks in the collection plate each week. Sometimes I think the Jews have it right. They charge big bucks for their ceremonies. Whatever.
I don't think the way I feel makes me a good Catholic. In fact it probably makes me a bad one. Maybe a very human one. I am trying to do better with it. "The last shall be first and the first shall be last."
26 comments:
You seem to focus on what you perceive to be the negative in our Pope. Here are what I see as a couple BIG positives. He has called the war against ISIS righteous. Yesterday, he called on Muslims to condemn and stand up to the ISIS and other terrorists. Pretty strong stuff, that you will poo poo. He's in your dog house and there ain't no gettin' out of a Trooper dog house.
Hopefully this discussion on religion goes better than the last few!!
Maybe we should stick to sports and porn.
Parables are fun because they invite consideration on different levels. The fun of identifying the day workers as Mexicans, could also extend to naming them as Catholics, Dirty Prods, and inconsistent churchgoers, all receiving the same amount of attention and pay from the Boss
Not true Nick. I am proud of the Pope for speaking out. Clearly and unambiguously against these animals. I would expect no less. I want him to do a lot more.
He is very brave to go to Turkey. I hope he is wise enough to listen to his security detail.
There is a difference between inconsistent church goers and those that only come for major events. Those are the ones who are happy to debate you about how the church is all messed up and is only about money and the priest scandals and every other thing. Of course when they want to get married or Grandma has to get planted they want to go to front of the line.
So the last are the ones who go first.
It kind of sucks when you identify with the son who stayed working for his Dad when he kills the fatted calf for the jerkoff who went and squandered his inheritance. There are a whole bunch of parables along those lines.
I don't dwell on what the Boss does. I expect he will do the right thing. But as a human I have very human emotions about these kinds of things.
I just feel that everything is topsy turvey. That good is bad and bad is good. That you can't count on much of anything anymore.
Maybe it is a function of getting old. I just have the tolerance I used to have anymore.
GET OFF OF MY LAWN!!!!!
This take on the story, by Robert Farror Capon,is one of my favorites:
There was a man who owned a vineyard. His operation was not on the scale of E & J Gallo, but it was quite respectable: let us put him in the Robert Mondavi class. We first see this gentleman on the evening of the second Sunday in October. September has been a perfect month – hot and dry, bringing the grapes to 20º Brix – but his meteorological service tells him that the weather is about to turn into cold soup. So what does out friend Robert do? He gets up first thing Monday morning, goes down to what passes for the local hiring hall and contracts for as much day labor as he can pick up. Unfortunately, every other grower in the neighborhood uses the same weather reports, so he has to promise higher pay to attract the workersThere was a man who owned a vineyard. His operation was not on the scale of E & J Gallo, but it was quite respectable: let us put him in the Robert Mondavi class. We first see this gentleman on the evening of the second Sunday in October. September has been a perfect month – hot and dry, bringing the grapes to 20º Brix – but his meteorological service tells him that the weather is about to turn into cold soup. So what does out friend Robert do? He gets up first thing Monday morning, goes down to what passes for the local hiring hall and contracts for as much day labor as he can pick up. Unfortunately, every other grower in the neighborhood uses the same weather reports, so he has to promise higher pay to attract the workershe needs: $120 for the day is the figure that finally guarantees him a crew.
I see a hand up, Yes, Virginia? No, Virginia, $120 is not a ridiculous figure. A denarius was a day’s pay; I have simply taken the liberty of making it a good day’s pay. A penny a day may have been alright for the translators of the KJV, but this is 2000.
Anyway, Robert loads his crew into a couple of old school buses and puts them to work, chop-chop. Just before nine am, though, he gets another weather bulletin. They have moved the start of the three weeks of rain from Wednesday back to Tuesday: he has one day, not two, to get the harvest in. Out he goes at nine, therefore – and with increasing panic at noon and at three – to hire on still more hands. Each time he succeeds in rounding up all the available help, giving them the by now the practiced line that he is Robert Mondavi, the famous payer of top dollar who is also Mr. Fairness himself: whatever is right, they will get.
It’s a huge harvest, though, and with only one hour left before dark, Robert realizes he won’t get it in on time without still more help. So out he goes again, but the hiring hall is closed by now and the village square has only its usual crowd of up-to-the-minute losers hanging out in a haze of smoke. You know the types: lots of leather, some girls (and boyfriends) with more mousse than brains, six-packs everywhere, and music that ruptures eardrums. What the heck, Robert thinks in desperation: it’s worth at least a try. So he walks up to the group, ostentatiously switches off the offending ghetto-blaster, and goes into his spiel: he’s Robert Mondavi; he’s famous and he’s fair; they could probably use a buck; so what do they think? What they think, of course, is also, what the heck: whatever he wants them to do, it won’t take long; and whatever he pays, at least its a couple more six-packs for the night. Off they go.
Now then: run your mind over the story so far. I’m sure you know exactly what happens each time one of those new batches of workers gets dropped off at the vineyard. Before they pick even a single grape, they make sure they find out from the workers already on the job the exact per diem amount on which Robert Mondavi is basing his chances at the Guinness Book of World Records. And since they are – like the rest of the human race – inveterate bookkeepers, they take the $120 figure, divide it by twelve and multiply it by the number of hours they’ll be working. Then and only then do they lay hand to grape, secure in the knowledge that they will be getting, respectively, $100, $70, $40, and $10.
Robert, however, has a surprise for them. At the end of the day, he is a happy man. With his best and biggest harvest on its way to the stemmer-crusher, he feels expansive – and a little frisky. So he says to his foreman, “I have a wild idea. I’m going to fill the pay envelopes myself; but when you give them out, I want you to do it backwards, beginning with the last ones hired.”
Once again, I’m sure, you know what happens. When the first girl with purple hair gets her envelope and walks away opening it, she finds six crisp, new twenties inside. What does she do?
No Virginia, put your hand down. She does not go back and report the overage; she just keeps on walking – fast.
But when her shirt-open-to-the-waist boyfriends catch up with her and tells her they got $120, too … well, dear old human nature triumphs again: they cannot resist going back and telling everybody else what jerks they were for sweating a whole day in the hot sun when they could have made the same money for just an hour’s work.
The entail of Adam’s transgression being what it is, however, the workers who were on the job longer come up with yet another example of totally unoriginal sin. On hearing that Robert Mondavi is now famous for paying $120 an hour, they put their mental bookkeeping machinery into reverse and floor the pedal. And what do they then come up with? O frabjous joy! They conclude that they are now about to become the proud possessors of, in order, $480, or $840 or even – bless you, Robert Mondavi - $1,440.
But Robert, like God, is only crazy, not stupid. Like God, he has arranged for the recompense to be based only on the weird goodness he is most famous for, not on the just deserts they have infamously imagined for themselves: every last envelop, they find, has six (6) twenties in it; no more for those who worked all day, and no less for those who didn’t.
This, of course, goes down like Gatorade for the last bunch hired, like dishwater for the next-to-the-last, like vinegar for the almost-first, and like hot sulfuric acid for the first-of-all. Predictably, therefore – on the lame brained principle that those who are most outraged should argue the case for those who are less so (wisdom would have whispered to them, “Reply in anger and you’ll make the best speech you’ll ever regret”) – the sweatiest and the most exhausted decide to give Robert a hard time. “Hey, man,” they say; “you call this a claim to fame? Those punks over there only worked one hour and we knocked ourselves out all day. How come you made them equal to us?”
Robert, however, has his speech in his pocket. “Look, Pal,” he says, (Incidentally, the Greek word in the parable is hetaíre which is a distinctly unfriendly word for “friend.” In three of its four uses in the New Testament – here, and to the man without the wedding garment in the King’s Son’s Wedding, and to Judas at the betrayal – it comes off sounding approximately like “Buster.”) “Look Pal,” he tells the spokesman for all the bookkeepers who have gagged on this parable for two thousand years, “Don’t give me agita. You agreed to $120 a day, I gave you $120 a day. Take it and get out of here before I call the cops. If I want to give some pot-head in Gucci loafers the same pay as you, so what? You’re telling me I can’t do what I want with my own money? I’m supposed to be a stinker because you got your nose out of joint? All I did was have a fun idea. I decided to put the last first and the first last to show you there are no insiders or outsiders here: when I’m happy, everybody’s happy, no matter what they did or didn’t do. I’m not asking you to like me, Buster; I’m telling you to enjoy me. If you want to mope that’s your business. But since the only thing it’ll get you is a lousy disposition, why don’t you just shut up and go into the tasting room and have yourself a free glass of Chardonnay? The choice is up to you, Friend: drink up, or get out; compliments of the house, or go to …. Take your pick.”
You just said a mouthful, MamaM. Thanks for the wisdom and hard work.
Thank you, Nick. Sports and Porn aren't my forte, with stories like these capturing my more of my imagination.
I apologize for the repeat in the first paragraph. It showed up in the first batch I posted, and I thought I cleared it up but there it is again. Will leave it as is.
The author was an Episcopal priest who died at age 88 last year. From Remembering Robert Farrar Capon this quote:
Robert Farrar Capon's writing is charged with an intense love for God and for all that God has made; it is deeply opinionated, utterly unique, and saturated with grace, reflecting the quirky appeal of the man himself, who, though now lifted to glory, leaves behind a warm invitation to taste and see that the Lord is indeed good.
Pretty good version, Mama. I'm going to pass that on to my sons. But, as Spinelli says, theology is a fraught subject in these parts, and best avoided as a temptation to several sins, Pride first among them.
TT, I may appear to be a newbie, but I've been reading and commenting here since 2010 and it's not evident to me that theology is a fraught subject in these parts or best avoided as a temptation to several sins. Capon's story is a good one, and so is the life review he received from another human. I've no comment on what the Higher Power thought of either. That would be pride.
I once participated in a blog where disagreement and difference with regard to the owner's sore points was discouraged. From my POV, what's put into post is fair game for comment.
Are you joking about the pride part or serious? Either way, more explanation would be helpful.
I have no problem with people disagreeing with my religious point of view. Because as Nick says I am a Shite Catholic and if you don't believe exactly the way that I do you are going to burn in Hell. Especially as Evi has so astutely stated if you are not a New York Giant or Yankee fan.
I don't hold other peoples religious views against. You are all heathen bastards the lot of ya!
I just use this blog for my musing on various subjects and I invite other people to do the same. It is a free speech zone. Or at least as much of one as I can make it.
Some stuff like Inga, Crack and Titus is more than I want to be bothered with so I dispensed with that crap. If that makes me a hypocrite so be it.
Titus just dropped over at Lem's to stir it up.
It is Sunday night so we might expect some shenanigans. Just sayn'
Well, the example I quote is the late contretemps between windbag and nd, as unfortunate a mess as I have seen, and no example of polite or even vaguely rational discourse. Now, AA, as we know, wanted to sell tickets to her clownish cage matches. No one here, from what I can tell, has a similar motive. So, slugfests wherein proclaimed superior knowledge of the words attendant upon Salvation are used as a cudgel are, to my mind, inherently bad, and ought to be avoided. Gastric distress, not spiritual insight, would seem to be the result in most people.
But far be it from me, as a lover of free enterprise, to dampen Pepto-Bismol sales, if that's what Trooper's audience truly wants.
And, to pay Mama again her due, the retelling of the First-Shall-Be-Last parable is as good a piece of practical Biblical exegesis as I have ever seen.
We have our male and female philosophers here this evening. You folks elevate this place for us bozos.
TT, the explanation was helpful. It's easy to get crossed up on the internet, and I believe I understand where you are coming from with regard to pride. We are all subject to limited human awareness when it comes to that which is invisible or beyond time.
The phrase "spiritual arrogance" showed up today in a book I was reading, which helped me get it, along with this line, from Rabbi Simon Jacobson, I know one thing for sure. The environment for healing has to be accepting, trusting and not judgmental. A soul is like a child. If a child feels frightened, it won't come out of its hiding place. It's critical that the soul feels safe. This is not a safe world we live in. Especially for those who grew up in traumatic homes. A soul, like a child, need to know that it's loved unconditionally.
He's kind of an odd duck of a rabbi, like Capon was an old duck for an Episcopal priest. I've a fondness for odd ducks, even the crabby ones, which is part of the reason I hang around here. It's a great place to quack!
(I first found the Capon rendition of this parable in 1996, in "The Book of Jesus", edited by C. Miller, still on my shelf. I've been saving it for a long time, awaiting a place to share it. Since then, others of his parables have showed up online, with this one still holding the place of favorite with me. )
The Good Rabbi Jacobsen, ended with this thought: Some of the greatest things in life don't have to be so dramatic. Remember that. You can do something modest. When a mother cradles her child, fireworks don't explode. That's the secret of all life. Some of the most beautiful things happen below the radar. Not on Wall Street, not on television. Not with all the hoopla. It's in the quiet moments that our lives are shaped. In homes, in cribs, in bedrooms, in the little things. That's where it all happens."
Enjoyed that, MamaM.
I also enjoy the Prodigal Son parable. Totally get the dutiful son feeling resentful (pride), but I love that the father is running toward his wayward son with open arms.
Just how I believe my Father is running toward me. Or want to believe it would be more apt.
"Children, how hard is it for them that trust in riches to enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."
People seem to forget this one.
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