Daily Archives: June 17, 2020

The Conversation is running a series of explainers on key figures in Australian political history, examining how they changed the country and political debate. You can read the rest of the series here.

Paul Keating was one of Australias most charismatic and controversial prime ministers.

Born in Bankstown, New South Wales, into an Irish-Catholic, working-class and Labor-voting family, he left school before he turned 15. Keating joined the Labor Party as a teenager, quickly honing the political skills that would serve him so well in later life. He entered parliament as MP for Blaxland in 1969 at just 25 years old, and briefly served as minister for Northern Australia in the ill-fated Whitlam government.

He subsequently served as a very high-profile treasurer in the Hawke government from 1983-1991, before defeating Bob Hawke in a leadership ballot in December 1991. In doing so Keating became Australias 24th prime minister, serving until John Howard defeated him in the 1996 election.

To Keatings supporters, he is a visionary figure whose big picture ideas helped transform the Australian economy, while still pursuing socially inclusive policies. To his conservative critics, Keating left a legacy of government debt and rejected mainstream Australians in favour of politically correct special interests.

He was a skilled parliamentary performer, renowned for his excoriating put-downs and wit.

Keating played a major role in transforming Australian political debate. He highlighted the role of markets in restructuring the economy, engagement with Asia, Australian national identity and the economic benefits of social inclusion.

Keating is remembered most for his eloquent advocacy of so-called economic rationalism both as treasurer and later as prime minister.

Under Hawke and Keating, Labor advocated free markets, globalisation, deregulation and privatisation, albeit in a less extreme form than the Liberals advocated. For example, while Labor introduced major public sector cuts, it attempted to use means tests to target the cuts and protect those most in need. Nonetheless, Hawke and Keating embraced the market far more than previous Labor leaders had.

Along with New Zealand Labour, Australian Labor became one of the international pioneers of a rapprochement between social democracy and a watered-down form of free-market neoliberalism. Years later, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who had visited Australia during the Hawke and Keating years, was to acknowledge the influence of Australian Labor on his own Third Way approach to politics.

Keating justified his economic rationalism on the grounds that the Australian economy needed to transform to be internationally competitive in a changing world. To avoid becoming one of the worlds economic museums or banana republics, in Keatings view, there was no alternative but to embrace his economic rationalist agenda.

At the same time, Keating argued that his economic policies would avoid social injustices. This contrasted with the outcomes of the extreme economic rationalism of the Thatcher and Reagan governments.

Unlike in the UK or US, where anti-union policies were pursued, the Labor government was prepared to work with the trade union movement to introduce its economic policies. Under the Accord agreements, trade unions agreed to wage restraint, and eventually real wage cuts, in return for government services and benefits.

Read more: Australian politics explainer: the Prices and Incomes Accord

Hawke and Keating referred to this as the social wage. They claimed the resulting increased business profits would encourage economic growth and rising standards of living.

Keating saw his economic policies and progressive social policies as compatible. Increased social inclusion would contribute to economic growth.

Drawing on Hawke-era affirmative action legislation, Keating argued improved gender equality would mean women could contribute their skills to the economy.

Keating was also a passionate advocate for reconciliation with Indigenous Australians, including acknowledging the injustices of Australias colonial past and facilitating Native Title. He envisaged an Australia where Indigenous people would benefit from sustainable economic development, cultural tourism and could sell their artworks to the world.

In Keatings ideal vision, Australia would engage more with Asia and benefit from the geo-economic changes occurring in the Asia-Pacific region.

Then Opposition Leader John Howard accused Keating of rejecting Australias British heritage. In fact, Keating acknowledged many positive British influences on Australian society. However, he argued that Australia had developed its own democratic innovations such as the secret ballot long before Britain accepted these. He also suggested Australian values had become more inclusive as a result of diverse waves of immigration.

Consequently, it was time for Australia to throw off its colonial heritage, including the British monarchy, and become a republic. Keating believed that doing so would enable Australia to be more easily accepted as an independent nation in the Asian region. He established a Republic Advisory Committee as part of preparations for a referendum on becoming a republic.

Australias greater relationship with Asia has had major benefits for the economy, although Keating underestimated the downsides of increased competition. Recently, he complained about what he sees as excessive security fears in relation to China and their impact on Asian engagement. The republic remains unfinished business.

Keatings vision has also left some unintended consequences for Labor today. Despite his patchy record in achieving them, Keating argued that both tax cuts and budget surpluses were important, even at the expense of public sector cuts.

Read more: Vale Bob Hawke, a giant of Australian political and industrial history

Consequently, it became harder for Labor leaders to make a case for deficit-funded stimulus packages when needed (as Kevin Rudd tried to do during the Global Financial Crisis). Similarly, it became harder for Labor leaders to argue for increased taxes to fund a bigger role for government, as Bill Shorten attempted during the 2019 election.

In addition, as I argue in a recent book, Keating-era policy contributed in the longer term to poorer wages and conditions for workers. Labor is predictably loath to acknowledge this. Keating also underestimated the detrimental impacts of economic rationalism on other vulnerable groups in the community.

The 2019 election result suggests many Australians no longer believe Labor governments will improve their standards of living.

Rather than the prosperous brave new world he envisaged, parts of the Keating legacy may have made things harder for subsequent Labor leaders. Nonetheless, Keating remains a revered figure in the Labor Party and one of its most memorable leaders.

More here:

How Paul Keating transformed the economy and the nation - The Conversation AU

Jair Bolsonaro, the President of Brazil, rode during a march organized by his followers on May 31 in Brasilia.Ueslei Marcelino / .

PANAMA CITY It has become common to hear that the negligent policies of Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump regarding the pandemic respond to the fact that these presidents prioritize the economy of their countries over the health of their population. In the case of Trump, it is stressed that he needs to get to November without a ruined economy, otherwise his reelection is virtually impossible. I am not convinced. Or rather, this diagnosis, without being incorrect, is crucially incomplete: rather than presidents in favor of laissez faire, they are leaders who belong to an old anti-rationalist political tradition.

The rejection of science, reason and the disastrous consequences they have generated, must be taken seriously and not be minimized as electoral strategies. Still less, discard them as pedestrian imbecility.

AND its not just about Trump and Bolsonaro. To stay in our hemisphere, the policies of Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario MurilloNicaragua enters this mold; some of the decisions of Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador in Mexico and Jeanine ez in Bolivia too. We are before a trend that combines anti-enlightened impulses with a way of acting tied to instincts and mysticism, and that privileges the bosss outburst over reason.

Some of these leaders had crossed lances against science before coming to the presidency. Their mandates have been consistent with it. And obscurantism, with impeccable logic, distilled dark consequences.

In 2016, Bolsonaro was baptized, like Christ, in the Jordan River. The brand new president imposed a slogan of panic: Brazil above all and God above all. Against the evidence, he denied the predation of the Amazon and threw out the director of the National Institute for Space Research who showed satellite images that proved it. When COVID-19 arrived, he called it a flu, dismissed two health ministers in the midst of the storm, and joined protests against the confinements. Of course, lets face it, he invited a religious fast to get rid of the disease. Now Brazil is the new center of the world crisis with the second global number of infected people and, it is estimated, it will soon be the second in terms of deaths as well.

A man with a mask walks in front of an advertisement with the photo of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua.Inti Ocon for The New York Times

Pink Revolution is the term to refer to the magical-socialist regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. The political manifestations of Sandinismo resemble public homilies. She is an avalanche of mysticism: she assures that she speaks with Rubn Daro and that one of her children is the reincarnation of Sandino. When COVID-19 landed in Nicaragua, The esoteric dictatorship organized demonstrations, marathons, mass masses, processions, among other acts that seemed destined to infect the entire country as soon as possible.. After a long time without recognizing the progression of the disease, they have accepted that divine containment had limitations. The massive and clandestine burials reflect that the situation is out of control.

We have not seen Trump, like Murillo, with quartz rings and other stones with supposed magical powers, but he has shown a consistent rejection of science and evidence. Before becoming president, he spread the infamy of associating vaccines with autism. Considering that global warming is a concept that China invented to reduce the competitiveness of North American companies, it withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement on climate change. An article from the University of Melbourne demonstrates the presidents anti-science attitude. And from there he faced COVID-19. He confessed that he said things that doctors would surely advise him to keep quiet. He suggested that injecting bleach could be a home remedy. People close to Trump have endorsed the conspiracy theory that Bill Gates is seeking to inoculate us with a chip in the COVID-19 vaccine. The result of all this delirium is that today the United States has more than 100,000 deaths from coronavirus. That is to say, almost 30 percent of the world deceased, although its population is around 5 percent of the global total.

Donald Trump held the Bible in front of St. Johns Church on June 1, 2020.Patrick Semansky / Associated Press

The point is, then, that obscurantism is a way of understanding knowledge and the world and that these rulers have acted accordingly. And that therefore obscurantism must be taken seriously.

The anti-illustration is almost as old as the illustration. The illustration, as defined by Kant in 1784, seeks to emancipate humanity from the hand of reason under the tutelage of different forces. The French philosophes are the vanguard that introduces in the sciences of society the desacralizing will of the hard sciences. Newtons laws precede the spirit of Montesquieus laws by almost a century. Reason summons the general. And, therefore, the universal. Neither physics nor mans rights, then, depend on his province. The global, the cosmopolitan, the possibility of humanity is reaffirmed.

Anti-enlightenment is the reaction against that combo. Since the end of the 18th century, romanticism has emerged in what will be Germany. Science is rejected as a social tool. It awakens anti-intellectualism and the exaltation of religious, poets and mystics. The moral order that is not anchored to a specific cultural community is denounced. Rather than acting for reason, they follow the drives, the vigor and the emotion. So when romanticism leaves its natural artistic space and turns to politics, it will embrace nationalism.

In its political and radical version, the anti-rationalist impulse germinated in the interwar European fascisms. But in Latin America the genuinely fascist movements were anecdotal. Some of his paraphernalia and anti-Semitism stood out in the populisms of the 20th century (in Argentine Peronism, the Bolivian MNR or Peruvian Aprismo) and much of his state terrorism was present in the dictatorships of the Southern Cone in the 1970s. But generally speaking, we did not have an institutionalized anti-rationalist policy. When Bolsonaro promises that the next supreme judge he names will be terribly evangelical, we set foot on new ground.

The recent success of these positions in various countries indicates a transformation that cannot be ruled out as a political, strategic or temporary event.. Lets think about Costa Rica: 10 deaths from coronavirus. Copy. Without being a rich country, it has spent 8 years of its Gross Domestic Product on health, and there are the results. Now imagine that Fabricio Alvarado, the evangelical candidate who reached the second presidential round in 2018 and whose wife speaks in tongues had won. Would we have the same results? Probably not. So, as national discussions revolved around political or economic issues, the damaging consequences of anti-rationalism watered down. But When an epidemic arrives that places science at the existential center of the countries, anti-rationalism becomes deadly.

When post-truth was chosen the word of the year 2016, more than one skeptic thought that the concept, in fact, pointed to the lie of a lifetime. They were wrong. Disdain for experts and data revealed an obscurantist way of approaching knowledge. Actually, Timothy Snyder was correct in ensuring that post-truth was pre-fascism, because, indeed, fascism is the radical political expression of contempt for what is reasonable and universal.

The President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro. (Jodson Alves / EPA via Shutterstock)

At the moment, we have seen plots of fascism in these governments: the contempt for minorities, a traditional macho attitude against women and, above all, a general behavior that fits in the word that George Orwell claimed described fascism better than any other: bully. But with the exception of Nicaragua, where we can appreciate the stabilization of a regime with fascist features, in the United States and Latin America we have seen glimpses of fascism.

On the other hand, what COVID-19 has allowed us to see, clearly and in all its breadth, is the anti-rationalist ferment that distills those political positions. As Anne Applebaum has noted, the three closest officials to Donald Trump feel like they are waging a biblical battle where there is no room for doubt. Unfortunately, the death, famine and fear that this pandemic will generate can be fertile ground for this type of project. It pays to be forewarned and know that, whether we are right or left, it is better not to choose an anti-rationalist as a lesser evil. Nothing illustrates this better than the extent to which investors are withdrawing their capital from Brazil in these weeks. Bolsonaro, the pro-capitalist, was, in fact, an anti-rationalist. The rest of the hemisphere is warned.

Alberto Vergara is a professor and researcher at the Universidad del Pacfico, Lima.

(c) The New York Times 2020

See the rest here:

The leaders of magical thinking - Explica

WE ARE IN THE MIDST OF LIFE-CHANGING TIMES, and in the faceof multiple crises remarkable work is being done. How do artists fit in? Sometimes, smack in the middle of things. Many news organizations have been doing excellent work of discovering the artists speaking to the moment and bringing their work to a broadaudience. Oregon Public Broadcasting, for instance, has been publishingsome sterling stories including the featureThe Faces of Protest: The Memorial Portraits of Artist Ameya Marie Okamoto, by Claudia Meza and John Nottariani. Okamoto, a young social practice artist who grew up in Portland, has made it her work not just to document the events of racial violence in Portland and across the United States: Shesalso, as OPB notes, crafted dozens of portraits for victims of violence and injustice.

People get so attached to the hashtag and the movement of George Floyd or Quanice Hayes, Okamota tells OPB, they forget that George Floyd was a trucker who moved to Minneapolis for a better life, or that Quanice Hayes was actually called Moose by his friends andfamily.When individuals become catalysts for Black Lives Matter and catalysts for social change there is a level of complex personhood that is stripped away fromthem. In her work she strives to give that back.

Okamoto also, radically, makes her work available to anyone who wants it. OPB notes that sheoffers her work online freefor nonprofit use,with a$10 suggested donation to the activist group Dont Shoot Portland.

In a piece by Eric Slade,Street Artists Transform Portlands Boarded Buildings With Murals,OPBalso has documented a movement to bring beauty to the streets in trying times. And inPain Fades, but Murals Remember People Killed by Police, The New York TimessZachary Small gathers images and meanings of artists responses to multiple slayings over multiple years across the nation.

MEANWHILE, AMY WANG of The Oregonian/Oregon Live has had two fine stories published in recent days. She wrotea moving memory of Portland writerRamiza Shamoun Koya, who died last week of breast cancer at age 49, and whose novelThe Royal Abdulswas published earlier this year by Portlands Forest Avenue Press. The novel, Wang wrote, is an elegantly multilayered and deeply moving story of a Muslim American family caught in the fissures of identity, immigration and race that were deepened by 9/11. And in35 books about race, recommended by black Portland writers, Wang talked with writers Intisar Abioto, Walidah Imarisha, David F. Walker, and Emmett Wheatfall to produce a small library of essential reading about Americas great divide.

MORE GOOD READING, FROM THE PARIS REVIEW: The literary quarterly magazine has unlocked several of its in-depth Writers at Work interviews from past years, offering free access to lengthy conversations with such important black writers asMaya Angelou(1990),Ralph Ellison(1955),Charles Johnson(2018),Ishmael Reed(2016),Edward P. Jones(2013), andSamuel R. Delany(2011). Ellisons comment from 65 years ago seems particularly pertinent to now: I recognize no dichotomy between art and protest. DostoyevskysNotes from Undergroundis, among other things, a protest against the limitations of nineteenth-century rationalism;Don Quixote,Mans Fate,Oedipus Rex,The Trialall these embody protest, even against the limitation of human life itself. And Reed, speaking of the highly politicalAmiri Baraka, whom he calls a great writer, also homes in on the importance of artistry and style, and how black artists have helped shape an American expression: He did for English syntax what [Thelonious] Monk did for chords.

THE STRIKING NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL UPRISING against police brutality and racial injustice has been dominating the news, even though the Covid-19 pandemic still rages, and indeed, is more destructive in the United States right now than almostanywhere else. In Oregon and across the nation lockdown restrictions, which have taken a huge economic toll, are easing, and no one knows what effect themassive public protests of the past two weeks will have on the potential spreading of the coronavirus. But reported cases are on the rise, and many health authorities are warning of a second wave of infection that could be worse than the first.

Such things have been on the mind ofHenk Pander, the Dutch-born and -trained painter whos lived and worked in Portland since 1965. On Wednesday morning in his Southeast Portland home studio hefinished his newest painting and signed his name to it. Maybe hell do a little touchup here, maybe a little change there, but probably not. I dont like to overwork these things, he explained over the phone on Wednesday afternoon.

Much of Panders work carries forward the rich tradition of history painting, and in a wayPlague Ships Fleeing the Burning City of Caffa. Ca 1347does, too. It reimagines an actual devastation during the Black Death years of the 14th century in the trade-center city of Caffa, on the Crimea, in what is now Ukraine. The seeds of the painting were planted a few years ago when Pander picked up a copy of John Kellys 2005 history of the Plague yearsThe Great Mortality, at Powells City of Books, and then took bloom with the rise of this years pandemic. We should be grateful that this is notTHEPlague, which began in eastern or central Asia and spread across the Middle East into Europe and beyond, killing by varying estimates 30 to 60 percent of Europes population, Pander commented.

Learning more about the historical calamity, Pander said, gave him an opportunity to make a painting about the current Covid-19 crisis without including such things as face masks: Its a vision, a fantasy. Youve got the burning of Rome in it, for crying out loud. He studied etchings of the ruins of Rome by the 18th century Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and looked up the designs of Plague flags from ships during the Black Death. What he was looking for was a sense of devastation and ruin, and that included adding the year 1347 to the paintings title: By giving the date it gives it a kind of authenticity. You can look it up and discover the full story, he said.

Still, this is an unfinished story. Panders painting may be finished. The pandemic is far from it.

THE PANDEMIC AND THE AMERICAN RACIAL CRISIS, along with a tense and unsettling political season, have shaken business-as-usual in many ways: The sense that the new normal, whenever it emerges, will look very different from the old normal is strong. This holds true in the arts world as much as in the culture at large. Weve seen in recent days nationaluprisings in the world of theater, where major artists of color including Lynn Nottage, Suzan-Lori Parks, Lin-Manuel Miranda, David Henry Hwang, Viola Davis and Quiara Alegra Hudes have signed a letter decrying racism in the industry, andin the world of poetry, where the president and board chairman of the richly endowed Poetry Foundation have resigned after an open letter signed by more than 1,800 poets and others criticized the Foundations response to the Black Lives Matter movement. As poets, we recognize a piece of writing that meets the urgency of its time with the appropriate fire when we see it and this is not it, the letter said in part.

OTHER FALLOUT HAS BEEN MORE PERSONAL, particularly in the case of pandemic-imposed isolation. InFocusing in Isolation, Portland photographer Pat Rose talks with five prominent Oregon photographers Ray Bidegain, Jamila Clarke, Jim Fitzgerald, Heidi Kirkpatrick and Angel OBrien about how the lockdown has or hasnt affected their lives and their work. How can we all not be changed by this? OBrien comments. The whole world has been upended, and any sense of stability has been erased..Now we are all having to deal with these innumerable humanitarian crises, but without hugs, without the closeness of friends and family. This is the first of two parts: Look for the words and works of five more photographers next week from Rose.

THE WORLDS TURNED VIRTUAL DURING LOCKDOWN, even more than it already was, and inAccounts to follow: Irresistible colorsShannon M. Lieberman continues her exploration of the Instagram accounts of Oregon artists, this time coming up with some colorful recommendations in the work ofDon Bailey, Ernesto Aguilar, and Meghan NutMeg, a trio of artists who, Lieberman declares, draw viewers in through their irresistible profusion of color.

ANINEVITABLE CHANGE IN THE ARTS LANDSCAPE WILL BE A SHAKING-OUT and reorganizing of organizations and how they go about their business. On Thursday the Oregon Cultural Trust reported results of astatewide survey of arts groups that reveals a devastating impact of Covid-19: The majority of Oregons cultural organizations are facing suspension of operations or permanent closure, the Trust declared. The Trust projects a revenue loss of more than $40 million statewide to arts groups by the end of June, with the arts & culture sector of the state economy being hit disproportionately hard by the crisis, especially in rural communities with little access to relief funding.

WILL BIG AND LITTLE ARTS GROUPS BE SCRAPPING for the same vastly reduced pile of money? Former Portland Opera General Director Christopher Mattaliano, inWill Portland protect its Big 5?, his essay for ArtsWatch thats spread far and wide,argues for a big picture look beyond the pandemic. Hecriticizes the citys smaller is better ethos and argues that the major groups the opera, Oregon Symphony, Portland Art Museum, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Portland Center Stage at the Armory should be considered anchor institutions that establish a strong cultural foundation for the city and provide an anchor for other important, smaller-scale arts organizations and local artists to coexist within a rich arts ecology. Mattalianos essay feels like the beginning of an important conversation that almost surely will reveal sharp differences of opinion: Expect to hear counter-arguments soon.

EVEN WHEN THE NEWS IS GOOD, IT SEEMS, ITS ALSO PARTLY BAD. Last week the Portland Art Museum, which has been closed since March 14 and bleeding money because of lost income,announced plans to reopen the second week in July. At the same time, it also announced that because of the hole already shot in its budget, it will lay off 51 full-time and 72 part-time workers. The museum hopes that many of the layoffs will be temporary.

Composer and vocalist Damien Geter, performing with Portland Concert Opera.

PORTLAND COMPOSER AND SINGER DAMIEN GETERS newest project, his large-scale workAn African American Requiem, seems to have one foot in the Black Lives Matter movement and the other in the pandemic crisis. Its deeply concerned with the roots and meanings of the black experience in America and its world premiere has been delayed because of the coronavirus. WithBlack music is the center of American culture, Charles Rose begins a three-part interview with Geter on what the music is and why it takes the shape it does. The Requiem, Rose declares, remains poised to become a landmark achievement both for Portlands musical culture and for American music as a whole. Commissioned by the choral group Resonance Ensemble, its a full-length choral and orchestral work that was to premiere in concert with the Oregon Symphony, along with Resonance, the gospel choir Kingdom Sound, and poet S. Renee Mitchell,and was to be broadcast live by Portlands AllClassical radio andNew Yorks WQXR. After the Symphony was forced to cancel the remainder of its current season, the premiere was rescheduled for January 22, 2021. But the Requiems here, ready and waiting, and the anticipations building. On adding texts to the standard mass, Geter says in part: I wanted to use something that related directly to the black experience and the experience of black Americans I chose I Cant Breathebecause its such a prevalent thing in this world. Whenever someone says it you instantly know what theyre talking about.

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Art on the move: responding to crises - Oregon ArtsWatch

Image by Marek Studzinski from PixabayEucharist, the source and summit of our Christian lives, concerns unity and transformationbut what is being transformed?

Eucharist is where everything comes from and goes to in the Cosmos according to Catholicism. What is it? And what does it do? And what is transformed in Eucharist? Who is transformed by it? And what transformation is the more important?

Today is a day drowned in terrible homilies and pooled ignorance. Together with Trinity Sunday, on this solemnity the ground cries out to Godthe homily sucks! And God hears the cry of the poor.

Today heard in many American Churches is talk of mind-boggling Eucharistic wonders and scientific proofs confirming Catholic beliefs as true, and first, and best, and only. Holiness will be relocated to the bizarre and extraordinary, far removed from the people.

By definition, a homily always explains a biblical text and applies it to life here and now. Sermons, speeches, lectures, rants, song-and-dance acts, and comedy routines have never been and never will be homilies. Ranting on about Eucharistic Miracles in neo-orthodox apologetics is an abuse, not a homily.

It is likewise a very popular abuse to turn todays Gospel (John 6:51-58) into fodder for Catholic triumphalism and anti-Protestant invective. In contrast to the many failed homilies heard today, todays Gospel itself presents the Johannine Jesus as giving a real midrashic homily. Likely, the Scriptures the Johannine Jesus explains and applies is the Palestinian Targum of Joshua 5:56:1 bound up with Numbers 21:6-9. (PLEASE NOTE: those Aramaic texts are QUITE DIFFERENT than NABRE translations!) These sections speak of Israels manna tradition and the Exodus experience.

In todays Gospel, the Johannine Jesus group (using Jesus as their mouthpiece) explains how Jesus himself fills up what is lacking in Moses bread from sky vault. Put simply, forget about Judaean society and their explanations of Torah. The Sky Vault Man Jesus explains everything. Ultimately, to experience this light you have come out of the world (i.e., the dominant society Israel) and embed yourself into Jesus (i.e., the Johannine Jesus anti-society).

Another section of Scripture many Catholics enjoy terribly abusing is 1 Corinthians 11:17-34. Some twist and re-contextualize these verses into a prescriptive to go to sacramental Reconciliation before partaking in Eucharist. Thats not what 1 Corinthians is saying. Paul is talking about group-awareness, namely, being attentive to the poor in the Jesus group and to not exclude or mistreat them. Thats where condemnation originates, not how many times you masturbate before Sunday.

And with all these weeks in COVID-19 shut down, lay Catholics watching Mass on video have been reminded by current theological trends that they really dont matter. All that matters is a demigod called priest, an ontologically-changed supercreature. Thats not official teaching, mind you. But that is how many parishes and diocese walk the faith.

We have to be honest in the Body of Christ. In many places, the priest is falsely presented by many Catholics to be not unlike Dr. Octopus in Spider-man 2. Someone who holds the power of the sun in the palm of his hand.

Speaking about the Catholic predilection for Eucharistic wonder-workers and miracles, Thomas Aquinas does speak about Eucharistic wonders. The Angelic Doctor claims God can manifest real physical change in the consecrated elements, turning the bread into physical flesh and blood or the appearance of a recognizable face. However, Aquinas maintained that even in such wondrous cases, the blood and flesh manifested cannot be the real properties of the risen Jesus. The risen Jesus bleeds no more!

Lets not betray Vatican I, either in fideism or rationalism. Fides et ratio, brothers and sisters. The well-meaning performers below arent exactly what Vatican I had in mind

The icing on the cake is how they react to something like Black Lives Matter. Not a peep for George Floyd and countless others tortuously murdered. Silence on the issue, except prayers for their beloved POTUS who is under constant attack from the Devil. But lets not drift there.

I also know brothers and sisters involved in such liturgical ministries without the ignorance or lack of sensitivity to justice. I know daily communicants and adorers who are transformed. They are examples in my life.

If such a devotional practice suits you, thats all good. But lets not force our youth and young adults into it, demanding that everyone must take part in it, and if they dont, therefore that shows something defective about their faith-walk. Dont try to legislate private devotional forms. You cant.

Super-Catholics might be astonished to realize that for one thousand years of Christianity there was no practice of Eucharistic adoration. Nothing. Zip.

It wasnt until the 1300s that Eucharistic adoration began in the West, and never the East. While the Eastern Church believed in the Real Presence, it did not develop this devotional practice. I once reminded this to a young Storm-trooper of orthodoxy Roman priest in light of ecumenical talks. Without blinking, he informed me that Eastern Christians, whether O Orthodox or Uniates, are less developed in understanding Christ than we Latin rite Catholics.

What an asinine thing to say. An asinine man who expects head-nodding from everyone, all day long spouting unchecked asinine things in his echo chamber surrounded by yesmen.

So why did this happen in the 12th century West? Some rejected the Real Presence of Christ. Others misunderstood it due to horrendously bad education. Peasants would go Church to Church on Sundays looking for the Host to be raisedmaybe it would give them good crops or fix the illness in their eyes.

Human beings dont stop being the capacity for God when they poorly understand the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church. In such a sad state of affairs, they seek to fill their God-shaped hole with private devotions. So in such situations, private devotions flourish.

Hence, some Medieval folks promoted devotions like Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament in order to reaffirm the faith.

Time passed. Unfortunately, adoration and other Eucharistic devotions evolved in a disconnected way from the Eucharist itselfmeaning the liturgy. Many Catholics forgot that Eucharist IS GREATER THAN the consecrated species. Jesus can never be Emmanuel (God-with-us) without the us.

Sadly, even today, over half a century following Vatican II, faulty thinking persists. It eliminates the relevance of us. We tend to place all of out focus on bread-transformation rather than us-transformation. Read the Gospels. Jesus was about metanoia.

We Catholics should askwhen exactly does the Eucharist begin? Is it when the presider says the words of consecration? No. Indeed, the Church officially accepts as valid one Eucharistic Prayer which completely lacks the words of institution at all! Officially, the Church recognizes that Jesus becomes sacramentally present in the Anaphora of Addai and Mari.

So when, therefore, does the Eucharist begin? The Eucharist begins when the people gather.

So when is Christ present? When the Body of Christ, the people, gathersthats when. Jesus is really present in the community. Sadly, U.S. Catholics tend to miss this, and I would say it is far more devastating than being mistaken about the consecrated species.

Surely Catholic teaching on the Eucharist speaks about the sacrament of the Eucharist also. There has been a transformationbread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. But this cannot be all that Eucharist is and means. That transformation is just one part of the entire action called Eucharist. It is such a sadness that devotional extremes have made Catholics lose sight of this.

Considerif the Eucharist were nothing more than the consecrated sacrament, what the hell is the point of the ceremonial rite? Why not just line up the laity outside the steps, have the priests confect Hosts beforehand, and distribute them? Why all the Scripture readings, prayers, sign of peace, songs, and other elements? It must be that Eucharist is more than priests making bread turn into Jesus, huh?

The purpose of a rite, whether ritual or ceremonial, is transformation. But who gets transformed? Our liturgies evolved to transition people out from regular, culturally ordinary reality into alternate reality. Ceremonial rites are like regular timeouts in the football game of life. They are for the benefit of the social group. For Eucharist (Mass), that would be the Church.

Jesus does not get lonely in our tabernacles. He is not our holy prisoner. Diosito doesnt need a chorus to sing him to sleep each night. And if you scratch the Host, it will not bleed. Enough with the gross and crudely physicalist notions, fellow Catholics! Note well the adverbs used to describe the Real Presencetruly, really, and substantially. Do you see physically there? The Church, throughout its history, condemns devotional extremes and bad thinking.

Our world desperately needs our transformation, us Christians being really present. Are we really present? The signs of the times say otherwise.

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Eucharist: The Most Important Transformation | Fellow Dying Inmate - Patheos