Monthly Archives: May 2023

Pride Anthems at WHBPAC June 2nd at 8PM

The Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center (WHBPAC) Director of Marketing and Communications Heather Draskin announced their programming of Pride Anthems as a wonderful way to kick-off Pride Month in the Hamptons. Ms. Draskin said, Pride Anthems is a great performance. What it is going to be is the kick-off of Pride-Month, here in the Hamptons. The kick-off will be the festivities June 2, at 8 PM with Pride Anthems at the WHBPAC. Director Draskin credits Executive Director Julienne Penza-Boone for spearheading the effort to bring Pride Anthems to WHBPAC.

Heather Draskin explained Pride Anthems is a musical journey of the past fifty years featuring music from folks like Donna Summer, Queen, George Michael, and Madonna with all those songs that are significant to the Pride Legacy. Then, Ms. Draskin added how important this show will be because There is a storytelling component about the fight for LBGTQ+ Equality, and its all performed by Broadway Stars, Broadway performers. It is a show for all ages, and Everyone comes together in song and celebration. It will demonstrate where the community has come from.

The show showcases the story of the fight for LGBTQ+ equality and how it is linked to the music that evokes the struggles, heartache, and liberation of queer lives then and now. The show commemorates the legacy and power and power of the Stonewall Riots.

The Stonewall Riots or uprisings, occurred after an anti-gay violent action by the NYC police at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village on June 28, 1969. Patrons of the other lesbian and gay bars and neighborhood street people reportedly fought back. Many consider this event to be the watershed event, of the gay liberation movement of the 20th century. It was a very emotional two days that jump-started in motion, an energy that grows to this day.

The power of awareness hit the zeitgeist those two days of June 1969. Intense sacrifices of those pioneers have definitely had a phenomenal positive long-term effect. Both here is the U.S.A. and around the world.

The performers scheduled for Pride Anthems are Natalie Joy Johnson, Kevin Smith Kirkwood, and Jon-Michael Reese. They perform under the supervision of Musical Director Brian J. Nash. Heather Draskins also mentioned, Pride Anthems will be a brand-new performance. The show is having their World Premire on May 24th. The WHBPAC performance will be the second performance. Draskin added, Pride Anthems is part of a nationwide tour. What makes this special is that a portion of the proceeds will benefit Pride Lives, and the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center. The center is scheduled to open June 2024 in Washington D.C.

Tickets are still available at the website (www.whbpac.org ) or at the box office, or online. As Director Draskin also said, I want to point out that it is for all ages. It is going to be a fun and uplifting evening of entertainment. This will be the WHBPACs first foray into LGBTQ+ programing. That is why we want a great kick-off to all pride festivities. We are working to make the WHBPAC an inclusive space for the community.

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Pride Anthems at WHBPAC June 2nd at 8PM - Hamptons.com

When I sat down with Eric Huntley on 13 April 2023 it was under the auspice of interviewing him about the new community garden that he has establishedalong with filmmaker and organizer Sukant Chandanin the London borough of Ealing, just minutes away from where he and his wife, Jessica Huntley, ran their bookshop and publishing house. However, it was impossible to contain our conversation to just the Jessica Huntley Community Garden. It would also have been a huge missed opportunity. Eric and Jessica were pioneers of Black literary publishing in twentieth-century Britain, alongside so much more. While running the Walter Rodney Bookshop and Bogle-LOverture publications, some of the first ever Black-owned enterprises of their type, they were also founder members of the Caribbean Education and Community Workers Association; helped form the Black Parents Movement in 1975; organized the 1981 Black Peoples Day of action march; and established the Supplementary School Move in the community. And that is just the list of activities listed in Whats Happening in Black History? III (2015).

During our wide-reaching conversation, Eric went right back to his earliest political activities in the 1940s of then British-Guiana, all the way through to 2023, where the 93-year-old community organizer and former-publisher is still working tirelessly to bring about radical change in British society.

The Huntleys legacy in Britain has been well-documented, commendably in Margaret Andrews book Doing Nothing Is Not An Option: The Radical Lives of Eric & Jessica Huntley (2014). After arriving in London between 1957-58, they started Bogle-LOverture Publications in 1968 out of the front room of their house at 141 Coldershaw Road in Ealing. The bookshop followed in 1974. It wasnt long before neighbors officially complained to the local council that the Huntleys were lowering the standard of the street by operating a business in a private house, and thus they were forced to look for a commercial premises. They ended up finding a place just off West Ealing high-street, that would later be named the Walter Rodney Bookshop after the Guyanese intellectual who was assassinated in 1980.

Rodney is integral to this story. When I asked Eric what the impetus was for founding the publishers, he first told me the anecdote that often gets repeated: Eric and Jessica were close with their Guyanese compatriot, both ideologically and socially, and when his writing and lectures were banned by the Jamaican government in 1968, the Ealing-based couple decided to publish his collected speeches in the book The Grounding with my Brothers. But then Eric corrects himself. While that was certainly true, his first foray into publishing came in Guyana over a decade earlier.

Guyana was still under the yolk of British colonialism when Eric was living there. He was a member of the anti-colonial Peoples Progressive Party (PPP) who ran as a pro-independence group, although Eric is modest about his role: Jessica and I didnt have any skills, we were working class people. Most of the people in the leadership of the party were middle-class doctors and lawyers and so on [1]. In 1951, while working as a postman in the village of Buxton, Eric saved up for a flatbed duplicating machine, I produced an unofficial journal for the Post Office Workers Trade Union using that equipment. We literally starved that month. Three years after, in 1953, the security forces seized the machine on one of their raids looking for contraband literature.

1953 was a turning point for the Guyanese independence movement. The PPP won a mandate from the public to govern, yet months later the colonial British regime suspended the constitution then conducted a widespread, violent crackdown against the PPP and anti-imperialist groups. As was common all over the world at that time, the British Empire wanted to nullify the upsurge in communist popularity that was permeating amongst the population and specifically cited concerns over the influence of communism as justification for their actions.

Marxist-thought was indeed popular amongst Eric and his comrades. He notes that communist ideas first found their way into the Guyanese zeitgeist through the soldiers who had gone abroad to fight in World War Two then returned home with battered copies of various Marxist texts. Some of these soldiers had been inculcated by members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), with whom Eric had a very short-lived relationship when we first arrived in Britain (he recounts how he and his fellow Caribbean communists had a meeting at CPGB headquarters on Farringdon Road, London, but never returned after they were kicked out mid-discussion at nine in the evening: we had just from the tropics where we were our own masters, Eric recounts, the night was young and when you start talking politics you go into the morning!).[2]

Communist organizing in Guyana begins to pick up pace after the success of the Cuban Revolution. Eric recalls how delegates from the PPP begin to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union and bring back ideas and books that were disseminated through lectures and study groups. Excluding Andrews biography, the foundational role that Marxism plays in Erics thought and life is often dismissed in the literature written about the Huntleys, even though he was keeping company with the likes of Marxist scholars C.L.R James and Walter Rodney, and facilitating the International Book Fair of Radical Black & Third World Literature in the 1980s. Eric stresses this point to me: Our teacher was what was happening on the ground here. We took a Marxist outlook which I havent lost and forms the basis of my world view.

However, he does highlight that Marxism, in particular the Eurocentric variety popular in 1950s Britain, sometimes felt alien to the newly-arrived Caribbean diaspora:

We came from the colonies with a Marxist perspective, [although] you left home without any consideration for the color of your skin and only you became aware you were Black when you came to England. And therefore the politics, the way you viewed the world, changed completely. We never really read Marxist books when we came here. In the colonies, that was all we had. In England, the racism, the issue of ESN (Educationally Subnormal schools), SUS [laws] became more important.

In other words, it sometimes felt like the issues facing the Black diaspora in England at that time had nothing to do with [the] Marxism that they had been reading about in their homelands. Eric even suggests that making these issues too party political could be a hindrance to change: There was more political value out of our struggle if we concentrated on [specific] issues [], with SUS it was much easier to come together. Which is also why Eric and Jessica, in spite of all their organizing efforts, never attempted to form a political party in England. Forming a party meant attempting to reconcile too many differences within the community, and that is without considering the angle of personal belonging too, we didnt really see ourselves as residents here, and settled, to form a political party. It didnt enter our thoughts, Eric told me.

Bringing together the community was central to the vision of the Huntleys Walter Rodney Bookshop. Even before it moved to the commercial premises at Chignell Place, the bookshop was a hub for the migrant community of Ealing: The bookshop became a virtual advice center where persons called for advice on a wide range of issues, wrote Eric in 2015. People came for addresses of solicitors in the event of being arrested on being being a person preparing to to commit an offense (SUS), accommodation, social and welfare issues. Maybe unsurprisingly, Eric also mentioned how they would often host visiting writers, activists, and throw parties. These events brought the Huntleys close to the international anti-imperialist movements of their time, especially the Grenadians.

Bogle-LOuverture publications was just one of three Black-owned publishers operating at that time in London, the others being New Beacon Books established 1966 by John La Rose, and Allison & Busby established 1967 by Margaret Busby and her partner Clive Allison. Rather than seeing each other as competitors, they often collaborated with one and other, coalescing on multiple fronts, including organizing the aforementioned International Book Fair of Radical Black & Third World Literaturewhich ran for over a decadeand founding Bookshop Joint Action, created after a spate of racist attacks on Black and Asian community bookshops in the seventies. The Walter Rodney bookshop itself was defaced on multiple occasions.

Throughout our conversation, I was enthralled by how much the Huntleys had achieved in such a short space of time and with so little financial support. When I expressed this to Eric he was, in what was a common trait of his, fairly self-effacing about it: Today if you have an idea, the first question theyre going to ask you ishow are you going to manage? Where are you going to get the money from? We never started off like that! Once you had an idea, you went ahead and somehow put it into practice. In order to publish their first book, they printed posters and greeting cards and sold them to raise the funds; when they first opened the bookshop, friends who worked in offices would liberate stationary from their workplaces and supply it to them.

It has been in this revolutionary, almost punk, spirit that Eric and Sukant Chandan, a collaborator and fellow Ealing resident, have founded the Jessica Huntley Community Garden, commemorating Jessica who died in 2013. Erics environmental work began in 1995 when he started the quarterly magazine Caribbean Environment Watch. But the community garden, in its own way, is closer to to replicating the dynamics of the now-defunct bookshop. The pair hope it will become a gathering place for local people to discuss their issues, as well as find some joy. It is a fitting legacy [for Jessica]. To put our communities into the center ground, literally, to put them into the center ground in this beautiful way, Chandan remarked. In West Ealing, like in many other areas, gentrification is marginalizing people further, so this is about bringing the people at the margins to the center.

Eric added to this his concern with the effects of the pandemic on peoples social lives, particularly young people. While on a simpler note, he affectionately remembered Jessicas love of gardening: Jessica herself loved flowers. When we first came to the country we were unaware of what the flowers and vegetation was like. We kept a lot of the weeds in the garden, once they flowered, to us they were fine, they were flowers. We didnt realize that as far as the English are concerned they are weeds. So we found ourselves keeping a lot of weeds in the garden.

There seems to be a lot of hope bound up in the new community garden and hope is a word that begins to reoccur frequentlymuch to Erics own jocular amazementat the close of our conversation. You hope at the end of the struggle you can show some progress, remarks Eric. A lot of ground work has been taking place across various ages and were seeing it coming out now. Look what the The Guardian [has published]. [] This is not a miracle. Eric here was referring to the The Guardians recent investigation into itself called The Cotton Capital, exposing the newspapers link to the Atlantic slave trade.

I express some cynicism about both The Guardians investigation and the downturn in a coherent revolutionary-left resistance to the problems of contemporary capitalism. Eric is thoughtful and respectful of my youthful impatience: Sometimes you need a magnifying class [] but the movement is taking place. He gives the example of todays young environmental activists, who despite being sons and daughters of the middle-class, have made some extraordinary sacrifices and faced heavy repression for decades. They came down on them like a ton of bricks, Eric points out. But now, he suggests, the tide is turning against the big polluters.

Generations sometimes react differently to the same issues, but it doesnt mean the struggle has disappeared. Chandan reminds us that these days, for better or worse, much of life is taking place online. That said, the community garden itself then becomes a statement, an antidote to the world of online class conflict, seeking to rebuild a different kind of public forum where local people can drop by and discuss existing issues with each other. Who knows what will emerge from these dialogues, but as Eric is always keen to remind us, doing nothing is not an option.

[1] In truth, the couple were clearly revered by the PPP leadership. Eric was a member of the partys general council and a campaign manager in 1953. Jessica was requested to run as candidate for the constituency of New Amsterdam in Guyanas 1957 general election. While Jessica failed to win her seat, the PPP were again victorious.

[2] Andrews (2014) writes that Jessica and Eric also campaigned for the CPGB candidate for Hornsey, G.J. Jones, in the run-up to the 1959 UK general election.

Rohan Rice is a writer, photographer, and translator from London. You can find his work at: https://rohanrice.substack.com/

First published on Freedom News

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The illuminating influence of Eric Huntley - Peoples Dispatch

Yup, I still want to dress like Sofia Richie.

Since her classic and timeless sense of style seemingly blew up overnight, I couldnt tell if it was just a phase. I wondered if people would be on to the next it-girl within a few weeks. However, given the current zeitgeist that is steering even the trendiest of fashion people towards quiet luxury and elevated staples, Im convinced that Richie is here to stay.

My favorite thing about Richies style is that it plays into the quiet luxury movement without being too minimal. She finds a way to evade overly trendy pieces while still having fun with her wardrobe. She knows when to bring color and unique elements into play with elegance. With that being said, Im ready to shop her wardrobe. Im convinced that I can do it without breaking the bank so below find the 31 Nordstrom finds that you absolutely must shop if youre like me and want to dress like Sofia Richie.

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Want Sofia Richie Style? Try These Cheap Nordstrom Finds - Who What Wear

Amid the zeitgeist of diplomatic rapprochement and normalization in the Middle East which has recently seen Saudi Arabia and Iran mend ties and Syrias Bashar al-Assad welcomed at this months Arab League summit the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas took a step forward to repair its own regional relationships.

In mid-April, a delegation of senior Hamas officials, led by Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Meshaal, traveled to Saudi Arabia under the guise of a religious pilgrimage. Yet being the first visit of its kind in more than a decade in which ties between Hamas and Riyadh had been unraveling, the political significance was unmistakable.

Some analysts framed the visit as a product of the breakthrough diplomatic agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which was brokered by Beijing in March. That, however, may be overstated given that there have been a string of similar gestures in recent years, such as Meshaals 2021 television interview on the Saudi network Al-Arabiya and the release of Hamas-affiliated political prisoners jailed by the Saudi government.

Nonetheless, the new atmosphere generated by the Saudi-Iran accord certainly offers a more conducive environment for Hamas-Saudi reconciliation. Moreover, the visit raises important questions about the impact of the Saudi-Iran rapprochement on Palestinians more broadly, especially given that the United States and Israel have made major efforts to bring Riyadh on board the Abraham Accords the normalization project initiated by the Trump administration in 2020 and carried on by President Joe Biden ever since.

Although the recent rapprochement does not have direct implications for the Palestinians vis--vis Israel, it could ease some of the pressure that has mounted in recent years by ending the period of regional polarization and reversing the momentum of the Abraham Accords. The question is: will the Palestinian political leaderships take advantage of this moment?

Lacking a state of their own, the Palestinians have always been highly dependent on the regional environment and reliant on external backing for their political cause. As such, the Palestinian liberation movement has, for decades, been forced to carefully navigate the Middle Easts complex politics and avoid antagonizing possible sources of support and hostility. Sometimes, however, the regional environment is so fraught that it makes this impossible.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud after signing a joint statement on the restoration of diplomatic relations, with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang in the background. (Mehr News Agency/CC BY 4.0)

Saddam Husseins invasion of Kuwait in 1990 was such a moment. Caught between two important backers of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which also hosted sizable Palestinian communities, Chairman Yasser Arafat found himself in an unenviable decision-making position.

Arafat ultimately tried to strike a sort of balance, opposing the U.S.-led military invasion of Iraq in favor of a regional diplomatic effort an equivocal stance that was read by the PLOs Gulf allies as a betrayal, given Kuwait was a clear victim of Iraqi aggression. The cost for the Palestinian community in Kuwait, and Palestinian politics more broadly, was catastrophic, as hundreds of thousands were forced to leave the country and the PLO experienced the worst diplomatic alienation in its history.

The 2011 Arab uprisings and the ensuing regional competition between rival ideological camps was another instance in which uninvolved political actors were pressured to choose sides. That is particularly true of the bitter hostility between the Saudi-Emirati alliance and Iran, which divided the Middle East and North Africa (as well as other regions like the Horn of Africa) in a localized cold war that exacerbated conflicts in multiple countries such as Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen.

With Tehran providing support to the Syrian regime and several substate actors and the Saudi-Emirati bloc moving into closer alignment with Israel, the balance for Palestinian groups like Hamas became untenable, and their regional relationships suffered. Even Hamass relations with Tehran were initially unsettled after the Palestinian group chose not to support the Iran-backed Assad regime against the Syrian opposition. Eventually, Irans financial backing and military support to Hamas resumed.

The decision by Saudi Arabia to restore diplomatic relations with Iran is important in this regard for two reasons. First, it reduces the violent polarization and competition in the region. While that is far likelier to be felt in places like Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Lebanon, it does take the pressure off of Palestinians as well.

This is meaningful both for the Palestinian political leaders who were forced into uncomfortable positions that threatened their material support, and for the Palestinian communities living in Arab countries that often bear the brunt of those decisions as witnessed in Kuwait after 1990 and Syria after 2011.

Ebrahim Raisi, current president of Iran, at Naja headquarters, April 30, 2019. (Tasnim News Agency/CC BY 4.0)

The reduced tensions also free regional powers from having to choose sides among the rival Palestinian factions. It was therefore unsurprising to see Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas hosted in Saudi Arabia at the same time that the Hamas officials were in the country, as Riyadh intended to make a show of balancing its relationships.

Furthermore, the Beijing-brokered Saudi-Iran accord is a clear sign that Riyadh and its allies are acting more independently of their longstanding partnership with Washington. This current period of multipolarity and middle-power assertiveness could be beneficial for Palestinians; U.S. hegemony in the Middle East has clearly not served Palestinian interests well, and a shakeup in the regional order could provide new opportunities.

The second reason the Saudi-Iran rapprochement is important for Palestinians is its relationship to the parallel Arab normalization process with Israel. Given that the Palestinians were the collateral damage of this process or more likely, at least from Israels perspective, a target of it the derailment of further normalization is a positive result for them.

The Saudi decision (and that of the UAE, which restored relations with Iran in 2022) is particularly important because it defies the rationale and narrative of the Abraham Accords, which oriented around rallying a regional bloc to confront Iran. This, along with the overarching imperative to safeguard Americas security architecture in the Gulf, had provided the motivational basis for entering into those accords.

Indeed, one of the fundamental weaknesses of the Abraham Accords is that it lacked a core achievement. Despite being framed as peace deals, they ultimately amounted to the formalization of diplomatic relations between non-warring states. Furthermore, an agreement that is based on coalition-building for the purpose of enhancing security must ultimately compete with alternatives aimed at achieving the same purpose.

Hence, reaching an agreement with Iran as the principal adversary is more likely to achieve a better result than escalating tensions through a confrontational posture, which would have put the Gulf states in the crosshairs of Iran and its proxies with few ironclad guarantees of help from the United States or Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the UAE Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Abdullatif bin Rashid Al-Zayani, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Bahrain attend the Abraham Accords Signing Ceremony at the White House in Washington, USA, September 15, 2020. (Avi Ohayon/GPO)

If anything, the rapprochement with Iran is a demonstration that the Arab states, including the UAE, have been exposed to the limitations of normalization with Israel and the growing unreliability of the United States as a security partner. This realization became acute after both Gulf states suffered a series of Iran-sponsored attacks on their infrastructure and commercial interests between 2019 and 2022, with barely any response from Washington.

This was no doubt a wakeup call for the Gulf states, which began seeking a less-confrontational approach to Iran and other regional adversaries. With Iraq and Omans help, reconciliation talks between Saudi Arabia and Iran began in 2020. In January 2021, the Saudi-UAE alliance lifted its blockade of Qatar. A few months later, the Gulf states began diplomatic overtures to Turkey. By the summer of 2022, the UAE and Iran had exchanged ambassadors, with Saudi Arabia following suit in the spring of 2023.

At the same time, the Abraham Accords stalled. No new agreements were forged after Trump left office in January 2021. Sudan has vacillated on its early declaration to join the process; and countries like Oman, which appeared like possible candidates, have enhanced their laws prohibiting any dealings with Israelis.

Even the UAE, which spearheaded normalization with Israel from the Arab side, has appeared more conflicted of late. The Emirates has used its chair on the UN Security Council for the 2022-23 term to support Palestinian positions and criticize the current Israeli governments policies. While it is unlikely for the UAE to reverse its formal ties with Israel, its enthusiasm for this process may be waning.

Ostensibly, all of this is a positive development for Palestinians. Normalization was being used by Israel to undermine Palestinian leverage, marginalize their cause regionally, and pressure them to capitulate to Israeli demands. The Saudi-Iran agreement contrasts sharply with the Abraham Accords, both in substance and effect.

Yet taking advantage of this change is another story entirely. Political fragmentation has denied the Palestinian liberation movement a singular address since 2007 and made regional engagement more complicated.

The PLO/PA under Abbass leadership has also proved a poor steward of Palestinian diplomacy: despite three decades of failure, Abbas has doubled-down on the strategy of relying on the United States to deliver a peace deal with Israel, while remaining wedded to the defunct Oslo Accords. Indeed, it was this agreement signed in the 1990s that allowed the Gulf states to more openly engage Israel, and has provided the ongoing context of cooperation that made the Abraham Accords possible.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas speaks during a meeting of the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank city of Ramallah, September 3, 2020. (Flash90)

This one-track strategy on the part of the PLO/PA has taken regional support for granted rather than actively cultivating it. As a result, the PLOs regional relationships have eroded, its once-strong diplomatic infrastructure has collapsed, and the Palestinian diaspora in the Middle East has fallen by the wayside, denying the liberation movement key sources of support, vitality, and leverage, including vis-a-vis the Arab regimes. The PLOs aging, corrupt, and bureaucratic leadership are no longer a source of inspiration for the people of the region as they were in the movements revolutionary heyday. Although the Arab street remains overwhelmingly sympathetic and supportive of Palestinians, it is not because of their leaders efforts, but in spite of them.

Hamas, on the other hand, more closely resembles the PLO of old and has proven itself somewhat better at navigating the regional landscape. While holding firm control in Gaza, its core diplomatic and political leadership are located outside of the occupied territories, where they are not subject to Israeli domination. And unlike the post-Oslo PLO/PA, Hamas does not have a built-in source of financing from a bloc of international donors a structure which makes the PA not only complacent and unaccountable, but subject to Western and Israeli conditionality.

Hamas still has to be more adept at responding to the vicissitudes of regional politics. But its strategic position is not precluded, like the PLO because of its Western-dependence, from maintaining relations with a diverse cross-section of allies, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Still, as long as Palestinian politics remain divided and dysfunctional hindered even more by the complete absence of democratic national elections, and a restructuring of systems of governance and decision-making the advantages that have opened in a changing regional context will likely pass the Palestinians by.

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What will Saudi-Iran rapprochement mean for the Palestinians? - +972 Magazine

Fifteen EU member states, including France, recently joined the infringement procedure initiated by the European Commission against Hungary before the European Court of Justice concerning the countrys controversial law on the protection of minors. According to Brussels, by prohibiting sexual content, including homosexuality and gender ideology, for children under 18, this law would violate the common values foreseen in the Treaty on European Union, notably the principle of non-discrimination.

It is rare to see fifteen countries follow the Commissions lead against another member state. That they should do so to attack a national law in the name of common values is a firstone which, beyond the facade of consensus, raises many questions. Whatever one thinks of the Hungarian law that has been in the news since 2021, a crucial but neglected question remains: In what way is the sexual education of Hungarian minors a competence of the European Union? On what legal basis does the EU claim the right to challenge this law?

The answer is, it is precisely in the name of these common values that are so often invoked but never defined. Even if, at first glance, the Commissions approach might appear justified, it could be that this vague notion serves as an ideal legal alibi to justify the imposition of an ideological line. Strictly speaking, the Union has no mandate to interfere in these matters. The Treaty is clear on this point, stating that the EU must fully respect the responsibility of the Member States for the content of teaching and the organisation of education systems. And yet, an infringement procedure has been launched, fifteen countries have responded, and the EU Court of Justice will deliver its judgment in 2024.

When the EU lacks an explicit competence regarding a particular issue, the Commission has demonstrated an unfortunate tendency to tailor one for itself by invoking disparate legal bases that are detached from the main complaint. In this case, the Hungarian law is said to be contrary to the free movement of goods, the freedom to provide services, the protection of personal data, and European audiovisual laws. Therefore, a national law merely needs to come close to any one of the tens of thousands of European laws to bring it within the competence of the EU and judge it according to these undefined European values. This only occurs ifand only ifthe Commission so wishes, of course, because in order to add a layer of legal creativity, we should not forget that the Guardian of the Treaties has the exorbitant power to launch an infringement proceeding or to refrain from doing so, on demand and against whoever the Commission desires, without any justification.

It is true that, for decades, the Commission has used this prerogative carefully and sparingly. But it would seem that, in this age of extreme ideologisation and loud messianism, the zeitgeist is to give precedence to values over legal rules. In this way, the latter are invoked in an abusive manner to better circumvent the rules and provide a veneer of legality for steps that might not be legal. Has the EU taken on the role of arbiter of ideological elegance, based on a margin of discretion so great that it becomes arbitrary?

Lets imagine for a moment that Brussels determines that secularism is discriminatory and Islamophobic, and therefore contrary to European values. In reality, there is no point in speculating: even if this vision is slowly making its way through the halls of power in Brussels, such a proceeding would be unimaginable, in light of Frances political weight. In theory, however, such a proceeding would be possible, and would open the door to many abuses, allowing the EU to suck up national competences under futile and sometimes ideological pretexts. In such an instance though, France could rely on its political clout. But what about the majority of other countrieswould they be able to do the same? Would political weight therefore become the main criterion for being subject to or escaping legal proceedings? In the name of common values, this would not be the only such paradox.

This messianic reflex is all the more worrying when one considers that Brussels recently acquired a formidable weapon with imprecise contours: financial conditionalityor, the possibility of withholding the entirety of the European financial manna upstream, if violations of the principles of the rule of law undermine or present a serious risk of undermining the sound financial management of the Unions budget. In cases of fighting fraud and preventing the misuse of the EUs financial resources, the Commission would be able to withhold all of the EUs money upstream if such violations are identified. If it was indeed only about fighting fraud and preventing the misuse of EU funds, how could anyone oppose it? But if, on the contrary, this mechanism was used as a lever to impose constitutional changes on a country or to unravel national educational reforms, then it would look more like a blatant abuse of power. A recent example illustrating this is the exclusion of 180,000 Hungarian students from the Erasmus programme beginning in September, even though no evidence of fraud or potential risk has been found.

In short, this is an opaque mechanism that allows the imposition of extremely severe sanctions for hypothetical or even imaginary, offencesthis time in the name of another all-purpose value: the rule of law. Moreover, the fact that since 2021, Turkey has been an integral part of this flagship Erasmus programme and its membership has never been questioned, further demonstrates just how this just in case exclusion, in the case of Hungary, is perplexing.

It is also worrying that these abuses are taking place in the midst of a paradox of broader public indifference towards the EU in parallel with general acclaim for the Union. For instance, the war in Ukraine is in full swing and the EU is playing a decisive role in it, which has enabled it to regain its image in the eyes of public opinion. But we should be concerned that such abuses are taking place in the shadows of a major geopolitical crisis, during which the European budget has been transformed on the sly into an instrument of political pressure, blithely violating the law precisely in the name of the rule of law.

Some people are satisfied that the EU is being built on the basis of crises and are delighted with this ever closer Union which is being forced from above rather than desired from below. They are forgetting that in this way, the EU will remain, democratically speaking, a giant with feet of clay. Others argue that by joining the Union, each new member state commits itself to respecting those common values so vaguely described in the Treaties, the interpretation of which has miraculously become clear and one-sided. In the face of these elucidations, let us recall without ambiguity that the real keystone of the European edifice is the principle of attribution of competences, a golden rule according to which any competence not attributed to the Union in the Treaties belongs to the Member States. This principle is clear and precise, yet it is widely trampled on. One sometimes wonders whether, in their role as troublemakers, certain central European countries, far from breaking the rules of the game, are in fact merely reminding us of their relevancean insolence that they pay a high price for and in hard currency, in the name of common values and the rule of law.

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EU as Arbiter of Ideological Elegance? The European Conservative - The European Conservative

Undated photo of St. Peter's Basilica during Second Vatican Council. (Lothar Wolleh/Wikipedia)

It was with great interest that I read Dr. Larry Chapps recent column The Progressive Revolutions Continued Control of the Ecclesial Narrative (May 18, 2023). Dr. Chapp and I agree quite substantively on the current issues besetting the Church, as a kind of progressivism has moved into the daylight from the academy and among the clergy and laity more broadly. The desire to be a Church on the move, ultimately in step with the reigning zeitgeist of the contemporary order, risks reinflaming the controversies that beset the Church in the 19th century leading up to the First Vatican Council, and in the early 20th century in the context of the so-called Modernist Crisis.

It is with no small sorrow that I see the counter reaction to this state of affairs now placing the Second Vatican Council in the crosshairs of questioning. As a Ruthenian Catholic, I can list a host of conciliar fruits that have been immensely beneficial for the various Eastern Churches in union with Rome. I have no desire to aid those who look to reject the Council in reaction to the immense issues facing the Church. I understand many traditionalists rage concerning all those who wish to take up anew the project of what Jacques Maritain said was the chronolatrous fatuity of those who are choosing to kneel before the world. Aware of the dated and confrontational nature of the term, he nonetheless did not hesitate, early in The Peasant of the Garonne, to speak of the neo-modernismnot only of liberal Protestants but, more importantly for him, among a kind of immanent apostasy of Catholic thinkers within the Church. It was a situation (then in 1966, in the original French) that he deemed was a virulent fever, compared to which the modernism of Pius Xs time was only a modest hay-fever.

And the fever has raged on. However, sympathetically understanding traditionalist rage is one thing, accepting its anti-Conciliar rejections is another.

I believe, in any case, that Dr. Chapp would agree that Maritains diagnosis was correct. (In Peasant, Maritain shows himself to be deeply reverential in regard to the Council.) Obviously, the language of modernism is immensely fraught. In the mid-1940s, Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagranges use of the term in response to the writings of certain theologians, most especially a work by Fr. Henri Bouillard, SJ, and certain privately circulating theological and philosophical papers, enflamed an entire debate which could have been conducted more irenically if the specter of Pascendi dominici gregis and the Anti-Modernist Oath were not so quickly evoked. Even Fr. Garrigou-Lagranges later interventions in this affair have remained mostly unknown, no doubt due to the rhetorically spectacular nature of the term modernism. Thus, we need not use this term, dating from the early 20th century and freighted with all sorts of resonances, nearly all of which serve only to prevent understanding.

What remains true, however, is the fact that our debates today over faith, theology, and the life of the Church remain in basic continuity with the longer arc of history that goes back into the 19th century. Fr. Gerald McCool, SJ, who wrote from a perspective differing from my own, well observed in his Nineteenth Century Scholasticism:

The contemporary debate over theological method is simply another phase in the dialectical movement of Catholic theologys response to the challenge of post-Enlightenment thought from the beginning of the nineteenth century through Vatican I, Aeterni Patris, the Modernist crisis, between-the-wars Thomism, the New Theology controversy, and Vatican II up to the present. To understand where we are in Catholic scientific theology, we must understand where we have come from and how far we have traveled in the course of the last two centuries. The contemporary quest for an adequate method in Catholic theology has a history. The better that history is known, the clearer will be the theologians understanding of his own discipline and his own scientific task.

Now, to bring things back into connection to Dr. Chapps recent article. I completely agree with his concerns, and on the whole with his general outlook concerning the nature of the Second Vatican Council as well as its interpretation during the papacies of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI. However, I should like to register a point of nuance, which I actually think is of assistance in overcoming the progressivist mania of today. In short, I think that it is very important not to present the Council as a kind of definitive victory of Ressourcement theology over scholasticism. I must be very careful, however, with what I mean in this regard, for it is not at all my desire to reinflame fratricidal conflict between Scholastics and Ressourcement theologians.

Obviously, every Council has had its theological winners and losers. And the Second Vatican Council was motivated by the interventions of non-Scholastic and even (faithful) anti-Scholastic voices. But, in order for there to be continuity in the midst of reform from one period of the Church to another, we must have a kind of respect for the orthodox position that came prior to that Council. To present the Ressourcement vein of theology (itself very internally differentiated), even in its Communio form, as the sole theological outlook of the post-conciliar Church risks a kind of condemnation of the whole of post-medieval theology, which would supposedly be nothing more than a rats nest of theological missteps from the time of the high Middle Ages until the mid-20th century.

Interestingly enough, contemporary Thomism sometimes expresses this sort of attitude as well, often treating contemporary scholarly literature with infinitely more respect than the scholastics of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Leonine Revival periods. But, the outlook is also present in certain veins of Communio thinkers, who have at least the propensity to a kind of disdain for Baroque scholasticism and pre-conciliar Thomism, all too often referring to it dismissively as neo-Thomism, despite the fact that the latter term covers over an immense domain of differentiation within this period. (And of course, there were other Scholastic schools in addition to Thomism, which, however, did manage to crowd out the others.)

I fear that unless this divide is not healed, there is no path forward. My recent work with Dr. Jon Kirwan, titled The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Thologie (CUA Press, 2023), is intendedto open a discussion about the possibility of viewing the scholasticism of the pre-Conciliar period as more than a reactionary posture, to see even traditional Thomism as a truly living perspective of theology. I will be the first to admit that such Scholasticism has a kind of totalizing attitude, understandably sounding as though it looked to subsume all things into a single Theological Science, wherein Thomist overlords would graciously dole out roles to various theologians, all as handmaidens in the thousand-year Thomist reign. But, chastened for many decades following upon the Council, and still far from representing the theological mainstream, such a Thomism today stands at a crossroads: shall it offer itself as a reactionary solution to the failures of post-Conciliar theology, or does it wish to live in dialogue with fellow Catholics as a living theological tradition that shares many concerns with the great themes of post-Conciliar theology that are dear to men such as Dr. Chapp? The latter is the only acceptable position for anyone who is ecclesiastically minded.

To this end, I offer a brief list of some themes related to the Council but having rich, organic connections to pre-Conciliar theology. My point is not that the old should replace the new but, rather, that if faithful Catholics were to take seriously people coming from different theological traditionsThomists (even quite strict ones like myself) not presenting themselves as sole alternatives to the current malaise, and Communio theologians not presenting themselves as unqualified victors at the Councilwe would find that contemporary theology would be all the richer. If I personally trumpet the riches of the Scholastic tradition, this is because I have professionally labored in uncovering these riches and wish to present them to the reading public for consideration.

Without being exhaustive, I propose the following examples of points of continuity.

Ecclesiology. The entire theology of the Mystical Body of Christ stands behind the continued developments in Lumen Gentium. Most are aware of the work of Fr. mile Mersch, SJ. However, one cannot underrate the importance of Fr. Sebastian Tromp, SJ, who exercised great influence upon Pius XIIs encyclical Mystici Corporis. (Also, many other works were written on the theology of the Mystical Body of Christ during the first half of the century.) Moreover, there is the profound and massive multi-volume Lglise du verbe incarn of Msgr. (later-Cardinal) Charles Journet. And, much is owed to the insights of certain scholastic thinkers like Fr. Louis Billot, SJ and others who ensured that the Tractatus De Ecclesia was appropriately moved to the context of the Tractatus de Verbo Incarnato and out of the apologetic concerns that overburdened it in many of the manuals of the era. (I hasten to add, however, that Billot is not my Thomistic cup of tea. But credit is due where it is due!)

After the Council, Journet masterfully incorporates the important theme of the Churchs sacramentality into his overall ecclesiological framework. (One finds rich echoes of this in the writings of Fr. Jean-Herv Nicolas, OP who really could be cited in most of these sections below; however, he is a kind of figure overlapping the two eras, so I will not mention him again.)

Christocentrism. Often, Thomism is critiqued for being insufficiently Christocentric. However, as Fr. Dylan Schraeder has masterfully shown in his work on the Salmanticenses, there were important Thomist voices who took quite seriously the challenges raised by the Scotists in this regard. One can find a deep engagement of the Salmanticensess position in someone like Garrigou-Lagrange, as well as in Journets treatment of Christs capital grace. With great spiritual profundity, Bl. Columba Marmion, OSBs spiritual works are arguably the lengthy articulation of a Christ-centered spirituality which is ultimately Thomistically grounded upon the profound Pauline theme of life in Christ.

The fontes revelationis. During the Council, Joseph Ratzinger rightly noted that the language of fontes revelationis was transferred from the earlier scholastic terminology of fons scientiae, that is, the sources of theological science. Many of the 19th and 20th century manuals would treat of the fontes revelationis in their treatises De ecclesia, which were placed at the start of theology, after treatises on revelation and before the treatise(s) on the One and Triune God. There would be two fontes: Scripture and Tradition. The concern, understandably and validly, was to show how the Church proposes the revealed message.

However, such discussions displaced the treatise that was known as De locis theologicis, concerned with the places (loci) from which truths were to be drawn for theological argumentation. This particular treatise was developed from a posthumous work by Melchior Cano, OP (15091560). Its most coherent Thomist treatment dates from the time of the Council on the pen of Fr. Emmanuel Doronzo, O.M.I. in his Theologia dogmatica. And the De locis is related to the topic of positive theology, the pre-conciliar developments of which are excellently presented in the doctoral dissertation by Br. Luke Celestine Salm, F.S.C. (19212009) defended in 1955 at The Catholic University of America. One might also consider consulting the late-19th-century De locis Fr. Jacques-Joachim Berthier, OP, the reforms of studies undertaken by Fr. Ambroise Gardeil, OP, and the German works on Cano by Lang and Hogenmller. (Obviously, in relation to the details of Dei verbum, there are still open questions regarding, for example, the material sufficiency of Scripture. However, the overly-simplified treatment of the two fontes does not reflect the best of the Scholastic discussions of this period.)

Theological assent. Much of the crisis of the post-Conciliar period has been concerned with the Churchs authority, which was rejected so immensely throughout the world. The older articulation of the theological censures plays an important role in understanding the nature of the Churchs authority in various domains. Especially regarding the nature of her definitive authority in non-revealed matters, we still stand in need of a definitive resolution to the question concerning what used to be called ecclesiastical faith (assent given to definitive but non-De fide truths taught by the Church). Many Thomists rejected this notion as an accretion entering later Scholasticism in course of the anti-Jansenist controversies. However, I suspect that a careful revisiting of this topic can at least provide light for how to think of the various levels of assent and, hence, the Churchs authority in teaching.

Development of dogma. The last point about ecclesiastical faith is related to the topic of dogmatic development. On this topic, too many people dismiss neo-scholastics as being fixists without any useful theory of dogmatic development. However, first of all, there is the work of Fr. Marin-Sola, which many view as presenting the magisterial Thomistic position regarding dogmatic development. It is a rich and detailed treatment of the questions involved in this topic. His views were not accepted by all, including by Fr. Reginald Schultes, OP, who taught the history of dogma at the Angelicum in the 1910s and 1920s. Fr. Schultes was very deeply read in the history surrounding the notions of implicit and explicit faith, concerning which he wrote a detailed study in German. His objections to Fr. Marn-Sola appeal to important themes in the history of Western theology addressing the nature of dogmatic development, and in his Introductio ad historia dogmatum, Fr. Schultes in no way shows himself to be a fixist in matters of dogmatic history. He does, however, critique certain (though not all) aspects of Fr. Marn-Solas theory. The debates aroused during this period have a currency that is still illuminating today. (Full disclosure, I am in the midst of translating Fr. Schultess work. I am inclined to think that he does register important critiques of Fr. Marn-Sola.)

Moral and spiritual theology. Very often, Fr. Servais Pinckaers, OP has been credited with overcoming the casuistic legalism of the earlier moral-theological writings penned in the Latin Church. However, as I have shown elsewhere, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange registered nearly identical critiques a generation earlier, and his older confrere Fr. Ambroise Gardeil also lamented the effects of casuistic excess upon moral theology. (Others could be listed.) Also, there was a great flowering of ascetical and mystical theology during this period. Merely in the line of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, one might consider Fr. Juan Arintero, OPs The Mystical Evolution in the Development and Vitality of the Church. Many other examples could be given. The Conciliar texts on the universal call to holiness are unthinkable without considering the immense riches of the pre-Conciliar discussions about the universal call to divinization and mysticism. Much, also, can be drawn from the posthumous writings of Fr. Michel Labourdette, OP, long-time professor of moral theology at the Dominican studium in Toulouse and peritus at Vatican II.

Politics. Even in matters political, there is much of interest. We find ourselves today revisiting all the questions concerning integralism. However, there are, in fact, various kinds of integralism, from what is found in authors like Frs. Billot and Garrigou-Lagrange (and they differ from each other too) to the much more mitigated forms that one finds in Maritain and Cardinal Journet. (The latter wrote a very large volume Exigences chrtiennes en politique.) Moreover, in addition to questions directly related to integralism, how can one fail to mention the critiques of liberalism that one finds in Maritain, not only in his early The Three Reformers but even later on in works such as The Twilight of Civilization. These works contain much, though in a robustly Thomistic language, that one can find in Fr. Henri de Lubacs study of secular humanism. And, also, on political matters, I would be remiss if I did not mention the works of Yves Simon on authority and democratic governmental theory.

In conclusion, I should add that of course, there are many other theological approaches than the two that I have mentioned here. There are many kinds of Thomism; Communio is not a single, united school; and there are many kinds of faithful Catholic thought (in East and West) that cannot be subsumed under these labels. However, there is something emblematic involved in contrasting the great theologians of the Communio approach to the more scholastically-inflected authors I cited above. I wish to draw from the rhetorical strength gained by slightly simplified genealogies, all the while recognizing the limitations of these classifications.

In any event, it is in the interest of the Church that points of continuity between the pre-Conciliar and post-Conciliar Church be acknowledged and even embraced. I do not expect, nor even desire, universal agreement in philosophy and theology in the life of the Church. These domains are always those of debate and discussion. But, what is needed now, in the midst of head-spinning discontinuity, is an appreciation of the continuity of faithful Catholic thought in the 20th century, despite some of its major disagreements and alterations. I hope that in the essentials, Dr. Chapp and others like him can agree with this proposal.

Endnotes:

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