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Your Russian Name Is… |
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Although I’d prefer a Polish brand (Żubrówka anyone…)
Tip o’ the biretta to Ben Johnson at Western Orthodoxy.
As you may know, German novelist and Nobel Prize winner Gunter Grass has come out of the closet —“ admitting to having served in the German Nazi Waffen SS during World War II.
Needless to say, many perspectives have been aired on what Mr. Grass’ admission means.
Mr. Grass has certainly been a loud voice calling for honesty and moral courage in post war German reconstruction. He has used his works and his awards as a bully pulpit to those ends. He most certainly has thrown rocks while living in an opaque house.
My observations are as follows:
First, I am glad he finally decided to be honest. Moments of honesty like this cause us all to reflect on our personal ethics, our personal hypocrisy. No matter how painful, a moral person will develop the courage to speak and make amends.
Second, honesty calls for forgiveness. Some have cited the fact that Mr. Grass has a new book coming out. They draw a line between that fact and Mr. Grass’ admission. Maybe it’s just publicity they say. There are plenty of things you can do to publicize a book, but admitting you were a Nazi, and a member of the SS to boot, is not among them. As the Waffen SS wiki states:
Regardless of the record of individual combat units within the Waffen-SS, the entire organisation was declared a criminal organization by the International Military Tribunal during the Nuremberg Trials…
I opt for a valid cleansing of the soul. Guilt does amazing things. It can lead to an amendment of life and reconciliation. It can also cause us to lash out forcefully against those that mirror our own misdeeds.
Third, there is only one moral authority, God. Our ability to exhibit the goodness of God is part of who we are. We are made in His image and likeness. Grass has done this through the art of words. His contribution is that his words had an affect on a people, his personal sins having little if anything to do with that effort, other than galvanizing his focus. Grass reflected the best of what we can be when we work in unison with God’s desire for us to do right in the midst of our sinfulness.
As Adam Hanft points out in his article: Gunter Grass and the Treacherous Limits of Moral Authority
Much of the commentary flood [on Grass’s admission], including these two pieces [in the New York Times], made reference to the exalted moral realm which had Grass occupied.
He was the voice of “moral authority” according to the International Herald Tribune; the “conscience of Germany” according to the Guardian (while the Wall Street Journal coolly qualified the title, calling him the “self-appointed conscience.” The Times of London wheeled out “moral arbiter” in their piece.
Therein lies the problem. I’m not convinced it’s healthy, in the long-term, for a society to pin the label of moral Zeus on anyone. Perhaps that galvanizing and oxygenating force is necessary in the short-term, when the culture has been through a wrenching trauma and an institutionalized order doesn’t exist yet. Post-war Germany was an example of this existential void, and so was post-apartheid South Africa. Grass and Mandela rose to those moments, but by doing so they were created an ethical aristocracy that was beyond criticism.
Truly healthy societies don’t draw their moral authority from a single individual, or even a few of them.
Following that statement Hanft goes off on a tangent, trying desperately to figure out where the moral authority that governs society comes from —“ and as with some intellectuals he pins it on the ‘magical’ inner working of that society.
Evolved societies and cultures are able to situate and draw their moral conclusions from within. At its best, America has had that internal locus of rightness, which is in many ways a direct descendant of our founding meritocracy. The promise of a jury of our peers would be meaningless without it. When America goes wrong it’s because our ethical GPS goes haywire.
Of course his qualifier —evolved societies— is completely subjective. I think Nazi Germany saw itself as an evolved society and as a superior culture. However, what it drew from within, with few exceptions, was death and destruction.
What Mr. Hanft fails to recognize is that there is an arbiter of morality that is clear and objective, with very well stated positions that reach beyond our present to our eventuality. That authority is God and His Church.
To my original question, did we hardly know Gunter Grass? I think we knew him well; after all he is human, weak, and sinful just like the rest of us. For Mr. Grass and the rest of us it is really simple: God has shown us the way, honesty is best, repentance and forgiveness are to be practiced by all.
Danny Donohue, President of the Civil Services Employees Association in New York State (a union that represents clerical workers) wrote an editorial in today’s Albany Times Union entitled: CSEA’s pension costs are not out of control.
In part he states:
First of all, the average CSEA pension is $11,000. That’s hardly excessive, especially when you consider that worker pay is at its lowest level in nearly 40 years and corporate profits are at the highest level ever recorded. Meanwhile, corporate CEOs are making 450 times what their average employee makes, and tax cuts for the wealthy are being handed out like candy to trick-or-treaters.
The typical Union line… Everyone else is so rich, we’re so poor. I guess Mr. Donohue fails to recognize the fact that he represents clerical employees. He also fails to realize that state pension costs are not CSEA’s pension costs (as his editorial’s title would suggest).
I think Mr. Donohue was absent from school on the day they talked about working hard and focusing on achievement. He might have missed the lesson on basic capitalism as well. He probably never missed a lesson on the philosophies of Marx, Lenin, and Mao.
Just because someone makes more money or just because companies are profitable, and that profit inures to those who put up the money to make it so, is not an evil in and of itself. Certainly, everyone deserves a fair wage and appropriate benefits (heath care for instance). What they do not deserve is to be treated as if they are someone else. A clerical employee by rights makes far less than a professional employee. Both make less than upper management or executives. Makes you want to go out and get an education, work hard, and get ahead doesn’t it?
He goes on:
Second, pension costs are not out of control. The governor himself says the impact of cost-of-living adjustments and other recent pension improvements has been negligible. What makes today’s pension costs seem overwhelming to many localities is that, for more than a decade, they had to pay nothing at all due to the success of the financial markets. In fact, employers are still paying less today, in terms of percentage of payroll, than they were years ago.
Yet the taxpayer is bearing the cost. That’s you and me (the government employer is us). It’s not the government employer versus the working man. It’s the taxpayer having to bear the costs of union dictated demands, agreed to by the politicians that are in their pockets.
This point also begs the question, What if I as a taxpayer do not want to fund pensions? What if I, and enough of my fellow citizens, would prefer that we keep our money for our own benefit? What if we preferred to invest in education, roads and bridges, or any of a thousand other priorities?
Look at the bills passed by the New York State Legislature in the past session. Thankfully the governor vetoed almost seventy (70) bills, the majority of which were pro-union giveaways to the tune of $1 billion in additional union benefits (reference here).
That’s part of the perpetual cost of unionized government employees. Sure, hiring a contractor may be more costly on a hour by hour basis, but once the contract is done the cash flowing out stops. With government employees the costs go on and on, and in some cases go on even after they die.
Now here’s the oxymoron:
Finally, suggesting that taxpayers will benefit by reducing public employee benefits to the levels of their nonunion counterparts in private industry ignores years of good faith bargaining between the state and its unions to negotiate contracts that are fair for everyone, including the taxpayers.
CSEA is not going to apologize for helping our members get a fair deal. Our wages and benefits are the result of years of responsible, good faith bargaining, and we’ve earned a reputation as a union that gets results while being fair and responsible. After all, our members are taxpayers, too.
If they did so well, why did he state in his opening that the —average CSEA pension is $11,000. That’s hardly excessive, especially when you consider that worker pay is at its lowest level in nearly 40 years…— Did they, or did they not do well by their members?
CSEA should be focusing on the big picture in New York State. There will be no jobs, no raises, no pensions, and no healthcare if employers, the young, and the general population (i.e., taxpayers) continue to leave in droves for low tax, small bureaucracy, and high employment states. The unions (along with all the other special interests) need to get on board and give up quite a bit to get to the point where New York is a viable, growing, and attractive state.
CSEA would do even better by focusing its energies on honesty – telling their members that they need to prepare for a future. CSEA should develop retraining and education efforts to move their members to a future without clerical employees. Clerical employees, whom they vehemently represent, are a throw back to the 1950’s. The days of rooms full of clerks processing paper are long gone. That is why state bureaucracy is so screwed up. Professionals are needed, paraprofessionals are needed. No one needs a file or steno clerk any longer (and if they think they do they should wake up and re-engineer).
I’ve said it before —“ compulsory union membership is un-American, is not democratic, it is extortion, and is a form of involuntary association. New York needs Right to Work legislation now. New York politicians need to develop the courage to reject the small cadre of union members and their leaders, focusing instead on the good of all New Yorkers. Otherwise our dry cow will become a dead cow.
‘My friend, I am not cheating you.
Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?
Take what is yours and go.
Are you envious because I am generous?’
Expectations, today’s reading, psalm, and Gospel are about expectations and the differences between the ways of God and our ways.
Recall the words God gave us through the prophet Isaiah:
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD.
As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.
God’s love, generosity, and mercy are boundless. Human attributes in those regards are rather limited. Humanity regularly fails on the road to God. We fail in our sinfulness. We fail in putting expectations on God —“ and in making God into our own image.
My brothers and sisters,
We contradict God’s expectation of us in our sinfulness. Sinfulness, the failure to meet God’s expectation, is highlighted in the first reading.
The shepherds of the people took advantage of their position. They made their lives comfortable. They cared little for the people under their care. God gave them a charge and they neglected it; they took advantage of it.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it. It is God’s indictment of failed spiritual leadership, a failure of the shepherds to meet God’s requirements. Even though we fail, God will not leave us without a shepherd.
Thus says the Lord GOD:
I swear I am coming against these shepherds.
I will claim my sheep from them
and put a stop to their shepherding my sheep
so that they may no longer pasture themselves.
The Father sent His son Jesus to shepherd His people. He sent His Son to show us the way, the truth, and the life. God would not stand for the selfish shepherds of Israel, He stepped in, and as God said through Isaiah:
I myself will look after and tend my sheep.
God always acts in constancy with what He has told us.
As today’s reading was about our failure to meet God’s expectation, today’s Gospel is about our inaccurate expectations of God.
As people we seek justice, but often call down condemnation that is inconsistent with God’s mercy. As the first workers in the Gospel did, we demand our day’s pay, and call out against our paymaster when we feel cheated, expecting God to give us more than what we were promised in the first place.
God’s mercy and generosity are not for us to debate. None of us can lay claim to perfection in accord with God’s will and God’s ways. None of us should second guess God, because we all come late to the work.
Like the holy martyrs we commemorate today, Claudius, Asterius, Neon, Domnina, and Theonilla, we need to accept what is given. We need to bear the burden of the evils put upon us and keep our focus on God.
Claudius, Asterius, and Neon were martyrs in the persecution conducted by Emperor Diocletian. The three brothers were denounced by their stepmother to Lysias, the proconsul of Cilicia. Their stepmother turned them over so she could lay claim to their property.
It was a definite wrong, and an evil. Yet when they, along with the women Domnina and Theonilla, were confronted by Lysias they did not second guess or complain about their situation. They stood fast in their faith —“ faith in Christ Jesus. When tortured they did not question God’s expectations, nor did they confront God with their expectations. They simply allowed God to be God.
For their faith the brothers were scourged to death. Domnina was beaten to death, and Theonilla, a wealthy Christian widow, was beaten and burned to death.
The martyrs did not complain about the wages they received. They saw what they received, the crown of martyrdom, as the pearl of great price. They were willing to sacrifice everything to obtain that reward. They didn’t second guess God —“ they simply thanked God for the faith they received.
Claudius, Asterius, Neon, Domnina, and Theonilla firmly fell into line with God’s expectation of them. May it be so with us.
Amen.
Boże, który w błogosławionym Filipie, wyznawcy Twoim przykład pokory nam dałeś, spraw abyśmy słudzy Twoi idąc w jego ślady, do pomyślności tego świata serca nie skłaniali, ale szczęścia wiecznego zawsze pragnęli. Przez Chrystusa Pana naszego. Amen.