Friday, 17 July 2020

16th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

Mersey Leven Catholic Parish
OUR VISION
To be a vibrant Catholic Community 
unified in its commitment 
to growing disciples for Christ 

Parish Priest: Fr Mike Delaney 
Mob: 0417 279 437 
Priest in Residence:  Fr Phil McCormack  
Mob: 0437 521 257
Deacon in Residence: Rev Steven Smith
Mob: 0411 522 630
steven.smith@aohtas.org.au
Seminarian in Residence: Kanishka Perera
Mob: 0499 035 199
kanish_biyanwila@yahoo.com
Postal Address: PO Box 362, Devonport 7310
Parish Office: 90 Stewart Street, Devonport 7310 
(Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am - 3pm)
Office Phone: 6424 2783 Fax: 6423 5160 
Secretary: Annie Davies
Finance Officer: Anne Fisher
Pastoral Council Chair:  Felicity Sly
Mob: 0418 301 573

Mersey Leven Catholic Parish Weekly Newsletter: mlcathparish.blogspot.com.au
Parish Mass times for the Month: mlcpmasstimes.blogspot.com.au
Weekly Homily Podcast: mikedelaney.podomatic.com 

Archdiocesan Website: www.hobart.catholic.org.au for news, information and details of other Parishes.

         

PLENARY COUNCIL PRAYER
Come, Holy Spirit of Pentecost.
Come, Holy Spirit of the great South Land.
O God, bless and unite all your people in Australia 
and guide us on the pilgrim way of the Plenary Council.
Give us the grace to see your face in one another 
and to recognise Jesus, our companion on the road.
Give us the courage to tell our stories and to speak boldly of your truth.
Give us ears to listen humbly to each other 
and a discerning heart to hear what you are saying.
Lead your Church into a hope-filled future, 
that we may live the joy of the Gospel.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, bread for the journey from age to age.   
Amen.
Our Lady Help of Christians, pray for us.
St Mary MacKillop, pray for us.


Parish Prayer


Heavenly Father,
We thank you for gathering us together 
and calling us to serve as your disciples.
You have charged us through Your Son, Jesus, with the great mission
  of evangelising and witnessing your love to the world.
Send your Holy Spirit to guide us as we discern your will
 for the spiritual renewal of our parish.
Give us strength, courage, and clear vision 
as we use our gifts to serve you.
We entrust our parish family to the care of Mary, our mother,
and ask for her intercession and guidance 
as we strive to bear witness
 to the Gospel and build an amazing parish.
Amen.
Our Parish Sacramental Life
Baptism: Arrangements are made by contacting Parish Office. Parents attend a Baptismal Preparation Session organised with a Priest.
Reconciliation, Confirmation and Eucharist: Are received following a Family–centred, Parish-based, School-supported Preparation Program.
Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults: prepares adults for reception into the Catholic community.
Marriage: arrangements are made by contacting one of our priests - couples attend a Pre-marriage Program
Anointing of the Sick: please contact one of our priests
Reconciliation:  BY APPOINTMENT ONLY

THE FOLLOWING PUBLIC ACTIVITIES ARE SUSPENDED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
Eucharistic Adoration Devonport, Benediction with Adoration Devonport,
 Legion of Mary, 


DAILY AND SUNDAY MASS ONLINE: You will need to go to the following link and register:  https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gHY-gMZ7SZeGMDSJyTDeAQ
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. Please keep this confirmation email as that will be your entry point for all further Masses or Liturgies.
Sunday 19 July          Devonport       10:00am – ALSO LIVESTREAM
Monday 20 July         No Mass            ... St Apollinaris           
Tuesday 21 July       Devonport        9:30am ... St Lawrence of Brindisi – ALSO LIVESTREAM
Wednesday 22 July    Ulverstone       9:30am … St Mary Magdalene
Thursday 23 July       No Mass               ... St Bridget
Friday 24 July           No Mass            ... St Sharbel Makhlûf
Saturday 25 July       Ulverstone       6.00pm …St James
Sunday 26 July          Ulverstone      10:00am

If you are looking for Sunday Mass readings or Daily Mass readings, Universalis has the readings as well as the various Hours of the Divine Office - https://universalis.com/mass.htm 

        
Your prayers are asked for the sick:
Fr Frank Gibson, Brian Robertson, Vinco Muriyadan, Fr Michael Wheeler, John Reynolds, Suzanne Ockwell, Graeme Wilson, Kevin Hayes, Rex Evans, Athol Bryan, Jill Murphy, Roberto Escobar, Robert Luxton, Jane Fitzpatrick, Mark Aylett, Marlene Heazlewood, & …

Let us pray for those who have died recently: 
Lita Guison, Sr Maura McAvoy O.P.,  Max Last, Danny Sheehan, Carole Quinn, Reg Hinkley, Veronica Murnane, Charles Max Johnson
                         
Let us pray for those whose anniversary occurs about this time: 15th – 21st July, 2020
Anne Charlesworth, Lawrence Corbett, Jim Landers, Janice Dyson, Michelle Sherriff,  Allen Menzie, Susanne Dooley, Suzanne Grimshaw, John Monaghan, Kathleen Monaghan, Teresa Askew, Deda Burgess, Marlene Willett, Ronald Buxton, Brian Innes, William Dooley, Margaret Charlesworth, Peter Sulzberger, Joseph Peterson, Frances Gerrand, Brian O’Neill, Ernest Pilcher

May the souls of the faithful departed, 
through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen
                                                            

 PREGO REFLECTION ON TODAY’S GOSPEL:
I enter this time of prayer by reverently approaching Jesus the teacher.
I sit at his feet and listen deeply to what he is trying to tell me. 
Yes, he is speaking to the crowds, but he is also speaking directly to me.
As I slowly pray the Gospel, what am I noticing in what Jesus says and in the way he says it? What is touching me as I listen?
Perhaps I am thinking about the evil I see around me, and wondering how to cope with it? Or maybe I am drawn to ponder the weeds I can discern within myself – doubt, mistrust, self-reliance, fear …? 
Could it be that realising where my faults lie can make me humble, more tolerant of others?
As I read again, I may be drawn to the quiet, measured reaction of the landowner. Perhaps I yearn to approach things in a more measured way myself? 
Have I the patience to wait for God’s purposes to be fulfilled?
I continue to pray, asking for whatever I need. 
Perhaps I pray for the constancy always to seek what is good and to ask for an ever-deeper trust in the great depth of God’s mercy.
Glory be ...
                            

Weekly Ramblings

 This morning (Thursday) I was part of an online conversation about the how to Get Wise Counsel. One of the statements that struck home for me is that it is easy to get opinions from people but these do not always have a lot of wisdom or understanding or knowledge. All four of them are very different and, at times, all are very useful but it is knowing the difference that helps make the process of decision making easier.

One of the participants said that her favourite saying about knowledge vs. wisdom is that knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit but wisdom is not putting it into a fruit salad. This simple example reminds us that things that you might consider important may not be that relevant to someone else and so deciding about which way to move forward will have different emphasis for different people.

Also this morning, chatting amongst the people in the house, we reflected on the wonderful way people have been responding to the need to ‘book’ to come to Masses. I also know that some people have found it a ‘pain’ but last Sunday at the Ulverstone Mass we were nearly at capacity and knowing how many people were going to be there meant that we were able to accommodate the few who ‘walked’ in. Please, if you are coming to Mass next weekend (25/26th) contact the Parish Office or book online - Vigil Mass go to https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/vigil-mass-25th-july-2020-tickets-112896127356  or  Sunday morning https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/sunday-mass-26th-july-2020-10am-tickets-112896291848

One of the things we have learnt during these months is the need to have an up-to-date database. What we found was that we were missing important information including mobile numbers (many parishioners no longer have land-lines) and email addresses as well as incomplete or outdated lists of people living at a residence or even the fact that many people have moved and new addresses were not recorded.

So, with the printed newsletter today is an extra page we are inviting parishioners to complete and return to the parish by mail or when next you are present at Mass or, if you receive the online version, an attachment that can be completed and emailed back with your details. Please complete the information even if you think/know we have your details – I’d much rather have too much information that not enough.


Once again I would like to express my gratitude to all those people who have been so supportive of all we have been trying to do during these challenging times as we pray that we might be spared the situation that is currently effecting Victoria and parts of NSW.

Stay safe, stay sane and, if you can, stay at home
                              
ORDINATION OF STEVEN SMITH:
With Praise and Thanksgiving to Almighty God the Catholic Archdiocese of Hobart, together with the Smith family, will celebrate the ordination of Steven Paul Smith to the Sacred Order of the Priesthood by His Grace Most Rev. Julian Porteous DD, Friday 24th July at 7pm St Mary’s Cathedral, Hobart. Due to Covid restrictions you are invited to view the ordination ceremony by following the link below:

THE FOLLOWING WEEK THE ORDINATION OF CHATHURA SILVA:
The Archdiocese of Hobart, together with the Ranmuni Silva family, cordially invite you to join the celebration of the Ordination to the Priesthood of Chathura Ranmuni Silva on Friday, 31st July 2020 at 7 pm.
Due to Covid restrictions you are invited to view the ordination ceremony by  following the link below:

YouTube links for the live streaming of Deacon Smith’s and Deacon Silva’s Ordination to the Priesthood:
Deacon Steven Smith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx_BodiefhM
Deacon Chathura Silva: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BMfU-84hns


SUPPORTING THE PARISH FINANCIALLY:
To continue supporting the Parish you can ...
·    Drop your contribution into the Parish Office during our usual office hours
          (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10am -3pm)
·   Make an electronic transfer of funds directly into the CDF – Commonwealth        Bank  Account Name: Mersey Leven; BSB: 067 000; Acc No: 1031 5724 and in      the  description simply add your name and/or envelope number thank you.

BECOMING MISSIONARY DISCIPLES EVANGELIUM CONFERENCE 2020
The Archdiocese of Hobart, invites you to attend the Evangelium Conference. The keynote speaker is Jude Hennessy, Director Office of Renewal and Evangelisation from the Diocese of Wollongong. The conference will be taking place on Saturday 29 August, in Launceston. To register or to find out more, go to www.eventbrite.com.au and search ‘Evangelium Conference’. Alternately contact Ella Tobin on 0468 601 517.  
                          




Mersey Leven Catholic Parish would like to wish Michael Gaffney
 a happy 80th birthday on Saturday 18th July.
God bless you Michael on your special day!
                                                

Letter From Rome
At the Halfway Point Of 2020,
Is the Year Already Over For The Vatican?


Until further notice there will be few tourists, cancelled meetings and no papal travel

-  Robert Mickens, Rome, July 17, 2020. 

This article is from the La-Croix International website - you can access the site here but complete full access is via paid subscription

This was supposed to be the year!

"When the history of Pope Francis' time as Bishop of Rome is finally written, there is a good chance that the Year of Our Lord 2020 will be recorded as the most important of his entire pontificate."

At least that's what I thought back in January.

But suddenly the coronavirus pandemic arrived and, now, everything looks up for grabs…It did not look like that at the beginning of the year.

Some are wondering whether it may actually be (Francis') last.

The pope's recent decisions to "retire" the powerful Italian churchman Angelo Sodano as dean of the College of Cardinals and to make Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of the Philippines head one of the most powerful Vatican offices – Propaganda Fide – are being read as signs that Francis is beginning to prepare for the election of his successor on the Chair of Peter.

The 83-year-old Jesuit pope will also be issuing two major documents in 2020, and probably a few others. He'll continue to travel the globe, possibly going to places where his predecessors had hoped to visit but were denied entry. And there's no doubt he will add more men to the illustrious red-hatted group from which will emerge the next Bishop of Rome.

So any way one looks at this new calendar year, it will almost certainly prove to be pivotal.

Any way one looks at it, indeed!

Don't cry for me Amazonia
The only major thing that Francis managed to get done before the pandemic caged him inside the Vatican was to issue his post-synodal exhortation, Querida Amazonia. And for a variety of reasons that are not all well founded, that document left a lot of people disappointed.

As for travelling to places where his predecessors were denied entry, you can put that on hold, too. The pope's not going anywhere right now or in the near future.

How bad is it? So bad that it's now big news that Vatican cardinals and archbishops are going to start crossing the Italian border and travel to other parts of Europe, which has been possible since June 3. That's more than a month ago.

As for creating new cardinals, there's word that Francis has ordered 15 new rings to give out with red hats at an upcoming consistory. But there is no indication when that might happen. And, as it's always been in this pontificate, it's hard to tell whom Francis will put in this college that will eventually elect his successor.

Where's the McCarrick report?
There's also the not so little matter of the exhaustive report on the former member of college named Theodore McCarrick.

It has now been two years since Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal nuncio to the United States, issued a blistering attack on the Jesuit pope, accusing him of turning a blind eye to McCarrick's sexual misconduct and calling on him to resign the papacy.

Where is this report? The Vatican promised that it would soon release it.

The delay likely has to do with the fact – fact, not speculation – that Francis' most immediate predecessor, and officials in that previous pontificate, bear considerably more responsibility than the Argentine pope for whatever lack of oversight there was concerning the former cardinal than he does.

The current pope certainly doesn't want to release a report that causes more embarrassment to his elderly and frail Benedict XVI who is mourning the recent death of what was his last sibling.

The bizarre state of suspended animation
It is a strange time at the Vatican. There are very, very few tourists and pilgrims right now, even more than a month after European residents were allowed to start travelling to each other's countries.

Most shops around St. Peter's Square are still closed. The whole area has a feel of abandonment, emptiness. This punctuates the continued state of suspended animation one feels regarding our partial return to worship. Or should that be our return to partial worship?

We are in bizarre times right now.

After so many months of lockdown, and then piecemeal re-opening, there is a feeling of weariness and fatigue at the Vatican. And there's a sense of uncertainty about the future.

Pope Francis, for his part, is taking his normal stay-at-home holidays during all of July. One can only wonder what he is preparing for the next half of 2020, despite ongoing restraints.

He has always demonstrated an uncanny ability to launch an initiative or make big news when it's least expected.

We must be on the alert then, for we do not know the day nor the hour.
                                  

Love: The Highest Form Of Knowing
This article is taken from the Daily Email sent by Fr Richard Rohr OFM from the Center for Action and Contemplation. You can subscribe to receive the email by clicking here 

My good friend, Franciscan sister and scientist Ilia Delio, has written a wonderful autobiography. In it she recounts how her parents decided to name her Denise. (She would have been named Denis had she been a boy.) Later in life, she was delighted to find a meaningful connection with the man who first approached theology in an explicitly mystical way in his text Mystical Theology. Delio writes: 
When I was doing my doctoral work in theology at Fordham University, I was introduced to the master of mystical theology, Denis the Areopagite, or Pseudo-Dionysius [who wrote in the late fifth to early sixth century]. I was immediately struck by the name “Denis”—the mysterious person who wrote the most exquisite words stretching into the mystery of the incomprehensible God. . . . God is the name of absolute divine mystery beyond any speech or thought or movement. God’s love is so tremendous, this mystical writer claimed, that God is like a sober drunk, falling over himself in the desire to share divine life.  
God, the eros of divine love 
God, agape, giving Godself away 
God, ek-static, standing outside Godself, in the creation of the world 
God, the volcanic eruption of divine life. 

Because God’s eros is cosmic, Dionysius claimed, the whole universe is drawn to God, who is always utterly transcendent. God is both hidden and revealed, and there is no access to the hidden God except by way of God manifested in creation. We long for God because God longs for us; God eternally desires to give Godself away in love so we can give ourselves in love; love always stands outside itself in the other. 

To be united to God we must “break through” the sensible world and pass beyond the human condition to move beyond knowing to unknowing, from knowledge to love. In his De mystica theologia Denis wrote: “As we plunge into that darkness which is beyond intellect, we shall find ourselves not simply running short of words but actually speechless and unknowing.” [1] . . .    

Christian mystics understood love as the core of reality and spoke of a deep relationship between love and knowledge. “Love is the highest form of knowing,” Saint Augustine wrote. [2] Gregory the Great said, “Love itself is a form of knowing” (amor ipse notitia est), meaning that the love by which we reach God implies a form of knowing above ordinary reason. [3] William of St. Thierry put it beautifully in this way: “In the contemplation of God where love is chiefly operative, reason passes into love and is transformed into a certain spiritual and divine understanding which transcends and absorbs all reason.” [4]  

Wisdom is knowledge deepened by love. The wise person knows more deeply by way of love than by way of argument because the eye of the heart can see the truth of reality. Hence the wise person is one who knows and sees God shining through everything, even what seems ugly or despised.  

[1] Pseudo-Dionysius, “The Mystical Theology,” in Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibhéid (Paulist Press: 1987), 139. 
[2] For example Bernard McGinn, who writes, “Love and knowledge are intertwined in Augustine’s mystical consciousness.” See Bernard McGinn, The Foundations of Mysticism: Origins to the Fifth Century, vol. 1 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (Crossroad: 1994), 235. 
[3] Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism—1200-1350, vol. 3 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (Crossroad: 1988), 82. 
[4] McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism, 82. 
Ilia Delio, Birth of a Dancing Star: My Journey from Cradle Catholic to Cyborg Christian (Orbis Books: 2019), 5-6, 200-201.
                             

Some Secrets Worth Knowing

This article is taken from the archive of Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI. You can find this article and many others by clicking here 

Monks have secrets worth knowing, and these can be invaluable when a coronavirus pandemic is forcing millions of us to live like monks.

Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of us have been forced to stay at home, work from home, practice social distancing from everyone except those in our own houses and have minimal social contact with the outside. In a manner of speaking, this has turned many of us into monks, like it or not. What’s the secret to thrive there?

Well, I’m not a monk, nor a mental health expert, so what I share here isn’t exactly the rule of St. Benedict or a series of professional mental health tips. It’s the fruit of what I’ve learned from monks and from living in the give-and-take of a religious community for fifty years.

Here are ten counsels for living when we are, in effect, housebound, that is, living in a situation wherein we don’t have a lot of privacy, have to do a lot of living within a very small circle, face long hours wherein we have to struggle to find things that energize us, and wherein we find ourselves for good stretches of time frustrated, bored, impatient, and lethargic. How does one survive and thrive in that situation?
  • Create a routine. That’s the key. It’s what monks do. Create a detailed routine for the hours of your day as you would a financial budget. Make this very practical: list the things you need to do each day and slot them into a concrete timetable and then stick to that as a discipline, even when it seems rigid and oppressive. Resist the temptation to simply go with the flow of your energy and mood or to lean on entertainment and whatever distractions can be found to get you through your days and nights.
  • Wash and dress your body each day, as if you were going out into the world and meeting people. Resist the temptation to cheat on hygiene, dress, and make-up. Don’t spend the morning in your pajamas: wash and dress-up. When you don’t do this, what are you saying to your family? They aren’t worth the effort? And what are you saying to yourself? I’m not worth the effort? Slovenliness invariably becomes lethargy and acedia.
  • Look beyond yourself and your needs each day to see others and their hurts and frustrations. You’re not in this alone; the others are enduring exactly what you are. Nothing will make your day harder to endure than excessive self-focus and self-pity.
  • Find a place to be alone for some time every day and offer others that same courtesy. Don’t apologize that you need time away, to be by yourself. That’s an imperative for mental health, not a selfish claim. Give others that space. Sometimes you need to be apart, not just for your own sake but for the sake of the others.  Monks live an intense community life, but each also has a private cell within which to retreat.
  • Have a contemplative practice each day that includes prayer.  On the schedule you create for yourself, mark in at least a half hour or an hour each day for some contemplative practice: pray, read scripture, read from a serious book, journal, paint a picture, paint a fence, create an artifact, fix something, garden, write poetry, write a song, begin a memoir, write a long letter to someone you haven’t seen for years, whatever; but do some something that’s freeing for your soul and have it include some prayer.
  • Practice “Sabbath” daily. Sabbath need not be a day; it can be an hour. Give yourself something very particular to look forward to each day, something enjoyable and sensual: a hot bath, a glass of wine, a cigar on the patio, a rerun of a favorite old sitcom, a nap in the shade in a lawn chair, anything – as long as it’s done purely for enjoyment. Make this a discipline.
  • Practice “Sabbath” weekly. Make sure that only six days of the week are locked into your set routine. Break the routine once a week. Set one day apart for enjoyment, one day when you may eat pancakes for breakfast in your pajamas.
  • Challenge yourself with something new.  Stretch yourself by trying something new. Learn a new language, take up a new hobby, learn to play an instrument. This is an opportunity you’ve never had. 
  • Talk through the tensions that arise within your house – though carefully. Tensions will arise when living in a fishbowl. Monks have community meetings to sort out those tensions. Talk tensions through honestly with each other, but carefully; hurtful remarks sometimes never quite heal.
  • Take care of your body. We aren’t disembodied spirits.  Be attentive to your body. Get enough exercise each day to keep your body energized. Be careful not to use food as a compensation for your enforced monasticism. Monks are careful about their diet – except on feast days.
Monks do have secrets worth knowing!
                               

The World After Covid-19: A Typology Of Crises

While certain restrictions may be easing in the UK, the prospect of a world after Covid-19 still seems to be remote, if it is possible at all. When it comes to shaping the post-virus world, how do we even frame the right questions, and from which perspectives do those questions need to be asked? In the first of a two-part article, Frank Turner SJ surveys the complex political, economic, environmental and civic terrain to which coronavirus has directed our attention, and from which decisions must be made.
Frank Turner SJ is a fellow in political theology at Campion Hall, University of Oxford.

From the earliest stages of the global struggle with Covid-19, firstly in China, then elsewhere, ill-prepared governments were scrambling to formulate policies balancing such intractable imponderables as ‘lockdown versus openness’, weighing the dangers of a health catastrophe against those of wrecking the economy. The stakes could hardly have been higher. Early estimates of possible deaths from Covid in the UK spoke of 500,000. On the other hand, the World Bank judges that the pandemic ‘has triggered the most widespread global economic meltdown since at least 1870 and risks fuelling a dramatic rise in poverty levels around the globe’.

From the outset, too, long-term questions were emerging about the ‘post-Covid’ world. Such questions risk wishful thinking. Will the world indeed ‘emerge from crisis’, or are we now compelled to recognise that the concept of a ‘crisis-free existence’ is mere complacency? A public health specialist estimates that, even given a promising new treatment for those with severe symptoms, we must learn ‘to live with this virus for the months and years to come’. In any case the language of a ‘return to normality’ implies a complacent myopia that can prescind from violence and mass suffering elsewhere: the reality of 5.4 million lives lost by violence over the decade of civil war and its aftermath in the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, rarely troubled news media in the UK or USA.

Perspective, too, is crucial. What ‘world’ are we discussing, and seen from where? From China or Central America, or Amazonia? From Wall Street or Westminster? We need a typology of crises. We cannot dispense with the perspective of global poverty and inequality. But urgent security issues also arise. The Council of Europe’s Committee on Counter-Terrorism has warned that the global coronavirus outbreak could encourage the use of biological weapons by terrorists. Their potential harm far outweighs ‘conventional’ attacks and currently the world’s government and security resources are severely stretched. Similarly, imagine the devastation inflicted by a successful cyber-attack on a country’s healthcare system.

The world does not face crises one at a time. If we can postulate ‘a time after Covid’, that time will also follow a US presidential election in November that could profoundly affect geopolitics for the next few decades, and it will postdate the outcome of the Brexit process that will shape the UK’s future no less than will the impact of the pandemic. It may (or may not) postdate the surge in social turmoil provoked by the killing by Minneapolis police of George Floyd. (It seems emblematic of the clash of priorities and perspectives that ‘Black Lives Matter’ demonstrations were themselves criticised for undermining the practice of physical distancing.) Certainly, the crisis will not displace the even more formidable impact of climate change and environmental destruction. All these — and other, still unsuspected, forces – will constantly interact.

Taking a broad view naturally risks becoming unduly abstract, deflecting attention away from facing immediate challenges, especially where they divide countries and/or scientific opinion. Take the British government’s recent decision about whether to curtail or to prolong ‘lockdown’. An extended article of 10 May in The Atlantic argues that ‘minimizing the number of Covid-19 deaths today or a month from now or six months from now may or may not minimize the human costs of the pandemic when the full spectrum of human consequences is considered’. We can judge securely only on hindsight, yet decisions must be made now. In any case, the future on which we speculate depends not least on how we respond in the present, just as the theological virtue of hope differs radically from ‘optimism’, since such hope can only be rooted in God’s faithfulness, as it inspires our own faithfulness.

Nevertheless, there can be no understanding without taking the long view, and without taking multiple perspectives. No one can forecast future outcomes, but it is possible to anticipate future dilemmas and choices, to identify what factors might make a crucial difference.

Politics
Political debates about the responsibilities of the state and about its appropriate limits often proceed according to two traditional polar positions:
  • a ‘neoliberal’ position: governmental planning is the least effective and the most wasteful way to manage societies. The rightful primary role of the state is to facilitate the more efficient working of the market and then get out of the way;
  • a ‘social democratic’ position: state responsibility for the economy (as for the maintenance of law and order, etc.) is an inalienable function: only a government, overseeing state institutions, has the mandate and duty to care for the overall public good.
Both positions face the difficulty that, in the modern world, states often find themselves relatively helpless against transnational corporations, globalised finance, and challenges that transcend any state such as climate change, the movement of peoples and transnational taxation. In 2020 we have learned, first, that no one (and no commercial corporation) is a free-marketeer in a crisis. The corporate world accepts that government regulation and control is legitimate and vital. Simultaneously, the same corporations (and citizens) depend on the state to bail them out (for instance by paying furlough), just as citizens depend on the state to support us in our personal need.

We have also discovered that many transnational structures are too shaky to provide either global governance or universal support. Thus, in this crisis, both the power and the prominence of single states has dramatically increased (for better or worse). Maurice Glasman argues that the virus has ‘sounded the death knell for liberal globalisation’.

This thesis needs to be qualified. The crisis has strengthened some of the largest corporate oligarchies (Amazon, Facebook, et al.), and there is no sign that global finance has surrendered its power to avoid reasonable levels of national taxation. We can suppose that the biggest corporations are well-placed to profit, whether vulnerable competitors collapse or are resuscitated.

We also continue newly to realise how much depends on the ethos and competence of each single state. Evidently, some states have managed the Covid crisis far better than others: the governments of South Korea and Taiwan, for example, responded much more effectively than did the UK, though with no additional notice of its dangers. In the Times Literary Supplement (‘Models and Muddles’, 24 April 2020) the economist Paul Collier commented on the sense of British exceptionalism that inhibited the government from learning from the world beyond the anglosphere.

The more fundamental danger remains that of ultra-authoritarian states, or reckless leaders. After a culpably slow start, then a reflex denial mechanism, the Chinese government seems to have responded effectively to Covid. But there are legitimate fears that its efficacy rests on a surveillance capacity that bodes ill for the future. In El Salvador, an initially popular president now seems now ominously out of control.

The ideal, of course, is that states will cooperate for the universal good, not least through accepting that their autonomy may be qualified by the international order. That ideal — as shown in the US President’s drastic attack on the World Health Organisation, an attack which will impact tragically on millions of people in Yemen and elsewhere — remains remote.

Economics
Adam Tooze, author of Crashed, a respected book on the financial crisis that exploded in 2008, notes the dynamic of the early phase of the present crisis. Government intervention on a scale unprecedented in peacetime has inevitably threatened governments’ own finances. We suddenly find that at the heart of the global economy (driven by the commercial imperatives of growth and profitability) lies a public institution – the central bank, normally functioning discreetly but now thrust into prominence as lender of last resort even to governments.

In May, for example, after much hesitation, the European Central Bank mounted a ‘pandemic emergency programme’, buying up €750 billion of government and corporate debt. Tooze explains that these central bank instruments of the EU and the USA have so far proved robust enough to cope. However, we are by no means safe: I mention four factors.
  • We do not know whether these interventions have stoked government debts so massive as to hamstring public policy for decades. Are we doomed again to the ‘austerity’ that has widened wealth inequality even since 2008?
  • We do not know whether the steps taken so far will suffice to withstand any worsening of the crisis in the West – an outcome that is entirely possible, since no end is in sight. (The World Trade Organization forecasts that world trade could fall by as much as 32% in 2020.)
  • There is every sign that Covid has exacerbated social inequalities, not flattened them. The Economist has pointed out that the surge in unemployment caused by the decline of heavy industry, mining and so on primarily affected male employment (dramatic inequalities were regional): in the present crisis, however, employed women have been far more at risk than men. They are over-represented in the service and retail sector, where jobs demand personal contact with clients and therefore cannot be done from home, and which have not been deemed essential.
  • The most pressing question of all: what of poorer countries and the entire developing world? Their central banks cannot possibly support governmental intervention on the required scale. No ‘furlough’ arrangements will be offered to millions of agricultural workers in lockdown. No ‘physical distancing’ is possible in a favela. What scale of sharing might be adequate, who can say? Gordon Brown has called on the G20 to establish a ‘coronavirus fund’ of $2.5 trillion. (By comparison, Brown University in the USA estimates that the USA’s costs in Iraq, from 2003 to 2010, a period covering the war and the subsequent military occupation, were $1.1 trillion.)
In a recent interview with the Quaker Council for European Affairs, Professor Cynthia Enloe pointed out the vapidity of any political rhetoric, in seeking support for painful decisions, that ‘we are all in this together’. We may all be in the same stormy sea. But we are far from ‘in the same boat’: some are in leaky and overcrowded dinghies, others in luxury yachts with well-stocked bars. A shared crisis does not ensure solidarity, governments respond disproportionately to lobbies with power, and the market does not correct anomalies.

Environment and climate change
A common reporting theme over these last months has been an amazing side-effect of Covid-19, as the natural world has reasserted itself with unimaginable speed. Fish swim in the canals of Venice, the citizens of Los Angeles can see the San Gabriel mountains clearly in suddenly unpolluted skies. On 15 May the editorial of the Financial Times noted that the virus may trigger the largest ever annual drop in carbon dioxide emissions. (If we think in terms of ‘integral ecology’, we must add that, in health terms, this fall in emissions is estimated to have assisted some two million patients with lung problems, in the UK alone.) It is both symbolic and prosaically accurate to state that Covid attacks the lungs.

We know that temporary benefits (such as the alleviation of noise levels for those living near airports) are quickly reversible, so in the long run all depends on the prevailing vision of economic development.

The US academic and activist Bill McKibben, in a recent article in the online journal Literary Hub, identifies one hopeful trend that needs to be mainstreamed. Since public transport cannot function as it currently does whilst requiring a sufficient degree of physical distancing (especially in cities the size of London), cities have a choice: permitting unrestricted car use (until the system seizes up); or do what is being planned in Milan, and even in London – establish a central zone closed to traffic fed by enhanced pedestrian and cycle priority, with efficient public transport. (This part-solution, however, seems hardly conceivable yet for the developing world.)

Second, can the millions of unemployed find work in converting our energy systems from fossil fuels? This can happen given the political will, at least up to a point. However, the ‘political will’ itself requires popular support – as Franklin D. Roosevelt is said to have advised a group of lobbyists: ‘OK, you’ve convinced me. Now go out and put pressure on me.’ I shall return to this point. Third, to what extent can the immense government subsidies given in many countries to fossil fuel industries, and extended to the airline industry, be redirected to essential public services such as prisons, care homes and indeed environmental protection?

However, ominous signs are plentiful, and I cite one example. In June 2020, Dominic Preziosi reported in Commonweal (Vol 147, No 6) that the reduction in carbon emissions in the USA in 2020 could be as much as eleven percent, thanks to the effective shutdown of coal-fired power plants, both dirty and hugely expensive to run even in periods of normal electricity demand. Meanwhile, however, in March, as the USA went partly into lockdown, ‘the White House announced the rollback of Obama-era automobile fuel-efficiency standards, a move that will lead to the release of a billion more tons of carbon dioxide’. Worse still, in late May, the director of the Environmental Protection Agency (of all bodies) was drafting ‘new rules that would legally enshrine business interests, not public-health benefits, as the primary measure in evaluating compliance with environmental regulations’; a move that could potentially hamstring even future administrations.

Civic and political culture
The cultural historian, Yuval Noah Harari, recently wrote a stimulating extended commentary in the Financial Times on ‘The World after Corona’. He discusses ‘the biggest crisis of our generation’:

… the decisions people and governments take in the next few weeks will probably shape the world for years to come. They will shape not just our healthcare systems but also our economy, politics and culture. We must act quickly and decisively. We should also take into account the long-term consequences of our actions.
The previous sections have illustrated what an extraordinary demand Harari here makes on governments. He is right to stress that an extraordinary experiment is taking place under pressure. We do not understand the consequences of requiring social and commercial life to proceed only at a safe distance, or through virtual technologies, or for universities to teach online while maintaining student fees at previous levels. We can hardly imagine the long-term implications when governments confine populations to their homes, and subsidise thousands of businesses and millions of salaries for months on end. It is an experiment without a control group. In normal circumstances such steps would seem outrageous – and they may be discredited in retrospect. However, notes Harari rightly, ‘the risks of doing nothing are bigger’. He identifies two structural tensions, with illustrations.

1. The first is between ‘totalitarian surveillance’ and ‘citizen empowerment’. China is manifesting its unique capacity to bring the pandemic under control, notably by means of tracking technology. Harari discusses the imminent prospect of ‘under-the skin’ surveillance, imagining a (hypothetical!) government that required citizens to wear biometric bracelets that recorded body temperature and heart rate. The state would know not only who you met (as it already probably does), but ‘what makes you really, really angry’. If the algorithm shows that some governmental statement infuriates you, what then? Arrest you as a dissident? Harari cites not only China but also Israel, where the government has still failed to withdraw many of the ‘emergency measures’ imposed in … 1948. No doubt the surveillance capacity of the USA or the UK is no less.

To this chilling prospect Harari opposes ‘citizen empowerment’, pointing out that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea gained widespread civic consent for tracking measures to guard against the virus. He jokes that most of us use soap to defend against infection, without the intervention of the ‘soap police’! He believes that, if citizens can fundamentally trust their governments, citizen enlightenment can rise to the challenge.

However, this ‘if’ is momentous; and Harari does not discuss the twentieth-century history that renders such trust so elusive. Citizens might willingly surrender certain freedoms in the short term, since privacy concerns may be trumped by health concerns: only, however, given the confidence that these freedoms were not permanently at risk. But how could trust be built between citizens and a totalitarian government, the case he postulates? He suggests ‘that the same surveillance technology can usually be used not only by governments to monitor individuals — but also by individuals to monitor governments.’ Really? Whistleblowers suffer a harsh fate. It may be just conceivable that citizens’ movements could track governments. But the governments in question would swiftly crush such movements.

2. The second of Harari’s tensions is that between ‘nationalist isolation’ and ‘global solidarity’. Governments, he suggests, need to learn from each other far more readily than they do, and ‘to be able to trust the data and the insights they receive’. Only governmental cooperation can match skilled personnel to the regions where they are most needed, or facilitate medically essential international travel by pre-screening travellers in their own countries.

The improbable adoption of this suggestion would probably remedy certain glaring failures of public policy. However, its scope is limited. Despite his passing reference to the pooling of medical personnel with the worst-hit countries, Harari nowhere refers to Africa, South Asia or Latin America. When he writes of ‘solidarity’, he seems to mean international cooperation amongst technologically advanced societies, which serves each nation’s enlightened self-interest. Willing cooperation would be far preferable to systemic suspicion. But it is far short of ’solidarity’ which, in the writings of recent popes, implies that others’ suffering is experienced as our own, so that we may stand with them even at great personal cost.

Another element, recently much discussed and crucial in shaping our future, is the quality, of ‘resilience’. In conversation recently, a colleague identified to me three aspects of psychological resilience: (1) the capacity to face squarely whatever challenge or ordeal we face; (2) to find meaning in those realities, and in our responses to them; (3) to respond creatively, showing that we are not deprived of inner resources.

The term ‘resilience’ is also commonly applied in the field of international development. A usefully broad definition is that of USAID: ‘the ability of individuals, households, communities, institutions, nations, or even value chains and ecosystems to withstand crises, recover from them, and adapt so as to better withstand them’. Its dimensions include disaster response, capacity-building, endurance under prolonged pressure. It can be a property of systems, as well as a fundamental quality of the human spirit. In the latter case, as opposed to the former, it is most likely to be found in regions and amongst communities who have not been led by their experience to consider comfort and security as the norm.

In the case of Covid-19, in the article already referred to, Paul Collier characterises resilience as ‘the speed at which an ecosystem recovers after a disturbance’. Crucial are the factors of diversity and adaptability. However, suggests Collier, ‘our economy has rewarded razor-thin efficiency in the recent past’ But ‘razor-thin’ margins ‘offer no buffer in the face of disruption’, as we have seen in the case of some global supply chains. We need, therefore, to shape our social and economic systems to encourage resilience, ‘anti-fragility’. And we need to resist any facile aspiration to return to a ‘normality’ that has become both irrational and unethical.

In these last months, the dignity of labour has been recognised even by governments that traditionally favour business, which often denigrated trade unions. Government ministers have eulogised ‘essential workers’, often the least privileged, poorly paid and politically excluded.

Yet it remains true that workers’ remuneration and negotiating status, over against managements and boards have not been realigned. Amongst the groups hardest hit by Covid have been those euphemistically called ‘self-employed’, meaning contract workers without rights or social protection.

It seems symbolic that, after his Covid illness, Boris Johnson singled out his two closest medical carers for grateful praise; one came from Portugal, one from New Zealand. Yet Mr Johnson’s government almost immediately repeated its insistence that employment visas would favour those immigrants who earned £50,000 or more. About the same time, the government’s rejection of low-paid EU nationals was followed by the scramble to allow them back in temporarily to harvest our crops.

The ‘normal’ that constituted our prosperous Western European social world was itself a problem, an absurd illusion, the very condition of our fragility and vulnerability. What we have admired most during Covid has emerged from social partnership, not market competition. Frances O’Grady, General Secretary of the TUC cited non-controversial examples: ‘people staying at home to protect our NHS, businesses and unions working together to keep people in their jobs, manufacturers switching production to life-saving ventilators, neighbours all over the country shopping for older people nearby.’

Not least, the government brought unions and civil society into policy discussion, as well as business leaders. A return to the so-called normality of a minimum wage that kept workers in poverty, of zero-sum contracts, would dissolve the social capital that has been generated. The radical loss of power experienced by the unions in the last decades has left many workers unprotected against the excesses of corporate power.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)