Dressing to the Zeroes

Once upon a time, being “dressed to the nines” meant being dressed to perfection, with distinction. It was expected in public, including many places today’s Americans would no longer expect. When I went to college in the late 1970s, my primary way home was by airplane: Detroit to Newark. I always remember putting on a shirt and tie for the trip.

New York Times fashion commentator Vanessa Friedman observes that now “airports look more like giant sleepover parties than transportation hubs. And it’s been that way for some time.” She mostly attributes it to 1960s “rebellion” against “convention,” followed by a successive “getting comfortable” in all venues public and private, consummated by COVID and the work-from-home/look-like-you’re-at-home-at-work ethos. It’s a “statement.”

To borrow from Billy Joel, “when I wore a younger man’s clothes” a girl who had holes in the knees of her jeans would either have been considered a slob or been the object of a collection to help her get a decent set of pants.

I’d add some other factors for today’s trend of dressing down: a lack of respect for others and an egocentricity focused on my own “comfort” to the disdain of others. Everything, including context, is subordinated to “me.” And that “casualness” is not limited to the secular. Take a visual survey of the typical parish Sunday (or Saturday evening anticipated) Masses. No doubt many priests will say they’re just happy people are there. That’s a minimalism that evades a valuable insight: “It’s not all about me.”

Soon It Becomes Real Money

The New York Times claimed (Feb. 18; here) with a certain degree of Schadenfreude that DOGE misrepresented its asserted savings for the American people by billing an $8 million contract as an $8 billion savings. On top of that, since $2.5 million was already dispersed, it really saved only $5.5 million. That’s a governmental rounding error, what Jackie Gleason would once have called “a mere bag of shells!” The chumps are being deceived by Elon and his Musk-eteers!

No, it goes to show the contempt the elites have for chump change and the chumps whose taxes pay $5.5 million or $5.5 billion for it. And how prophetic the late Sen. Everett Dirksen (R-IL) was when he said, “a billion here, a billon there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money!”

Lent and Money

In case you haven’t noticed, Ash Wednesday is about ten days away, on March 5. Easter 2025 is about as late as it can be this year (April 20).

There’s something of a rearguard debate in the Catholic blogosphere about Septuagesima, that three week period that used to precede Lent, eliminated by the Roman Calendar reform but still part of the usus antiquor. Joseph Shaw makes the argument that Septuagesima (see here) serves a useful purpose by getting us ready for the serious business of Lent, rather than having it just spring upon us. (And, let’s face it, our secular calendars really don’t reckon with Lent, especially since Easter — unlike Christmas — is easier to ignore). “The time to think about how to handle Lent is not the week of Ash Wednesday. It is now!” Septuagesima used to be that wakeup call.

Now it seems that, in many dioceses, that wakeup call is some version of the bishop’s annual fund drive. In my Diocese of Arlington, the nexus is even explicit: it’s the “Bishop’s Lenten Appeal” and there’s been no shortage of First and Second Sundays of Lent where the important theology of the Gospels (Jesus’ temptations, the Transfiguration) had to compete for homily time with instructions about properly completing pledge envelopes. My particular pet peeve are pitches dressed up as prayers in the General Intercessions. “That we may respond with generosity to” this year’s campaign seems to be divided between soliciting Divine assistance and putting subliminal messages in the congregation’s mind.

Yes, almsgiving has long been one of the traditional disciplines of Lent and, yes, the Church has a need for the support of the faithful. That said, maybe it’s me but it seems the connection of these two needs some more refinement. And while I am not necessarily urging the restoration of Septuagesima, Shaw does have a point: With the elimination of obligatory Friday abstinence throughout the year, the practical suppression of Ember Days, and the “joyful” vibes of today’s Advent, Lent is now practically the Church’s sole concentrated time of penance. That adds to the importance of some pre-Lenten focus.

Stealing from the Dead

Last summer, I wrote (here) about a peculiar form of theft: stealing metal for scrap metal resale. I mentioned stripping public electrical fixtures like street lights for copper wire or even fire hydrants for iron. Now the New York Times reports (here) the latest insult: grave markers. Graves in a German Catholic cemetery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, whose immigrant denizens were largely laid to rest about a century ago, were mostly marked by zinc plaques because they promised to be the most long-lasting element the immigrants could afford. The plaques lasted a century, until morally corroded metal thieves laid hands on them.

A “Trumpian” Guide to Sex

The Department of Health and Human Services on Feb. 19 released a helpful list of definitions, including what is a “woman.” The list can be seen in capsule form, here. I have emailed a copy to Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson, in the hope that it helps her resolve her conundrum about the possible answer to that difficult and complex question which, absent a biologist’s consultation, would remain insoluble.

Quick conclusions: (1) Thank you, President Trump and Secretary Kennedy, for restating what every normal person knows. (2) The fact that they had to issue this handy-dandy chart itself is telling, and not in a good way. (3) The fact that some pundits brand the action as “controversial” says even more about the cultural rot into which we have slipped.

Polish-American Contributions

Speaking of artifacts left behind: the material culture of Polish Americans. The Polish-American community in the United States now numbers about ten million people. It was generated by three major immigration flows: an economic migration during the height of American industrialization, from 1880-1920 (which Poles call the “emigration for bread,” emigracja za chlebem); a political migration following World War II of those who, having fought in the West, refused to return to a Communist-ruled satellite (the “political emigration,” emigracja polityczna); and a politico-economic migration in the 1980s-90s amidst the dying days of official communism and Poland’s democratic transition (the “Solidarity emigration,” emigracja solidarnościowa). Each made contributions of material culture to the American landscape, most prominently in many of the elegant churches they built but also including many statues, memorials, and other monuments. Ewa Barczyk — retired from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s Library — edited a very thorough (300+ pages) guidebook of these monuments: Footprints of Polonia: Polish Historical Sites across North America  (2022), which includes Canada (Amazon link here). Barczyk and the Polish American Historical Association (PAHA) aim at continuing to keep this work up-to-date, and PAHA depends on voluntary collaboration in that effort. This is particularly important as Catholic Polish-American parishes (which once numbered almost 1,000, now culled to about 175) are the victims of episcopal “renewal” through consolidation and closure. If you have Polish monuments in your area and want to send pictures or any stories, write to Ms. Barczyk at ewa@uwm.edu

You Call It “Clericalism”

I recently posed a series of ecclesiological questions about Pope Francis’s letter on immigration (see here). As I said, while most of the initial reaction to the document focused on its ethical claims, there are also questions about how it matches the Pope’s proclaimed ecclesiology, particularly about “de-clericalization,” when the addressee of that open letter are the Catholic bishops of the United States. I asked how the message was to get to the faithful: are they to read other peoples’ mail or to receive it trickle-down? Reflecting further, I have an additional question: While Francis ostensibly decries “clericalism” and nominally opposes it, might he not think this letter is some kind of fatherly responsibility? Maybe. But can one also ask where the line of even “benign paternalism” becomes clericalism by another name?

Chair of Peter

Saturday, February 22 is the Feast of the Chair of Peter. We should not forget that among the essential tasks of the Holy See (and bishops in union with him) is teaching about faith and morals. In a confused, morally relativistic world, that guidance is even more essential. It isn’t just merely useful: keeping people, especially the People of God, on the straight and narrow to heaven is the Church’s mission. It is willed by God, a gift, to His Church.

That said, respect for the teaching office also seems to require more respect from the teachers, especially when it comes to avoiding or eliminating those things that erode the office: like off-the-cuff remarks that imagine themselves “pastoral” or “non-clerical” but also sow confusion; like leaving impressions that settled ecclesiastical teaching really isn’t settled after all; like leaving suggestions through the art of the unsaid or considering it “discretio”; like failing to walk the walk by ignoring corrosion from the drip-drip-drip of clerical sexual scandal, something deafening many to authoritative teaching, especially in the field of sexual morality. On the last point, Pope St. Paul VI’s words from Evangelii nuntiandi remain apt: “‘Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses'” (no. 41).