I Am Behind Because I Am Ahead

Occasionally we hear people say that an institution is behind or ahead of the times (see last two posts). The word “times” here signals either culture or a functional vector; when this concept (if not the phrase) is applied to children, they’re either retarded or precocious; when to a business it is “behind” when it stops growing or fails to go public and then, in turn, fails to engage in diversification or acquisitions.

This dynamic vector has no terminus. I’m evolving, I’m evolving—and forever more. Progress is always to the better, evolution to the higher. Regression and devolution therefore are negatively flavored words. And arrival’s always mythical: the classless society or the end of times rapture. The imagination just refuses the infinite progress as well. Time must have a stop.

Deep engagement with “the times” is listening to one hand clapping. Reality is better pictured as the cycle of the seasons. Autumn is summer’s devolution and the progress toward winter time. And someone behind the times in Winter, dreaming of warmth and colored flowers, may be ahead of time because Spring is just around the corner.

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini

I mentioned a cardinal in the last post who said, in an interview published immediately after his death, that the Church is “200 years out of date” (link). He said further: “Our culture has aged, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up. The Church must admit its mistakes and begin a radical change, starting from the Pope and the bishops. The pedophilia scandals oblige us to take a journey of transformation.” This gentleman, a Jesuit, was Archbishop of Milan (1979-2002) before his appointment as a cardinal—and was viewed as a quite liberal spokesman within the Church. He was born in 1927 and died in 2012.

I came across this statement by looking back to see what happened Out There a year ago September—not then fully aware that today’s theme would be “the times.” I found it fascinating that the Cardinal’s view is, in a way, a match for his liberal tendencies, which are progressive. Not surprisingly, therefore, the headline in The Independent, which I reference above, speaks of a “damning critique” and how it has “rocked the Catholic Church.” Grist for the media mills. Martini contrasts two cultures, one within and one outside the Church. The transformation he advocated, to be sure, was already underway under Benedict XVI (in my opinion); Benedict strove to renew the inner spirit of Catholicism—which is not the sort of thing the media notice. Then came Francis who is much more ebulliently extroverted… In both approaches there is, curiously, an element that does not quite resonate with the secular notion of progress.

On that subject yet a third posting today, the one that follows this one.

The Flavor of the Times

I recall quite well how Autumn felt last year; the patterns are always the same: a little warmer, a little colder, more rain or less, that sort of thing. This morning, taking a survey of the news, I tried to recall what it was like, Out There, a year ago. I could remember nothing. Wikipedia, however, keeps track of such things, and the flavor or last September rapidly returns.

A year ago—and yes, I’d quite forgotten—a YouTube thing called Innocence of Muslims, interpreted as insulting to Mohammed—caused, or was thought to have caused, terrorist attacks against the Western Infidel. For a while, until the handy tag become hopelessly useless, the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Libya, very big news, was explained by that YouTube. Rapidly the story was transformed into an attack on the Obama administration. Remember? And yes. There were two horrid fires at two garment factories in Karachi and Lahore. Tensions between China and Japan peaked over some obscure islands. One cardinal, in a posthumously published letter described the Catholic Church as 200 years behind the times. (How something can be ahead or behind the times is worth a posting on its own; make a note.)

To the fore in my mind this September is the replay of End of the World, read Fiscal Cliff, the bombing (not) of Syria, and the Pope suggesting that the Catholic Church is welcoming and its leaders should stop obsessing about little things. Aljazeera America began its broadcasts; its coverage pleases us. Yesterday we learned, for instance, that China is the only country where more women than men commit suicide—and at least one possible explanation is China’s long-maintained one-child policy (which is now rapidly eroding). Angela Merkel triumphs in Germany, and hand-wringing here because she means “austerity.” We like Angela. A kind of mild thaw—of which the Syrian initiative, read Putin’s, is one element, Iran’s changed foreign policy being another—ought to be marked here because, a year from now, it may well be forgotten again. What would we do without a Global Symbolic Enemy, shades of 1984. In politics the new mantra (may it be completely forgotten in September 2014) is that We must all bear our own Cruz.