South Bend, Ind., Nov 12, 2019 / 02:48 am (CNA).- Are the times these days good or bad?
That depends, in part, on how one reads the times.
On the one hand, technological advances have brought illiteracy levels throughout the world from 90% to only 10%. Advances in science and medicine are allowing people to live longer and healthier lives.
“These are some of the good things that are happening. I think a lot of it is done out of friendship, out of good intention,” Archbishop Borys Gudziak, the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparch of Philadelphia, and the Metropolitan for the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the U.S., said November 7. Gudziak was one of the keynote speakers for the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture 21st annual fall conference, which this year had the theme: “I have called you friends.”
“I don’t canonize our times and I don’t canonize longevity, but we do appreciate these things,” he said.
“And yet the times are not so good,” Gudziak added.
“In fact, they’re similar to…what it was in 1914 when the Western world was convinced that progress would lead us to great happiness. Then the massacres began. World wars. The genocides,” Gudziak said.
He noted that for all of our technological and social progress, Americans are lonelier, more depressed and more stressed than ever. In Pennsylvania, one of the states where he serves, the opioid crisis has left people sick, dying, lonely and without hope.
“It’s important to focus on friendship because no amount of material, educational, technological, industrial welfare can compensate for the relationships that we are called to,” he said.
Gudziak said some of the most profound friendships he’s seen are those he witnessed in Soviet Russia before it fell, and those he continues to witness in countries controlled by communism, although these friendships are not easy or without cost.
“In all of these countries that were or continue to be communist, where millions of people were killed, where the system killed systematically, people over generations developed a reflex to put on a mask, put up a facade, build a wall because the outside world is dangerous,” Gudziak said.
Families are encouraged to inform authorities against each other in communist countries, “so people in the family don’t say things, because you can’t trust. It becomes like a radiation.”
“You can’t taste it, has no smell, no color, but it mutates the genes. There’s an extra fear chromosome. It’s a reflex. You can’t control it. Two billion people have an added obstacle to cultivate profound friendship.”
And yet it was in these oppressive conditions in Soviet Russia that the Ukrainian Catholic Church, while it lost many members, grew deep roots and bonds of friendship among those that remained.
“(T)he Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which had about 4 million members in 1939, with 3,000 priests, was totally – on a visible level – liquidated,” Gudziak said.
“In 1945-46 all the bishops were arrested, hundreds of priests with their families were deported to Siberia. The church was rendered illegal and it remained the biggest illegal church in the world for 43 years until 1989. And it was very reduced. By 1989 there were only 300 priests left,” he said.
“But what a community it was! Forged in that fire of persecution,” he added.
When he met the underground Church, Gudziak said everything was stripped to the bare minimum – bishops had jobs as ambulance drivers or coal workers, there were no schools or churches or official institutions of any kind. The bishops didn’t even know one another’s names, because it was too dangerous to tell someone your name in underground seminary.
“And yet they were profoundly friends of Christ, and it was an incredible, intense relationship of those in the underground,” Gudziak said.
“The friendship was not just kind of a nice thing, it cost profoundly to be a friend of Christ in an atheist totalitarian system,” he said. “It cost to pass down the faith to your children. But the fruits are amazing.”
The Ukranian Catholic Church now again has 3,000 priests, 5 million members and 800 seminarians.
The story of the Ukranian Catholic Church is important because “it’s the story of the cross,” Gudziak told CNA in an interview.
“I think the story of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, its persecution, its underground life, its survival…it’s not a philosophy, it’s a story of human faithfulness to God…the faithfulness of concrete people to God and to each other.”
From the beginning of humanity, God has been teaching human beings about true friendship, Gudziak noted in his talk.
“From the scriptures we know from our faith, we experience that the Lord so yearns to make us his friends. Moses had a special privilege to see face-to-face. Abraham was called a friend. The value of friendship was modeled by David and Jonathan,” he said.
“Then, Jesus came to us. Our faith, our church, our theology, our civilization is based on this incredible gesture that God comes to be close, to convey his divinity. He sits next to us,” he said.
“What a God, what a Lord, and what is He conveying? He’s conveying the divine life shared by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Friendship…motivates the Father to send his Son into (the world’s) grime, into our anxiety, our sin, the pitch blackness that we can create, into our hell, into our death, to create relationship, to create trust, intimacy, to establish an alliance.”
“Friendship,” he said, “is the school of the spiritual life which reflects the gift of relationship that we have, by virtue of being created in the image and likeness of God. God is triune. He’s personal and there’s relationship. We as persons are called to relationship. We’re called to friendship.”
Besides his appointments in the U.S., Gudziak also serves as the president of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. In striving to teach their students about true friendship, the university invites academics as well as students with disabilities into its classes and campus, he said.
“Not because they need us, because they need our social handout, but because the children of God with special needs have special gifts. They don’t care where you got your Ph.D. or how many publications you have. They don’t notice how rich or poor you are or, which title you carry,” he said.
“They have one basic question: Can you love?…There’s no more important pedagogical question.”
In a world increasingly divided along political, religious and other ideological lines, Gudziak told CNA it is all the more important that Christians reflect on God’s friendship to us, and in turn our friendship with him and with others.
“I think ever since The Enlightenment, when we’ve really been focusing a lot on ideas, there’s a tendency for ideas to become ideologies. And our consciousness in the Western world is very intellectualized, and our relationships can become abstract. They can be categorized according to different positions, world views, and they’re in our head,” he said.
“If we look carefully at the Gospels and listen to Jesus, he doesn’t speak about grand ideas. He talks about the Father, the Holy Spirit. He talks about relationships,” he added. “He talks about persons and interaction among persons, and he uses very personal, very concrete examples and stories to teach about life. He doesn’t start from ideas and systems and ideologies and systems.”
In his talk at the conference, Gudziak noted that Jesus became friends with “very concrete people, Peter and John and Nathaniel. It’s not an ideology, it’s not a system. There weren’t too many buildings there in Jesus’s time, nor in Paul’s or for 300 years.”
“So maybe if we lose the buildings and the endowments and the properties, maybe that’s not the end of things, if we can recover or develop more profoundly our friendship.”
[…]
I suspect that Trump will not do that much for the working class, but perhaps throw them a few culture war bones. The real winners are the billionaires. They always are. Look for big tax cuts for Elon Musk & his buddies.
Hmmm. Well, perhaps. But my real spending power dropped around 25% during the Biden years. Go figure.
I notice absolutely no proof has been offered to back this hyperbolic statement up. You are a liar through and through.
Keep licking those billionaire boots with your crusty and diseased tongue. We all see what you are, Carl.
Between all of 2020 and not all of 2024 the average inflation rate is 4.94% per year, with a cumulative inflation of 21.20%. So, at least a 20 percent erosion on average, absent offsetting pay increases, if any.
Let me offer a few platitudinous condolences:
*Trash talk doesn’t have much staying power.
*Your cross fits you perfectly.
*You’ll be all right.
*Carl’s loss of spending power likely benefitted someone just like you, someone bereft of grace, without any idea of gratitude.
Dave R. I see you. You’ve unmasked yourself. I know Carl, and he is nothing like you, as your post reveals you.
There’s a special place prepared for the hateful. Make a change before you find yourself there.
“Keep licking those billionaire boots with your crusty and diseased tongue. We all see what you are, Carl.”
Oh, I’m sure you do, Davie. Meanwhile:
“Prices are still 21.4% more expensive since the pandemic-induced recession began in February 2020, with only about 6% of the nearly 400 items the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks cheaper today.”
Your need to make personal attacks is interesting. And sad. You’re a sad guy, Davie boy.
William and Dave R.!
You want facts? During Trump’s first term, real wages — i.e., wages adjusted for inflation — rose by 7 percent, the largest increase for any four-year period since the 1970’s.
That’s according to Wisconsin Watch and Gigafact.
By the way, the largest increases occurred in the wages paid to those workers earning the least.
You need to question your assumptions, sirs. Otherwise you will end up engaging in cartoon thinking like so many on the left.
Dave R
Gas and food is through the roof. Any president, Dem or GOP, should be given at least 2 or 2½ years into their first term in order for their policies to start taking effect. Inflation has been dragging even before Biden took office, and it’s still hanging around almost 4 years later. Whatever he and Harris were doing obviously didn’t work or impress the vast majority of the working class voters who have now found a home in the new Trump Republican party. What we saw two days ago was a pissed off America that fired Kamala Harris for not doing her job.
The working class is now in charge of the ruling class.
“The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” Spoken like a true progressive. Working people voted for Trump. The progressives you support are all funded by billionaires.
Without expressing an election preference, and about the mentioned “numerous legal challenges from state and federal prosecutors,” here’s one fanciful path to be manicured into the White House lawn…
About the FEDERAL CASES in Florida and DC on the unconstitutional disruption of governance on January 6, 2020, and on the on mishandling of classified documents…in the first instance, why not acknowledge that disruptive court appearances for a president now constitute (!) a repeat, and just call it even?
And, regarding CLASSIFIED MATERIALS, why not just let stand the finding that prosecutor Smith was improperly appointed—an unconstitutional assault on the entire judicial system? Likewise, about the RICO charge in Georgia, as with the now past-tense Harris campaign, why not just let the disqualified prosecutor Fani Willis stay in the rearview mirror?
About the CIVIL LAWSUITS—about which even a sitting president is not exempt (sitting, or whatever), why not link the penalty amount for inflated property values (up to $454 Billion redefined as damages) to an inquiry into funny-money budgeting and the inflated national debt incurred by all members of Congress, some $34 Trillion (not billion) and counting…
And, about the coincidental 34 (!) counts on falsified BUSINESS RECORDS, if the conviction stands why not simply impose the least awkward sentence of “community service”? And, assign the next four years of community service (!) in the White House as sufficing, with the corresponding salary donated to some relevant cause?
Oh, wait, like Presidents Washington, Hoover and Kennedy, Trump didn’t accept a presidential salary, for his first four years in the White House. He donated it to the National Park Service, the Department of Education, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Small Business Administration, the Surgeon General’s office and the Department of Agriculture. Maybe this counts, something remotely like jail time already served?
Just sayin’ about these real but dangling-chads, why not just declare victory as smoothly and as unified as possible?
Oops, I slipped a decimal three places! Should read “$454 million,” not billion.
But, still, as the late Senator Everett Dirksen, Majority Leader of the Senate 1959-1969, elucidated: ” “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”
“And it’s a great day to be alive
I know the sun’s still shining
When I close my eyes
There’s some hard times in the neighborhood
But why can’t every day be just this good…”
Travis Tritt
I voted for a write-in candidate, Thomas Massie, because I could not abide Trump’s greenlighting the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the re-emergence of neo-con Mike Pompeo as probable secretary of state. Our only hope is that the good forces within the Trump campaign–Tucker Carlson, RFK Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard will have his ear. These–and the Holy Ghost!
Fellow Catholics, keep praying that Trump will pursue peace, especially with Russia, and that he will cease to fund and arm the murderous state of Israel.
The “genocide in Gaza” is like unicorns and leprechauns. These are all things that exist only in people’s imagination. The terrorists in Gaza are getting exactly what they deserve.
One of the reasons I voted for Donald Trump was because he has been a true friend of Israel and is not antisemitic. That’s not always the case with populist type politicians.
From what I saw in his first administration I’m hoping he will keep us out of war, especially a global one. Israel’s neighbors, with the exception of iran, want peace.
And the markets spoke the day after the election: the Dow rose 1500 points – the largest increase in many years. The market has a collective intelligence unmatched by any one individual.