CrossCurrents A Catholic Reflects on Faith in Our Times

A year ago this past week Senator Eugene McCarthy died. Within months he was followed by Coretta Scott Scott King, William Sloane Coffin, and John Kenneth Galbraith. For me it was a lot like the end of a generation.

None of these four was a New England native, yet all made a mark here. Coffin was long-time chaplain at Yale, where he established his peace-making credentials during the Vietnam War. Galbraith taught at Harvard and made his home in Cambridge. King was studying at the New England Conservatory of Music in the early 1950s when she met the young Boston University doctoral student who became her husband before emerging as the nation’s conscience. And McCarthy exploded on the presidential scene by his surprise showing in the 1968 New Hampshire primary.

These were not baby boomers. They were part of what Tom Brokaw christened “the greatest generation”—people who had lived through World War II. But they did not represent their generation in the usual way, by presiding over the complacent conformist “normalcy” that passed for real life in the 1950s. Instead, they each gave voice to that discontented “counter-cultural” consciousness so typical of the 1960s. And each one linked that discontent to an acute awareness of America’s unfinished moral business.

Galbraith (born 1908) had lived through not only WWII but also the Great Depression. He became famous first as author of “The Affluent Society” and later as JFK’s ambassador to India. But even his earliest works (like “The Great Crash” and “American Capitalism”) called attention to the dangers posed by corporate power.

He was acutely aware that Americans cherish checks and balances over government power, and he chided us (in his inimitable ironic style) for blinding ourselves to the challenge of creating equally effective “countervailing power” to check and balance capitalism. In our own day, when Enron executives are jailed and Bechtel and Halliburton reap billions from the mess in Iraq, his warnings seem more timely than ever.

Coretta Scott King (born 1927) stood by her man as he led the charge for civil rights, achieving national fame from the 1963 march on Washington to his assassination in 1968 (She actually preceded him in opposing the Vietnam War). After her husband’s death, she assumed the heavy responsibility of being spokesperson for his legacy, emerging in her own right as a civil rights and community leader and founder of the King center.

Her steadfastness became an inspiration to a nation that had finally acknowledged the need to finish Lincoln’s emancipation of Black Americans, had moved to complete the task, and finally had even honored its champion with his own national holiday.

William Sloane Coffin (born 1924) was a man at the level of his time—a gifted preacher and phrase-maker whose commitment to peace could not abide the US folly in Vietnam. And so this mere college chaplain became a national figure who inspired millions of youth by blessing their concerns.

To him, their confusion, anxiety, misgivings, disquiet, feeder, and anger about Vietnam were not mere youthful rebellion—they were legitimate moral concerns rooted in important questions about meaning and value, about good and evil. An entire generation committed to the propositions “don’t trust anyone over 30” found this man a credible source of wisdom—and more than that: wisdom rooted in Christian faith and tradition.

We might wonder: what American can do as much today? Who, for example, has proclaimed the Christian wisdom that calls invading Iraq folly?

And finally, Eugene McCarthy (born 1916) mobilized that same young generation into action. Like many others, I got “clean for Gene,” trimming my hair and doffing my jeans, and then I went door-to-door in central Massachusetts, and did poll-watching in Connecticut, and sold tickets to a Fenway Park rally where Leonard Bernstein introduced McCarthy to 41,000 people. And five years later I sat front row in Washington’s Grace National Cathedral as McCarthy returned the favor, introducing Leonard Bernstein to conduct the National Symphony’s counter-inaugural concert of Haydn’s “Mass in Time of War.”

It was McCarthy who first championed the cause of peace at the level of presidential politics. As a thoughtful Catholic (and former Benedictine novice) he founded his peace platform firmly on Catholic social teaching. Here’s what he said on the day he announced his candidacy for the presidency:

At some point you make a prudential judgment that whatever good you can get out of the war, or what good is going to come from it, is not proportionate to the destruction of life and property and the draining away of moral energy, which goes along with the pursuit of the war in a way in which we are now pursuing it."

Few people noticed at the time, but McCarthy’s language and reasoning are both mainline “Just War Theory,” which has been the mainstay of Catholic social doctrine on war and peace for more than a thousand years. In other words, what appeared to be radical politics was in fact very traditional Catholicism!

By the time McCarthy introduced Bernstein 1973, he felt we had reached the point well beyond reasoning, a point when “there are no words left to say” and only art (like Haydn’s Mass or Picasso’s “Guernica”) can express our grief in war and our longing for peace.

But in 1968, he had the words we needed to hear—and no doubt we could use those words again today. Indeed, some of his words might well describe the toll war is taking on us in 2006:

Draining off our material resources and our manpower resources, but…also creating great anxiety in the minds of many Americans and really also weakening and debilitating our moral energy to deal with the problems at home and also some other potential problems around the world.

As we look to another presidential race, in time of yet another war, is it too much to hope for another voice like his? I hope not.

These four champions of moral wisdom from the “greatest generation” awakened the moral conscience and inspired the hope of the very boomer generation that leads us now. I wonder: is it mere coincidence that they were all in some way “people of the cloth”: two ordained ministers, a minister’s spouse, and a former novice monk?

In a single year, we have lost them all, but we cannot long survive without their kind. It would be a historic and moral tragedy if our generation squanders their legacy—and worse, if we do not pass it on to our children and our children’s children.

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com

Dr. Swain’s opinions do not represent the views of this parish or any other official body.

Bernie Swain has devoted more than 30 years to adult spiritual formation in dioceses in the US, Canada, and France. Since 1991 he has maintained a private practice as trainer, teacher, and consultant to leaders in parishes and other religious organizations. He holds degrees in theology and political science from Holy Cross, Harvard, The University of Paris, and The University of Chicago.

His writings include Liberating Leadership (Harper & Row, 1986) and more than 200 articles in periodicals such as The National Catholic Reporter, Commonweal, The Miami Herald, The Catholic Free Press, The Pilot, Harvard Theological Review, and Liturgy.

A lifelong layperson, he lives in Boston with his wife and three children. Visit his website at:

http://www.CrossCurrents.us

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