A naval disaster

A total of 381 books (that we have been told about) have been removed from the Nimitz Library at the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland.

What happened to them? Maybe they were just thrown out with the trash. Maybe they were dumped in some damp basement to molder away. Or maybe they were burned.

It was definitely a book burning, even if no flame was lighted.

If a torpedo had been fired into the hull of a Nimitz class warship, the whole country would be upset – up in arms, as it were.

But a torpedo has been fired into the Nimitz Library. What’s been damaged, if not sunk, is the Naval Academy’s reputation as an institution of learning.

Note I didn’t say higher learning. I mean learning period.

The current administration’s attacks on learning are just beginning. But the attack on the Nimitz Library is a sign of even more despicable things to come.

I looked through the list of banned books. It was helpfully provided by the Navy itself – a bit of integrity following an act of infamy.

I noticed several I have read. Among them:

* How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi

* White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones

* Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen

* America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America by Jim Wallis

* I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou

* White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo

* The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward

I might mention more, but the database the Navy provided is not particularly user friendly, and its listings are hard to translate into plain text. You can find it for yourself by looking online for “381 books” or anything similar.

You’ll quickly notice several themes among the titles. They are mostly books about race, gender, the South, and history in general.

Somebody doesn’t want anyone thinking a thought about these subjects that is not approved by the powers-that-be.

And what does this gain us?

It gains us multiple new classes of Naval officers who don’t know much of anything about American history or how we got to where we are today in terms of race and gender relations – officers whose brains have been whitewashed with narrow-band propaganda.

Do we really want such poorly educated officers commanding our ships and defending our shores?  Or should we look elsewhere for the best and the brightest?

Two more giants gone

There were giants in our land. Two more have died.

 Pope Francis died on Easter Monday at age 88.

 Retired United Methodist Bishop Richard Wilke died on Easter morning in Winfield, Kansas. He was 94.

 Francis will be mourned throughout the world by all Christians and by followers of other faith traditions as well.

 Papal electors probably didn’t know what they were in for when they elected a Jesuit pope from Latin America.

 Francis proved to be (at least publicly) a gentle pastoral spirit who embodied the love of God for all. He also was a fearless voice for social justice and a tenacious opponent of ingrown Vatican politics and “conservative” Catholics who worship tradition rather than Jesus.

We shudder to think who will be chosen to follow him – or, more likely, replace him.

Wilke was best known for the pioneering Disciple Bible Study series, which he developed with his wife, Julia.

More than 3 million people around the world have taken part in a Disciple Bible Study 

The Wilkes’ daughter, Susan Wilke Fuquay, created Disciple Fast Track, a streamlined version of the original that has proved popular among churches.

Disciple grew out of a longtime frustration with the scriptural illiteracy of many in the pews. That frustration was embodied in a 1986 book, And Are We Yet Alive? The title came from a hymn frequently sung at the start of each year’s annual conference. The answer was supposed to be yes. Wilke wasn’t sure that was always true – and one remedy he suggested was deeper engagement with scripture.

In recent months I’ve marked the passing of President Jimmy Carter and theologians John B. Cobb and Richard B. Hays. There are surely a few other giants left out there. To paraphrase the hymn, if we ever needed them before, we sure do need them now. 

Gatsby at 100

One of the most memorable bits of symbolism in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby is the giant set of spectacles and matching giant blue eyes advertising the services of the optometrist Dr. T.J. Eckelburg.

 Every time I think of them I recall my days at the University of Illinois in the late 1960s. Near the Champaign-Urbana campus was a sign advertising the services of a local optometrist, Dr. Seymour Landa.

 No joke. I don’t know whether the name inspired the choice of vocation or the vocation inspired the name, but Seymour Landa was a real person. For all the ink spilled over the giant Eckelburg glasses and other outsize symbols in Gatsby, you’d think they were real, too.

 April 10 was the 100-year-anniversary of publication of Gatsby. It is routinely hailed as one of the top several candidates for The Great American Novel.

 I reread it last summer, not aware of the approaching anniversary. Then I watched the two most recent movie adaptations of the book. Finally, a few days ago, I reread the book itself. I’m finally getting around to writing about it.

 I don’t remember whether it was in a high school or college freshman lit class, or maybe both, but I do remember one or more teachers waxing poetic over the symbolism of the book. As if the symbolism were the most interesting or most important thing about it.

The symbolism is pretty much laid on with a trowel, so it’s hard to miss. I am more taken with the way the characters embody the hedonism of the jazz age and slyly convey Fitzgerald’s criticism of the age, and perhaps the way he and his wife Zelda are true to the age.

The narrator is Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner off to New York to make his fortune selling bonds. Nick is wide-eyed and impressionable but in some ways wise beyond his experience. Somehow the offhand cynicism of those around him fails to rub off, and he emerges from the story mostly unscathed.

Nick is “second cousin once removed” to Daisy, whose voice is “full of money.” She is married to Tom Buchanan, an irritable boor who also comes from old money. Fitzgerald describes them as “careless people” who smash things up and then retreat back into their money.

On the north shore of Long Island is a (fictional) peninsula divided by an inlet that creates two similar wings, the East Egg and the West Egg, inhabited by old and new money, respectively. Nick rents a shabby little West Egg house that sits in the shadow of a giant mansion owned by Jay Gatsby.

Gatsby is a self-made gazillionaire with a murky, perhaps shady, almost certainly fictional, past. He throws elaborate parties every weekend, and it takes awhile for the story to reveal that the parties have a purpose beyond their wild extravagance. Gatsby has loved Daisy from afar since they met years before, and he hopes to win her heart back from Tom.

Based on the same book, the two most recent movie versions are obviously similar in most ways. I prefer the 1974 version starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow as Gatsby and Daisy. Sam Waterston plays Nick. (I keep expecting to learn that he later goes into law.) Bruce Dern is a snarling Tom, and Karen Black is an alluring and sad Myrtle, Tom’s mistress.

The script by Francis Ford Coppola is occasionally so close to the book that you’d think Coppola sometimes just handed in pages torn out of the book. By contrast, the 2013 version takes more liberties with the story – sometimes OK, sometimes not.

The stars here are Leonard DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan; Tobey Maguire as Nick; Joel Edgerton as Tom; and Isla Fisher as Myrtle.

Two other performances are notable in the 1974 version: Elizabeth Debicki as the “incurably dishonest” golf pro Jordan Baker, who says she hates careless people and apparently doesn’t realize she is one of them: and Jason Clarke as Myrtle’s jealous husband George, who propels the story deeper into tragedy at the end.

All of the characters are seeking their version of the American Dream, and several – most obviously Gatsby – are full of hope that the dream can be fulfilled in their lives. Alas, these seekers – again, most notably Gatsby – are so self-deluded that their lives are empty of meaning.

In Fitzgerald’s symbolic world, the green light that blinks at the end of the Buchanan dock lures them all toward an illusory hope and impossible dream.

It’s an oddly compelling story that holds up well after 100 years. Wouldn’t you agree, old sport?

Two books and one Rx

There’s no accounting for taste, it’s said, or for the kind of books you like or don’t like.

 Just the other day I finished rereading The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz. It’s the fourth book in a six-part series started 20 years ago by Stieg Larsson.

 I had read the first in the series, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, but gave up partway through the second volume. Both were just too thick with extraneous detail, I thought. Enough Stieg Larsson.

 I received the three Lagercrantz books from Linda for Christmas several years ago and promptly read the first one and greatly enjoyed it (except for the grisly way he eliminated one likeable character). A few days ago I found myself without a book of fiction in hand, so I thought I’d read it again. Same reaction as the first time. I’ll pick up the next book in the series soon.

I was briefly without fiction to read because I’d attempted to read Karla’s Choice by Nick Harkaway. It’s billed as “A John le Carré Novel.” That’s because it features George Smiley, a character from the le Carré canon, and le Carré and Harkaway are pseudonyms for father and son.

I don’t recall reading le Carré. I don’t believe I’ll try Harkaway again, at least when he’s trying to channel his father.

Karla’s Choice has been widely praised, but I’m not sure why. I found it ponderously slow, simply uninteresting. As for the celebrated George Smiley … not sure why anybody cares.

Both Spider’s Web and Karla’s Choice are densely plotted, but Spider’s Web moves briskly through it, where Karla’s Choice seems to enjoy taking forever getting from Point A to Point B via several irrelevancies in between. Not my cup of tea.

*  *  *  *

 Two weeks ago, Wendy Chrostek, one of the Resurrection pastors, was speaking about the importance of loving relationships in our lives, and she mentioned the final report of Vivek Murthy as U.S. Surgeon General.

 He issued it Jan. 7 and titled it a Parting Prescription for America.

 At a time when health care professionals increasingly cite loneliness as a major social problem in America, Murthy sounded a theme familiar to those who’ve followed his work: We need more connection in our lives.

 Specifically, he encouraged what he called the “triad of fulfillment”: healthy relationships, service to others and finding a purpose in life – all tied to the core virtue of love. 

“Choose community,” he concluded.

I had read similar comments from Murthy before, but I wanted to read more, so I followed links to the report on the website of the Department of Health and Human Services. It had been there briefly, but the report and all mentions of it have now been scrubbed from the site.

Murthy was appointed surgeon general by President Barack Obama, fired by Trump, then reappointed by President Joe Biden. His term ended Jan. 20. What he said will be remembered – even if the institution he once served no longer values it.

Order of love

Vice President JD Vance says everyone who disagrees with him about immigration should Google ordo amoris. That’s pretty good advice. He should take it himself. He might learn how totally he misunderstands it.

Ordor amoris, or “order of love,” is a medieval Catholic concept derived from the works of Saint Augustine.

Vance cites it to justify the cruelty of Trump administration policy on immigration, specifically deportation of suspected violators.

He says: “There is a Christian concept that you love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.”

I’m not sure how the “far left” has inverted this order, but as Vance expresses it, what gets inverted are basic Christian understandings of proper human behavior.

Vance says it is “basic common sense” that your moral duty to your children outweighs those “to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away.”

The way Vance tells it, you love your family the most, and others in a series of expanding concentric circles – and by the time you get to the outermost circles, you have no love left for anybody.

Without mentioning Vance, Pope Francis debunked Vance’s interpretation in a letter to U.S. bishops on Tuesday.

He wrote: “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. …

“The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) – that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

The idea of an “order of love” comes from St. Augustine, who lived a few hundred years after Christ and is one of the most influential Christian theologians after Saint Paul.

“All men are to be loved equally,” Augustine wrote. “But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.”

That might be a familial connection, but it might be a connection of another kind.

In his book Sources of Strength, Jimmy Carter recalls a conversation with Elroy Cruz, a Puerto Rican pastor he admired. Cruz says: “Señor Jimmy, we need to have only two loves in our lives: for God and for the person who happens to be in front of us at any time.”

Persons in need whose need we are aware of – those are the ones we are called to treat as neighbor, as Jesus illustrates in his parable of the Good Samaritan. Those are the ones we are called to love.

Sorry, Vance, you cannot use the gospel of Jesus to justify cruelty to anyone. And when you try, you only expose how shallow is your understanding of the faith you claim to represent.