Fr. Jim Bacik: Opening the Catholic Church to the World

image by tsahaylu

I haven't been to a Fr. Jim Bacik lecture in a while, but I'm glad I went last week. I met friend Teddy and we planned to go to dinner afterwards. Fr. Bacik, ever the scholarly theologian,  talked about the "new tribalism," the tendency to gather with like-minded people, as a response to globalization. He emphasized the dangers of turning inward and ignoring or demonizing those who are different. He pointed to the growing number of hate crimes in the US, the renewed anti-semetism, angry racism, white nationalism, the prejudice against Muslims, and the rise of an extreme political partisanship pulling people apart and destabilizing the world.

Before talking about Vatican II (1962-1965) and Pope John XXIII, Fr. Bacik recalled the Council of Jerusalem in the year 62 AD, where debates between Paul and Peter and different factions led to more openness in the church, a kind of first step to a more tolerant mission.

Pope John XXIII. Pope Francis continues his
tradition of a church open to the world,
 and I think he looks like him too.   

Vatican II revived the spirit of the Council of Jerusalem to renew calls for a Church that was relevant to peoples around the world. It's the spirit that Pope Francis, coming as he did from serving in Argentina and among the poor, embodies and carries on today.

John XXIII wanted Aggioramento, a rural church, a humble and loving Church that welcomed all people everywhere. This is  how the Catholic church reached out to South America and Asia and Africa.  Of course there was the inevitable resistance to change. The Curia leaders and the Bishops rose up to defend tradition, like Cardinal Ottaviani, whose motto was Semper Idem (Always the same).  I like that Latin phrase, and often have need of it!

What were the key issues?
*The liturgy: use of the vernacular instead of Latin so that parishioners went from being passive spectators to active conscious participants in the service
*Spirituality: from holiness for priests and nuns to a universal call to holiness
*Religious liberty: from Catholic privilege to freedom for all
*From a ghetto mentality to ecumenical dialogue
*From opposition to other religions to interfaith dialogue and cooperation
*From withdrawal from the world to active engagement.

Lovely statue of John XXIII in front
of St. Anthony's Church in Istanbul,
 where he preached for 10 years
 before becoming Pope.

Pope John XXIII prevailed.  Vatican II marked a new era in which the Catholic church "would understand itself for the first time as a World Church." As Karl Rahner, Fr. Bacik's mentor and a brilliant theologian noted, Vatican II was the most important change in the church after the Council of Jerusalem. It offered salvation and freedom of conscience, and energized ecumenical dialogue. Fr. Bacik called Vatican II "a great salvation optimism" for the whole human family with all its joys and sorrows.

I am not Catholic, but my daughter Elissa is; she calls me a Pope Francis Catholic. She's right. I knew when the new Pope took the name Francis that he would be a wonderful Pope, that he would be another John XXIII."Who are we to judge?" Pope Francis reminds us, a phrase I use a lot.

St. Antoine of Padua Church, Istanbul. Photo taken at night
on Christmas eve 2009 in the heart of  the city.  We walked 
along bustling streets, shops and cafes crowded with revelers 
and decorated in blue lights with joy in our hearts..

Fr. Bacik's lecture took me back to a Christmas in Istanbul in 2009 with my Peace Corps friends Jud and Jason. We decided to attend St. Anthony (Antoine) of Padua church, where John XXIII preached for ten years before becoming Pope. It was the kind of incredible travel experience that moves you, transforms your view of the world.

St. Anthony's is an international congregation, befitting the memory of Pope John XXIII. The church overflowed with people from all over the world in a spirit of  inclusiveness and acceptance. The service was ecumenical, the priests, the choir, the music and traditions from around the world.

I sat next to a lovely young woman who said her name was Fatima, which I recalled as the name of the town in Portugal where three shepherd children claimed to have seen visions of Mary, the mother of Jesus. I assumed Fatima was celebrating the Christian holiday.  We chatted as the choir practiced songs from South America, Africa, and around  the globe. I explained that we were Peace Corps Volunteers from America working in Ukraine. "I thought you were American!" she said with a big smile.

I asked about her. She was born in Turkey, and lived in Munich, Germany, with her family." She went on to talk about being a college student majoring in international organizational development. She spoke many languages and loved Munich.

"Why are you here tonight?" I asked.
"I'm visiting family. And Istanbul is my birthplace, Muslim is my religion, and the cultures of the world my greatest interest," she replied. "I like this church because it is diverse and tolerant. I remember it as a child, and I feel welcomed here."

It was the best Christmas message we could have gotten from any church in the world, and here we were in Istanbul, three Amerikankas celebrating with Fatima, the devout Muslim. What a conjunction of the human spirit.   The "Open Arms Tribalism" Fr. Bacik champions.  It enveloped each of us in gratitude.


http://fran-ukrainian-adventure.blogspot.com/2009/12/christmas-in-istanbul.html

Philip and Chase at the Toledo Sister Cities International Festival

I try to introduce my grandchildren to the wider world whenever I have a chance. I give them maps, photos, talk about my travels, take them to meet people from somewhere else. They met my conversation partner Fenghua. They have met friends from Europe, Ukraine, the Middle East, and Africa, and they have classmates from other countries in school. So today, my daughter Elissa and I took our grandboys, Chase and Philip, to the Toledo Sister Cities International Festival at the Seagate Convention Center in downtown Toledo.

We roamed around looking at displays, talked about different countries, listened to music and performances by various ethnic groups. Chase and Philip enjoyed getting their names signed in Chinese, at the Chinese display table, and in Arabic, at a lovely exhibit of Lebanese art and  cultural  items.   I showed them the countries on the map.

"You guys already know about these two countries," I told them.
"No, we don't, Nana," Philip chimed in.
"Well, have you ever been to a Chinese restaurant or eaten Chinese food? And how about the Lebanese food at the Beirut and the Grape Leaf?"
"Oh right," Philip smiled. "Good food."
 We agreed food was a good way to get to know another country!

Dr. Elizabeth Balint, director of the Great Lakes Consortium. We worked

together on the Open World Project that brought people from Ukraine to Toledo.  

Toledo is a "Welcoming City," home to immigrants from many countries.  They have helped make our neighborhoods strong for generations. Some are newer, including refugees from war-torn Syria. Toledo has sister cities in Spain, China, Hungary, Poland, Japan, Tanzania, Germany, Lebanon, Pakistan and India.  It makes sense that the world's two Toledos, Toledo, Ohio and Toledo, Spain have been sister Cities since 1931, one of the oldest formally recognized sister-city relationships in the world (see www.association of two toledos.com).


I've been talking about maybe getting a sister city in Ukraine. Our US Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur is interested. She is always a strong supporter of the International Festival and international exchange programs. She is knowledgeable about and honors America's history of immigration, including her own Polish and Ukrainian heritage.  "We are all immigrants," she says, and "through food, music, art and fun we build bridges toward a stronger future together."

We had to sample some food, of course, so Philip and I got Asian food and Bubble Tea, and Chase got tacos, and we sat down to eat and watch a Karate performance. Chase is a yellow belt! We introduced ourselves to an elderly man sitting alone at the table. Turns out he was a retired Professor of German Language and Culture at the University of Toledo, where he had taught for many years.  It was nice to strike up a conversation. A few minutes later a  mother and her son, who was dressed in lederhousen, asked to sit at the table. I asked if he was from Germany. No, he was just dressed like a German, in Bavarian lederhousen actually. He was a Senior in high school who loved the German language and wanted to go to college in Germany. His mom was encouraging him.  "You're at the right table," I said, as I introduced them to the German professor, which delighted all of us.  They spoke a little in German, and we had a lovely chat about Germany and travel.

Serendipity! The same  kind of serendipity we encounter wherever we travel, and always to our delight, and it happened right here in Toledo, Ohio, at a table at the International Festival! 

The world is open to us. All we have to do is embrace it. I hope Philip and Chase, and all my grandchildren, will give it a try one day!

What is "Hybrid Warfare"? Foreign interference in an American election.

Image, blazingcatfur

What is "hybrid warfare?" It's what Vladimyr Putin has been practicing without restraint or serious resistance since his interference in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential campaign, designed and implemented with help from Paul Manafort, followed by Putin's invasion of the sovereign nation of Ukraine in 2014.

That's the truth in a nutshell. The implications are enormous. And they are interconnected with our 2016 presidential election.

On his way out the door, fired by Trump because they disagreed, Gen. H.R. McMaster, a PhD historian, brilliant, forceful, gave a good definition:

"Hybrid warfare is a pernicious form of aggression that combines political, economic, informational, and cyber assaults against sovereign nations. It employs sophisticated strategies deliberately designed to achieve objectives while falling below the target state’s threshold for a military response. These tactics include infiltrating social media, spreading propaganda, weaponizing information, and using other forms of subversion and espionage.”

McMaster acknowledged that the West had "failed to impose sufficient costs" on Moscow for its aggressive behavior.  He was thinking Ukraine and Syria, and maybe our election.

He contended that we are engaged in a “fundamental contest between our free and open societies and closed and repressive systems.”  He called the nerve poisoning of the Skrypals in London  “an assault on the United Kingdom’s sovereignty, a clear violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the first offensive use of nerve agent in Europe since World War II."  This last part was news to me, about the chemical weapons agreement and the contemporary use of a nerve agent.

I'm glad I learned this, because true to form, Russia has since mounted a new information cyber war, a disinformation campaign, to create confusion and cover up the truth.

I found more details about hybrid warfare in an article in Air Force Magazine (cited below), a fascinating source. This article caught my attention because it uses Russia's aggression against Ukraine as an example. Here's how the article describes it: 

"The “little green men” were one of the first signs of Russia’s strategy. Commandos wearing green uniforms stripped of insignia occupied key government institutions in Crimea during the early months of the Ukrainian crisis of 2014.
    For a time, their ambiguous identity allowed Russian leaders to deny that Moscow had launched a military offensive to seize the Crimean Peninsula and its Black Sea ports.
    But these Russian Special Forces were not the only indication Moscow had launched a complex, multifaceted operation in the region. That October, as Ukraine neared a crucial snap parliamentary election, electronic advertising billboards in the capital of Kiev suddenly began showing a video accusing Ukrainian politicians of war crimes. Then they displayed graphic images of civilians killed in the eastern part of the country.  The electronic network had been compromised by a shadowy, pro-Russian group of hackers. 
     Russia also relied on conventional forces to push for its objectives. Regular infantry units eventually took the place of the little green men in Crimea. Russian artillery and military personnel crossed into Ukraine proper to help pro-Russian insurgents seize and hold strips of territory in the Donbas region in the country’s east."
   

It's a concise description of a complex strategy, and its conclusions are clear: "Russia’s intervention in Crimea and eastern Ukraine is a textbook example of hybrid warfare, the combination of unconventional means (subversion, cyber attack) with conventional might to reach a geostrategic objective."

That Paul Manafort and his cronies had a hand in Putin's mission is indisputable. And it's becoming clear as more evidence and new connections emerge--as the dots are connected--that Manafort used the same kind of hybrid war games--social media, propaganda,"fake news"--in America's 2016 election that he had used in Ukraine to demonize Yulia Tymoshenko and elect pro-Russian billionaire Viktor Yanukovich.  

The folks at Cambridge Analytica, Robert and Rebekah Mercer, Steve Bannon of Breitbart, Republican Party operatives, alt-right fanatics who saw in a Trump presidency the chance to "deconstruct" our democracy, were impressed.  Manafort knew how to swing elections. The "Corrupt Yulia" disinformation propaganda campaign morphed into the "Corrupt Hillary"campaign.

But that Cambridge Analytica circle of propagandists are not the only ones who are experts at "weaponizing information."  The Air Force Magazine article reveals another interesting fact: Gen. James Mattis, Trump's Secretary of Defense and a marine to the core, is also an expert on hybrid warfare.  Who knew that? He has thought about it for over a decade and has written about it.  In a 2005 article he co-wrote with Lt. Col. Frank G. Hoffman, who was one of the first to use the term, he called it "an unprecedented synthesis."

“We may face remnants of the fielded army of a rogue state in future wars, and they may employ conventional weapons in very novel or nontraditional ways.”/ Hybrid war might feature attacks against US critical infrastructure or transportation networks. It could involve an electronic take down of military or financial computer networks," Hoffman and Mattis wrote.

"Hybrid war in Poland, blazingcatfur 

It was a prediction, and it came true.  Mattis must  see the connections to the 2016 election. He understands more than we know. Like his friend Gen. McMaster.  They must see the whole picture that Mueller is now putting together, like the pieces of a puzzle.

It makes me wonder how people who know so much more than Trump can hang in there. It makes me wonder how Mattis will work with the warmonger John Bolton, friend of Russia, ethically challenged, part of the Cambridge Analytica story, involved in Russian oligarchs' links to the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Whoever thought that Putin's brand of warfare would become part of an American presidential campaign between an unfit Trump and a super-qualified but cyber-targeted Hillary Clinton?

In fact, in my view, the intrusion in our election had its genesis in Putin's hatred of Clinton and his fear she would be hard on Russia if elected. The hybrid-disinformation campaign against her started when she was Secretary of State. Also, Putin believed Trump could be "persuaded" to end the sanctions imposed for his invasion and occupation of Ukraine. And Paul Manafort, still in touch with pro-Putin Ukrainian and Russian oligarchs, thought so too.

We are facing a political firestorm unprecedented in American History. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has his plate full. A political tsunami is rumbling onto shore, slowly but surely. It will take down the Trump regime and all who enabled it, obstructed justice, or colluded with a foreign power using a hybrid war to disrupt an American election. 


Some sources:
http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2017/March%202017/The-Perils-of-Hybrid-War.aspx

"Retired Marine Reservist Lt. Col. Frank G. Hoffman was among the first theorists to begin using the term “hybrid war” to refer to this hydra-headed concept. He referred to it as a “blurring of modes of war, the blurring of who fights, and what technologies are brought to bear.” In this definition, hybrid war involves both nations and nonstate forces. Its violence can span the spectrum from intense regular unit combat to guerrilla warfare and terrorist acts. It can slot in criminal kidnapping and theft and, increasingly, cyber warfare. It can employ state sponsorship of existing local unrest and the manipulation of currencies and other means of economic aggression. Diplomacy and propaganda play a part. /Hoffman began talking about this concept as early as 2005. He called it “unprecedented synthesis” in an article in Proceedings cowritten with Marine Corps then-Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, now the new Secretary of Defense."

https://www.csspmspk.com/hybrid-war-and-economy/by Adeela Naureen, origininally published in The Nation and used in online courses.   An interesting world-wide view of what it means.

http://cyprus-mail.com/2016/06/05/russias-hybrid-war-ukraine-2/

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/mcmaster-rips-russia-on-his-way-out-of-the-white-house.html

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/mueller-is-asking-russian-oligarchs-about-donations-to-trump.html

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/mattis-had-an-impossible-task-now-trumps-making-it-harder.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/world/europe/balkans-russia-night-wolves-republika-srpska-bosnia.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share  About the Night Wolves, Putin's feared biker gang.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2017/11/17/russias-hybrid-war-west-began-battlefields-ukraine/

http://www.newsweek.com/poland-prepares-hybrid-war-amidst-russian-threat-316469 Interesting article on Russia's hyrid war in Poland, showing the extent of Putin's efforts in the East and the West.

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