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ncluding children who have absolutely no control over the policies of their governments are made to suffer in hopes that their suffering will produce somebody else s political surrender today s gospel rejects that logic from beginning to end jesus doesn t ask the hungry people whether they support rome or oppose it he doesn t demand that they renounce the zealot revolutionaries nobody has to recognize caesar change governments make a deal or prove political innocence before receiving bread they re hungry for jesus that s enough that s also why today s responsorial psalm is so important it says that god opens god s hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing not merely americans or israelis not merely palestinians or cubans and certainly not merely people whose governments we happen to approve of bread is god s gift to everyone and if that s true food cannot morally be turned into a weapon neither can water medicine electricity or the fuel upon which access to all of them depends children cannot be starved because we disapprove of their parents government sick people cannot be deprived of medicine in hopes that their suffering will produce regime change those things may be called foreign policy sanctions leverage or national security but today s gospel invites us to call them something else it invites us to ask whether deliberately depriving human beings of what they need to live is compatible with following jesus that s the uncomfortable part of this gospel for christians like us it s easy to oppose hunger when hunger is nobody s fault it s easy to contribute to catholic relief services after a hurricane or drought but things become considerably more difficult when our own government is causing the hunger or enabling others to do so at that point charity isn t enough christian faith becomes political because following jesus requires us to oppose policies carried out in our name and perhaps that s the real meaning of those twelve baskets left over at the end of john s story there was enough all along there is enough today as well the question is what we do with what god has given us do we share it or hoard it do we feed people or blockade them do we treat bread as god s gift to every human being or as leverage to force our enemies to their knees the jewish mothers in today s story at least as i imagine them opened their baskets the child opened his jesus blessed what they shared and everyone ate that leaves us american christians with an uncomfortable question when our government uses hunger and deprivation against the people of gaza and cuba whose side are we on our government s or jesus posted on august 1 2026 categories sunday homilies tags cuba faith gaza homiletic helps hunger hunger as weapon international law jesus starvation sunday homilies 2 comments on bread or blockade jesus gaza and cuba my tears for willie loman last saturday peggy and i went to new york city to see arthur miller s 1949 masterpiece death of a salesman we left the winter garden theater in silence before long i realized i was crying yes weeping the tears continued for blocks as we walked toward the restaurant where we planned to have dinner even now i m not entirely sure why i cried at first i assumed i was simply identifying with willie loman after all he is a man in his sixties who suddenly discovers that the work defining his life for more than thirty years has become impossible his energy is gone his usefulness is questioned the world that once seemed to need him has quietly moved on his death comes long before his suicide at eighty five i know something about watching one s capacities diminish hearing fades energy declines more and more often the question becomes not what can i still accomplish but who am i if i can no longer do what once defined me but the more i reflected on my tears the more i realized they weren t really about willie or at least not only about willie they were about fathers miller s play understands something painful about fatherhood there comes a time when our children stop looking up to us and begin looking through us they discover that their fathers are neither heroes nor villains but complicated human beings whose virtues and weaknesses are hopelessly intertwined every parent eventually faces the unsettling realization that the children whose lives we once shaped will one day render their own quiet judgments about ours that recognition stirred memories of my own family not because our story resembles the lomans but because every family contains misunderstandings disappointments words spoken in anger hopes that never quite found their mark and love that somehow survives them all i suspect many parents left the theater carrying similar memories perhaps with tears in their eyes too the play awakened something else as well there are moments in every long life that continue to haunt us not necessarily because they were our greatest sins but because they revealed our deepest fears watching willie confronted by the collapse of the image he had tried so desperately to maintain reminded me of occasions when i failed to be as courageous or as truthful as i wish i had been decades later those moments still revisit me from time to time what lingers is not so much guilt as humility as a young man i imagined that moral growth meant eventually overcoming weakness experience has taught me something different growing older has not meant becoming flawless it has meant trying to become less defensive about my flaws and less inclined to hide them from myself perhaps that is one of aging s unexpected gifts most people understand death of a salesman as a critique of the american dream they are right willie spends his life believing success means money popularity and being well liked when those illusions collapse so does he but watching the play in 2026 i couldn t help seeing another tragedy near the end willie s employer proudly demonstrates the latest technological marvel a bulky tape recorder almost immediately afterward willie is discarded today the tape recorder has become artificial intelligence workers everywhere are discovering that technology often celebrates innovation while quietly abandoning the people whose lives it replaces the gadgets become more impressive human beings become more disposable that frightened me because in the age of ai disposability has become one of the defining moral failures of our time workers become disposable the elderly become disposable the poor become disposable even truth itself sometimes seems disposable finally there was one detail about willie that made me wince he is obsessed with being liked he constantly judges himself and everyone else according to popularity i wanted to tell him stop worrying about being liked then i realized i needed to hear the same advice i tell myself that i write because i hope my words might contribute however modestly to justice to compassion to a clearer understanding of our world that is true yet i would be less than honest if i denied the small disappointment that comes when an essay receives fewer readers than i had hoped in our digital age likes and views have become our own version of willie s popularity contest arthur miller understood that temptation long before social media existed as peggy and i walked through manhattan the tears gradually subsided eventually i realized i wasn t mourning willie loman i was mourning every illusion about myself that still survives the illusion that my worth depends on my usefulness the illusion that i can control how others understand me the illusion that i should have outgrown weakness long ago the illusion that being noticed is the same as being loved then another thought quietly entered my mind one connected with the work i ve actually done my entire life jesus almost never asked the questions our culture asks he showed remarkably little interest in success reputation or productivity again and again he seemed drawn instead to people who had stopped pretending tax collectors prostitutes failures the poor the brokenhearted those who no longer had impressive résumés to defend his harshest criticism was reserved not for sinners but for those who could no longer tell the truth about themselves perhaps that is why willie loman remains such a tragic figure his deepest failure was not that he sold too little or earned too little it was that he could never relinquish the story he had invented about himself truth however painful might have saved him as i grow older i find myself believing that the spiritual life has less to do with becoming extraordinary than with becoming honest perhaps that is what jesus meant when he said that the truth will make us free not successful not admired free arthur miller gave me no answers that afternoon he simply held up a mirror and perhaps the tears that surprised me outside the theater were not tears of despair at all perhaps they were tears of gratitude for having lived long enough to discover that life s grace is found less in our achievements than in our willingness to stop pretending tell the truth about ourselves and entrust the rest to love posted on july 14 2026 categories book reviews film reviews retirement reflections tags ai american dream arthur miller artificial intelligence death of a salesman fatherhood growing old life willie loman writing 10 comments on my tears for willie loman what is democracy for china s whole process democracy and the common good my recent opednews article china s example and the need to rethink democracy itself prompted an interesting response from editor in chief rob kall he agreed that america s inability to think beyond the next election is becoming one of our greatest national weaknesses but he asked me to explain more fully what the chinese call whole process people s democracy how does it actually work is it merely another name for one party rule or does it embody a fundamentally different understanding of democracy those questions deserve a careful answer because most americans including many progressives know surprisingly little about china s own explanation of its political system we generally define democracy almost entirely by its procedures if citizens vote if competing parties contest elections if freedom of speech is protected and if power changes hands peacefully we call a nation democratic if those conditions are absent or limited we usually do not chinese political theory begins somewhere else its proponents argue that democracy should be judged not only by how governments are chosen but also by what governments accomplish for ordinary people the legitimacy of government lies not simply in electoral competition but in reducing poverty expanding education building infrastructure protecting public health caring for the environment and planning for future generations in that sense china s theory of whole process people s democracy is consequentialist it asks citizens to judge government by its results whether one ultimately accepts that understanding or not it raises a larger question that reaches far beyond china what is democracy for as i reflected on rob kall s question i found myself thinking not only about chinese political theory but also about jesus liberation theology catholic social teaching from leo xiii to pope leo xiv and even the marxist ecological economist john bellamy foster strange as it may seem these very different traditions converge around a remarkably similar principle political institutions should ultimately be judged by what they produce for human beings especially for those who are most vulnerable jesus expressed the principle with characteristic simplicity by their fruits you shall know them that sentence may be the clearest statement of consequentialist ethics ever uttered jesus repeatedly judged persons and institutions by their consequences rather than by their claims good trees produce good fruit bad trees produce bad fruit in the parable of the last judgment nations are evaluated not by their constitutions or political procedures but by whether they fed the hungry welcomed the stranger clothed the naked visited prisoners and cared for the sick the decisive question is always what happens to the least of these matthew 25 31 46 liberation theology extends precisely that biblical insight into politics and economics gustavo gutiérrez famously defined theology as critical reflection on praxis orthodoxy must be tested by orthopraxis correct ideas alone are insufficient a society is judged by the lives its institutions make possible especially for the poor enrique dussel sharpened the point by distinguishing between what he called formal and material democracy formal democracy concerns procedures elections constitutions legislatures political parties and legal rights these are indispensable achievements but they are not enough material democracy asks whether those institutions actually reproduce and enhance human life do they enable communities to flourish do they defend the excluded do they protect future generations if they do not procedural legitimacy alone cannot redeem them that distinction helps explain what chinese theorists mean by whole process democracy according to its proponents democracy is not exhausted by election day citizens directly elect representatives at the village level while higher level people s congresses are chosen through successive representative levels consultation continues throughout the policy process through congresses advisory bodies professional organizations universities business associations workers organizations and representatives of china s many ethnic communities chinese scholars argue that democracy therefore consists not only of elections but of consultation planning implementation evaluation and revision western observers frequently challenge aspects of this account raising important questions about political pluralism freedom of expression and civil liberties those questions deserve serious discussion yet the chinese model also asks a question americans too seldom ask ourselves what has our own democracy actually accomplished for decades americans have watched infrastructure age political polarization deepen homelessness increase life expectancy stagnate compared with many peer nations and public confidence in institutions decline elections continue on schedule campaigns become ever more expensive every election is described as the most important in our lifetime yet many structural problems remain stubbornly unresolved one reason i believe lies in the nature of our political system itself the permanent competition between democrats and republicans makes sustained national planning extraordinarily difficult policies begun by one administration are often dismantled by the next not necessarily because they have failed but because they belong to political opponents the electoral calendar becomes stronger than the planning calendar china s political system has ...