HUMANS, NEITHER CATTLE NOR SHEEP.

The teaching point for Christmas Eve and Christmas services returned, this year, to the curious political economy of Roman Catholicism, or perhaps of the Social Gospel.

Chicago's Cardinal Archbishop, Blase Cupich, is showing his age, or perhaps his remote control microphone cut out on him at inopportune moments.  His message echoed those of previous years in thinking of the shepherds as society's outcasts.  That's debatable, as they had assets.

The message itself struck WGN's Jo Marquez as standard stuff.

Cupich's message highlighted an acceptance of human frailties and limitations, emphasizing the need to recognize and wholeheartedly embrace them. "The message is very clear. We are not to be afraid of our humanity but to embrace it. Not to be afraid of our weaknesses, our mortality, our limitations in life…. When God enters into us," Cupich told the congregation in a statement obtained by WGN-TV.

Historically, the Midnight Mass at Holy Name Cathedral has always been a significant event for the Catholic community in Chicago and has been broadcast live for decades, allowing countless to join the celebration remotely. This year was no different, with people coming together both in person and virtually, witness to a tradition that has endured through the years.

Expanding on the themes of Cupich's homily, it was shared that the cardinal urged believers to look upon their vulnerabilities as an opportunity to let forgiveness and tolerance fill their hearts. With insights into one of life's great contradictions, he suggested that true salvation comes not from one’s power but through the grace of God, as reported by ABC 7 Chicago.  He said, "He says when we acknowledge our own weaknesses that's when forgiveness and tolerance can enter our hearts."

The "contradiction" is as old as the creation account in Genesis, as the message makes clear.  I'm quoting from the Christmas morning message at Mercy Home, which repeats the themes of Christmas Eve if at a more reasonable hour for older people.  The transcript is set down as if in free verse.

It’s often been said that God sent his son
Into the world to take on our human flesh,
Not to teach us how to be God,
But how to be human beings.
How to be human beings who live with our mortality,
Our weaknesses, our vulnerability,
And everything that is involved with the
Conditional aspects of our lives,
Where we also begin to see that we cannot save ourselves.

That's long been a Christian selling point: rather than a deity who intervenes on the side of the rulers; who grants special powers to a priestly caste; who lets rulers, including more than a few Pharaohs or Caesars over the years, to claim godly status for themselves: this deity appears in the most humble form, first announced to those shepherds.

Only, that is, after prohibiting the first humans from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Because the real temptation from the very beginning
Of creation, as we saw in the Genesis account,
Is humanity’s temptation to give in to that temptation
That we can save ourselves.
That’s what the eating of the fruit
Of the forbidden tree is about.
That Adam and eve could be Godlike,
Could be those who save themselves.

Humans, evidently, could not make full use of that knowledge, nor, after having been tossed out of the Garden of Eden, could they climb Yggdrasil.  Oh, sorry, different tree of life.  (Gen. II:9)

A digression: there's a lot more in that account of the Fall for people who know a lot more about faith traditions than I to chew over.

Of course, the traditional interpretation of the Genesis account of the creation of the world and mankind is hardly calculated to please our modern sensibilities. Apart from God’s stirring command in the first chapter that man “fill the earth and subdue it”—which is very much in accord with the ambitions of our scientific, technological approach to reality—the account of creation in Genesis will strike many as downright reactionary. Not only is the challenge to “subdue” the earth considerably toned down in the second chapter, where man is merely given leave to “till” and “keep” the garden of Eden, but the account of the creation of woman, formed from one of Adam’s ribs to be his companion and helper, cannot be edifying to champions of feminism. Then, too, there is the story of the fall of man and his permanent expulsion from paradise. It is bad enough that Eve, as the first to yield to the serpent’s blandishments, implicitly gets most of the blame, but even worse is the seeming disproportion between the offense and the punishment: to be banished forever from paradise, saddled with pain, conflict, and mortality, all for a single act of disobedience.

Go there, or do your own research.  I'm inclined to agree with John Galt: whatever Adam and Eve were, as they lived in the Garden of Eden, they were not living as humans.  It was when humans acquired that partial knowledge of good and evil that they became moral beings.  Indeed, it is humans living as humans who do a lot demonstrating the conditional nature of life.  We call them parents.  "Our job is not just to build a relationship with our kids. We already have that. It’s to help them build a relationship with the world."

Today, though, I want to stay focused on the Cardinal Archbishop's curious political economy.  Let's return to his message.

And so we see here in this account
From the Gospel of Luke how all of that
Really is shown so very powerfully.
For it begins, we see here, by announcing
Those who are in power, who have possessions,
Who have different positions.
Caesar Augustus, the great emperor,
Quirinius, Herod, all of those who in some way
Have control of the situation to the point
Where in fact Mary and Joseph have to move
From their home in Nazareth to come to Bethlehem
To be counted.
Great Caesar looks upon people as his cattle,
As his possessions, as those who are to be accounted.
They also are a family that seems
To have nothing in possession.

English language translations of Luke sometimes have Caesar's subjects being enrolled, and sometimes they're taxed.  Does it therefore follow that when we journey to the county clerk to enroll as voters, or when the census-taker knocks on our door, in order that seats in the House of Representatives or the Illinois Legislature be properly apportioned, that we are Governor Pritzker's cattle or Donald Trump's sheep?

No, dear reader, it is that we have moral authority as humans, whether that comes from our very existence or as an endowment from Divine Providence, to exercise control over the situation.  Furthermore, the concept of "possession" requires concepts of ownership and accounting that Luke, the apostles, or Great Caesar himself did not grasp.  As an exercise, work out how unequal wealth ownership was in the days when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.

From that perspective it is rich that the Cardinal Archbishop would pivot to anxiety and worry.

So both the shepherds and the holy family
Call us to remember that God has taken on our flesh
To help us understand what it means to be human
And to accept our humanity,
To accept our vulnerability,
Our limitations and yes, our mortality.
Because when we do so,
We open ourselves up to the realization
That God does come to save us.
He not only comes to save us, but he makes us his own.
But when we try to pursue our own salvation
On our own terms of possessions and positions and power,
We find ourselves always fretting about things,
Always anxious and worrying.
It seems that no matter how much money we have
Or power we have, it’s never enough
Because we still wonder if we can save ourselves.

On the other hand, is there any ritual to match confession before communion when it comes to making the congregants fretful, anxious, and worrying?  And penance is only good for one communion cycle.  But then, the priests and prophets have their own way of thinking of the congregants as sheep who ought not go astray.