Caritas

I’m having a much better mental health day. The problem I didn’t want to talk about has been taken care of. I did spend another day at home so once again I have to figure what to write. Yesterday’s entry that I thought of as whiney proved popular and well-liked. Artists are not the best judges of their own works. We react not just to the work but to our feelings when making it. My favorite example is that Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t think much of his Sherlock Holmes books; he thought his historical novels were his best work. I like my writing best when it’s funny, especially the little asides. I haven’t written a full humor piece in years. I should try my hand at it again.

Luckily for me in a bad mental space the new season of Better Call Saul dropped. I also started rewatching The Good Place from the beginning. Everyone who loved the show should do that after they finish watching the last episode. The entire first season takes on a different meaning on a rewatch. You pick up on references that were made in the last episode to the earlier ones. Unless you are like Janet, and experience all time at once, you won’t get the full The Good Place experience if you don’t rewatch it.

I heard back from the Census Bureau. I made an appointment to get fingerprinted. That makes sense. I’ll be going into people’s homes, they better vet the workers well. There are so many enumerators that it’s almost certain that some have abused their position. That’s true of every profession that provides some sort of access or power. If there are large numbers involved even things with small rates happen frequently. People don’t have a good intuitive feel for that. Trump trumpets crimes by immigrants and his followers think immigrants are dangerous. The fact is that they commit far fewer crimes per capita than native born Americans, but with millions of immigrants that still means that many crimes are committed. Many more, are committed by people born in the US. If there’s one demographic to be feared, it’s men, they commit far more crimes than women. Maybe we should preemptively deport Trump. He’s a man, one that’s been accused of sex crimes by multiple women. That would make more sense than keeping desperate refugees out of the country.

One of the best courses I took in college was Medieval History. The professor is what made it great. I learned ways of thinking, not just facts. Some of those were medieval ways that I don’t want to emulate but want to understand. Some people still follow them. One thing I learned was the concept of caritas. That’s Latin and is often translated as “love” in the bible. Sometimes it’s translated as charity. It’s one of those words, there are many in Yiddish, which has no exact English equivalent. I had trouble putting it’s meaning into words, so I looked it up on Wikipedia and found this. It’s not quite what I mean but it will lead you there.

In Christian theology, Charity (Latin Caritas) is considered as one of the seven virtues and is understood by Thomas Aquinas as “the friendship of man for God”, which “unites us to God”. He holds it as “the most excellent of the virtues”. Further, Aquinas holds that “the habit of charity extends not only to the love of God, but also to the love of our neighbor”.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines “charity” as “the theological virtue by which we love God above all things for His own sake, and our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God”. Charity (virtue)]

Obviously the part I care about has nothing to do with god but with loving people for their own sake. It’s about wanting to make other people happy and avoid hurting them. It’s altruistic love. Martin Swinger understands caritas.

I’m upset when people lack caritas. This line of thought started with something minor. The Mets built a spring training facility in Port St. Lucie, Florida. The City provided most of the money to build it. The facility is used the rest of the year by the Mets minor league team in Port St. Lucie. They built a fancy clubhouse for the big leaguers in spring training but won’t let the minor leaguers use it the rest of the year. Instead they built a separate bare basics clubhouse for them. They spent extra money just so the minimally paid minor leaguers know their place. The way they put it is that getting the good clubhouse is a reward for making the majors. These players are struggling to make ends meet, they don’t need more incentive to reach the big leagues. This is the Mets being mean-spirited and every article I’ve read about it agrees. Yet when I posted it Facebook people couldn’t see the problem. To them the Mets’ lack of caritas is not a big deal. They don’t value caritas and that hurts.

We see the same thing on a national scale. Caritas would not let us separate children in parents and keep them in cages. It would not let us turn away refugees fleeing horrors. It would not let people go without medical care. It would not let children go hungry. Caritas should be our watchword. It is the most excellent of virtues and we should try to exhibit it. It should be our lodestone. We should be as good as our dogs.