c. 2000 Religion News Service
(Eugene Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author most recently of “My Brother Joseph,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)
(UNDATED) The year seems both long and short since we were told by publicists and pundits _ and there is a fine line between them _ that character did not count. Let the president frolic as long as it does not interfere with his job.
Now the voters of New Hampshire tell us that possessing character is the president’s job.
The same pundits who sold off personal moral behavior at deep discount last winter now emerge from the New England snows to tell us what the pope and the great Unpolled and Unreported Majority have known for a long time: “What mattered most” to voters “was finding a man of unshakeable character, willing to stand up for his convictions.”
Bill Clinton has been searching desperately for a legacy, for an accomplishment he could claim as uniquely and completely his own. And now it has emerged as unambiguous in its message as the groundhog’s shadowed prediction of more winter ahead.
President Clinton can retire the Irony Prize for bequeathing to the nation a deep longing for honesty and decency in the Oval Office. He has left us the same thing Punxsutawney Phil does, a shadow on the landscape rather than a statue in the public square.
Now the Rediscovery of Character has replaced the Loss of the Mars Explorer as the story that most embarrassed the experts during the millennial season. Nothing becomes us less, in matters related to human longing, than being confident that we know what people really want.
Joining the cohort that includes the designers of the Edsel and the brewers of New Coke are the spinners who invented the notion that ethics and morality are irrelevant in public life.
The big winner in all this, as the newsmagazines love to declare, is, of course, Kenneth Starr, a man reviled for arguing on behalf of such supposedly discarded practices as telling the truth under oath and not sexually harassing women who work for you. The big loser, of course, is consultant James Carville, who, until now, has been given a pass by the media for making a sacrilege of the truth in his use of misinformation and defamation as campaign tools.
The biggest winner may be the pope. John Paul II has sensed the needs of a weary and worn-down world for some time now. While many Catholics and others have wondered at his emphasis on canonizing saints, it now turns out that good example writ large is exactly what people want at this time in history.
The primary results, however, make goodness not only attractive but relevant to everyday life in a brand new century. The pope, almost alone among world figures, has underscored the dynamic model of the spiritual person over that of the economic person as central to human progress. The cost/benefit ratio may not be as applicable as many think to the things that, in a real sense, count in life. The individual pursuing honor may turn out to be more influential than the impersonal, and ethically neutral, mass movement in changing the world for the better. As long as we are sinners, the pope has reminded us, we will be in need of saints to light our ways and to deepen our courage in facing life.
The roots of the word “character” are instructive. It comes from “kharassein,” which means to brand or to sharpen. It is related to “kharax,” which means a pointed stake. In its family of meaning, we find to sharpen, to notch, to carve. It is a distant relative to the Old English “grit.”
Character may indeed have rough edges; that is why we refer to those who lack it as jellyfish. It is akin to the spiritual character that, according to Catholic teaching, the sacraments, such as baptist and confirmation, engrave on our souls.
Character, in a world of broken lances and dulled swords, is a pointed stake, sharp enough to remind us that men without a conscience are also, in the long run, men without a country, too. Character is the pointed stake of the beam that bears the weight of what we build out of fidelity, love and truth of our lives.
DEA END KENNEDY
