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Articles by Travis LaCouter
What von Balthasar can teach us about Pope Francis’ reforms
The prolific and often eccentric Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-88) must surely be considered one of the most influential Catholic thinkers of the past century. The author of over 100 books, founder of a secular institute and a publishing house, and a tireless translator, Balthasar left a legacy that professional theologians are still grappling with nearly four decades after his death. For many, Balthasar’s name conjures up associations with a conservative theological agenda.
What von Balthasar can teach us about Pope Francis’ reforms
Hans Urs von Balthasar and Pope Francis (Composite photo/Wikimedia Commons) The prolific and often eccentric Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-88) must surely be considered one of the most influential Catholic thinkers of the past century. The author of over 100 books, founder of a secular institute and a publishing house, and a tireless translator, Balthasar left a legacy that professional theologians are still grappling with nearly four decades after his death.
Analyzing Prayer: Theological and Philosophical Essays. Edited by Oliver D. Crisp, James M. Arcadi, and Jordan Wessling. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. 240. £75.00. - LaCouter - The Heythrop Journal - Wiley Online Library
No abstract is available for this article. The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties.
Send Lazarus | Syndicate
I understand the impulse to compare my basic disagreement with Send Lazarus to that between Slavoj Žižek and Ernesto Laclau, though I suspect that Eggemeier and Fritz will regret having given me the opportunity to ventriloquise through my fellow ex-Yugoslav. There was a good Albanian joke that became popular in the 2000s after the catastrophic attempts to build democracy there throughout the 1990s: two vampires, a father and a son, are making dinner plans.
A Certain Boldness
DECEMBER 13, 2020 THEOLOGY BY ITS nature calls for a certain boldness. Not necessarily in terms of writing it, although bold stylists often produce the most fertile theologies (think Augustine, Martin Luther, or Marcella Althaus-Reid), but in terms of its subject matter — that is, God and all things related to God. Inert propositional claims tend to do very little theological work, aside from prepare the theologian to say something that might spark the readers’ imagination or stir their heart.
Pentecost demands a faith that moves
Thoughts and prayers—such is the typical response to tragedy in the United States of America. It is an especially common refrain after the death of innocents, almost always urged upon us by those who know that they have something to lose should a more fundamental challenge to the system arise. And why not? For many people, prayer refers to something private, something silent. Catholics often think that prayer leads one further into oneself, not out into the world.
What can Bob Dylan teach us about the Giving Pledge? -
3 min read February 12, 2015 The crown prince of American folk music reminds us – in his characteristically cool way – that there is a different style of philanthropy… Since launching roughly five years ago, the Giving Pledge has attracted the support of more than a hundred billionaires around the world.
Playing the Long Game
The four have been quarreling with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but she quickly rose to their defense, assailing Trump’s “xenophobic comments” and declaring that his signature slogan about American greatness “has always been about making America white again.” Here’s hoping Trump’s malice encourages Democrats to face up to the stakes of the fight they’re in. It’s already hard enough to be in the opposition.
Another GOP Attack on Health Care
O’Connor’s reasoning was that Congress undercut the constitutionality of the law by eliminating a tax penalty on those who failed to buy health insurance. Chief Justice John Roberts hung his 2012 opinion validating the constitutionality of the ACA on Congress’s power to tax, so O’Connor’s pretext was that once the tax went, the whole structure collapsed. Pause and marvel at the gall of conservative jurisprudence.
Poem | Fibonacci
Around the inner rims of these sunflowers one by one small yellow petals pop open, in obedience to the sun. On some the inmost circles, bright yellow, is almost complete, circumspect around the seeds that are still virginal, tight, neat. Their elegance is in the way they fill their places, in dumb-show greening the ghost life of mathematics, their order cosmic, their time to come.
‘Ongoing Matters’
Particular, Robert Mueller meets with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in 2012 (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) Robert Mueller’s effort to stand outside partisan politics in his investigation of President Donald Trump will no doubt follow him into the pages of American history. But for now there are still some questions that he needs to answer, despite his reluctance to say anything more than is contained in his 448-page report.
Why the ‘Metropolitan Plan’ Doesn’t Work
The now-glaring weakness of the USCCB’s 2002 Dallas Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People was that it made no provision for dealing with bishops who engage in sexual misconduct. In the wake of the scandal surrounding Theodore McCarrick, who had escaped the consequences of his abuses for decades, the American bishops realized this gap had to be closed.
'Collected Poems'
Marie Ponsot has had a remarkable, and remarkably long, career. Her debut collection, True Minds, was published way back in 1956—a distant time when Allen Ginsberg, Robert Lowell, and Elizabeth Bishop strode the earth. The first poem in that book, and the first poem in her new Collected Poems, is “Take My Disproportionate Desire.” It speaks in a voice that is confident and complicated, rich but not overwrought.
Poem | Looking Out, Anytime
I draw the praise-lines of a letter alpha or omega to honor light & air which refuse to be drawn as, right now, they engineer the east-borne career of three white clouds across New York October clear illusion of blue above named famous bulldogs ochre, umber, stony, glassy, linear. Every day wherever I am whenever I look, I see thanks to one great flame The invisible presences it dims out spiral on, anyhow.
Ducks Over the Pond
While finding a stadium large enough to meet the outsized demand for tickets to the games is one thing, ensuring that stadium includes a quality playing field is another. In some ways, this should be easier for baseball—unlike in the NFL, NBA, or NHL, the sport has no standard field size. The dimensions of professional soccer pitches also vary slightly, but not nearly to the same extent as in baseball.
Pope Francis on the Loaves & Fishes
The pope points to the word “give.” This, he says, “tells us something very beautiful. Bread is not only something to be consumed; it is a means of sharing. Surprisingly, the account of the multiplication of the loaves does not mention the multiplication itself.” Jesus emphasizes the sharing, not the multiplying. “Jesus does not perform a magic trick; he does not change five loaves into five thousand and then announce: ‘There! Distribute them!’” No, says Francis.
Questions of Identity
If The Dead Don’t Die loses steam for its lack of focus, the Brazilian film Bacurau by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles keeps up its energy with what the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw rightly calls “ruthless clarity and force.” While critics’ initial excitement over Jarmusch’s zom-com quickly cooled, Bacurau was one of the breakout hits of the festival. After the premiere screening, the crowd gave it a ten-minute standing ovation, and it tied for the prestigious Jury Prize.
Ava DuVernay’s ‘When They See Us’
The case brings back the poisonous zeitgeist of late-1980s New York, where a new über class of wealthy young Wall Streeters disported itself amid the wreckage of a crack-cocaine epidemic among the city’s underclass. Violent crime reached levels unimaginable today (the city suffered 2,250 murders in 1990; twenty-five years later, just 330); looking back in 2002, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert described “a city soaked in the blood of crime victims....
Motherhouse of Cinema
Besides commercial concerns, another specter loomed at the festival this year, too. The long shadow cast by a particular president’s orange bouffant covers the globe, and Cannes is no exception. In Cannes as in Hollywood, Trump is a figure of near-universal scorn; but Trump’s name was almost never explicitly mentioned at the festival, and in general the crowd here opted for icy neglect instead of histrionics. Which is not to say politics was avoided altogether.
The Practice of Love
This “powerlessness” of power asserts itself, for instance, whenever Anne attempts to make a decision. At court she is caught between Tory and Whig factions that disagree on how best to carry out war with the French. For guidance she turns to Sarah, whose force of character and clear-eyed political commitments often carry the day. But then, the imagined slight or the whiff of disloyalty from Sarah quickly sends Anne into apoplexy, and she reverses decisions she has just solemnly pronounced.
Crowdfunding the Wall
A strange feature of our current political climate is the significant overlap of philanthropy and partisan activism. That’s not so extraordinary, of course; charity has always been shaped by and contributed to shaping prevailing political trends. Nevertheless, it’s safe to say that the all-important ‘buffer space’ called civil society—wherein citizens can participate in public ventures which are not themselves explicitly political—is shrinking. This fact plays out in two ways.
Partisanship and philanthropy, again
In a recent study published in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, four scholars of philanthropy and public policy marshal tax data from more than 3,000 counties to paint a new picture of partisan giving. In the past, such studies have tended to chase easy headlines, claiming broadly that Republicans give more money to charitable causes than Democrats do.
“If you die rich, you die poor, really.”
Donald and Barbara Jonas. Photo attribution: http://jonasphilanthropies.org. I’ve written in the past about foundations that “spend down”, and in doing so challenge the presumption of institutional perpetuity that one finds so often in Big Philanthropy. An example of an individual donor making the same sort of commitment comes to us from the late Barbara Jonas, a psychotherapist from Manhattan who died recently at the age of 84.
The complexities of donor intent - Philanthropy Daily
4 min read August 30, 2018 The question of donor intent is not simply, ‘What would our founder have done?’ but rather, ‘How do we implement our founder’s vision today?’ One of the persistent challenges facing private philanthropic organizations is the question of donor intent. This problem is only amplified when dealing with family foundations, which so often owe their existence to a particular individual with very specific ideas about how his or her money should be spent.
Checking in on the Donor-Advised Fund debate
How Tech Billionaires Hack Their Taxes With a Philanthropic Loophole – that’s the title of David Gelles’ article published earlier this month at the New York Times. Gelles’ arguments will be familiar to those who have followed the reports on Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) from Philanthropy Daily (here, here, here) (and beyond) in the past few years: DAFs allow wealthy donors to shield large sums from taxation without ultimately providing meaningful requirements to move their money out the door.
A first look at the Everyday Philanthropist Act
Ever since the passage late last year of the GOP tax bill, nonprofits have been scrambling to find how they figure into the new regulatory landscape.
The limits of data-driven philanthropy
Over at Inside Philanthropy, David Callahan makes a noteworthy argument about Michael Bloomberg’s Annual Letter on Philanthropy. The ex-mayor’s Letter gives insight into the motivations and goals of one of the country’s most prolific and influential donors. This year Bloomberg placed a special emphasis on the importance of data.
Gamers give back
Online gaming culture occupies an uncertain position in the collective imagination. Since the 2014 Gamergate controversy, in which female web developers were targeted for online harassment and doxing, the gaming community has had to contend with legitimate questions about its inherent misogyny and cliquishness.
David Rubenstein’s lonely patriotism
Philanthropy Magazine’s Spring 2018 issue featured an interview with the prolific D.C. philanthropist David Rubenstein.
Poem | Wild
Even the eagle is deep into dailyness acts as if safe, & is silly during its courtship rituals spends days inspecting impregnable building sites before choosing one with a view of fat meadows, water, & the right neighbors clucks at stubborn children to hurry them up, models high tricks of survival for their benefit wakes in the night when the wind shifts hard north, & tunes in hastily to the weather reports.
When Muse Becomes Mother
Nor is Alma able to stave off the withering judgments that accompany Reynolds’s imperious moods. Finally, hurt once too much, she takes drastic action that results in his incapacitation. She couldn’t care less about the impact on the business or his art; she’s happy only that she has Reynolds where she wants him: “flat on his back—helpless, tender, open, with only me to help.” Now it is Alma shutting doors in Cyril’s face, rather than the other way around.
The Philanthropist Prince
In a recent speech to the United Kingdom’s Charity Commission Prince William presented his vision of the role and future of philanthropy in England. William’s speech captured some of the essential truths about charity in a free society, while also hinting at the possible new directions in which he’d like to see British civil society develop.
Salt in the Wound
It was dismaying, then, but not entirely surprising when the president announced on December 6 that the United States would formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and eventually relocate its embassy there. “This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality,” he insisted. “It is also the right thing to do.” No one outside of the United States and Israel appeared to agree. Both China and the European Union quickly distanced themselves from the new U.S. policy.
A Glimpse That Outlives the Moment
There’s a certain comfort to be had from a poem that’s centered on a person. We tend to like the groundedness provided by a narrator; lines like Seamus Heaney’s “Our unspoken assumptions have the force / of revelation” might feel more ominous were they not attached to some sort of a presence. The world is wondrous but also strange and sometimes even dangerous; a narrator whispers us into peace. The poet Eric Pankey doesn’t seem to feel that way.
Not Worth a Cake?
The U.S. Supreme Court heard one of the most closely watched cases of its term earlier this week. The dispute involves a Christian baker from Colorado who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, says his religious convictions about marriage require him in good conscience not to provide wedding-related services to gay couples.
What is the Basis for Human Equality?
In a tour of philosophy across the centuries, Waldron considers many possibilities for what features of human beings might establish their continuity with one another and their distinctively high standing. Reason has long been a popular choice in the mix of argument. But Waldron also hastens to add—it is his main contribution—that we are looking for characteristics that come in a distinctively human range. I may have less capacity than you do to reason, or find it harder to engage my moral powers.
Nightmare Vision
As if to drive home this point, two of Woman’s children soon show up (played by real-life brothers Domhnall and Brian Gleeson), fighting bitterly over an inheritance. Anger quickly turns to wrath and the younger brother is killed by his sibling, with blood spilling on Mother’s painstakingly refinished floorboards (where it will stay the rest of the film, crying out for vengeance). From here things spiral further out of control.
GOP unveils tax reform bill draft. College endowments are on the table.
Republicans in the House of Representatives finally unveiled the first draft of their tax reform bill last week. As might be expected in the age of Trump, the House plan hits some populist high notes—by holding the top tax rate steady at 39.6%, for instance, penalizing companies that move their operations overseas, or expanding the child tax credit. But on the whole the proposed overhaul represents a victory for House Speaker Paul Ryan, whose unshakeable faith in tax cuts is finally paying off.
An Art of Life | Commonweal Magazine
Readers in search of some year-round Christmas spirit will find it in Terence Ward’s The Guardian of Mercy: How an Extraordinary Painting Changed an Ordinary Life Today (Arcade Publishing, $24.99, 200 pp.). The extraordinary painting is Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s Seven Works of Mercy, painted in Naples in 1607 for seven young noblemen who had founded a religious organization in 1603, committed to relieving the plight of the poor.
Share This Protest
In 2009, a group of Harvard researchers made an accidental discovery. While building a computer program to read Chinese text, they realized that they were able to track what the Chinese government would censor and what it would not. First, they looked at social media posts that criticized the government or government officials; it seemed a natural place to start. But this wasn’t what was being censored.
The charitable tax deduction turns 100
“In America, as perhaps nowhere else in the world,” declared an editorial in the Boston Transcript on June 29, 1917, “educational and philanthropic institutions have been built up and maintained by private subscription.” The article goes on to argue that in other countries “of slower development” than the United States, welfare work and social services have had to be taken up by government organs, whose resolve (and funding) tends to dry up during times of war.
Putting panhandlers to work still works - and it’s still unpopular
2 min read September 28, 2017 Will such efforts end panhandling or eliminate poverty? My colleague Macarena Olsen wrote back last August about efforts by the city of Albuquerque to put panhandlers to work with government day jobs. The Albuquerque program—called There’s a Better Way—paid just around minimum wage and provided lunches to workers, a huge bonus for those used to begging every meal.
The resource every higher ed donor should know about
Bloated budgets, threadbare curricula, activist administrators—the litany of sins attributable to the modern American university is as familiar as it is discouraging. One of the broad structural problems underlying these more-discussed abuses is the fast and easy approach many schools take to donor intent.
Major newspapers look to nonprofits for cash
We hear a lot about the death of traditional print media. Newspaper sales are down, digital consumption is up, advertisers are fleeing like rats from a sinking ship—yadda yadda yadda. Although (as some fastidious commentators point out) there remains a path forward for those Big Name papers that reinvest in content and get aggressive about multi-platform integration, it’s undoubtedly the case that the ground has long been shifting beneath the feet of our traditional media institutions.
Small town gets their store back after anonymous donation
The small Village Store in Francestown, New Hampshire, served residents and visitors to the Granite State for more than 200 years. A mainstay of the northern New England hamlet, the Store could claim to be the second oldest continuously run store in America. They sold coffee, bread, beer—you name it; “We used to buy everything here, meat and everything,” one local resident told the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript.
A widow’s need | Philanthropy Daily
It’s one of the most commonly recurring biblical images—the widow in need. The Psalms promise that, “The Lord watches over the strangers; He upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked He brings to ruin” (146:9). In Deuteronomy Moses curses “anyone who deprives the alien, the orphan, and the widow of justice” (27:19). The Book of James declares that the “religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress” (1:27).
Pakistan’s philanthropy problem | Philanthropy Daily
In the New York Times recently Mohammed Hanif commented on the philanthropic practices of Pakistanis. Hanif—a Karachi-based novelist—doesn’t hide his disdain for his country’s literalist interpretations of Islamic charity rules. Despite the fact that Muslims are meant to have to zakat (an annual 2.5% tithe to the poor), Pakistanis have a complicated relationship to giving.
The stories we tell ourselves about our Great Men
Watching even the first few minutes of the recent HBO documentary film, Becoming Warren Buffet proves (as if proof of a truism were needed) that narration is narrative. We see Buffet briskly walking to his car early in the morning to drive himself to work; we see him stopping at the local McDonald’s to pay in cash (with exact change) for a sausage McMuffin; we see him delivering folksy platitudes to highschoolers, who for their part look on eagerly.
‘Big Philanthropy’ tries to channel ‘Big Ideas’-does it work?
Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal ran an adulatory profile (paywall) of philanthropist Nicolas Berggruen. At first glance Berggruen seems like an interesting character. The Parisian son of an art collector and an actress, Berggruen studied existentialist thought before launching a highly profitable hedge fund in 1988.
All in the family: how the wealthy talk about inheritance
In May the New York Times’ Paul Sullivan published a piece on ‘How the Wealthy Talk to Their Children About Money.’ The profile of a handful of millionaire families proves interesting for what it reveals about the awkwardness introduced into the most intimate of relationships by the presence of significant sums of money. Sullivan cites a recent poll by the Wilmington Trust that suggests rich parents are hesitant to even bring up the topic with their children.
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