The Need for Greatness Many of Us Harbor

When I look on the heroes in my life, what I see is their greatness. We fumble for words to say what it is that lifts them above us: talent, integrity, courage, decency, holiness, a whole bunch of synonyms for being a saint. I think Chip Brown stumbled on it in his article on Tiger Woods in today's New York Times. One word: Greatness.

Check out this week's Play Newsletter:

When Chip Brown went to Florida for two weeks in March for an up-close look at the Tiger Woods phenomenon, he left knowing that Woods, still just 32, was one of the most written-about athletes of all time, the subject of many millions of words, including some 85 books. He also knew Woods tended to avoid saying anything very revealing.

But Brown had been studying Egyptian gods for an article for "National Geographic," and he saw in Woods the same kind of alloy that, in ancient Egypt, reflected greatness back onto an entire civilization. In his cover story for the current issue of PLAY, "It's Good To Be Immortal," Brown chose to focus on the relationship between Tiger Woods and us, and how his greatness as an athletic performer fulfills a need for greatness that many of us harbor.
[http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2008/05/29/sports/playemail/index.html]

Two names in the current flow of headlines, harbor greatness in us, for us.

Scott McClellan may not have the brand of greatness we seek from athletes on the field, but the other kind that glows when a person stands to speak truth to power. McLellan is so speaking, about what he did and hated doing, as Press Secretary for The White House. He went along with it, anyway, and now speaks, only to be doomed. We may not follow. We do listen to what he has to say, because we harbor a need for greatness, especially in one sole person, one solitary hitherto relatively unknown person rises to stand before power. And speak truth.

Bishop Geoffrey Robinson has greatness, that awesome, magnificent kind. He is on a speaking tour in the United States for his book Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus.

He, too, speaks truth to power, and is damned. And yet, and yet, not doomed. When Catholics hate Catholics, there is no decency, only damnation. To hell's fire. For eternity. Ask Galileo, Joan of Arc, Hans Kung. We listen to this Bishop, just a retired Auxiliary Bishop from Australia, and we bless our own need for the greatness. We listen and we follow, for he is a Christ standing before the high priests of his own times. That is the "greatness that many of us harbor."

We can measure the impact of these two spokespersons by the mediocrity oozing when "they" pounce, too late, to silence them, but in time to doom or damn. State dooms.Church damns. Quickly, even immediately, they surge out from sanctuaries against anyone who dares besmirch their institution of state or church. They are not nice people. They have no greatness. They do not even harbor it. Actually, they are little people, drill instructors, martinets, marching rhythmically in the lockstep of sycophants: the Libbys, the Cheneys, the Wolfowitzes, the Rumsfelds, the Bushes.

No such litany is needed for churchmen. "High priests" will do. We know them as lurkers: Curial Cardinals, Bishops behind Chancery walls, a Pope wringing his hands as apologies tumble forth n gushes. Instituional personages, in love with buildings and costumes, at home in pulpits of power, while doing nothing for the abused, be they children or women or theologians formerly licensed for the greatness of teaching. Little greatness in a clique.

Pouncers have few inklings to acknowledge heroes. They may long for greatness – as in a legacy -- but can never see it in others or in themselves, enwrapped as they are in brillo, rather than awe. Which brings the puzzlement: Why disgust? Rather than awe? Lots of disgust lately, but little awe.

* Scott McClellan and the bush Bush reaction to his disclosure and exposure.
* Bishop Geoffrey Robinson and the burning bush reaction from hierarchs who envy each other lusting for power.

There is a common fugue in the daily flow and earthquakes of news: be it in print or on cable; from quakelake books flooding the market; instant condemnation uttered by puzzled pundits; spokespersons unmuzzled, lunging off leashes; and those knee-jerk rushers to judgment: Whom shall we doom or damn today?"

Makes little difference whether one claims allegiance to State rather than Church, as one well might, for those who pounce out of Church are as practiced and skilled in obliteration by destruction. Theirs leaves no spoor. At least the assassins from Church are consistent by condemning their prey to an eternity of hellfire and damnation with "He's a heretic." We just do not hear the palliative, "He's not the Bishop Geoffrey we thought we knew." "He's not one of us, never was." "Ban him."

In state's pursuit of those who done it wrong, the justification is the expansion of power, pretty much the same driving force for church, but not clothed in vestments of religiosity, so much as in stonewalling, doublespeak, unbilling the Bill of Rights.

And so, the news of the moment is that McClellan is leaving the muzzlement of political spokesman, even as his former colleagues enter puzzlement at his behavior, "He's not the Scott we used to know."

Bishop Robinson, on the other hand, is not as slyly dismissed, you see, and must be destroyed, without trace. After all, he is simply asking questions, as he told ABC News, but he must be damned, with no understanding, no forgiveness, no salvation outside the Church, no puzzlement, that snide reaction of Bush people to criticism of their president. Churchmen are never puzzled.

We may have heard our elders say: What Peter says about Paul says far more about Peter than it does about Paul.

We may remember Plato's question in The Republic: Who shall guard the Guardians?

And yesterday, on their birthdays, I thought of two men, who did say things like that. My father, whose greatness was born in 1896. And Walker Percy, the novelist of the South, born in 1916. Percy wrote:

[We] live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.

Listen then, to Scott McClellan's answers, and note those who are puzzled by him.

Listen then, to Bishop Geoffrey Robinson's questions, and note those who forbid him to ask them.

Harbor greatness.