Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell

I had heard of this book a long time ago, but had never read anything by Taylor Caldwell. Here are my thoughts on the novel, it was not what I expected.  I have returned the book to the library, so I am writing from memory. I apologize for any errors.  The copy I checked out of the library was published by St. Ignatius Press.

Taylar Caldwell writes that she began drafting a novel about Saint Luke when she was about 12 years old.  So it  took her about 40 years to write this book, first published in the late 1950s.

The book begins with Luke as a young boy, the son of two former Greek slaves.  They were freed by the family of his father's current employer, a wealthy Roman soldier and Tribune.  The Roman Tribune was a friend of Tiberius Caesar, but a severe critic of the turn that Roman politics has taken.  The Tribune grew up in love with Luke's mother as the two were playmates and she was quite beautiful.  However, he could not marry her because Roman rules about marriage.   The Roman Tribune is so impressed by the young Luke that he promises to send him to the university in Alexandria to study medicine. 

The very young Luke is presented as someone chosen by God and he already has great love for what the Greeks call "the unknown God".  He even sees the star on Christmas eve and learns of the birth of this unknown God while still a youngster.  However, Luke's love for God and men comes under attack as he sees a girl he loves  (the daughter of the Tribune)  suffer and die.  He becomes bitter wondering how God can be good if he allows this innocent girl to suffer and die.  Nevertheless he still wants to study medicine and relieve the suffering that the cruel God of the universe allows to happen.

After Luke finishes his studies he becomes a travelling physician, taking jobs on ships.  He carefully cares for the sick on ships and provides the same care for slaves and freemen alike.  He seems to have a mystical power to cure serious diseases such as leprosy.  Because the Tribune had adopted him, he is very wealthy, so he never charges the poor for his services and refuses to treat anyone rich unless their case otherwise would be hopeless.  Nevertheless he maintains his bitterness against God and cannot really love anyone.  In many ways he is a lonely man.

But by the time he is in his forties, as a result of his travels in the Mediterranean,  Luke begins to hear stories about the life of Jesus, His Crucifixion and His resurrection.  At this point the reader begins to see the point of the novel.  Through learning about the life of Christ and how He interacted with sinful and suffering men and women, Luke's life is transformed from the bitter man he had become to one who allows charity (the love of God) to guide his life. He finds salvation and the faith in the "unknown God" he had as child returns to him.  This is the first point of the novel, how learning about the life and teaching's of Jesus Christ can transform a man's soul.

The second point of the book is to offer an explanation about how Luke came to write his Gospel.  Luke is presented as a multi-talented man, someone quite naturally good at everything.  That is, God has endowed him with many graces including the grace to seek knowledge of the unknown (and true) God and the ability to write well.  Hence, as Luke hears stories of Jesus--the rich young man who fails to give up all he had to follow Jesus, the centurion whose servant is healed, and many others--he decides to write them down so that he might be able to share them with others.

Finally, he decides to travel to Palestine to meet some of the disciples of Jesus and to find the Blessed Virgin Mary.  During these travels he learns of the glorious birth of Jesus, Mary's Magnificant, the nunc dimittis and the birth of John the Baptist among other events in the life of Christ. Hence, Taylor Caldwell offers a reasonable explanation for how Saint Luke was able to compile his Gospel.  In my opinion this makes the book very valuable.  At the end of the novel Luke departs from Nazareth to seek out St. Paul. How he came to write the Acts of the Apostles, therefore, is not part of the story.

Although there are many historical flaws in the book--for example the book has Luke drinking whiskey which did not exist for over a thousand years after the birth of Christ--they do not detract from the story.  The heroic characters in the book clearly would be supportive of traditional morality if living today and blame our current political problems on the decline of morality broadly defined.  She also goes out of her way to be very critical of slavery.

I enjoyed the book very much until Luke travels to Palestine.  There he even stays with Pontius Pilate and is responsible for the lifting the Roman persecution of the Church. At this point the book begins to drag.  Hence it took me longer the read the last 50 pages than the first 300.  Nevertheless I enjoyed most of the book and would recommend it to adult readers.  There is a somewhat mild description of a Roman orgy thrown by the wife of Tiberius Caesar and Luke's escape from it. Hence, this part should be skipped by younger readers.

Catholic Theory and Worship

Below is an excerpt from Bridgett, Thomas Edward. Ritual of the New Testament 3^rd edition (Burns and Oates Limited, London: 1887) pp. 112-115.  In my opinion it clarifies the nature of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in the Extraordinary form, and though written to explain Catholic Ritual to 19th century Protestants, it also answers questions that modern Catholics, who are unfamiliar with the ancient rites of the Church, might also have.  Since I assisted at TLM's for about 12½ years before ever assisting at a NO mass, in my opinion I could in good conscience substitute NO wherever the text says Protestant.  I admit that I could be wrong about this.

II. Catholic theory of worship and of prayer.
The main difficulty experienced by Protestants in witnessing Catholic worship arises from their not understanding the difference between a common act and a common prayer. The acts of the Church, such as processions, expositions of the Blessed Sacrament, the administration of Sacraments, and above all the holy Sacrifice of the Mass, are indeed always accompanied by prayer, and generally by prayers of priest and people, though not necessarily by united or common prayer. In any case, the act must be distinguished from the prayers.

A Protestant may easily understand what is meant by this distinction by aid of a few illustrations: Suppose a ship, filled with a mixed crew of French, Spanish, and Portuguese, is being wrecked on the coast of England. A crowd is assembled on the cliff, watching with intense earnestness the efforts being made by the captain and crew on the one hand, and by lifeboats from the coast on the other, to save the lives of the passengers. A great act is being performed, in which all are taking part, some as immediate actors, others as eager assistants. We may suppose this act carried out in the midst of united prayers. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, each in their own tongues, and many without spoken words at all, are sending up petitions to Almighty God for the safety of the passengers. It is a common act at which they assist; it is accompanied by the prayers of all; but they are not common prayers, in the sense of all joining either vocally or mentally in the same form of words.

When the priest Zacharias had gone into the temple of the Lord to offer incense, and ' all the multitude of the people was praying without' (Luke i. 9), there was a common act performed by priest and people by the priest as actor, by the people as assistants and the act was accompanied by united prayers. But it mattered not to the people what language was spoken by the priest or what sacred formulas were used. Their intentions were joined with his. Their individual and varied petitions were one great Amen said to his sacerdotal invocations; and all ascended together in a sweet-smelling cloud of incense to heaven.

Or to come still nearer to the reality of Catholic worship, let the reader represent to himself the great act of Calvary. Our Lord Jesus Christ is Priest and Victim. He accompanies His oblation of Himself with mysterious and most sacred prayer. Two of His seven words are from the Psalms ; and it has therefore been conjectured that He continued to recite secretly the psalm, after giving us the clue to it, by pronouncing aloud the words, ' Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabacthani?' 'My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?' Or again, ' Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.' There were many assistants at that act, and among those who assisted piously the Blessed Mother of Jesus, the Apostle St. John, the holy women, the centurion, the multitude 'who returned striking their breasts ' there was a certain unity in variety, not a uniform prayer, yet a great act of harmonious worship.

There are, then, prayers used in Catholic churches in which the whole congregation joins, such as the singing of hymns, the recitation of the Rosary, performing the Stations of the Way of the Cross, and especially the chanting of Vespers or Compline. Such prayers are either recited in the vernacular, or, when Latin is used, they require some little education in those who take a direct and vocal part in them. But the great act of Catholic worship is the Holy Mass, or the unbloody Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.' One alone stands forth and makes the awful offering; the rest kneel around, and join their intentions and devotions with his; but even were there not a solitary worshipper present, the sacrifice both for the living and dead would be efficacious and complete. To join in this act of sacrifice, and to participate in its effects, it is not necessary to follow the priest or to use the words he uses. Every Catholic knows what the priest is doing, though he may not know or understand what he is saying, and is consequently able to follow with his devotions every portion of the Holy Sacrifice. Hence a wonderful union of sacrificial, of congregational, and of individual devotion. The prayers of the priest are not substituted for those of the people. No one desires to force his brother against his will. It is the most marvellous union of liberty and law which this earth can show. The beggar with his beads, the child with her pictures, the gentleman with his Missal, the maiden meditating on each mystery of the Passion, or adoring her God in silent love too deep for words, and the grateful communicant, have but one intent, one meaning, and one heart, as they have one action, one object, before their mental vision. They bow themselves to the dust as sinners; they pray to be heard for Christ's sake; they joyfully accept His words as the words of God; they offer the bread and wine; they unite themselves with the celebrant in the Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ, which he as their priest offers for them; they communicate spiritually ; they give thanks for the ineffable gift which God has given them. Their words differ, their thoughts vary; but their hearts are united and their will is one. Therefore is their offering pure and acceptable in the sight of Him who knows their secret souls, and who accepts a man, not for the multitude or the fewness of his sayings, for his book or for his beads, but for the intention with which he has, according to his sphere and capacities, fulfilled His sacred will, through the merits of the Adorable Victim who is offered for him.'

It will be seen from this that, supposing the existence of cogent reasons for the use of a dead language, there would be no such difficulties in its employment in the Holy Sacrifice and Divine Office of the Catholic Church as there would be in what Protestants understand by public and congregational service.

Septuatgsima

I hope that I have spelled this correct.  Pius Parsch (sp?) thought it was a good idea to consider Septuagesima as the beginning of the Church's Year of Grace.  I want to explore that by studying Lent.

My Meditation on the life of Dorothy Hilda Watson Lax

What follows is a brief talk that I gave reflecting on the life of my mother-in-law, Dorothy Lax, during her funeral on Saturday, August 31, 2013.  The parts in parentheses have been added by me in editing it for this post.  You may notice that I tried to give it a "Catholic" flavor at the end.  But this was not forced, it came naturally.

On the day of Candlemas in 1935 Dorothy Hilda Watson was born in Dagenham England, a town east of London near the docks that would be so heavily bombed during the second world war.  By 1940 her father had left to serve his country in an artillery unit in the famous British Eighth Army.  Dot was briefly evacuated to the country where she attended church at a small country chapel. She heard a hymn there that she adored.  She did not remain evacuated very long, returning home where she had the experience of nearly being collateral damage from the many German bombing raids aimed at the Dagenham docks.  One day there was a direct hit on a neighbor’s bomb shelter killing a little girl.  Sadly this was an experience not unique to Dot during this war as well as many others.

Nearly 6 years after he had left, her father returned home having survived the battles in North Africa, Sicily and Italy.  Among Dot’s possessions are letters her father sent to her mother from El-Alamein, Sicily and Anzio.  (I think these “letters” were actually post cards.)  After the war her father grew a beautiful rose garden and Dot clearly inherited his green thumb.  There had been many tailors on her mother’s side of the family and she clearly inherited from them the ability to excel at handicrafts such as sewing, embroidery and knitting as well as painting. (We still have at least one flowerpot in the garage painted by her.) I don’t know from whom she inherited her great love of animals, especially dogs.  It seems to me that she rescued half of the stray dogs and cats in Tuscaloosa County.  (That is how we ended up with two dogs, Betsy and Strawberry.)

On July 31, 1954 Dot married Derek Sidney Lax and their first child Christine, who much later became my wife, was born 18 months later.  Christine was followed in turn by Janet and then Robert.

I first met Dot a few weeks before my wedding to Christine.  After our first child was born we periodically began to receive parcels containing sweaters and blankets that Dot had knitted for her grandchildren.  One day I remarked to my wife’s Aunt Muriel that I could not understand why Dot did this. It must be a lot of boring work.  Muriel’s reply was an emphatic, “No, James, it’s a labor of love!” And indeed it was.

When my wife became a US citizen, Dorothy asked her to sponsor her immigration to the United States.  Since the parents of a US citizen can more or less automatically get a green card, Dorothy and Derek left England in August 1989,  leaving behind two grandchildren to join two others, and third about to be born in Northport AL.  Once she was here, she learned of an upcoming immigration lottery and entered her daughter Janet (along with husband John Chambers), as well as her son Robert.  Since you could enter the lottery as many times as you wish, she did so many times, and that is how the rest of Dot’s immediate family came to immigrate to Tuscaloosa.  The year 1998 brought Dorothy a sixth grandchild, Hayley, who quickly became the apple of her eye.

Dorothy worked at Home Health Care of North Alabama, DCH Home Health Care, then Hydra Tools, and finally she worked for her daughter, Christine, at the Babytalk Store until she became too ill to continue working.

As Dorothy’s cancer progressed, so did her pain and suffering.  I took her to see a specialist at the Kirklin Clinic several times and she received treatment last November and December at the Cancer Treatment Center at DCH.  Finally in early May we learned that there was nothing that could be done that had any reasonable chance of working.  Dorothy decided to be admitted to hospice and only receive palliative care. 

Oddly enough, this is when I really began to appreciate what I think is the most important thing about her. As Saint Peter told the readers of his first epistle, “before all things have a constant mutual charity among yourselves: for charity covereth a multitude of sins.”   As Dorothy suffered, I recalled the many little labors of love (or charity) that she had shown toward her children and grandchildren over the years.  She had never been too tired to make a batch of Yorkshire puddings for Christmas or Thanksgiving or both.  She brought a large batch of Yorkshire puddings to our 2012 Christmas dinner, even though she had been extremely ill from her treatments and could not stay very long.  Dot was quick to adopt the American holiday of Thanksgiving because it was another occasion for the entire family to be together.

I marveled at how she accepted her suffering without complaint.  The only thing she asked was that Derek never leave her side, and he practically never did. Several times the nurses at Hospice told us that they were worried that she did not ask for pain medicine often enough.  I kept wondering whether Dorothy was allowing her suffering to have meaning by uniting it with the Passion of Christ.  She certainly was exhibiting the sort of heroic virtue typical of many famous saints.  Throughout her ordeal she always seemed to be at peace and was grateful for even the smallest act of kindness.

Two days ago my daughter Sarah reminded me that Dorothy had had a dream during the spring shortly before we learned her treatments had failed.  She dreamed that she was back in the country chapel that she had attended during the war while evacuated from Dagenham. She remembered the hymn that she had loved so much and then Christ appeared to her in this dream and told her not to worry, He would take care of her.  As Dorothy was nearing the end of this life, she must have been trusting that Christ would take care of her.  I hope that I can have that same trust.

What's Wrong with the Labor Market

Consider this graph of the ratio of the number of initial claims for unemployment compensation relative to the number of individuals employed by the private sector.

The black line is the average number of people during the month who filed an initial claim for unemployment compensation per 1,000 people employed in the private sector.  The red line is the number of continuing claims for unemployment compensation for each initial claim.  For a short period of time at the ends of the 1973-75, 1980 and 1981-82 recessions there were over 8 people filing an initial claim for unemployment compensation for every 1,000 people employed in the private sector. The maximum value of this series during the 2008-2009 recession was only 5.98, less than three-fourths of the maximum value during the above three recessions.  In terms of people losing their jobs, the 2008-2009 recession was not particularly bad.  In part this was because of the downward trend in the ratio of initial claims to private sector employment that, as shown by the black line, began during the Reagan administration.  Be that as it may, initial claims are much lower relative to the size of the labor force now than during the boom years of 1984-89.
      The problem in the labor market appears to be the inability of the unemployed to find jobs.  The red line shows the ratio of continuing claims to initial claims for unemployment compensation.  After this ratio jumped during the 1969-70 recession, it failed to fall once again below 6, but only exceeded 8 for a short period after the end of the 1973-75 recession and barely went above eight during the early 1990's.  From the graph it appears that there was some sort of structural change associated with policy after the 1990-91 recession that caused the equilibrium value of this ratio to increase from a number below 6, to one above 6 but less than 8.  Even during the severe recession of 1981-82, the number of continuing claims to initial claims did not exceed 8.
     But the story has been different since the 2001 recession and much worse since late 2008.  It took a long time for the ratio of continuing to initial claims to fall below 8 after the 2001 recession, but then it jumped to a value as high as 10.5 after the 2008-2009 recession and has yet to fall below 8.  Indeed, in May 2012 there were 8.75 continuing claims for every initial claim.
     What does this tell us? There must be some institutional or economic policy change responsible for the inability of the unemployed to find work.  Most people appear to have forgotten how dour economy was during the 1973-75, 1980 and 1981-82 recessions.  In addition to high unemployment policy-makers had to deal with rising inflation.  Indeed, it would not be unreasonable to presume that the 1981-82 recession was caused by an explicit monetary policy decision to reduce the rate of inflation. But the Reagan administration did not respond to this recession by increasing government regulations and arguing that it would not hurt the economy to raise taxes.  Indeed President Reagan took the opposite approach.  Are our current economic ills the result of a failure to reduce regulations rather than impose additional ones? Are they the result of threats to increase taxes rather than proposing tax cuts?  It is a position at least worth considering.

The Economic Incidence of a Tax--Part 2

A few days ago I began discussing the economic incidence of a tax. Closely related to this is the deadweight loss of a tax. On February 22 I wrote: "The deadweight loss comes from the reduction in economic activity caused by the tax. If the gain from a transaction between a buyer and a seller is $5, but the government imposes a $6 tax on the transaction, it will cause the transaction to disappear."

The main harm done by taxes is this deadweight loss. Taxes tend to reduce economic activity. Now the government programs funded by the tax might increase economic activity, or make citizens and residents better off in some way. If tax revenue is used to pay for a legal system, which by its existence reduces crimes by a sufficient amount, the gain from having the legal system will exceed the deadweight loss incurred by the taxes necessary to pay for the legal sytem. (By legal system I mean things like police, prosecutors, public defenders, prisons and courts.)

I presume that no one doubts that we need a legal system. However, it is conceivable that an increase in taxes imposed to pay for an expansion of the legal system (such as building a new courthouse or hiring more police) could cause a deadweight loss sufficiently large to be greater than the value to society of the expansion of the legal system. A new federal courthouse is to be built near where I live. Already the city has condemned property and thereby put many businesses out of business or forced them to move. The federal government is going to pay for the new courthouse, so local residents are not concerned about the deadweight loss of the taxes needed to pay for the new courthouse. Only a small part of those taxes will be raised locally. But the loss is there, and I don't think the new courthouse will make the area safer. But I digress.

Today's topic is the incidence of a tax. Suppose there is no tax on the production and sale of a good. If markets are perfectly competitive, then each buyer will spend dollars on the good until the value (to the buyer) of one additional unit of the good just equals its price. Each seller will be willing to supply additional units of the good to the market until the cost of providing one additional unit just equals the price of the good. If the price of bananas is 45 cents a pound, then I will buy pounds of bananas per month until the value to me of one more pound of bananas per month is just equal to 45 cents. I purchase more bananas than this, the value to me of each additional pound of bananas will be less than 45 cents.

Lets keep the price of bananas at 45 cents per pound and suppose the government imposes a tax of 10 cents per pound on bananas. And suppose the the government requires me, and other buyers, to pay this tax. In order for me to keep buying the same number of bananas per month the price would have to decline to 35 cents per pound. But if this happens, the seller of the last pound of bananas that I purchase will only get 35 cents for that pound, even though it costs him to 45 cents to provide me with that pound of bananas. Hence, the price cannot go down all the way to 35 cents per pound. What will tend to happen is that the price of bananas will decline a little bit, say to 40 cents per pound. Buyers, in this case, will pay 40 cents plus 10 cents in taxes--at total of 50 cents per pound--for each pound of bananas. Hence they buy fewer bananas. Sellers will supply fewer bananas to the market because they will not supply those bananas that cost it more than 40 cents per pound to supply. So the tax causes sellers to receive a smaller amount for each unit of their product, and buyers to pay a higher amount to purchase each unit of the product.

When there was no tax, the value to each buyer of the last pound of bananas purchased per month was 45 cents per pound. The cost to each seller of the last pound supplied was also 45 cents per pound. With the 10 cent tax per pound, the value to each buyer of the last pound of bananas purchased per month will exceed the cost to each supplier of supplying his last pound supplied by 10 cents. Each buyer will buy pounds of bananas until the value of the last pound per month is 50 cents, and suppliers will supply bananas until the cost of supplying the last pound is 40 cents. 50 minus 40 cents is 10 cents.

This gives us the information we need to calculate the incidence of the 10 cent tax on bananas. Before the tax was imposed, buyers paid 45 cents per pound for bananas, but now they pay 50 cents. So the incidence of buyers is 5 cents. The incidence of a tax on buyers is the increase in the amount that the buyer has to pay because of the tax. The incidence on sellers is also 5 cents in this example, because before the tax each seller received 45 cents per pound of bananas, but now they receive only 40 cents for each pound. The incidence of a tax on a seller is the decrease in price per unit of output received by the seller because of the tax.

The incidence of a tax is often expressed as a percentage. In this example buyers pay 50% of the tax and sellers pay 50% of the tax (because 5 cents is 50% of 10 cents). The tax is not always equally shared by buyers and sellers. What actually happens depends on how sensitive the demand for the taxed good is to price, as well as how sensitive the supply of the taxed good is to price. (We call these items the elasticity of demand and the elasticity of supply, respectively.) In general, the more sensitive to price the demand for the good is, the smaller the incidence on buyers. Likewise, the more sensitive supply is to price, the smaller the incidence is on sellers.

Interestingly enough, there are conditions under which the sensitivity of supply to price is so great that it is not possible for the price received by sellers to decline. This is a long-run or long-term possibility and the industries in which this can happen are called constant-cost industries. If an industry is a constant cost industry, then the incidence of any tax imposed upon it will fall entirely on buyers.

Suppose an industry is a constant cost industry. Suppose all the producers in this industry are really rich. The government decides to tax them because they are rich. Suppose the people who buy the good are either poor or are typically people with low incomes. The incidence of the tax then will fall entirely or almost entirely on people who are poor, even though by statute the "rich" are suppose to pay the tax. The economic incidence of a tax does not depend upon the statutory incidence of the tax. You can tax the rich and by doing so make the poor worse off.

There are also examples where it is the behavior of buyers that causes incidence to fall entirely or nearly entirely on sellers and in which the buyers are "rich" and the sellers are "poor". A good example of this is the luxury tax. Luxurious goods are not necessarily produced by the rich for rich, they can be produced by the poor for the rich. But by its very nature a luxury good or service is not a necessity. People do not have to have it. If it is taxed, the quantity of the good or service demanded declines greatly, causing the amount produced to decline and incomes of producers to decline because price declines. Consider a tax on employing domestic help. Since this is not a necessity, households that employ housekeepers, nannies, and cooks will tend to greatly reduce their employment of domestic employees, or conspire with them not to pay the tax. This is why so many nominees to cabinent positions have "nanny" tax problems.

Are the markets voting no confidence in the Obama administration?

Although my numbers are only approximations, the Obama administration appears to be getting very low marks from United States financial markets.  During the two months from the November 2008 elections to the first week in January the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined about 5%.  During the last 8 weeks, it has declined by 25%.

There is a theory that active traders in the stock market (or any other market that reflects expectations of the future) use all information at their exposure when making decisions about at what prices they are willing to buy and sell equities.  This is a called the efficient market hypothesis.  The idea is that market prices reflect all available information.  Speculators use new information to change the prices at which they are willing to buy or sell any particular common stock (or bond or other financial instrument).  Properly understood the efficient market hypothesis does not imply that prices always reflect all available information, rather it implies that prices move very quickly to reflect such information.  The practical application of this to personal investing is that if I read the financial news every morning, reflect on it for a few hours, and then decide to buy or sell common stock based on what I have absorbed, unless I have some insight that noone else has, market prices will already reflect this news.

When looking at how the markets evaluate the Obama administration we can use the efficient market hypothesis because it implies that the decline in the stock market this morning (Monday, March 2) reflects new information, information that market participants did not have on Friday, February 27.  Indeed, the entire decline in the stock market since President Obama's election implies that, taken as a whole, what President Obama has revealed about the kind of economic policy he intends to follow, has had a profound negative effect on the economy--and especially a profound negative effect on what equity market participants expect will happen to economic growth in the future.

The market is voting no confidence in the Obama administration!