'Evil is DEPRAVED of meaning'

Joe, a former seminarian, is not a perfect speller. But he writes an occasional blog (The New Orthodoxy) with great thought and reflection and recently his topic was evil. Evil, he wrote is 'depraved' of meaning. Knowing Joe fairly well, I think he meant to say 'deprived' but what he published was more clever and perhaps closer to the truth. Evil is indeed depraved of meaning.

Depraved evil is all over the new film "The Butler." I have not been so disturbed by a film in a long time. The film relates a part of history that I lived through but wasn't always aware of individual events. I only read about most of them in the newspaper. "The Butler" reminds me why Jewish people constantly remind the world about the Holocaust. If I forget my American history and the evil that was racial discrimination in my youth, then I will live it again. In fact, there are indeed instances in which it continues to live like a monster that keeps reshaping itself into something more horrifying with each new incarnation.

The juxtaposed scenes of the butler's training for a job in the White House with those of his son's training as a freedom rider in the early 60s frightened me and made me squirm in my seat. All this was going on while I was safely attending the small Catholic liberal arts college from which I graduated. It was all mostly unreal to me and the subject of television news programs.

The saddest scene for me was the one in which the butler and his wife are invited to attend a state dinner instead of his participating as a butler. It reminded me of another dinner, one I attended as a 23 year-old seminarian, a dinner planned and carried out by the priests who staffed the college seminary I attended in rural Kentucky in 1965. The priest in charge of the kitchen decided that we seminarians would prepare dinner for our cooks in their honor. It went off fairly well except that many of the staff seemed embarrassed by the honor and one older woman who cooked for us could not eat the rich food we prepared. She had never been fed so well before.

The film reminds me also that neither history nor our lives are ever as simple as we later determine. This man served eight presidents. He watched as his father was murdered by a man who raped his mother. He lived through the civil rights era trying to keep his own children safe. He lived through the assassinations of three political figures during the 1960s as well as the Vietnam war in which his second son was killed. After all of this and the personal difficulties of his marriage, he sees the election of the first African American as president of the United States. This event is as much a statement that the butler's life has not been lived in vain as it is an historical event. The butler's life has been one of integrity and dignity. Moreover, an era in American history has officially ended even if there are still battles to fight.

Where is God in all of this? A visible crucifix on the wall of the bedroom of the butler and his wife signifies God's constant presence in the suffering of these men and women. Evil is indeed depraved of meaning. Evil cannot overcome the inherent goodness and integrity of men and women.