One of the great retail rivalries of all time touches upon our neighborhood. At the northwest corner of the parish, stretching a quarter mile along the Chicago River, are the structures that once housed the catalog warehouse and headquarters building of Montgomery Ward & Company, buildings now repurposed for residences and other commercial uses. Montgomery Ward, as many of you know, was the great champion of Chicago’s lakefront, believing it should be open to all. In 1872, he founded his mail order business, a few years before his rival Sears. As the postal service reached into rural America at the turn of the century, both companies thrived, and Ward  built its massive complex in 1907. While Sears in its early days was willing to sell just about anything mail order (including all sorts of dubious pills and potions), Ward remained a classier operation. When the Great Depression hit, both retailers struggled. In 1936 Ward’s Board of Directors hired an experienced executive named Sewell Avery to rescue the business. And he did just that. By cutting corners and reducing the number of suppliers, he was able to salvage the company. When World War II ended, Avery was convinced that another Great Depression was on the way. While his competitor Sears expanded into suburban shopping centers and upgraded their old stores, Avery vowed to bank all the company cash. He opened no new stores and refused even to allow the present stores to be freshened up with a new coat of paint. His strategy was to buy up the new Sears stores once the Depression hit and Sears ran out of cash. As it turned out, the decade after World War II was a time of economic boom and there was a great demand for consumer goods. When the Board of Directors finally forced Avery out as President in 1955, it was too late. Although the company managed to hang on until 2000 (and even built a new headquarters building on West Huron Street in 1972), it never recovered from Avery’s miscalculation. Now, Ward’s great competitor Sears is barely alive. The irony is that if these two great mail order companies had jumped on the internet bandwagon, they could still be competing as the Amazons of today.

Competition. The excesses of the free enterprise system have been well documented; but competition remains the lifeblood of the American way of life. But when does it become too much? When does everything become a competition? A few days ago, I read a blog entry by Sr. Jane Marie Brandish, a high school educator from Milwaukee. She was on a break and spent a lot of time watching television. She says, “I was stunned to see how many shows were competition based.” Not counting the sports programming, there were talent competitions, cooking competitions, dating competitions, and all manner of competitive races and outdoor adventure competitions. She writes, “I began to wonder if everything must be a competition. What happened to collaboration? Or, maybe even more rare, simple sharing?”

            Well, the answer is that collaboration and sharing do not make for exciting television. It is the reason that shows about lawyers always focus on high stakes courtroom drama. No one would want to watch a show about a law firm that only handles intellectual property and patent disputes. Nor would we want to see a football game in which the Bears and Packers collaborate (although as a Bears fan it has sometimes looked that way). Still, Sister Jane Marie’s point is well taken. When something does become so pervasive in our culture, we need to pay attention to how it is infecting our life and our Christian witness. Even Jesus had to tamp down the competition among his disciples about who would be second in command in the Kingdom and he addressed a parable to those who were competing for the best seats at a banquet. So, it is worth asking: Is my competitive spirit getting out of hand? Is it leading me to do things at work that are deceptive and only marginally ethical? Is my on-line gambling becoming an addiction? Am I becoming obsessed with securing the educational future of my child who is only three years old?

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column about the inflammatory language and lack of civility in politics, and noted that as followers of Christ we have a duty to respect all people as beloved children of God. Now an attempt has been made on the life of Mr. Trump. Sometimes we become so focused on denouncing the competition that we fail to see the flaws in our own party and our own candidate. (In truth, neither political party these days can lay claim to fully representing Catholic values or Catholic teaching.) Political violence is a terrible reminder of how competition can be unhealthy. It divides rather than unites. It puts people down rather than lifts them up. It can push people who are already at the bottom even deeper in the hole. Collaboration and sharing really are Catholic values. As I write these words a few hours before our Monday bulletin deadline, it would be nice to think that this horrific episode will chasten us all and help us control what we say about the political competition.

                     Fr. Joe