Our Pope

Unlike his predecessors, he is no wordsmith; he is not a brilliant theologian; he will not be a doctor of the Church. Like his namesake from Assisi, he teaches…not with words…but with actions, with his life. He is my father; and I love him! Entirely in communion and continuity with the prior dual-pontificate in substance, he is a refreshing change in style. At his election I was glad the Cardinals did not choose an outstanding theologian because the legacy of our previous two is so rich it will take 100 years to assimilate. He is free, spontaneous, unscripted, raw, human, fallible, genuine, and free. He is awkward and goofy, but in a disarmingly gracious manner. The Church, because of its invincible unity, has a genius for diversity (catholicity): whether it is parish, diocese or papacy, the change of regime is always a reversal…the crack administrator replaces an incompetent one, the saint is followed by a man of the world, a slacker by a workaholic, and the scholar by an anti-intellectual. Always on offer: something new, fresh, surprising, annoying, upsetting, challenging and consoling! He calls us out of complacency to move to the fringes, to the poor, to the marginalized. He realizes, I hope, how much so many of us are ourselves poor and weak, desperately in need of being strengthened in our families, communities, prayer and inner selves. The centripetal and centrifugal energies of the Holy Spirit need to fructify each other: we cannot give away our riches and become poor until we are rich in faith. But he is my father; and I love him! He is refreshing. He is free. He teaches by his way, not by his words. He shoots from the hip; he has loose lips; he says silly things. We will have to get used to him: comments thrown off on an airplane or in an interview are very far from the infallibility of the Chair. He is my father. And I love him! He insults and scandalizes precisely those who love him the most: those who sent him spiritual bouquets, those who would protect the life of the innocent, the chastity of the young, and the integrity of the family. But he is human…a poor sinner, fallible and weak…and so I love him and forgive him and support him. He is my father, and I love him! He is my captain, my king, and I follow him. The editors of AMERICA magazine are happy that he speaks like a brother not a king. But I do not need another buddy; I have plenty. I need a Father, a King, a genuine Authority figure! My father’s cousin Walter, who had lost his Catholic faith, had occasion to see Pope Pius XII during WWII and said: “He seems like a nice fellow.” Nice fellows and buddies are a dime a dozen! In my pope I want a father, not a buddy. He is my father, even if he doesn't always speak that way, and I love him! He cares about the poor and seems to dismiss concerns about sexuality and marriage. I hope he realizes that, at least in the USA, poverty is mainly rooted in infidelity, betrayal and unchastity. The poor desperately need the full Gospel…especially the Theology of the Body. I hope that he will advance, rather than ignore (with most of his Jesuit brothers) this precious body of work by our soon-to-be-Saint-John-Paul! Despite his neglect and imperfection, he is my father and I love him! He is worried that the Church come across as a body of detached rules, mostly about sex. In my world, we have been afflicted, from the pulpit, for half a century by a steady stream of moralism of the “do-gooder” social activist type…and complete silence about chastity of the body, mind and spirit. His own remarks could be understood to affirm this catastrophe, although that is not his intent. Wisdom is not his strong suit, but he is my father. And I love him. His political economics are just about right…in the Catholic middle…infatuated with neither the free market nor the expansive state…he values solidarity, subsidiarity and liberty…and cares deeply for the least. He is my leader, my captain, my exemplar…and I follow him. We, especially the lay faithful, will have to complement and correct his magisterium as this loving and holy man is markedly deficient as authoritative teacher of the faith. But he is my father; and I love him!

Interceding with Abraham

"The gay life is a sad life." My dear friend George told me this before he died of AIDs. These words came back to me this past Sunday when I found myself stuck in the middle of the Gay Pride Parade in lower Manhattan. This was the mother of all such parades after last week's Supreme Court decision. The gaiety was on show, none of the sadness. By contrast, the mass readings for Monday and Tuesday narrate God's destruction, by fire and brimstone, of Sodom and Gomorrah. There is no doubt about God's wrath and judgment against the sin there. Abraham does not disagree. But he intercedes and pleads, cleverly, insistently, boldly: "If there are 50 good men, will you spare the city?" It is striking that Abraham is not judgmental, righteous or even removed from the folks in Sodom; rather, he pleads and bargains for them. He loves them; cares about them; and wants them to be saved. Clearly, God is directing us to pray for our brothers and sisters who suffer this condition. May we humble ourselves and come to Him together, with all our particular disorders, and seek His Mercy!

NOT a Good Person!

I am NOT a good person! I am like my old Honda CRV before it died: it would stall out, randomly, unexpectedly, uncontrollably at every 7th or 12th or 19th red light. It was not a "good car"...it was unreliable, unfaithful, fickle, embarrassing, dysfunctional, pathological and annoying. So am I. My wife, mother, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters...not a "good person" among the seventeen of them. We are, all of us, miserable sinners, desperate for God's pardon, mercy, and help. That is the single most important fact of our existence. We NEED God, desperately! We need a Savior! We need Jesus Christ! It is not that I lack goodness. On the contrary, goodness flows into and through me, constantly, miraculously, inexorably. But the goodness comes from beyond me...it comes as gift...it is not my doing. The marvel is that despite the overflow of love, grace and gifts I have received, I remain helplessly prone to infidelity, cowardice, malice, fear, and distrust. Like my old CRV, I am fickle, unreliable, disordered, pathological. You can see that I am an Evangelical Catholic, not a liberal. Words like "He is a good person!" flow easily from the lips of a liberal. "He doesn't go to Church, but he is a 'good person.'" This apparently means: he is not a militarist, a capitalist, a rapist, or a preacher. This apparently means: he is originally and actually innocent, un-wounded by sin, in need of neither a Savior nor the pardon and grace of the sacraments. "Why do you call me good? One alone is good!" were the words of Jesus himself. As Catholics, we know that Jesus is a good person...even though he denied it. Mary is also. So are all the saints in glory, the Church triumphant. But we are the Church militant...still fighting the war daily...each of us an unstable dynamic of good and bad...the best of us infected by badness, the worst of us influenced by goodness. But I am not...a good person!

The Inevitability of Dogma

The human mind requires certitude. I am certain about where I came from (my Mom and Dad and God) and where I am going (death, the particular judgment, and an eternity in hell or purgatory/heaven.)As a Catholic, I have total certitude about the inexhaustible mystery of Being in the form of our creed and dogma: Trinity, creation, original sin, Christ, transubstantiation, angels and devils, absolution, and so forth. With such certitude, I am able to entertain a healthy, rational skepticism about tentative, empirical, political and scientific matters: for example, the saving efficacy of the expanded state (Obamacare) or of the low-taxed, low-regulated free market. Those bereft of such a sanctifying creed, are compelled, unconsciously, to construct a bogus dogmatic system in which they place their trust. The editors of The New York Times or of CNN, for example, are entirely incapable of tolerating any doubt about evolution as a mega-theory, explanatory of all life, about the catastrophic imminence of man-made global warming, or the messianic significance of contraception and legalized abortion. Deprived of a supernatural or transcendent revelation, the liberal mind substitutes a "scientistic" creed by making absolute theories and values that are vulnerable to doubt and questioning. In this manner, it is the liberal, secular mind that is irrational and anti-scientific. By contrast, as an unabashedly dogmatic Catholic, I approach issues like evolution, climate change, and contraception with a healthy, reasonable, questioning attitude...open, inquisitive, free, and therefore genuinely liberal. Bogus dogma enslaves the mind that is unaware of itself; genuine dogma frees the intellect and the will.

Aging: Moving from Martha to Mary

Aging is the steady loss of energy, stamina, and strength: the inexorable decline, over time, of the "Martha capacity"...the ability to do, to accomplish, to achieve, and to serve. With God's grace, however, we can become more like Mary: receptive, appreciative, contemplative, prayerful, and loving. It seems that we need to accept weakness, fatigue, forgetfulness, and incompetence...not as failings or curses...but as opportunities to relax, trust, surrender, and love. Mary and Martha, dear friends of our Lord, pray for us!

The Neutrals

In the Culture War that has been blazing for over 40 years, a troubling, puzzling, significant, and determinative phenomena is the persistence of The Neutrals, those who abstain from the fray, who do not advocate for or against legal abortion, women priests, or gay marriage. This group is the deteminative majority, or at least plurality: since neither side of the war has a decisive plurality, there is a virtual parity with the neutrals determining the outcome. Their passivity has, by default, ennabled the liberal drive for sterile sexuality and abortion and the triumphant, unstoppable parade for gay marriage. Within the Church, it is different: for more than a decade after the Council, the revolutionaries set the tone but the emergence of John Paul, and all his collaborators (present company included),turned the tide and the Church is today, more than ever, dedicated to protect the helpless and the family and is ferociously at war with the hegemonic, liberal, elite culture. Many of the brightest, best Catholic minds I know,especially among the Jesuits and Maryknollers, are neutrals. They sharply separate their personal and social values: privately against abortion, they vote pro-choice, unfailingly; anxious about climate change, they are unable to defend the male priesthood or the normativity of heterosexuality. The logic is: I wouldn't abort my child or grandchild, but I don't care, politically, about the 60% of black NYC pre-borns who are aborted...an attitude that is less than inclusive, Catholic or compassionate! They follow the correct liberal line on war and the enviroment but would not be caught dead praying the rosary in front of an abortion clinic. These culture war issues are all binary in that they require a yes-or-no answer, much like: Will you marry me? Are you alive? Is the electricity turned on? Clearly, if women have a right to become priests, it is a grave injustice to deny them; but if they do not, it is impossible for the Church to contravene the will of God. It is not possible to straddle these issues. A common dodge for such neutrals is to sympathize with the liberals but advocate patience: the Church takes its time, sometimes centuries, to develop its understanding. This doesn't work: the stress, pressure and polarization are all so intense, right now, that a decision is required. The Church is right or the Culture is right: you can't have it both ways. How is it that such fine, bright, good minds persist in abstaining from the fray? I see two major causes of this neutrality: inherited reticence about sex and life; and an inadequate catechesis on the body. First, especially among the Irish with their Jansenist background, there is a deep, traditional Catholic reticence, shyness, and avoidance of sex and the body. Many fine Catholics don't want to talk about abortion and contraception and so they ignore them. This is especially true of the older, "great" generation and those who came of age before the sexual revolution of the late 1960s. A Victiorian propriety and decorum continued to influence these generations so that the bishops, for example, who governmed the Chuch in the 60s and afterwards had no real answer to the Sexual Revolution: they were unarmed, defenseless, inarticulate...and so they largely avoided the topic. They have been ready to pronounce on war, immigration and the federal budget, topics about which they have no competence, but retreat from teaching God's plan for the human, male-female body. The second and primary cause of this neutrality is an inadequate catechesis or understanding of the meaning of the gendered, human body. The ground-breaking, breath-takingly inspiring teaching of John Paul remains a secret due to the indifference of so many. Bereft of such a personalist, Catholic understanding, the neutral remains reactive against what is perceived as a legalistic, negative religion of condemnation. They remain indecisive, split between a private and a public world, confused and ambivalent. It is like being undecided on slavery in 1860 USA, or disinterested in Hitler in 1937 Germany. It would be better if they were hot or cold.

A Recipe for Raising Catholics

My life achievement, my role in (Salvation)History, my legacy...I hope and pray...will be: with my wife, our families and the Church, I raised seven Catholics...real, practicing, believing, hoping, loving, sinning-and-repenting Catholics. Not canonizable saints; no, sinners like all of us, but sinners who know how to receive the incomparable love of Christ, the graces, pardon, strength, and truth our Savior gives us through His Church; not perfect individuals, not fabulously successful achievers, not celebrities, not even "good people"; but living, pulsating, suffering, militant members of the Communion of Saints who think, act, breathe, desire and hope with The Church. The world in which we raised our children was already a sharp contrast from the pro-Catholic, Christian 1950s USA in which we were raised. When our children were born in the 70s and 80s, our culture had already turned dark and hostile to the Catholic way. The recipe we used to pass on our faith and way of life included four crucial ingredients: a Catholic family and home, a Catholic parish, parochial schools, and inspiration from the ecclesial movements. Only the synergy released by the interaction of these four energy fields is adequate to overcome the toxic actors that prevail in our culture. Primary, of course is a Catholic home: where God is evoked, together, in prayer, commonly, frequently, naturally; where the Church and her tradition and practices are honored; where there is care for the poor and suffering; and where we share a sense of our need for forgiveness and pardon. Secondly, the parish: where we are baptized, married, buried; where we learn our faith; where we are forgiven of our sins. The parish, like the family is always imperfect: the priest too conservative or too liberal; too taciturn or too gregarious; too disorganized or overly-controlling. Nevertheless, the parish is where the sacraments are efficaciously performed for our sanctification. Thirdly, parochial schools. These again are hardly utopias; often enough they are not very Catholic or not great schools. Nevertheless, they are a place where the light of faith can openly, unashamedly, freely and boldly be shed on all aspects of reality and human life. Lastly, the ecclesial movements are environments of intense, deep, heartfelt faith. Most of these emerged in the post-Council Church and manifest distinctive and interesting charisms, all for the Church. Particularly helpful for us was the practice of sending our adolescents, during their summers, to special events and experiences: Youth 2000s; World Youth Days; immersion, mission experiences; catechetical camps; NET retreats; and charismatic conferences. It was here that our children saw that it was "cool" for people their own age to avidly, openly, and articulately love Christ and His Church. There is nothing magical about this formula. Not every Catholic would agree. My own nephews, one recently ordained and the other in evangelical vows, received their faith and vocation without attending Catholic schools and with minimum contact with the movements. Indeed, it is a good bet that many of our priests are less than enthusiastic about maintaining parochial schools and about the influence of the movements. Ours is a very "lay" perspective. It worked for us...thanks be to God!