Father Robert T. Cooper

September 27, 2020

           In the early day of the pandemic, there was a viral expansion of advertisements and recommendations on my social media accounts about The Chosen, a 2019 drama series about the life of Jesus. Many contained hype about The Chosen’s being the highest crowd-funded TV series or film project of all time, about how it has been seen by over 20 million, in 50 languages, across 180 countries. My general aversion to fads and herd behavior, however, won the day.

          Two other things gave me pause. The word that the series was “based” on the Gospels but gave lots of extra-Biblical, imaginative “background,” made me wonder what the series would do for my blood pressure. I am always interested in visual depictions of the life of Jesus, but when Biblical accounts are mixed with fictional interpolations and extrapolations, I have found that most of these additions annoy rather than aid. Moreover, Catholic theological training in general forms us to wait prudently until something is over before giving general reviews since something that starts with much promise could end up being a hook for something harmful at the end. This is part of the wisdom in the way the Church handles claims of private revelations, for example. And so, I would normally hesitate to write an article after only one season of a projected eight.

          But once public worship resumed, the volume of Mass-goers asking me for my opinion on the series, multiplied by questions from various penitents, pushed me over the edge. I had to watch it, at least to flag any potential concerns. Some spare time in July gave me the opportunity. I was very pleased overall by the eight episodes of the series’ first season and found most of it to be a very helpful and beautiful visual meditation on the life of Jesus. The figure of Jesus, played by Jonathan Roumie, is manly, cheerful, and attractive, someone the strength of whose personality would be able to get very down-to-earth people to leave everything to follow Him.

          Playing Jesus may be the most difficult acting assignment there is, not only because most Christians already have strong impressions about Him they are vigorously prepared to defend, but also because no human being can possibly depict the divine dimension of the hypostatic union. Roumie approaches that challenge in the only adequate way, through prayer before and during filming. “I always ask that it’s not my voice or my personality that comes through but that of the Lord’s,” he said in an interview. He is also praying after the series, using his new status as an icon of Jesus to lead others in prayer, using YouTube to pray the Rosary, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and a novena to St. Joseph with viewers as well as to speak about the Eucharist.

          Throughout the first season, Nicodemus is given a much larger role than the Gospels accord him, which is an interesting choice on the part of creator, director, and co-writer Dallas Jenkins, a fervent Evangelical. I found Jenkins’ inventions with regard to Nicodemus, however, credible. They allow viewers to see Jesus from the perspective of a member of the Sanhedrin, with the typical questions a scholar and lover of the law of Moses would pose toward the spiritual fulfillment Jesus was bringing. Nicodemus is also a “seeker,” someone making a sincere attempt to discover the truth, as many today are. He has been called throughout the centuries the “reluctant disciple,” someone who comes to Jesus “by night,” who out of cowardice and pusillanimity keeps his faith hidden, who gives oblique defenses of Jesus when colleagues in the Sanhedrin turned on Him, and who surfaced as a believer only after Jesus’ crucifixion. His character reveals that the essence of Christianity is not knowing Jesus or believing in Him but faithfully following and imitating Him. Many will relate to Nicodemus’ struggles to do so.

          The first eight episodes also develop the figures of Peter, Mary Magdalene, and Matthew. Peter is shown as a struggling fisherman, a stubborn and strong leader, impulsive and action-oriented, proud but capable of humbling himself. The Gospels imply that he was married—he had a mother-in-law—but say nothing about his wife or marriage, leading some to question whether he was a widower and others to speculate that Jesus may have broken his wife’s heart in summoning Peter to leave everything to follow Him. I very much like the way that Jenkins presents Mrs. Simon bar Jonah: someone whose faith in God, her expectation of the Messiah, and her love for her husband led her to rejoice when Jesus saw the good in her husband and called him to be at His side. Her fiat to Peter’s vocation and mission, setting him free to serve the Bridegroom, is heartwarming.

            There is a heavy focus on the vocation of Mary Magdalene. She is discretely shown at the beginning of the series as a prostitute and very plainly as a possessed woman whom typical exorcisms cannot liberate, until she meets Jesus, who frees her. “I was one way and now I’m completely different,” she says later. “And the thing that happened in between was Him.” Toward her Jesus shows a chaste confidence and she in turn seems to help the apostles relate to Jesus as a person rather than just a projection of their Messianic hopes. I do not care for how, prior to Jesus’ exorcising her, she is referred to as “Lilith,” which imports a lot of unnecessary baggage from Jewish demonology and modern radical feminism that unfortunately will not impede further neo-gnostic concoctions about her. If anyone deserves a more sober, Biblically-tighter portrayal, it is she.

          The greatest liberties, however, are taken with the story of Matthew the publican. Jenkins presumes that ancient tax collectors needed to be detailed-oriented, mathematical geniuses rather than a low-level corrupt Mafiosi, and therefore portrays Matthew anachronistically with Asperger’s. While the attempt toward inclusion is admirable, it does not fit other aspects of the Biblical account, especially Matthew’s being the king of the sinners capable of hosting a party full of his ilk, not to mention someone chosen not just to write a Gospel but to be sent out into the crowds among wolves to proclaim it. His conversion story, nevertheless, is moving and highlights not only how Jesus summoned the outcasts but how following Jesus meant giving up much to gain much more.

              As a whole, through these vocational portrayals and others, the series brings to the fore the personal aspect of the call of Jesus and the response human beings must make. Jenkins certainly delivers on his goal to portray Jesus “through the eyes of those who met him,” and through that perspective viewers can sense that they are meant, too, to be among “the chosen.”

          I have liked very much the visual meditations on Jesus’ miracles. The wedding feast of Cana is very well-developed and among the most moving things I have ever seen on screen. After viewing the healings of the paralyzed man and a leper, one may never read or hear those Biblical accounts the same way again. The miracle of the miraculous draught of fish has Peter catching fish strangely near the shore rather than after having “put out into the deep,” but nevertheless clearly reveals Jesus’ overwhelming generosity. The healing of Peter’s mother-in-law shows Jesus’ routine personal concern.

          I also appreciate the way The Chosen has handled Biblical flashbacks, whether to Jesus’ early days—like the finding in the temple—or to Old Testament prophecies regarding Jesus, from Abraham, Moses, and the Prophets, all of which give a much richer context to the visual Gospel narrative, especially for those who have greater familiarity with the Bible.

            The second season of this series of Scriptural visual art is set to start filming in September. It will feature greater development of the apostles James, John, and Nathaniel and will continue examining how the disciples respond to Jesus’ miracles as well as how the Pharisees and scribes begin to organize in opposition to Jesus. For those who have not seen it, it is available for free on YouTube or The Chosen App. Production is funded fundamentally by viewers who, moved by what they have seen, desiring to see more and wanting others to see it, are contributing via crowd funding about $10 million per season. With many, I am looking forward to the second and subsequent seasons.

September 20, 2020

            For those who want to grow in their knowledge of the faith, there is never been a greater time to be alive. We have ready access not only to the Bible in every spoken language but also to so many great commentaries, websites, and podcasts, that help us to understand and live it. There are scores of good Catholic publishing houses printing inspiring works from authors old and new. There is free digital access in most modern languages to the works of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church and almost every spiritual classic. There are now several 24-hour Catholic television stations and hundreds of Catholic radio stations that are no longer restricted to particular geographical areas but can be streamed anywhere in the world. There are Catholic newspapers and magazines that through the web have increased their scope to form and inform from an authentically Catholic perspective.

              There are millions of authentically Catholic websites and blogs, showing the beauty of the faith, carrying out the crucial work of apologetics, presenting Catholic commentary on every topic under the sun, and providing a digital narthex for millions. There are the extraordinary apostolates of Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire, Matthew Kelly’s Dynamic Catholic, the Augustine Institute’s Formed, and Ascension Press’ array of scriptural and theological courses, which help people better understand the faith, live it, and teach it to others. These are all key parts of what the popes have called the new evangelization. While there is an undeniable crisis of faith today in the West leading in various parts to reductions in parishes and Catholic schools, sacramental practice, vocations, and public influence, these new forms of outreach are all the buds of a new springtime that inspire hope, strengthen faith, and build Catholic culture in the midst of the scorching rays of aggressive secularization.

             The Covid-19 pandemic, while bringing much death and suffering, has also out of necessity mothered various inventions. Some, like parking lot confessions and parking lot Masses, will not outlast the pandemic. Others, however, will. The streaming of online Masses, while obviously not the same as participation in person, is a great gift to those in places where faith is struggling, whether due to persecution or poor pastoral service or anything in between. My cousins told me in April that they loved attending the livestream Masses of Fr. Mike Schmitz from the Diocese of Duluth, one of the U.S.’s most capable priestly evangelists, especially to young people. Since then, I have been told by friends from various parts of the country as well as from Trinidad, India, Spain, and Nigeria that they have been watching Fr. Schmitz as well and are grateful that the pandemic has allowed his gifts to be shared beyond northern Minnesota. Some have told me that, even though they love their parish priests and fellow parishioners, they have longed for more inspiring preaching and more conspicuously devout celebrations of the Mass. The pandemic’s livestreams have made that possible. It is one illustration of the “catholicity” of our faith that many faithful are praying will continue.

              I think one of the innovations occasioned by the pandemic that will and ought to last is the phenomenon of virtual Catholic conferences. Covid-19 hit the U.S. right as we were preparing for Lent, when many Diocesan men’s and women’s conferences, educational, and Eucharistic conferences take place. When almost all of them needed to be canceled, some Catholic apostolic entrepreneurs tried to convert that disappointment into opportunity and host a conference online. Speakers and interest Catholics responded. And in the last few months, there have been massive virtual Men’s and Women’s Conferences, Theology of the Body Conferences, Marriage and Family Conferences, as well as conferences on chastity, Catholic Social Teaching, the Eucharist, apologetics, Catholic formation, and other themes. Two of them had over 60,000 attendees. Another had nearly 40,000.

            Over the course of my priesthood, I have had the chance to speak at many Catholic conferences and workshops. As a pastor, I always prioritized bringing as many of my parishioners to such events as I could. Their value goes beyond the powerful talks, sacraments, and opportunity for prayer that are the routine fare. It is being surrounded by so many others like them seeking to grow in faith and to rejoice in it. While Catholics can sometimes feel like outliers in their schools, workplaces, and even sometimes homes, when they attend such conferences they recognize that they are not isolated tapers in the midst of strong headwinds, but rather a united torch with a mission to ignite the world with the light of faith.

              I wondered how the online conferences would be able to substitute for that experience. It was easier than I thought. At a typical in-person conference, there is a finite program with four to five speakers over a given day. The virtual conferences were able to have several dozen speakers watched on demand, in the order the viewer wished, over three days (Friday through Sunday). The fact that so many speakers signed up to share their gifts on related themes already created a baseline of community. That tens of thousands of others were interested in attending the conference added to a sense that the Holy Spirit was working to unite despite the isolation caused by social distancing. And most of the conferences had breakout sessions over Zoom where participants could interact directly with the speakers, ask questions, and engage with Conference-goers from across the world. It is not the same as in-person contact, but nevertheless, the conferences produced a palpable sense of Catholic community.

             Because of the extended format and greater number of speakers, the online conferences were able to deliver content even better, I think, than in-person conferences. Not only is there a greater variety to meet the heterogenous needs of attendees, but the different approaches, experiences, and expertise of speakers make for a broader and deeper learning experience. Being able to rewind to hear an important point missed, or to watch a whole talk again, can clearly assist comprehension. There is also something powerful about the immediacy of a speaker looking right at you and, albeit through a screen, speaking directly to you, rather than addressing a multitude of hundreds or thousands from a stage.

               The financial model of the virtual conferences likewise is innovative and a win-win-win for attendees, speakers, and organizers. Attendees are generally able to watch the talks for free during the weekend, which makes the content accessible to all, regardless of their financial situation. Those who would like to have access to some special talks and live sessions during the conference, or to the videos on demand afterward, can sign up for “premium packages,” but those fees are normally far less than what one would pay to go to in-person conferences.

              Speakers are not given stipends but receive generally half of the proceeds of all those who sign up for the premium packages through their recommendation. If speakers have large social networks, their own apostolates can do very well. The other half of the fees go to the organizers to cover the computer and other costs incurred for a virtual conference as well as to strengthen their apostolates financially, which is particularly important during pandemic-related financial shortfalls.

              Since these virtual conferences have been so successful, many are now trying to organize similar events. There will only be so many weekend conferences that even zealous Catholics will have the stamina to attend. But even after the pandemic has abated and in-person conferences are able to be held again, I believe—and am hoping—that the virtual conference model will remain an option, since it is able inexpensively, measurably, and conveniently to expand the number of people able to attend such powerful opportunities to grow in faith.

September 13, 2020

           On August 6^th and 9^th, we marked the 75^th anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As Americans, we look with horror and rightly condemn the evil attacks against Pearl Harbor or the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, where 2,403 and 2,977 people, respectively, died. What should our attitude be toward the dropping of the uranium gun-type bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima and the plutonium implosion “Fat Man” bomb on Nagasaki, which between them killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, the equivalent of six to ten weeks of September 11s?

              In the United States, a sense of patriotism has kept many of us from confronting how World War II ended. To question the morality of the bombs dropped by the Enola Gay and Bockscar mainly on Japanese non-combatants seems to question the moral legitimacy of the Allied victory, turn the good guys into bad guys, and undermine the authentic heroism of the greatest generation.

              We are told that dropping the bombs was necessary to prevent an estimated 130,000-220,000 US casualties (25,000-46,000 dead) that would have come from a land invasion of Japan. We are reminded of the unlikelihood of Japanese surrender through conventional means and of Japanese sadism not only to Allied prisoners of war and the civilians of the Philippines, Korea, and China. We had already, after all, obliterated 67 Japanese cities with fire bombings, destroying 267,000 buildings and killing 100,000 people in Tokyo in a single night; is there really that much moral difference, we are asked, between using conventional rather than atomic weapons to achieve the same end?

              Such consequentialist and proportionalistic moral reasoning, however, cannot make something evil good. A just end, like concluding the war or saving American lives, cannot justify any and all means. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen spoke forthrightly about the ethical deformation that came from ignoring moral absolutes and justifying the intrinsically evil decision to use atomic weapons with merciless indiscrimination to destroy whole cities in order to intimidate survivors to surrender.

              “The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima,” Sheen said, “blotted out boundaries. There was no longer a boundary between the military and the civilian, between the helper and the helped, between the wounded and the nurse and the doctor, and the living and the dead. For even the living who escaped the bomb were already half-dead. So, we broke down boundaries and limits and from that time on the world has said we want no one limiting me. … The key moral question comes down to the principle that the end does not justify the means. A noble intention to end the war does not make immoral acts moral. The same is true in the moral life more generally.”

             That is why when the Popes have visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they have spoken in terms of horror and shame over the slaughter of so many people, the wounding of 650,000 more, the birth of the age of atomic and the threat of global self-suicide, and the eclipse of moral reason. John Paul II in 1981 called it an “unforgettable tragedy,” a “frightful wound inflicted on … the whole of the human family,” and a terrifying realization that “man is capable of destruction beyond belief.” He said that what happened in those cities stands out even against the horror of “concentration and extermination camps where contempt for man and his inviolable rights reaches its most base and cruel expression.” To remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he said, is to abhor nuclear war and to commit oneself to help humanity make a “moral about-face.”

              Pope Francis, during his visit last November, insisted, “We cannot allow present and future generations to lose the memory of what happened here.” He said that the two cities must become a “living memory that helps us to say in every generation: never again.” He poignantly asked: “How can we speak of peace even as we build terrifying new weapons of war?” Quoting Pope Paul VI, he said, “No one can love with offensive weapons in their hands.” And that is why he underlined, “The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possession of nuclear weapons is immoral.”

                 While the Church has since the start of the atomic age spoken out about the immorality of the use of nuclear weapons—Vatican II had unequivocally and unhesitatingly denounced any “act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population” as “a crime against God and man himself”—the condemnation of the possession of nuclear weapons is new to Pope Francis. But it is a clear logical development of Church’s thought.

               Nuclear weapons are not collectors’ items. They are maintained with the clear intention and threat to use them under certain circumstances if deemed necessary. The intention to do something intrinsically evil, however, is itself evil. The whole machinery of possessing nuclear weapons involves training people to use them, weeding out conscientious objectors who would hesitate to launch, keeping them on alert, choosing targets, constantly assessing and updating weapons readiness, and so on. Human or system error, after all, could be catastrophic—just remember Chernobyl and Fukushima.

                The possession of nuclear weapons has been justified in the past under the guise of a doctrine of deterrence and mutually assured destruction, that one State’s threat of nuclear retaliation will impede other States from attacking with their nuclear weapons. During the height of the Cold War, the Church tolerated it on an interim basis, with John Paul II saying in 1982, “In current conditions ‘deterrence’ based on balance, certainly not as an end in itself but as a step on the way toward a progressive disarmament, may still be judged morally acceptable.”

                     Over time, however, the “current conditions” have changed: it is no longer “superpowers” who alone have them in somewhat balanced numbers, but also rogue States with unstable political situations and apocalyptic leaders, and non-State actors and terrorists have striven to obtain them from failed States or corrupt officials. The provisional nature of the tolerance as a gradual step toward gradual disarmament and abolition has proven illusory, as disarmament agreements and commitments have not been honored, allowed to expire, or withdrawn from. The present situation of deterrent possession is destabilizing and crumbling.

               There is also a deep moral flaw in the rationale of mutually assured destruction. Two people will never form a friendship if they have loaded guns pointed at each other. Similarly, mutually assured destruction, as Pope Francis stated in 2014, will never be the “basis for an ethic of fraternity and peaceful coexistence among peoples and States.” Now is the time, he said, to “counter the logic of fear with the ethnic of responsibility and so foster a climate of trust and sincere dialogue.”

                  As we mark the 75^th anniversary of bombings that should never recur, now is the time patiently and persistently to work for nuclear disarmament and eventual abolition. Nuclear weapons will not disappear by magic or by words. It is time to ratify, buttress, and implement the various international and bilateral treaties to this end. It is also a time to pursue what the Church has called “integral disarmament,” referring not only to the reduction of weapons of war in general but also to the defusing of bellicose hearts. Jesus told Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Those who live by the sword die by the sword.” If we do not wish to suffer the fate of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, we must address not just the weapons involved but convert the minds and hearts of those who justify their possession and their potential fratricidal use.

September 6, 2020

           Pope Francis was elected to bring about a missionary metamorphosis of the Church. The “next Pope,” Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio told his brother cardinals during their pre-conclave meetings in 2013, had to be a “man who, from the contemplation and adoration of Jesus Christ, helps the Church to go out of herself to the existential peripheries, who helps her to bear fruit living off the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.” The cardinals not only agreed with his assessment but deemed that the Archbishop of Buenos Aires was the one to lead that transformation.

              In his programmatic apostolic exhortation “The Joy of the Gospel,” written eight months later, Pope Francis articulated his “dream of a…missionary impulse capable of transforming everything,” so that all the Church’s resources “can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.” He warned consistently of a self-referential Church, “living within herself, of herself and by herself,” focused on internal issues rather than on those persons still waiting to receive the Gospel at the depth at which Jesus wishes it to penetrate. He spoke of the danger of the Church’s preaching becoming obsessed with “secondary” issues—applications of the Gospel to particularly moral themes—rather than on the primary proclamation of what God has done and continues to do out of love for us.

             Nevertheless, prior to, during and after last October’s Synod of Bishops on the Pan-Amazon Region dedicated to “New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology,” most of the oxygen has been spent self-referentially and on such secondary (though important) issues: the troubles, inalienable human rights and needs of the indigenous people of the region; the exploitation and destruction of the Amazon biome within the context of global environmental concerns; and the region’s dearth of clergy and the push by some, as a purported remedy, for married men to be ordained priests and women to be considered for permanent deacons. The foremost ecclesial issue of the evangelization of the Amazon—five centuries after missionaries first arrived—was largely underemphasized. Some of the leading participants explicitly gave the impression that sharing the Gospel in the existential peripheries of the Amazon was not a priority. One bishop, a chief contributor to the Synod’s working document, scandalously bragged that in nearly two decades, he had not baptized anyone. Various other protagonists, in the midst of describing how desperate the region was for clergy, suggested that foreign missionaries need not apply. They wanted rather an “Amazonian Church with an Amazonian face,” which, if advanced in any other part of the world—for example, “An Aryan Church with an Aryan face” or “a Tutsi Church with a Tutsi face”—would immediately be recognized as un-Catholic xenophobia.

             This is why Pope Francis’ February 12^th post-synodal apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia is such an important missionary reset. The Holy Father certainly did not ignore the fight for the dignity and rights of the indigenous peoples, the preservation of their cultural riches, and the jealous conservation of its natural beauty, and its sylvan and aquatic life. He indeed dedicated the first three chapters, respectively, to his social, cultural, and ecological dreams for the region. But the true lynchpin of the exhortation was the fourth chapter on Pope Francis’ “ecclesial dream,” which takes up his original “dream of a…missionary impulse capable of transforming everything” and applies it to the Amazon.

                The Pope passionately declares that we cannot respond to the problems and needs of the Amazon only with “organizations, technical resources, opportunities for discussion and political programs” designed to help lift them out of poverty and defend their rights. As Christians, he writes, “we cannot set aside the call to faith that we have received from the Gospel. An authentic option for the poor and the abandoned…also involves inviting them to a friendship with the Lord that can elevate and dignify them. How sad it would be if they were to receive from us a body of teachings or a moral code, but not the great message of salvation, the missionary appeal that speaks to the heart and gives meaning to everything else in life.” Nor can we be content, he continues, “with a social message. If we devote our lives to their service, to working for the justice and dignity that they deserve, we cannot conceal the fact that we do so because we see Christ in them and because we acknowledge the immense dignity that they have received from God, the Father who loves them with boundless love.” This message, “expressed in a variety of ways, must constantly resound in the Amazon region. Without that impassioned proclamation, every ecclesial structure would become just another NGO.”

              He suggests, with paternal tenderness, that in some places the Church has not integrated the “social and spiritual” adequately, focusing too much on material development and too little on Jesus Christ. The result has been that many of the people of the region have felt the need “to look outside the Church for a spirituality that responds to their deepest yearnings,” as they have recently done in huge numbers toward Protestant churches. The Pope insists that the indigenous peoples “have a right to hear the Gospel, and above all that first proclamation, the kerygma,” the message that God “infinitely loves every man and woman and has revealed this love fully in Jesus Christ, crucified for us and risen in our lives.” This kerygma, he wrote in 2018, involves three truths: God loves you, Christ saves you, and Christ is alive and can be present in our life at every moment to fill it with light and take away sorrow and solitude. This is the message, he emphasizes, that must be “proclaimed unceasingly” in the Amazon and is the starting point for the Church’s care for the Amazon’s people, culture, and environment.

              He confronts head-on the ideology that claims that sharing the Gospel is a violent foreign intrusion against the people, culture, and religious traditions of the region and that what the indigenous really need is primarily social workers and development aid, not Jesus and His Church. “In our desire to struggle side by side with everyone,” he states, “we are not ashamed of Jesus Christ” and do not “scorn the richness of Christian wisdom handed down through the centuries, presuming to ignore the history in which God has worked in many ways.” Rather, the Church is proud of what God has done.

              At the same time, he says, the Church must properly inculturate the Gospel. He implies that in previous centuries, missionaries sometimes thought that in proclaiming the faith, they also had to communicate “the culture in which they grew up.” The Gospel, however, is not “monocultural,” but is capable of becoming incarnate in every culture. Inculturation, he says, involves a “double movement,” in which the Gospel takes root and enriches a culture with its transforming power while at the same time receives from the culture what the Holy Spirit has already mysteriously placed there. In the Amazon, he notes that the Holy Spirit has sown openness to God’s action, a responsible and grateful care for creation that preserves resources for future generations, esteem for the family and the sacred character of human life, the importance of worship, a communitarian approach to existence, solidarity and shared responsibility, an austere and simple life, and belief in a life beyond this earth. Nothing of this goodness that exists in Amazonian cultures should be rejected, he underlines, but all of these things should be “taken up in the process of evangelization,” and shown to be “brought to fulfillment in the light of the Gospel.”

              As for evangelizers in this missionary transformation of the Amazon, the solution, he implies, is not ordaining married men as priests or investigating whether women might be ordained permanent deacons. It begins with praying insistently for vocations in the Amazon and ensuring that priests with missionary vocations from the region do not “go to Europe or the United States” but stay to help out “their own Vicariates in the Amazon region.” It involves more permanent deacons in the Amazon, he states, suggesting that it makes no sense to talk about ordaining married men to the priesthood if married men are not even stepping forward for the diaconate. He also calls on religious women and lay leaders to take on a much larger responsibility in passing on the faith.

               He concludes the exhortation with a prayer to Mary as “Mother of the Amazon,” asking her to “bring your Son to birth in [Amazonian] hearts, so that he can shine forth in the Amazon region, in its peoples, and its cultures, by the light of his word, by his consoling love, by his message of fraternity and justice.” That is a prayer born from the heart of most profound papal dream and from the desire of the cardinals who elected him. It is also one that corresponds to the Amazon’s greatest need.

August 30, 2020

            The centenary of the birth of St. John Paul II on May 18^th was not the only anniversary of note connected with him in the month of May. On May 25^th, the Church marked the 25^th anniversary of his landmark encyclical on Church unity entitled Ut Unum Sint, taken from Jesus’ prayer to the Father on Holy Thursday, “May they all be one” (Jn 17:11,21). This encyclical was the most courageous papal ecumenical proposal since the schism with the Orthodox in 1054 and the Protestant Reformation in 1517. It confirmed as “irreversible” the Second Vatican Council’s commitment in favor of Church unity and called all Catholics, as well as our brothers and sisters in other Churches and ecclesial communities, to renew and increase their efforts to respond to Christ’s appeal to work for full and visible communion. “The way of ecumenism,” John Paul II stated, “is the way of the Church.”

          It must be the way of the Church because unity is, first, an indispensable mark of the Church. The Church was founded as the Mystical Body of Christ and is meant to reflect the communion that exists among the persons of the Blessed Trinity, providing an earthly image of the communion of saints in heaven. St. Paul emphasized this among the members of the early Church, reminding them, “You are all one in Christ Jesus” and, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one Baptism” (Gal 3:28; Eph 4:1-6). Church unity is not something we create by our own efforts and negotiations but is a reality God himself has created that the Church must once again evince.

              When Jesus begged the Father that His disciples be one just as He and the Father are one, He declared that this would help the world “know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me” (Jn 17:23). The effectiveness of the work of evangelization, He implied, was contingent on the manifestation of the unity of believers. Lack of unity “openly contradicts the will of Christ, scandalizes the world, and damages the holy cause of preaching the Gospel,” the Second Vatican Council proclaimed. Paul VI added, “We must offer Christ’s faithful not the image of people divided and separated by unedifying quarrels. The division among Christians is a serious reality that impedes the very work of Christ.”

              That is why John Paul II stressed the centrality and urgency of the ecumenical task. He called ecumenism “one of the pastoral priorities of my pontificate” and said it “is not just some sort of ‘appendix’ that is added to the Church’s traditional activity. Rather, ecumenism is an organic part of her life and work, and consequently must pervade all that she is and does.” He stated simply, “To believe in Christ means to desire unity; to desire unity means to desire the Church; to desire the Church means to desire the communion of grace that corresponds to the Father’s plan from all eternity. Such is the meaning of Christ’s prayer: ‘Ut unum sint.’”

               The ecumenical goal, he stated, cannot be achieved by “human powers and capacities,” and therefore the first step of ecumenism is public and private prayer for God’s assistance, opening ourselves to the work of the Holy Spirit, joining ourselves to Christ’s intentions and interceding for each other that we may grow in ardent fidelity to God’s will. The second step is conversion, a true change of heart, involving repentance and reparation for sins against unity, like “long-standing misgivings inherited from the past,” “mutual misunderstandings, prejudices, complacency, insufficient knowledge of the other,” “refusals to forgive,” and “pride.” Conversion also involves striving to grow in “love, self-denial, humility, patience” and “renewal and reform of the Church.” The third step is dialogue, which he says is not “simply an exchange of ideas…[but] always an exchange of gifts,” in which people enter as partners seeking reconciliation and unity and truth. Such dialogue, he adds, cannot take place just on the “horizontal dimension” of meetings and exchanges of points of view, but must feature a “primarily vertical thrust” in which we all seek, contritely, to listen to and respond to God. That perspective allows dialogue to take place in a context of love directed to God and in God toward others, as well as helps all partners remain faithful to what they consider essentials and to avoid false irenicism, indifference, half-hearted commitment, defeatism, or prejudicial opposition. The most effective dialogue of all, he says, is that of the saints and the martyrs who witness to the will of God in things little and big until the end.

                  The goal of the ecumenical movement, he says, must be “nothing less than full communion between East and West,” so that the Church may “breathe with her two lungs.” The image he proposes is the way that different Churches related to each other in the first millennium of Christianity, in which there was unity with diversity. He acknowledges that one of the major obstacles to unity is the understanding of the papacy. In the boldest part of the encyclical, he invites other Christians to a “patient and fraternal dialogue” about how the ministry of the Bishop of Rome, without renouncing anything essential, can reemerge as a “servant of unity,” “presiding in truth and love” “done in communion” with the Churches and the bishops.

                In the past quarter-century, there has been much ecumenical progress. The Catholic Church continues high-level dialogue with fifteen different Churches or associations of Churches and there have been notable breakthroughs: several agreements with ancient Churches of the East resolving the Christological controversies of the fifth century, an agreement on Justification with the Lutherans in 1998, and common declarations on various points of faith and witness with the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Patriarch of Moscow, and the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury.

                The Popes have welcomed many Christian religious leaders to Rome and met with them in their own residences and houses of worship, notably various Orthodox Patriarchs as well as Lutherans for the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation and the World Council of Churches on its 70th anniversary. There has been much common effort for peace, for the protection of our common home, for refugees and migrants, as well as in defense of Christians being massacred in the Middle East and elsewhere. There have also been gestures of charity, involving the ecumenism of the saints, most notably St. John Paul’s giving the Russian Orthodox the icon of Our Lady of Kazan, his returning the relics of St. John Chrysostom and St. Gregory of Nazianzan to Constantinople, and Pope Francis’ giving even some of the relics of St. Peter to Patriarch Bartholomew.

                 Astride these positive steps, there have been setbacks and disappointments. Some of the Churches dating from the Reformation have separated themselves further from the common interpretation of the Church on the inspiration and inerrancy of Sacred Scripture, the Sacrament of Holy Orders, the meaning of marriage, and various aspects of sexual morality. There has also been a major split between the Orthodox Patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow over the Orthodox Church in the Ukraine.

                Twenty-five years later, the momentum given by Ut Unum Sint remains and the questions he asked with regards to the exercise of the papacy in Christianity as a whole are getting more attention. Most of the progress has happened at the level of expert dialogue, not so much at the grassroots level, but clergy in various Churches are now receiving much more formation in ecumenism than before, giving them the capacity to bring a fraternal spirit to their houses of worship. One last sign of hope is that there is one more saint in heaven, the author of Ut Unum Sint, who now, along with martyrs and saints from East and West, can intercede and work for the manifestation of the unity for which Christ prayed, from the place where the full communion of believers within the communion of God shines in all its radiance.

August 23, 2020

           The typical Polish Happy Birthday song is “Sto Lat,” which translates into English as “100 years, 100 years, may he/she live, live for us 100 years.” It is a prayerful wish that the one being celebrated will have a long, healthy life. It was intoned by Polish pilgrims regularly when they were with St. John Paul II in the Vatican, especially but not exclusively around his birthday. On May 18^th, all of those well-wishes chanted over the decades for him came true, as we marked the centenary of St. John Paul II’s birth.

            The baby born Karol Wojtyla now experiences, as his canonization affirms, a life far greater than the extension of days on earth, dwelling in a house not made by human hands, prepared for him by the One whom he served as earthly vicar (2 Cor 5:1, Jn 14:3). While we are not privy to how such events are observed where even “a thousand years are like a day” (2 Pet 3:8), it is fitting here on earth to mark this time with gratitude to God, reflection on the meaning of John Paul II’s life and our own, and prayers through his intercession.

             Saints are gifts of God to the people of each age. They show us how to live. They teach us how to love. They help us learn to die. They reveal to us our exalted origin, dignity, and destiny. They make the life of faith attractive and Christian hope realistic. They are not just exemplars of heroic virtue but mediators, praying for us that we might follow their footsteps as they followed Christ’s. While saints are always consequential figures in the real, real world, even if hidden to most human eyes, John Paul II’s life has had an enormous impact on what also makes history books, most notably the role he played in the fall of Soviet communism. His impact within the Church, in implementing the teachings and authentic spirit of the Second Vatican Council, and leading the Church through various ideological storms that were buffeting the Church from within and without, was perhaps even greater. In honor of his ten decades, I would like to focus on ten distinctive marks of his papacy that have deeply impacted the life of the Church and her engagement with the world.

            He was the Pope of the universal call to holiness, re-proposing to all the high standard of ordinary Christian living. During his 26 years and 7 months as successor of St. Peter, he canonized from all walks of life 482 saints and beatified 1,327, more than all his predecessors from the previous five centuries combined.

           He was the Pope of theological anthropology. He took the Second Vatican Council’s teachings that Christ reveals the meaning and supreme vocation of human life and that we will only discover who we are through the unselfish gift of ourselves toward others (Gaudium et Spes, 22, 24) and spent his papacy elaborating that connection. His first encyclical, Christ the Redeemer of Man, laid out the leitmotif of his papacy, describing, in response to the reductive understandings of the human person that have led to so much confusion and destruction—communism, individualism, subjectivism, materialism, empiricism, relativism, racism, chauvinism and other “isms”—the full understanding of the person revealed and redeemed by Christ, body and soul, male and female. He chartered the path of Christian humanism.

           He was the Pope of courage. His repeated echo of Jesus’ “Be not afraid!” in his inaugural Mass homily characterized the whole of his life and papacy. He boldly helped establish and act in the Rhapsodic Theater as a young man under Nazi occupation. As a priest and bishop, he helped the Polish people remain intrepid during Soviet oppression. As Pope, he was constantly urging people to “put out into the deep,” and led by example, in boldly and prudently opposing dictators and evil.

           He was the Pope of human love in the divine plan. As a young priest, he said, he “fell in love with human love” and spent the rest of his priesthood trying to “introduce love into love,” namely Christ’s agape into the experience of human eros. Whereas many priests and bishops still today are afraid to talk about love, marriage, sex, and family, he did so with great confidence, appeal, and effectiveness. He gave university lectures, wrote his landmark Love and Responsibility, authored plays, poems, and articles on the dynamics of betrothed love, established interdisciplinary diocesan commissions on marriage, wrote and delivered his catecheses on the theology of the body, published a tremendous exhortation on the Christian family in the modern world (Familiaris Consortio) in 1981 and the Letter to Families, met with newlyweds after every general audience, and established at the Lateran University the John Paul II Institute for the Study of Marriage and Family.

           He was a Marian Pope. His papal motto, Totus Tuus, was taken from St. Louis de Montfort’s prayer of total consecration to Mary and he consecrated the world to her immaculate heart on March 25, 1984. He gave her credit for saving his life with her maternal hand after his assassination attempt on her feast day, presenting the bullet that pierced five vital organs to her in Fatima one year later. He proclaimed a Marian year and wrote Mother of the Redeemer, fulfilling the Second Vatican Council’s call for a more Scripture-based Mariology. He prayed the Rosary continuously between appointments, gave us the Luminous Mysteries, declared a Year of the Rosary, and taught us how to pray the Rosary better in his exhortation The Rosary of the Virgin Mary. He put the first Marian image, Mother of the Church, in St. Peter’s Square.

           He was the Pope of youth, founding the World Youth Days in 1985, meeting with young people on every foreign trip and responding to their questions, hosting regular audiences with young people in the Vatican, writing a profound letter to the young people of the world in 1985, and regularly speaking to bishops and priests about how to be more effective youth ministers, through identifying and appealing to what is perennial rather than faddish in young people.

              He was the Pope of life, battling the culture of death and helping the Church not be ashamed to proclaim and live her teachings on the sanctity of every human life at a time in which elites were promoting abortion as a paragon of freedom, and communist countries as a means of population control. His 1995 encyclical The Gospel of Life remains the greatest pro-life manifesto of all time.

            He was the Pope of evangelization. He made 104 foreign trips, logging 700,000 miles, more than all of his predecessors combined and three times the distance of a round trip to the moon. He felt a divine vocation, he said, to be a “pilgrim pope of evangelization,” doing “traveling catechesis,” hoping to stir up the enter Church to take up the “new evangelization,” a phrase he himself coined.

             He was the Pope of holy years. The Polish bishops in 1966 had a jubilee to celebrate the 1000^thanniversary of the arrival of Christianity in their country and he saw how such jubilees could renew the Church. As Pope, he had special jubilees to focus on the 1950^thanniversary of our Redemption (1983), Mary (1987), The Holy Spirit (1998), God the Father (1999), Christ the Redeemer (2000), the Rosary (2003-4), and the Eucharist (2004-5). The Church has continued these helpful thematic years since, with the Year of St. Paul (2008-9), Priests (2009-10), Faith (2012-13), and Mercy (2015-6).

             He was the Pope of suffering. He endured Mehmet Ali Agca’s assassination attempt in 1981, bone breaks, and several years on public display with Parkinson’s disease, becoming one of the modern world’s most well-known images of perseverance in a euthanizing age. His 1984 exhortation on the Christian meaning of human suffering (Salvifici Doloris), in which he said God permits suffering to “unleash love in the human person,” remains the greatest theological window into the mystery of suffering ever produced.

              As we continue to mark the hundredth anniversary of St. John Paul II’s birth, we thank God for all the blessings He gave him and, through him, all of us. We pray through his intercession that we may build on those foundations—and with him live 100 years and more.

August 16, 2020

           Last Fall, Attorney General William Barr gave an impassioned speech to the students and faculty of Notre Dame Law School as well as to Notre Dames’ Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture on the state of religious freedom in the United States. His remarks were received with alarm by commentators like the New York Times’ Paul Krugman, who called Barr’s words “the language of witch hunts and pogroms,” by the Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell, who described them as “a tacit endorsement of theocracy,” and by Huffington Post’s Mary Papenfuss, who said they reveal “how deeply the top lawman in the nation is tied to his Catholicism,” which for her was obviously a problem.

           As such reactions show, Barr’s unabashed candor upset many of the proponents of the militant-secularist project he decries: those who preach the virtue of tolerance while being intolerant of those who disagree with what they want tolerated, who proclaim new rights and fundamental freedoms while trampling the long-established ones of those whom they think are in their way. Militant secularists often wrap their advocacy and action in the American flag and frame what is happening as a flourishing of the principles of the country’s founding fathers, while generally and snobbishly trying to disregard as un-American paranoia the concerns raised by religious leaders and people. When the Attorney General, however, exposed what is afoot as bluntly as he did, they knew they could not ignore it. Rather than engaging the arguments, they resorted to high-class, old-fashioned, hyperbolic name-calling and fearmongering.

            Even though many of Barr’s ideas are not new to those who have been concerned with the rapid erosion of religious freedom in the United States, they need to be taken as seriously by defenders of religious liberty as they have been by religious freedom opponents. They are a wake-up call for citizens not to take their duties in response to religious liberty and freedom of conscience for granted—and to begin to act.

            Barr makes three major points in his address. The first concerns the centrality of religious liberty in the history of the United States. He underlines that the founding fathers, especially Madison and Adams, were convinced that the only way the American experiment in ordered liberty would succeed would if the people governed were moral and religious if they interiorly obeyed a higher law that restrained them from doing evil and moved them to work for the common good. Self-government is not just and principally “government of the people, by the people and for the people,” he said, but begins with self-mastery and the capacity to govern oneself. Religion helps teach and form people to want and choose what is good and to refrain from abusing their freedom for selfish ends against the good of others.

              Without such moral formation toward authentic freedom, toward interior and cultural restraint instead of the enforced restraint of government, the founding fathers did not believe the United States could succeed: the unbridled pursuit of personal appetites at the expense of the common good would begin to tear asunder the social fabric and leave government coercion as the only means to achieve order. America has succeeded until now because, for the most part, the vast majority of people were indeed moral and religious and regularly chose to do the right thing even if they might have been able to get away with doing the wrong.

               Those achievements, however, are in danger, as Barr emphasizes in his second point, which is what critics of his speech found most offensive. Over the past half-century, religion in general, and religious freedom in particular, have been under increasing attack, he says, as militant secularists have mounted a comprehensive effort to drive religion and the Judeo-Christian moral system from the public square. The “unremitting assault” of “organized destruction,” he argues, has taken place through popular culture, entertainment, the academy, courts, and legislatures, where secularists have sought to supplant traditional values with a quasi-religion of moral relativism pushing as moral goods abortion, sexual promiscuity, euthanasia, and gender ideology, among other things. The consequences of this moral upheaval, he stresses, have demonstrably led to skyrocketing rates of illegitimacy, broken families, depression and mental illnesses, suicide rates, and drug abuse. Rather than acknowledge and confront the “social costs of licentiousness and irresponsible personal conduct,” militant secularists, he says, enable them by having the State pick up the social tab, paying for abortions rather than calling people to sexual responsibility, providing safe injection sites rather than attacking addiction and assisting addicts, and assuming through scores of new social programs the parental and spousal responsibilities of those who forsake them.

              It is obvious that not all those who call themselves secularists are part of a loose conspiracy of organized destruction. At the same time, however, it is difficult to deny that those organizations who, for example, have sought to remove any reference to God from public assemblies and places, who have pushed not only for universal access to abortion but to have those opposed to it pay for it, have justly earned the Attorney General’s description. Their ire at the term “destruction” seems to come not from its use describing their attempted annihilation of the Judeo-Christian values that they believe stand in their way, but from Barr’s blaming their moral revolution for the disastrous consequences he documents. “Among these militant secularists are many so-called ‘progressives,’” Barr quips laconically. “But where is the progress?”

              Barr’s third major point builds on the point of organized destruction, by illustrating with authority how law—especially judicial activism—is strategically being used as a “battering ram” to bring about moral revolution. The goal, Barr contends, is not just replacing traditional values with new ones, but forcing people of faith and religious institutions to subscribe to practices and policies antithetical to their beliefs and consciences, like paying for abortions, being browbeaten to bake cakes for same-sex weddings, or being compelled to have their children taught in public schools about sexual practices contrary to their faith. Such attacks, Barr says, remind him of Roman emperors who refused to leave Christians alone to practice their faith but forced them to offer religious sacrifices to pagan deities or the emperor. He makes plain that such attacks are not only a “monstrous invasion of religious liberty,” but also wholly un-American, something that would fill not just the founding fathers but most Americans throughout the last 243 years with outrage.

               What is to be done to remedy this trend? Barr mentions briefly on three things. First is individual moral renewal: we can only transform culture and society if we ourselves are transformed. Second is to focus far more vigorously on the moral education of children: there can be no moral rebirth unless we do a better job in passing along faith and values to the newer generations—and not just particular religious values, but the general values that the founding fathers recognized make a free society possible to endure. Third, lawyers must take greater leadership and responsibility for the way the courts are being used to bulldoze believers and their values. They must vigorously resist the secular desire to expel religious viewpoints from the public square and to limit the free exercise of faith.

              Like a pre-exilic prophet, the Attorney General focuses far more on the analysis of the problem than on giving detailed steps toward a solution. For those engaging in the types of socially calamitous behavior he describes, their reaction to his speech burnishes his prophetic credentials. For Christian citizens, however, he describes a situation for which Jesus has prepared us. Jesus repeatedly emphasized that our religious freedom would be challenged, that we would be brought before governors and courts, mocked, persecuted, and hated on account of His name. Such suffering, He said, would not only lead to our beatitude but to an opportunity to give more compelling witness. That is why He told us not to fear but to rejoice and be glad for our heavenly reward would be great!

August 9, 2020

           The lives of Black people do matter. They matter profoundly because God has created every human being in His beautiful image and likeness. Every person is of infinite value, so precious indeed, that Christ spent His life and offered His death for the eternal salvation of each individual member of the human race. This astonishing truth shines in stark and disturbing contrast with the evil history of slavery. For centuries, slave owners, slave traders, and indeed, the whole political and economic system of our nation dehumanized, exploited, abused, and killed people of color for an erroneous perception of a collective benefit. Each person has an inherent human dignity and can never be merely a means to an end. Our bloody Civil War, the share-cropping system, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow laws, public lynchings, segregation, the prejudice and violence against the Civil Rights movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the instances of racist police brutality, and the recent death of George Floyd, all point to a long history of struggle, violence, and suffering to overcome racism in our country and establish inherent human dignity.

          In this moment of challenge and decision regarding race, a cacophony of voices and opinions have exploded. What are the lasting and transformative solutions? How do we get to the core of the matter? Laws may change for the better, police methods need to improve, institutional leaders need to examine how they lead and serve, but ultimately, hearts must be converted if we ever hope to eradicate racism from our midst in a lasting and peaceful way.

          Because of our sinful and fallen human nature, a flawed, innate tendency in the human psyche often feels the need to define as “other,” some person or group that is different from us, someone whose humanity or even very existence needs to be diminished, mocked, excluded, or even eliminated. Think of Nazism and the Jewish people, the generic “enemy” during any wartime, the native peoples of the Americas, the native peoples of Africa, the unborn child, or even the child in school who gets bullied and picked on for being different in some way. In sad, evil, and terrible ways, African Americans have suffered from this dynamic for centuries; such racism and exclusion, no matter the identity of the victim, is radically anti-Christian and stands in diametric opposition to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

          A particular way to view the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ is His identification with the “other” and the “outcast.” In His trial and condemnation, Jesus becomes the criminal, the rejected one, the scapegoat, upon whom is cast the hatred, sin, and evil of humanity. By absorbing this violence, embracing this exclusion, offering pardon to His killers, taking upon Himself the entirety of prejudice, persecution, injustice, and sin, the Lord heals all of it in one mighty offering of self to the Father. By becoming the scapegoat Himself, Jesus provides the path to end all scapegoating. The arms of the cross symbolize the mighty embrace of God towards all of His children. By that embrace, no one is the “other”; no one is excluded or cast out. All are invited to embrace a new identity as children of God. The Church, formed from the Passion, death, and resurrection of Christ, is born as the reconciled communion of love, unity, and peace to which all people are invited. Indeed, “Catholic” means “universal.” Our very name implies a new humanity in which prejudice, violence, hatred, and racism have no place.

          The sad history of racism in members of our society and our Church points to the challenging truth that the fullness of the Gospel still has not permeated through our institutions via our individual hearts. To the extent that violence, disrespect, prejudice, and exclusion of any kind still afflict us, to that degree we still require conversion. This current moment of protest will only bear lasting fruit if it is radically grounded in a vision of human dignity and nurtured by a spirit of reconciliation. To forgive and to seek forgiveness, in a spirit of love and prayer, will begin to heal our society and communities of the fear, prejudice, and hatred that still divide us, conflict us, and violate us. Imprisoned in Auschwitz, St. Maximilian Kolbe urged his fellow prisoners to love and forgive the Nazis. “If we do not, we are no better than they.”

             Forgiveness alone, however, is not enough. How do we build a culture of life, unity, love, justice, and peace? We need a public and flourishing morality to do so. Tolerance is not sufficient. I do not want simply to put up with people; I want to love them. I do not want to coexist with others. I want to be in communion with them. Such a vision demands a spiritual perspective. In his courageous leadership, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted the Scriptures and appealed to a Gospel of non-violence. The Freedom Riders sang religious spirituals as they marched. Read Dr. King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail.” We need this witness today. The principles of Catholic Social Teaching, with their emphasis on human dignity, rights and responsibilities, solidarity, the primacy of family and social bonds, the importance of work, a preferential option for the poor, and an integral ecology, are solid and transformative pillars upon which we can build a civilization of life and love. As St. John Paul II reminds us, the human person can only fully flourish in a society with a healthy public morality, a functional democracy, and an economy ordered to the good of everyone.

            Most of our national Founders were deists; while not necessarily practicing Christians, they acknowledged the existence of God as a benevolent Providence from whom flowed the dignity of the human person and the inalienable rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This shared conviction that God created the universe and invites humanity to order its affairs in a revealed morality is sorely lacking today. Tolerance and goodwill are thin fare to hold together a society which so absolutizes individual autonomy at the expense of the common good, and in many ways, has pushed religious values out of the public square. We sorely lack a common moral language even to discuss ethical issues.

            In my ministry as a priest, I have been privileged to stand in many sacred places with suffering brothers and sisters whose very existence was marginal and fragile. These folks experienced poverty, violence, prejudice, and even death. In one way or another, they all experienced the sense of being outcast, devalued, ignored, and disregarded. Yet, in the midst of such marginalization, I experienced faith, forgiveness, healing, and hope in very desperate situations. The truth of the Gospel demands us to go out in search of the lost, the marginalized, and the dehumanized and to proclaim the Good News of God’s love and the inherent dignity of every person. The mercy and reconciliation of Christ is the only power that can heal an unjust world and a wounded heart.

            Violence and lawlessness will not bring about the communion we need and seek. We must condemn the violence against protestors and police in these past weeks which has even led to several deaths. The looting, burning, vandalism, and disregard of the law are not representative of the vast majority of the protestors, but nevertheless, should be a troubling concern for all. The attacks against human life and property are a violation of God’s will for us as well.

              What does this moment of protest and challenge ask of us as Christians? Certainly, to pray for peace, justice, and reconciliation, for an end to violence and its causes; to fast and do penance for healing and forgiveness in the world; to study the Scriptures and the teachings of the Church where we will discover God’s desire for us as a nation and a people; to take actions of mercy, forgiveness, service, and healing as best we can; to volunteer for service to marginalized and suffering people; to pray for our government leaders, health care workers, the police, the victims of injustice and violence, and all those who are suffering in any way right now; to examine our own hearts and ask the Lord to eradicate any prejudice, hatred, fear, or lack of forgiveness; to proclaim fearlessly Jesus Christ as the source and model of mercy and justice.

              At each celebration of the Eucharist, we have an opportune moment to ponder our communion in Jesus Christ, to remember that the Eucharist forms and feeds us as the Church, so that we may carry forth the love, mercy, peace, and forgiveness we experience in Mass to the world. We are sent forth to sanctify society so that our families, cities, nation, and indeed all of creation increasingly is conformed to the fullness of the Kingdom of God. This Paschal Banquet participates in and foreshadows the celestial Marriage Feast of the Lamb in the Kingdom of God, where all sin, hatred, division, and death will vanish forever. This love is the ultimate solution to our torment and division. This love never fails!

August 2, 2020

           In recent weeks, we have witnessed the vandalizing and toppling of statues around the country which depict Confederate leaders, Christopher Columbus, Saint Junipero Serra, Francis Scott Key, and anyone else deemed to be offensive to the vandals. Even a monument recognizing the service of the first all-volunteer Black regiment of the Union Army during the Civil War was defaced in Boston. Often, law enforcement officers have done nothing to stop this destruction. The magazine, Popular Mechanics, features a current article detailing how to destroy “a statue that you decide you no longer like,” utilizing science to do so. This dynamic reached another stage on June 22^nd when Shaun King, a Black activist, publicly encouraged the destruction of “white” statues and other artistic depictions of Jesus Christ, labeling them as forms of “white supremacy.”

          As an avid reader of United States history, I know some of the torturous narratives of violence and oppression against both the Native peoples of this land and the African peoples brought here as slaves. In my opinion, the injustices suffered by these peoples over the course of centuries are two of the greatest moral failures of our country, with deep repercussions in our culture. We must study and know this history in order to transcend it, to learn from it, and to commit ourselves to justice, equality, and solidarity because of it. At the same time, even the worst aspects of history should be remembered and kept before our eyes. Auschwitz remains open as both a memorial and a museum so that humanity never forgets the horror of the Holocaust.

          How illuminating and healing it would be if we had a national education effort to understand our history in its totality, have a respectful discussion about the proper way to commemorate people and events, such as Christopher Columbus, the European colonization of the Americas, the tragic suffering of slavery, the Civil War, Confederate leaders, the Founding Fathers, and the evangelization of our continent and then make measured decisions about statues, buildings, and memorials.

           If we allow the commemorative and visual history of our nation to be destroyed by random groups in the current moment of anger, how will we ever learn from that history? Does toppling and vandalizing a statue of George Washington because he owned slaves, really serve our country and our collective memory? Would it not be better to let the whole history of our country be on full display in all of its complexity so that we can value the patrimony of our heritage and simultaneously critique the injustices and sins of the past? A statue of Christopher Columbus was erected in the North End of Boston by proud Italian-Americans in the 1920s as a sign of their ethnic heritage. Two weeks ago, the statue was beheaded by vandals. A slap in the face to those who paid for it and placed it there for a noble purpose. Should certain statues be placed in museums or storage? Perhaps. Should we let a group of vandals make those decisions for us? No.

          Concerning the destruction of “white” artistic depictions of Jesus, which Shaun King has called for, the principle of enculturation merits our reflection here. In the Catholic Church, every culture, country, ethnicity, and race has claimed Jesus and the Blessed Virgin Mary as their own. Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared to Saint Juan Diego as a mestiza, African art depicts Jesus as Black, Asian depictions of the Blessed Mother, too, take on similarities of both bodily appearance and, often, cultural garb. In this context, are white representations of Christ and His Mother inherently signs of white supremacy? I think not. Because the Son of God became incarnate in our human flesh, does not all of humanity – every race, tribe, and tongue – have the spiritual ability to depict Him through the particular lens of their own culture?

           In Her missionary outreach, some in the Church at times have mistakenly equated the fullness of Catholicism with European culture. We have learned over time, as have others, to approach a different culture with respect and humility, recognizing the inherently authentic human elements already present in each person and place. We attempt to maintain unity in that which is essential, and diversity in those things which are not. A robust proclamation of the Gospel will purify every culture of its negative and destructive elements, but will leave intact its beauty, goodness, and truth. Belief in Jesus as Our Lord and Savior only makes us more fully human and more deeply rooted in the worth of our respective culture and country.

            In the face of Mr. King’s comments, as a priest and pastor, I cannot remain silent. I need to denounce such a call to violence and destruction. Our statues, pictures, stained-glass windows, churches, icons, and devotions are holy to us. They are sacramentals, blessed and sacred, visible expressions of the love of God, poured out in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and made manifest in the Saints. They remind us of God, His love for us in Christ, and the nearness of the divine. The secular iconoclasm of the current moment will not bring reconciliation, peace, and healing. Such violence will only perpetuate the prejudice and hatred it ostensibly seeks to end. Religious freedom, given to man by God Himself, and guaranteed by our Constitution, allows us as Catholics to practice our faith, build our churches, pray in public, put up statues and crucifixes on our property, and serve the common good through a remarkable network of health care, schools, and social services. We must not surrender our religious liberty to the voices that seek the destruction of our public presence, the diminishing of our sacramental worship, and the denial of our belief in Jesus Christ as the savior of the world. Only the love of Christ can heal a wounded heart, not a vandalized piece of metal.

July 26, 2020

            A few years ago, I had the joy to travel to Detroit for solemn Vespers at the historic National Shrine of the Little Flower Basilica on the feast day of the Little Flower. In the canticle for Vespers, taken from the Book of Revelation, we prayed how “all nations shall come and worship in [God’s] presence, which gave us an occasion to focus on Jesus’ call for us to “go and teach all nations” (Mark 16:15, Mt 28:18-20) sharing with them the treasure of Christian faith and life. As we encounter a world that desperately needs to hear the proclamation of the Good News, the thoughts of St. Therese, the cloistered nun who became co-patroness of the Missions, can give some important direction for the Church today.

          The need for a more effective sharing of our faith cannot be denied. In the U.S., 30 million people define themselves as ex-Catholics, one out of every 11, constituting the second-largest religious group behind those identifying as Catholics. There is the almost viral rise of the “nones;” those who do not identify with any religion. There is the shuttering of Churches, schools, convents, and seminaries. There are many U.S. dioceses in which priests ride circuits of several hundred miles every Sunday to try to bring Christ to people. One of the most troubling worries of many middle-aged parents and grandparents concerns family members who have stopped going to Mass and cease living according to Christian faith and morals. Most Catholics in Europe, however, would love to have our problems, because theirs are infinitely worse. There is a widespread collapse of faith in many countries in which Christian life once flourished. An impressive institutional structure remains, featuring much patrimony and munificent Cathedrals, but many are more like museums, drawing far more tourists than communicants.

          We have the situation on the Amazon. The Amazon is an enormous tropical forest four times the size of Alaska, embracing 2.8 million indigenous people, 390 indigenous tribes, 240 spoken languages, and 137 uncontacted peoples. And many of them are visited only once or twice a year by priests. Just 12 years ago, all the Bishops of Latin America met in Aparecida, Brazil and produced an extraordinary document calling for a continent-wide Mission, but it seems that many have lost that zeal for and confidence in its summons. And we cannot forget that we have many countries that have yet to receive the Gospel and where the Gospel is forbidden.

           The Great Commission did not have an expiration date. There is a need to learn the missionary dimension of our faith anew. That is one of the reasons why Saint Therese was declared a doctor of the Church. I would like to focus on three elements of the missionary spirituality she teaches us.

          First, mission begins with love: love for God and love for others. The essence of her spirituality was “to love Jesus and make Him loved.” The most important organ for a missionary is not the legs but the heart. St. Therese’s heart was formed very young, reading the “Annals of the Propagation of the Faith” with her family. As a little girl, she replied, “I have a passionate desire to be a missionary!” Later she wrote how she wanted to “spread the Gospel in all parts of the earth, even to the farthest isles, … [and] not for a few years only {but] … from the world’s creation … till the end of time … so that … we may inflame all poor sinners with love of you.”

          Do we love people enough to want to share Christ with them? The Little Flower was once asked by one of her adopted Missionary priest brothers what was the reason why, more than 1800 years after Christ had come, there were still so many people who had never heard Jesus’ saving name. Her response was because of the laziness and lack of generosity of other Christians. Some do not lose sleep over multitudes’ not living and dying without knowing Christ, being baptized, hearing the Word of God, receiving the Eucharist, having their sins forgiven in Confession, being properly prepared for death. Some live almost as if they believe that it is no big deal, that there are no stakes for life in this world or the next, whether people come to believe, know, and follow Christ as the way, truth and life and learn how to love Him in their neighbor.

          As Pope Francis movingly wrote in The Joy of the Gospel, “What kind of love would not feel the need to speak of the beloved, to point him out, to make him known?” We know, he continued, from personal experience, just as St. Therese did, that “it is not the same thing to have known Jesus as not to have known him, not the same thing to walk with him as to walk blindly, not the same thing to hear his word as not to know it, and not the same thing to contemplate him, to worship him, to find our peace in him, as not to. …We know well that with Jesus life becomes richer and that with him it is easier to find meaning in everything. This is why we evangelize.”

            Second, the Little Flower teaches us that the mission involves constant prayer. Jesus knew that there would always be a “vocations crisis,” but He gave us the remedy: to pray to the Harvest Master to send laborers for His harvest (Mt 9:37). St. Therese became a Carmelite precisely to support the missions through her prayer. In 2000, the future Pope Benedict XVI commented about how Jesus used to call His disciples only after praying during the night. “Jesus had to acquire the disciples from God,” he said. “The same is always true. We ourselves cannot gather men. We must acquire them by God for God. All methods are empty without the foundation of prayer.” To be a missionary is to be a contemplative. Often, we are tempted to solve problems primarily with worldly means, placing our trust in new programs, advertising campaigns, and slogans. It must begin with prayer. It must begin with God.

          Do we really pray for people to come to the faith? Do we pray as if lives depend on it? Do we intercede for those on the front lines of the Mission and those with vocations to missionary institutes? Do we beg God that every baptized Christian, beginning with ourselves, will discover and live the apostolic dimension of the Christian life with tongues of fire given by the Holy Spirit? Do we implore for each of us to realize, as Pope Francis stated in The Joy of the Gospel, that “I am a mission on this earth; that is the reason why I am here in this world”?

          Third, St. Therese teaches us how to sacrifice for the missions. She told a sister she aspired to Carmel “to suffer more and by this means to save more souls.” She confessed, “Our Lord had made me understand that it was through the cross He would give me souls, … but I have made a covenant with God that they may be for the benefit of poor missionaries.” Three months before she died of tuberculosis at 24, she posed for a photograph, holding a saying of her foundress, St. Teresa of Avila, “To liberate only one [soul] I would gladly die many times over.”

        There are, of course, many ways to sacrifice for the Missions. If God permits physical sufferings, we can convert them into a bodily self-offering, as she did. We can sacrifice monetarily—truly sacrifice, going without things we need—to help missionaries who often go without many of the basics we take for granted. And we can make the commitment to give our life to spread the faith whether in far distant lands or our neighborhoods.

          Eleven days before she died, the Little Flower said that she wanted “even to save souls after my death.” She was excited that her missionary zeal would no longer be constrained by “cloister and grille.” She felt that “my mission is about to begin, … of making God loved as I love him,” and that her heaven would be spent “doing good on earth.” She said, “I cannot be happy rejoicing, I cannot rest, until all souls are saved.” The Little Flower is spending her heaven praying for us, that we and the whole Church might receive the fruit of her prayers to the Harvest Master and realize that we are the laborers He is summoning to take in His white and ripe harvest.

July 19, 2020

           At the end of March, toward the beginning of the pandemic shutdowns, actor and filmmaker John Krasinski established an uplifting and entertaining eight-part YouTube series entitled “Some Good News.” The show was “dedicated entirely to good news,” focusing on various heroes in the healthcare field, inspirational generosity from individuals and businesses, buoyant appearances by actors, singers, celebrities, and other touching features. Framed as a news program from his living room home studio, it sought to bring some joy and good out of pandemic’s various difficulties, like canceled graduation ceremonies, proms, and weddings. Seventy-two million people tuned in.

          The son of a Polish dad and Irish mom from Newton, Massachusetts, Krasinksi’s Catholic roots were hard to miss in the program’s title. In the midst of the incessant bad news of Covid-19, there was a need for “some Good News,” and Krasinski enthusiastically, passionately, contagiously, and touchingly provided. The response showed how deeply it resonated: a vast international movement erupted following his paradigm, as others, especially young people, reported on the good news that was happening all around them.

          The series filled a vacuum. It sought to remedy the obsessive preoccupation with bad news—exacerbated by the pandemic—prioritized by the secular media. But it also filled a gap left by the Church, which, though commissioned to preach the Good News in season and out of season, in pulpits, on street corners, and from rooftops, lacked similar creativity and, with some exceptions, largely retreated when people were hungering for hope. The Church exists to preach the Good News. And in circumstances like the coronavirus, with so much suffering, death, and instability, and, more recently, social unrest, injustice, and violence, its message is all the more urgent and needed.

            Someone who never forgot this lesson and who sought joyfully to proclaim the Good News at all times for 66 years was Father John Jay Hughes, a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, author of 12 books, and Church historian, who died of heart failure on June 3^rd at the age of 92.

            He was a seventh-generation direct descendant of U.S. Founding Father and first Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, whose name he received in baptism. “Jay” grew up in somewhat elite Manhattan circles and graduated from Harvard at 20. His father and grandfather were leading Episcopalian priests and he followed them to ordination, happily serving for six years in Episcopalian parishes. Traveling through Belgium in 1959, he met some young Catholic theologians who corrected his false notions on papal infallibility, which led him on an arduous journey toward being received into the Catholic Church on Easter 1960. He called it the “most difficult decision I have ever made, but also the best.”

             Entering the Church brought with it some enormous loss. His priest father was unyielding with regard to those who “perverted to Rome” and told Jay that were he to become a Catholic, he would no longer be welcome in the family home. His father kept his promise. Jay never saw him again. His coming into full communion also required the sacrifice of the priesthood he loved, at least for a time, as he hoped that he would eventually find a Catholic bishop who would ordain him. He entrusted his priestly vocation to our Lady and asked her to restore it to him when God willed. Eventually, eight years later—with permission from the Vatican, after he made the case that the Episcopalian bishop who ordained him had valid apostolic succession—he was conditionally ordained a Catholic subdeacon, deacon, and priest by the Bishop of Münster, Germany, where he was studying for a doctorate in theology and where one of his professors was the young Fr. Joseph Ratzinger.

              He returned to the United States to teach at St. Louis University’s Divinity School. He suffered from what he described as a “clerical system [that] didn’t know what to do with me,” living in St. Louis but subject to a bishop in Germany. Eventually, he was incardinated into the Archdiocese of St. Louis, where he served in the chancery, as pastor of two parishes, and for many years as theological consultant to the Archbishop.

              There are two themes that made him such a powerful and joy-filled proclaimer of the Good News. On his thirteenth birthday, Jay had written a long list of all the things for which he was thankful. He would continue the practice for many years on his birthday. That practice made thanksgiving central in his life and prayer, and he would always begin his morning half-hour meditation with five minutes of thanksgiving to God. “Thankful people are happy people,” he loved to say in homilies, and, “If you are looking right now at a happy man, and a happy priest—and I can assure you that you are–it is because I have trained myself to say every day, more times than I could ever tell you: ‘Lord, you’re so good to me. And I’m so grateful.’”

              His thanksgiving abounded for the gift of the priesthood, a love that only grew during his eight years of exile from the altar awaiting Catholic ordination. “Priesthood has brought me joy beyond telling,” he said. “It has also brought me pain, sorrow, and grief. If you were to ask me, however, whether I have ever regretted obeying the Lord’s call to serve him and his holy people as a priest, I would answer without hesitation: never, not one single day. I would change just one thing: I would try to be more faithful. If I were to die tonight, I would die filled with happiness, joy, and thanksgiving beyond telling!” He never lost the sense of awe at celebrating Mass each day.

                 He began his long preparation for death at six years old, when his mother died suddenly. He did not know how to process his grief. After a few months, he received a grace. “It came home to me one day, with blinding certainty,” he said in another homily, “that I would see my beloved mother again, when the Lord called me home to himself” and left him with a very real sense of the unseen, spiritual world of God, the angels, saints and beloved dead.

           He was a great preacher. Among his books was a three-volume set of Sunday homilies entitled, “Proclaiming the Good News.” Each week he would send out his Sunday homilies to 3,000 people, including brother priests and bishops. In 2013, when his health began to decline and he needed to move into a priest’s retirement home, he noted that he was struggling with not having the opportunity to share the Good News each day as he had for decades in parishes. He was urged to start a blog and to post daily Mass homilies.

              That blog (jaystl.blogspot.com) is still up. Before Father Jay died, he posted who knows how many upcoming homilies. As of June 24^th, they are still appearing every day, as he posthumously continues, as a sustained valedictory of faith, to proclaim some good news and more.

July 12, 2020

           “I promise to be faithful to you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.” On the day of their wedding, most couples make those vows looking ahead to the future, praying that they will have far more happy times than sad, much more wellness than illness. During the pandemic, however, as the world endures the worst global sickness in a century and millions are enduring truly difficult times, those words take on added meaning.

          One of the things that have impressed and inspired me most during these last few months is how many young couples I have been preparing for marriage have prophetically and courageously been willing to say and live those words, now. Even though their guest lists have had to be pared from hundreds to ten. Even though they have needed to postpone receptions and honeymoons. Even though they have had to jump various hurdles to get marriage licenses and invent creative solutions concerning gowns, tuxes, flowers, and other wedding staples because their vendors have been deemed non-essential businesses and are closed. Even though, in short, they have had to let go of many of the elements of what constituted their dream wedding.

          One young couple told me that they prayed about what God was asking of them during this time of the pandemic and concluded that He wanted them to give witness to the Sacrament of Matrimony. “We can’t do anything about the decisions that have been made with regard to the availability of the Sacraments of Baptism, the Eucharist, Confession, Confirmation, and the Anointing of the Sick during the crisis,” they told me. “But to the extent that the decision is within our control, we want to show our family members, our fellow Catholics and everyone else, how important the Sacrament of Marriage is.”

          I celebrated the Nuptial Mass of a couple surrounded by just their immediate family members, with everyone else, even their closest friends, needing to watch via live stream. The groom told me during our marriage preparation sessions, “Marriage means joining together with each other and with God, and loving each other through every twist, turn and curve-ball that life throws our way.” I could not resist saying during the homily, “Life has certainly thrown you a curve ball these last couple of months, and the two of you, with four hands on the bat, are crushing that pitch for a leadoff homerun. And all those in attendance here, and the multitudes watching on live stream, are cheering you on as you begin to round the bases of married life.” Their many friends and family members who were not able to be present in the Church nevertheless arranged a joyful drive-by in their cars after the ceremony to congratulate the new husband and wife.

          None of these decisions were made without suffering. Some couples I am preparing for marriages this year also have chosen to postpone their wedding until 2021 because they could not imagine a wedding without all of their family and friends being able to travel to be present, or without a joyful reception afterward. Regardless of the decision, when all of these couples got engaged and first started to come to see me, none ever imagined having to consider postponing the long-awaited day because of a pandemic.

            I have noticed a few things, however, that have influenced the couples who have chosen to keep their dates. The first is a very strong vocational awareness. They know that they are called by God to marriage and they want to respond promptly to that call. As part of marriage preparation, when couples tell me that they are hoping God blesses them with children but they are intending to wait a couple of years trying to conceive, I gently remind them that one of the devil’s greatest temptations is to get us to think that “there’s always time.” I ask them, “If you knew you were only going to be married for five years before the other died a heroic death, would it change the way you think about when you’d like to start having children?” It invariably does alter their thinking and gets most to move up the timeline.

             I was very pleased when, faced with the decision about whether to postpone the marriage, one of the couples cited those words. “Father, if, by God’s will, we’re only going to be able to be married for five years before one of us gives our life to save another’s,” the bride-to-be said, “we would much rather spend that year as husband and wife. We have the vocation to marry each other, not to be engaged to each other!”

            The second characteristic is a deep appreciation for what happens in the Sacrament of Matrimony and the conviction in faith to prioritize the bond God creates over having all of their family and friends present, having a reception after the ceremony, being able to travel for the honeymoon, and the various other things that, though beautiful and meaningful, they do not consider as important. At a time in which many engaged couples cohabitate and others treat each other as if they were married, the couples choosing to keep their dates in general treat marriage as God’s bringing into existence something profoundly new, a communion with God and each other they desire and do not want to defer.

           The third trait is that those keeping their wedding dates are living their engagements with conspicuous chastity. Like any couple, they desire each other, but they know that they cannot morally consummate that desire and become one flesh until God joins them in one flesh. Waiting another year for a fuller celebration when they have been eagerly waiting their whole life to find the right one and to begin to “receive children lovingly from God and raise them according to the law of Christ and the Church” is something they are just not eager to do.

            Their choice to get married in the midst of worldwide sickness and tough times is a powerful proclamation that what couples profess to each other in their vows, they really mean. From the first day of their spousal coexistence, they are dramatically putting those words into practice. And they are giving the Church and the world a beautiful, provocative, and inspiring witness.

July 5, 2020

           On May 30^th, I was walking to St. Louis Cathedral for the priestly ordinations when I entered part of the sidewalk that was barracked off as a construction site. There was a African-American construction worker on the other side of the barricade who, as I approached, asked at high volume, presumably for his fellow workers to hear, “Are you taking part in the protest, Father?”

            Because of the mask he was wearing, I could not really be sure of his tone, but it seemed like a friendly query. “Are you a Christian?” I asked him, figuring that if he used the term “Father,” the odds were good. “Yes,” he replied with pride. “Well, as a Christian,” I smiled and said, “I protest on both knees.” He looked me quizzically, seeming to request elaboration. “Our first protest against evil is not to drop to one knee, like football players, but to drop to both knees in prayer, crying out to God for forgiveness for the evil of racism, for the wicked killing of George Floyd and other victims, for the sinister rampage of destruction and looting that have harmed so many businesses and led most others to have to board up their windows. We drop to our knees and beg God for help to fight against and repair these evils.” He paused as he processed what I was saying and then nodded his covered chin in agreement. “So would you like to march with me to the Cathedral,” I asked amicably, “where we can protest together before the Lord?” He replied with a laugh, “I have to work!” “Then I guess I’ll march for both of us!” I concluded, and gave him a hearty socially-distanced wave goodbye that he reciprocated with “Thanks!”

          I have been doing a lot of double-kneed protesting over the last couple of weeks. To protest means, according to its Latin roots, to “give witness” (testari) “on behalf of” or “in front of” (pro) others. I have been regularly going before the Lord in reparation for the indefensible slaying of George Floyd, for the history of racial injustice that African Americans have suffered in the U.S. all the way back to the evil of slavery at our national origin, for police officers who have become corrupted and for those who attack the good ones because of the bad, for the decades of inadequate responses, tokenism and political exploitation blacks continue to suffer from various leaders, and for the need of a movement to help convince others of what should be both obvious, culturally, and legally ensured, that life matters!

          I have also been building up knee callouses in response to the evil I have seen in many cities by those using the protests as a cover for anarchic destruction, organized crime, and brazen robbery. A friend of mine, who is a priest in New York City describes, his experience:

Last Monday morning, walking back after celebrating Mass at a different convent down by City Hall, I passed through China Town and Little Italy making my way north. I normally don’t read the news before Mass and so I was unaware of the severity of what had happened the previous night.

Turning left from Mulberry Street onto Bleeker, ahead of me on the sidewalk, I saw thousands of tiny shards of glass. As I drew closer, I could see that all the windows of the store had been shattered. Turning the corner onto Lafayette Street, I saw that many establishments had met the same fate, cars on the road had had their windshields and windows smashed, and graffiti was everywhere. I saw stunned store owners trying to contain themselves, sweaty construction workers putting up boards to cover the windows, and people scrubbing walls to clean the graffiti.

As I walked on farther, every block or two, a store had been singled out for destruction, looting or graffiti, and random cars for gratuitous damage. This continued most of my way home, including an attack on the doors and display windows of an eyeglass store a few blocks from home. And those were not even the worst sections, where cars and buildings had been set on fire.

Then on Thursday, traversing the city westward for confessions and Mass at 6 am, I felt like I was crossing a lumber yard. Construction workers were already hard at work not building new skyscrapers but cutting plywood and hammering it into windows and doors as protection. All the iconic stores of New York, national media studios, restaurants, banks, hotels, museums and basically everything else not made from stone was being boarded up.

This was a result of a lack of trust in the protesters’ good will and in New York’s leadership to protect the city’s citizens and businesses, not to mention enforce its curfew or the most basic Covid-19 social-distancing regulations.

Police officers told me they felt basically powerless to fight the vandals and pillagers effectively, because local and state leadership, under the guide of “justice reform,” had recently passed laws and orders that prevent law enforcement from holding overnight in jail those arrested for most crimes.

To see almost all of Midtown boarded up was like the collective raising of a white flag of surrender to the mobs, something that saddened me almost as much as witnessing the destruction a few days earlier. While similar upheavals have been taking place in major cities across the country, there is something particularly painful about seeing it happen in New York City, a symbol of American resilience after 9/11. After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the city defiantly, courageously, inspiringly rose again, spurred on by true leadership at various levels. This time, discouraged by leadership at most levels, and enfeebled by three months of fear of the coronavirus, the only defense it seemed capable of mustering against riots was to build plywood walls.

Most residents and store owners had understood that if after months of enforced social distancing with stark messages about how deadly Covid-19 was—that we risked killing seniors, the vulnerable and even the apparently healthy if we asymptomatically and inadvertently passed the virus on—state and municipal leaders allowed crowds of thousands of people to convene to march, rally, and mourn, then those in public office were not serious about enforcing laws and executive orders even during what they had called apocalyptic pandemics. Those wishing to take advantage of lawlessness were paying attention.

          Some argued that the importance of the cause justified such an exception. The cause is indisputably important. But when authorities shut down Jewish funerals with 50 people in the streets and pretend as if Catholics would violate love of neighbor if ten people were at Mass across a vast cathedral, and then permit thousands to agglutinate for any other reason, it communicates that there is one set of rules for the protesters and another for everyone else.

         The fight against inequality will never be won, however, by other forms of inequality. Injustice before the law will never be rectified by other forms of injustice. New double-standards will not eliminate, but, through fomenting resentment, likely perpetuate, the contemptible double-standards against which multitudes are marching. Justice, equality, and peace will come only through assiduously treating people equally according to their equal dignity.

         Catholics should be on the front lines of the fight for justice. But we should always remember two things. Marchers should begin in the front pews, protesting devoutly before God. “Unless God build the house, in vain do the builders labor” (Ps 127:1). The first thing Catholics should always do in response to any need or crisis is unite themselves to God in prayer. And when they take to the streets, they should head toward the One who never ceases to say, “Follow me.” Christ perpetually asks us to march with Him and the pilgrimage of the Church in time is a march for love and against sin. Marches guided by different principles or different destinations will not deliver the justice and peace they seek.

June 28, 2020

           I often visit Espn.com to peruse the happenings in the world of sports. There I get more than box scores, videos, and articles on recent happenings in major sports. I also receive inspiration from the heroism of various teams and athletes, who overcome seemingly insurmountable life situations to make the pros or mount incredible comebacks under pressure to win games or championships or handle crushing defeats with grace and maturity.

           Sports have always been one of the great practice fields for human growth—for cultivating preparation, perseverance, leadership, teamwork, poise—and even in an age in which many star athletes fail to live in an exemplary way off the field, the character of those who strive to be role models can have a profoundly positive influence on others in various walks of life. That is one reason why St. Paul regularly used sports—like running and boxing—in his preaching of the Gospel because what is required to fight the good fight and finish the race in athletics is akin to the discipline needed to be faithful disciples. In my priestly work with men, young people, and increasingly with women, sports have not only been a good conversation starter but a school of spiritual lessons.

          Even though I am routinely inspired by articles and features on Espn.com, I have never encountered anything as moving as the lead article and video the morning of August 3, 2019. It was about a cloistered nun, Sr. Rose Marie of the Queen of Angels, from the Poor Clare monastery in Alexandria, Virginia, who had just celebrated the 25^thanniversary of her profession. The article, entitled, “Whatever Happened to Villanova Basketball Star Shelly Pennefather? ‘So I Made This Deal With God,’” was part of a promo for a documentary entitled “A Long Embrace” about the former Mary Michelle “Shelly” Pennefather, debuting that evening.

          Shelly was the highest scorer in Villanova basketball history who in the early 1990s was on the verge of becoming the highest paid female basketball player in the world, but opted instead to embrace poverty, chastity, and obedience far from the lights of the arena and cameras. Her story, and the way it impacted the life of her coach, teammates, former boyfriend, and the author of the article, ESPN senior writer Elizabeth Merrill, was written with a reverence and awe that the best Catholic publications could not surpass. The coverage was a mix of fascination and incomprehension at how someone like Shelly could make the choice not just to leave riches, fame, and athletic glory behind to become a religious sister, where she might be able to teach and coach others to greatness in this world and beyond, but to become an “incarcerated” cloistered nun perpetually behind the grille, as Sr. Rose Marie jokingly describes her life. The truly radical nature of her vocation, it became clear as the article progressed, although respected, remained shocking even 28 years after she passed through the monastery portal.

              St. Therese of the Child Jesus once famously quipped that we cannot become saints by halves, that is, by giving less than one hundred percent. We are living, however, in an age of compromises with the faith, in which we will give ourselves with total dedication to our families, careers, sports, and volunteer work, but moderate our commitment to the Lord lest we be “fanatical.” Even though Jesus called us to love God with all our mind, heart, soul, and strength, most of us are satisfied with giving Him only a percentage. We can easily relate to the decision made by the Rich Young Man: after Jesus told him that to have it all he needed to sell all he had, give the money to the poor and then come follow Him, he walked away because he did not have the strength to choose Jesus over all his stuff.

             Amid a materialist, hedonist, and autonomous age, the radical nature of the religious life, uniting oneself to the poor, chaste, and obedient Jesus as one’s true wealth, love, and freedom, is an extraordinary sign of contradiction. Even more so is the cloistered life like that adopted by Sr. Rose Marie, voluntarily cutting herself off both from the things to which so many of us are addicted, like televisions, computers, cell phones, and the culture of the instantaneous, as well as from some of the most beautiful and meaningful things in life, like contact with family and friends any time we want.

              The choice she has made, however, is a modern illustration of Jesus’ parables of the treasure buried in the field and the pearl of great price (Mt 13:44-46). There are certain things worth joyfully selling all one has in order to obtain. Cloistered nuns make a bold proclamation that God is greater than all other great gifts and realities in life. It is a prophetic declaration that God’s love is enough to satisfy the desires He has placed in the human heart. It is a witness that the most important thing we need to do in life is to love God back with all our might.

              In a sixth-grade class, when Shelly was asked what she was hoping to be when she grew up, she replied, “I’m going to be a saint!” At first, her classmates laughed, thinking that their humorous companion was just trying to be witty. She was serious. To desire the end is to choose the means. St. Thomas Aquinas said that all one needs to do to become a saint is to will it—but to will it with all one’s heart. And Sr. Rose Marie has willed it with the same type of focus, determination, and perseverance with which many men will to win Super Bowls.

              Her decision was nourished by her understanding of the Eucharist. As a young woman, she was struck by Jesus’ words, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him” (Jn 6:56), and grasped that she wanted to live her life with Christ in the Eucharist as the center and root of her life. Attending daily Mass at Villanova and then in Japan where she played pro ball, her hunger only grew. Her life has become a commentary on Jesus’ words, “Just as the Father who has life sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me” (Jn 6:57). It has also become an elucidation of the words of consecration, as she has given her body, blood, and life together with Jesus for others.

                We get a glimpse of how much fruit her religious life has borne in various people in the video. Via letters and their occasional visits to the monastery, she has counseled her former coach, Villanova teammates, and family members through troubled home situations, child-raising sagas, physical sufferings, the death of loved ones, and major life choices. Many of her teammates remarked that she and her fellow Poor Clares, rather than being oblivious to what is happening in the world, are very well informed on major worldly events, because their vocation is to pray for those in the world, like Moses on the mountain as the battle was waging in the plain (Ex 17:11). They continue to pray for persons and outcomes long after the petitioners have forgotten having made the request.

              Much was made in the article and documentary about her impressive feats on the court: 96-0 in high school; a record 2,408 points for Villanova, in the era before three-pointers; three-time All-America and Big East Player of the Year; and 1987 Wade Trophy as Female College Player of the Year. When the General Judgment takes place, however, those achievements will seem insignificant compared to what she is now accomplishing with a different team and a different coach in monastic enclosure toward an imperishable crown—an eternal victory won by Christ that she and her habited teammates are praying that we will share.

June 21, 2020

           This weekend, we celebrate Father’s Day throughout the United States. It is a relatively recent celebration, made a permanent national holiday on the third Sunday of June only in 1972 when it was signed into law by President Nixon. President Lyndon Johnson had given the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers only six years prior. Mother’s Day, by contrast, was proclaimed by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 to be held on the second Sunday of May. The earlier celebration for mothers is partially explained by the desire to honor the work of moms at a time in our nation’s history when women and their contributions to society were often widely underappreciated. But the length of the delay for fathers may also explain how the role of men precisely as fathers has similarly been underappreciated.

            Social science has been documenting in recent decades just how important the role of fathers is in raising children to be integrated adults. When kids grow up without a father in the home, they experience much higher rates of school suspensions, staying back in school, dropping out of school, child poverty, youth violence, crime, incarcerations, drug use, behavioral disorders, obesity, running away from home, homelessness, sexual abuse, promiscuity, teen pregnancy, and suicide. This is particularly concerning when 43 percent of children in the US now live without a father in the home.

            The future Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said in a March 2000 speech in Palermo, “The crisis of fatherhood we are experiencing today is an element, perhaps the most important element, threatening man in his humanity.” The crisis, he said more specifically, is a “dissolution of fatherhood,” flowing from reducing paternity to a biological phenomenon without its human and spiritual dimensions. Fathers are treated as superfluous, seen in the explosion of what sociologists now term sperm dads, absent dads, dead-beat dads, visiting dads, nice-guy dads, and various other descriptors for fathers who have no decisive role in protecting, providing for, rearing, and mentoring the children they have begotten.

             When kids, however, are blessed with a dad who has made a lifetime commitment to their mom and them, when fathers live up to their calling, they, in general, do much better. That is why on this Father’s Day it is so important to celebrate and thank dads who have lovingly prioritized their responsibilities to their families. But it is also why it is key to celebrate and promote fatherhood in general, not just for the good of men, but also for the good of the women who count on their capacity for faithful love and for the children who so much need both parents in a committed alliance.

            In the promotion of fatherhood and the formation of men to be good dads, the Church has much to offer. Practically, there are organizations like the Knights of Columbus as well as an explosion of parish men’s groups (i.e. the Divine Mercy Men’s Club) and diocesan conferences to help men support each other as sons, brothers, husbands, and dads. Theologically, there is a goldmine of wisdom about the paternal meaning of man’s masculinity found in what Jesus revealed about God the Father and in His own spiritual fatherhood that can help men.

             Pope Emeritus Benedict in a 2012 General Audience spoke about the greatness of fatherhood in the divine plan. “Perhaps people today,” he said, “fail to perceive the beauty, greatness and profound consolation contained in the word ‘father’ with which we can turn to God in prayer because today the father figure is often not sufficiently present and all too often is not sufficiently positive in daily life. From Jesus himself, from his filial relationship with God, we can learn what ‘father’ really means and what is the true nature of the Father who is in heaven. In the Gospel, Christ shows us who is the father and as he is a true father, we can understand true fatherhood and even learn true fatherhood.”

              Jesus came to reveal God the Father and the depth of His love for His children. He showed us how the Father takes delight in His children (Mt 3:17), loves unconditionally (Mt 5:45), is provident and responsible (Mt 6:26), pays close and caring attention (Mt 6:8), forgives (Lk 6:36, 15:11-32), teaches (Mt 11:25-26, 16:17, Jn 6:44), lovingly disciplines (Heb 12:5-11), works hard (Jn 5:17, 36), and shares His life (Jn 6:40), giving an example for all earthly dads. Likewise, Jesus, the icon of the Father, the New Adam and the father of the restored creation, exercised His own spiritual paternity in becoming the principle of the new life we receive in the Sacraments through His passion, death, and resurrection.

              It is in this sense that priests—who act “in the person of Christ” in the sacraments—exercise Christ’s fatherhood and are appropriately called “fathers.” Their fatherhood cannot be reduced merely to spiritually generative sacramental actions but is meant to flow into fatherly identity and behavior, particularly in the commitment they make spiritually to protect, provide for, rear and mentor the spiritual children entrusted to them. When priests are reduced to ecclesiastical functionaries who never form authentic fatherly bonds with the individuals and families whose baptisms, weddings, and funerals they celebrate, there is a huge problem. That is why recent remarks by Cardinal John Dew, Archbishop of Wellington, New Zealand, are so myopic and potentially harmful. In an April 4^th column in 2019, he praised an article by Fr. Jean-Pierre Roche in La Croix International that argued that we should stop calling priests “Father.” He recited Roche’s three arguments: Jesus says we should call no one on earth our father (Mt 23:8-9); calling someone “father” necessarily places one in the inferior position of a child when we are all supposed to be equal; and denoting a “father” inevitably fosters a relationship of dependence and obedience. In response to Pope Francis’ call to fight against clericalism, Cardinal Dew said, ceasing to call priests “father” or him “Eminence” or “Cardinal” “might seem like a very small thing to do, but it may be the beginning of the reform in the Church.” The reform of the Church is not going to come from calling the Pope “Frank,” or the Archbishop of Wellington “John,” or the pastor of one’s parish by his baptismal moniker. It is not going to come from the verbal dissolution of the spiritual paternity of the priesthood, but rather, from the buttressing of the authentic fatherly nature of the priestly call. Clericalism is an abuse of spiritual fatherhood just as much as authoritarianism is an abuse of natural fatherhood. The remedy is not to eliminate the oral reminders of fatherly identity but to purify the exercise of fatherhood. As the wise aphorism goes, abusus non tollit usum: the misuse of something is no argument against its proper use.

              Regarding the arguments cited, Jesus’ words to call no one father, or rabbi, or master were meant to communicate that no one should seek to replace God, who is our principal father, teacher, and master. We can still call our dads father, our instructors’ teacher, and our rabbis rabbi, provided that we are not treating them as if they were God. The context shows that Jesus was correcting the Pharisees for prioritizing a separate set of allegiances based on rabbinical tradition over what God Himself had revealed. Jesus Himself uses the word father several times, when He speaks about not loving “father or mother” more than Him and of leaving one’s “father” to follow Him (Mt 10:37; Mk 10:29). Jesus’ example, as well as St. Paul’s after him, shows us the use of father to refer to spiritual fatherhood, like that exercised by priests. Jesus cites Abraham, our father in faith, as “Father Abraham” in a parable. St. Paul tells the Corinthians, “In Christ Jesus I became your father through the Gospel” (1 Cor 4:15).

             Does calling someone a “father” necessarily place the spiritual son or daughter in an inferior position or create a situation of dependence and obedience? Perhaps when we are dealing with infants, but not with adults. When adults call their parents “Mom” and “Dad,” they are not referring to a power-axis—in many cases, the children are the ones making the decisions—but employing a term of fact, endearment, and reverence. Similarly, when Catholics use father, they are not employing it in the sense of the ancient, brutal Roman paterfamilias. They are recognizing the priest’s role to provide for, protect, and guide them spiritually. That is why on this Father’s Day, in addition to thanking our earthly dads, we should also be celebrating God the Father and the spiritual fatherhood of Jesus as well as the way priests are called by both to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in becoming spiritual fathers after the image of Father and Son.

June 14, 2020

           How do we increase knowledge and faith of the reality of Jesus in the Eucharist? It begins with taking seriously what the Church believes and courageously living it, so that others might come to believe. Faith is not just taught but caught, and everything the Church does ought to help people catch it. I would like to mention nine practices for consideration. I hope in doing so that we can get beyond the “liturgical wars,” beyond even our preferences, to concentrate on what is truly conducive to communicating clearly and effectively the Church’s Eucharistic faith.

          First, priestly Eucharistic piety. Priests have the greatest role and responsibility for turning the situation right-side-up. There is a difference between priests who live truly Eucharist lives and those who do not. It is manifested in the way they pray rather than recite the Mass, handle the Eucharist in their hands and distribute, put reverence into genuflections, celebrate Mass on their days off, pray before the Blessed Sacrament, promote Eucharistic adoration, refer in their preaching to Jesus in the Eucharist, and sit in the confessional so that people can be worthy to receive Him. Eucharistic priests form Eucharistic parishes, and Eucharistic parishes not only survive but thrive and renew the Church.

           Second, tabernacles in the forefront of our sanctuaries. If we know the Eucharist is truly the King of Kings, why would we put Him anywhere else than in the most important place? Moreover, would not our tabernacles be the most exquisite item in the whole Church, to convey this truth and love?

            Third, prayer before the Eucharistic Jesus. If we believe that in the Eucharist, Jesus fulfills His promise to be with us always until the end of time (Mt 28:20), and we recognize that people need Jesus, then we must provide access to Him. Locked Churches, however common, are a scandal. They are shut, of course, out of safety, lest the Church suffer vandalism, but the remedy is vigorously promoting prayer and adoration with a sense of shared responsibility. Eucharistic adoration may be itself the most important element in the turnaround, for no one worships bread.

            Fourth, daily Mass. If the Eucharist is really Jesus, then is there anything more important we can do on Mondays, or Thursdays, or any day than receive Him? Daily Mass changes a believer from someone who fulfills a Sunday duty to someone who treats the Eucharistic Lord with generous love.

               Fifth, not rushing Holy Communion. Catholics believe receiving Jesus Christ is the most incredible moment in human life. Why would we ever hurry it? In many parishes, we often hear the phrase that we do not want communion to “take too long.” But emphasizing “efficiency” over this encounter between God and His beloved is unwise and counterproductive.

              Sixth, receiving with greater reverence. It is certainly possible for people to receive the Lord devoutly in their hands while standing. We should not forget, however, that when Cranmer, with Machiavellian discernment, was seeking to destroy Eucharistic piety in post-Reformation England, he did it principally through promoting communion in the hands while standing. If men drop to their knees to propose to beloved future brides, cannot we kneel out of love to receive the Lord? Does not Holy Communion on the tongue far better communicate the sense of receiving the Eucharist as a gift? Since we seldom kneel except for God and seldom allow others to put things into our mouths, such a gesture would communicate the uniqueness of what we are doing.

              Seventh, living the Church’s teaching about worthy reception. We do not transmit faith in the Real Presence when we permit anyone and everyone, regardless of their conditions, to receive the Eucharist. This concerns, not just those who obstinately persist in manifest grave sin, like Catholic politicians with scandalous public or private lives, but also Catholics who have committed serious sins yet to be absolved and non-Catholics who are not yet in communion. People notice whether we take the holiness of Jesus in the Eucharist seriously or treat the Eucharist like a piece of cake at a birthday party. Our example instructs.

               Eighth, terminology. Our vocabulary must communicate our faith. We should boldly use the terms “sacred Body” and “precious Blood.” Mention of “bread” and “wine” at all—even “Eucharistic bread” or “consecrated wine”—confuses the faithful and does not communicate the truth. This is particularly important for catechists and liturgical ministers. We also need to be particularly careful about what is taught through liturgical music. “Look beyond the bread you eat” is heretical. Singing a catchy mantra, “Eat this bread, drink this cup,” teaches something far different than “Eat my flesh, drink my blood.”

              Ninth, pulling out all the stops. If we really believe the Eucharist is Jesus, and we love Him, then it should show, lavishly. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in one of his Eucharistic hymns, “quantum potes, tantum aude,” “Dare to do all you can.” The more we do to enhance the beauty and dignity of the liturgy and of our churches, the more we will convey our Eucharistic faith.

             As I make these suggestions, I would like to emphasize that not only is none of them “against Vatican II,” or against the authentic liturgical reforms of the last 50 years, but each is meant to bring about the central liturgical aim of the Council: the “full and active participation by all the people,” and not just in the liturgy but in what the liturgy is meant to accomplish: bring us into communion with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. I would also like to underline that none of the ideas are new or original. In fact, many are already being implemented in various parishes, dioceses, religious communities, schools, and movements—and in general, have led to flourishing counter-indications to the Pew Research Center’s troubling report.

              Putting Jesus in the Holy Eucharist in His proper place leads to great vitality. Not doing so leads to decline and death. That is the choice the Church faces. Who do we say that the Eucharist is?

June 7, 2020

           In Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked who people said He was, and His two polls showed that only one person said He believed Jesus was who He truly was, the Messiah and Son of God (Mt 16:13-20). Recently the Pew Research Center asked U.S. Catholics who or what they understood the Eucharist to be. The response, like in Caesarea, was sobering. Only 50 percent of U.S. Catholics said that they knew the Church’s teaching that after the consecration, the bread and wine are totally changed into Jesus’ body and blood; 45 percent said that the Church teaches that the “bread” and “wine” are only symbols, and five percent did not know what the Church teaches. Even among the 50 percent of those who were aware of the Church’s teaching, a third said that they still regarded the Eucharist as a symbol, leaving a total of only 31 percent who believed the Church’s teaching. Sixty-nine percent of Catholics said that they believe that the Eucharist was just a symbol—that Jesus is not on the altar after the consecration, or in the tabernacle, or within us after Holy Communion.

          Rather than news, the report was a confirmation of what had long been known and inferred: there is a grave crisis in Eucharistic faith. That crisis is ultimately at the root of many others: low Mass attendance, shuttered parishes, closed schools, insufficient priestly vocations, waning Catholic influence in society, growing secularism, and, as Pope-emeritus Benedict incisively wrote in April 2019, even the clerical sexual abuse of minors. That is why the results have justly been occupying the attention of bishops, priests, commentators, and all those who care about the Church and the Lord. Many have focused on the need for much better catechesis across the board. That is absolutely true, but inadequate and shortsighted. Christianity is not a classroom trying to help people pass a standardized test, but a way of life. Even if the results came back and 100 percent of surveyed Catholics identified the Church’s teaching with precision and affirmed faith in it, the larger question would remain: are they living Eucharistic lives, with Jesus in the Eucharist as the source, summit, root, and center of their existence? Knowing and believing are indispensable steps, but the goal is Eucharistic living. This is something that goes far beyond mere Sunday Mass attendance. It is whether we live in holy communion with the Risen Lord incarnate in the Eucharist, whether we draw our life from Him, whether we permit Him from within to make our life a commentary on the words of consecration.

           Knowing how we got here is key to knowing how to respond adequately. After the Second Vatican Council, there were many ideas and practices that undermined knowledge and faith in the Real Presence. Some priests, religious, and theologians advanced a desacralizing ideology that, falsely claiming to be the “Spirit of Vatican II,” attacked Eucharistic piety, destroyed high altars and altar rails, banished tabernacles to side altars or chapels, and basically sought to effect a Copernican shift in Eucharistic focus away from worshipping God and onto idolatry of the community. Many of these iconoclasts taught in seminaries and Catholic universities, where, with impunity, they diabolically derided Eucharistic adoration as the superstitious “worship of a breadbox” and persecuted seminarians who wanted to make holy hours or have exposition. This sadly was not isolated. And it certainly impacted those future priests who did not know the faith well enough to recognize the voice of false prophets.

            But that is not the principal explanation. The bigger one is a series of practices regarding the Eucharist that, regardless of the intentions in inaugurating them, impacted what the faithful know and believe. The ancient aphorism lex orandi, lex credendi reminds us that how we pray impacts what we believe. The way we have spoken about the Eucharist in word and body language, in music and architecture, over the last half-century has unquestionably impacted what people understand and believe. The location and beauty of the tabernacle, the posture with which we receive Holy Communion, the pace at which Holy Communion is distributed, the direction of our worship, the liturgical vocabulary we use, the widespread encouragement and allowance of almost everyone to receive, the accessibility of Churches for prayer, the frequency of Eucharistic adoration, and the Eucharistic piety of the priests and others who lead the Church’s prayer all matter.

          How do we increase knowledge and faith in the reality of Jesus in the Eucharist? It begins with taking seriously what the Church believes and courageously living it, so that others might come to believe. Faith is not just taught but caught, and everything the Church does ought to help people catch it.

           In next week’s article, I would like to mention nine practices for consideration. I hope in doing so that we can get beyond the “liturgical wars,” beyond even our preferences, to concentrate on what is truly conducive to communicating clearly and effectively the Church’s Eucharistic faith.

May 31, 2020

           May 31^st is traditionally the Feast Day of the Visitation of the Lord in which, among other things, we ponder the in-utero interaction between Jesus and John the Baptist. Mary, a few days pregnant with her Creator, visits her elderly cousin Elizabeth, six-months pregnant with the forerunner of the One through whom all things were made. John, before his vocal cords had developed to be the voice crying in the wilderness, testified to Jesus by making his mom’s womb a peritoneal trampoline, leaping with joy. Jesus, before his human fingers and hand had even formed, nevertheless blessed His cousin, sanctifying him for his mission of preparing Jesus’ way. It is an extraordinary mystery, one that is particularly significant for those in pro-life work. The Sisters of Life name all their outreach centers helping pregnant women choose life—in New York, Toronto, and Philadelphia—“Visitation” Missions. They seek to live, and show the Church how to live, both sides of this Visitation mystery.

          Jesus taught clearly that everyone who received a child in His name, receives Him, and that whatever we do to the least He takes personally (Mt 18:5; 25:40), and so the first side of the mystery is to help women come to embrace the fruit of their womb as a blessing, as Mary received Jesus in the world’s most famous (humanly) unplanned pregnancy. The other side of the mystery is that they, like Mary, go out to care for modern Elizabeths, pregnant women in need, helping them in so many practical ways during pregnancy and beyond so that the women may eventually feel their children kicking and leaping within—and one day jumping into their arms with joy. Like the Annunciation, the Visitation is a feast on which we can and should ponder the deeper meaning of human life in the womb. It is also an opportunity for us to see in greater relief what happens when that renascent life encounters violence rather than love.

           In May of 2019, Pope Francis gave us another extraordinary discourse on abortion when greeting participants in a Vatican Conference dedicated to the theme, “Yes to Life! Care for the Precious Gift of Life in Fragile Situations.” Bringing together 400 experts from 70 countries, it was sponsored by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life, the Knights of Columbus and the Italian foundation Heart in a Drop, which was formed in 2015 to promote scientific research and the growth of a culture that protects the life of mother and child before conception, during pregnancy and after birth. Pope Francis spoke plainly about the “throwaway culture” that considers children diagnosed with various malformations and pathologies “incompatible with life,” and that often leaves them, in places with ready access to abortion, “condemned to death.” Francis emphasized, however, that “no human being can ever be incompatible with life, not due to his age, his health conditions, or the quality of his existence. Every child that enters a woman’s womb is a gift, which changes the history of a family, of a father and a mother, of grandparents and siblings. And this baby is in need of being received, loved and taken care of.”

           He stated that every time a woman discovers that she is pregnant, she becomes aware of a mystery within, of a “presence, growing within her, pervading her whole being, making her not only a woman but a mother.” He marveled at the “intense, crisscrossing dialogue” established between mother and child from conception that fosters a “mutual adaptation, as the little one grows and develops.” That crosstalk, however, can change, he said, when the child is diagnosed with a serious condition that endangers his or her life, robbing the mother and father of serenity and feeling powerless.

           At the same time, he stressed that children in the womb with such conditions are “little patients who not rarely can be cured with pharmacologic, surgical and extraordinary care interventions” and, when they cannot, can be placed in perinatal hospices that “provide essential support to families that accept the birth of a sick child.” Pope Francis summoned doctors and nurses to give “competent accompaniment” that affirms the “sacred value of human life” and takes responsibility for those little patients and their family members. In the very trying situation of children who are destined to die immediately or soon after birth, whose care “might seem a useless commitment of resources and further suffering for the parents,” Pope Francis said it is rather an opportunity to bring familial love to fulfillment. “To take care of these children helps parents, in fact, to work through their mourning and think of it not only as a loss but as a stage on a path followed together. That child will remain in their life forever. And they will have been able to love him. Often those few hours in which a mother can cradle her child leave a trace in the woman’s heart, which she never forgets.”

          This approach is in stark contrast, he said, to the culture of waste that justifies abortion for such children in fragile circumstances under the euphemism of “prevention.” It is really, he stated, part of an “inhuman eugenic mentality” toward children with disabilities. Opposition to abortion, in these circumstances and in every situation, he underlined, is not principally a thing of faith, but “pre-religious” and simply “human.” He said two questions that clarify the issues at state are: “Is it licit to eliminate a human life to solve a problem?” and “Is it licit to hire a hitman to solve a problem.” He answered by saying that it is never permitted to “do away with a human life or hire a hitman to resolve a problem.” Everyone sees these truths clearly with regard to those who have been born. He wants us to see it just as clearly with regard to those who will grow into kids and adults if they are not assassinated.

            He then gave a powerful example from his time as Archbishop of Buenos Aires of how “abortion is never the answer that women and families seek.” “There was a 15-year old girl with Down Syndrome who became pregnant, and her parents went to the judge to ask permission for her to abort. The judge, an upright and serious man, studied the matter and said: ‘I want to question the girl.’ ‘But she has Down Syndrome, she doesn’t understand,’ [the parents replied]. “No, no, have her come,’” the judge responded. “The 15-year old girl went, sat down, and began to talk with the judge and he said to her: ‘Do you know what is happening to you?’ ‘Yes, I’m sick. … They told me that I have an animal inside that is eating my stomach so I must have surgery,’” the girl said. “No, you don’t have a parasite that is eating your stomach,’ [the judge retorted]. ‘Do you know what you have there? A child!’ And the Down’s girl said: ‘Oh, how beautiful!’ … With this, the judge didn’t authorize the abortion. The [girl’s] mother wanted it.” The Pope went on to give the rest of the story. “A girl was born. The years passed. She studied, grew up and became a lawyer. From the moment this girl became aware of her history, she called the judge on her birthday to thank him for the gift of her birth. … The judge died and now [the daughter of the girl with Down Syndrome] has become a prosecutor.”

             “Abortion,” the Pope reiterated based on the story, “is never the answer that women and families seek,” and he thanked those families, those moms and dads, who have “accepted fragile life” and who support others in such situations, saying their “witness of love is a gift for the world.” In contrast to the throwaway, eugenic inhumanity that undergirds the abortion of handicapped children and others, this warm, welcoming culture of parents and medical professionals to kids in fragile situations manifests a culture of love. It is the only adequate answer to another human being, however young, however disabled. It is the culture that Christians find in the mystery of the Visitation.

May 24, 2020

           One of the great paradoxes in the Gospel is about peace. On the one hand, Jesus says during the Last Supper, “Peace I leave you. My peace I give you” (Jn 14:27); on the other, when He sends out His 72 disciples, He says, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword” and describes that because of Him, even families will be divided. Has He come to bring peace or division, to unite or scatter?

          He has clearly come as the “Prince of Peace” (Is 9:5) in order to fulfill what the angels sang the morning He was born, “Peace on earth to people of good will” (Lk 2:14). He took on our nature to ratify in His own flesh the definitive peace treaty between God and the human race. He has come to “guide our feet into the path of peace” (Lk 1:79). But He has left each person free. Not everyone will choose to follow Him on the way of peace. Not everyone will believe in or adopt what He describes as peace’s essential conditions. Many will choose, in fact, to do the opposite of what Jesus says—and how much division flows from such a path. What I would like to do in this article is explore five things Jesus reveals about the path to peace. Jesus said, “Not as the world gives do I give [peace] to you” (Jn 14:27), and so these elements are different than what we would learn in foreign service training. But just as He turned worldly logic right-side-up with regard to happiness in the beatitudes, so Jesus also does so regarding His peace plan for a world rife with conflict.

          The first is to prioritize God. After Jesus describes that He has come “to bring not peace but the sword,” He specifies, “I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s enemies will be those of his household.” This is not because Jesus came to divide: He came to gather and to save. But not everyone will accept His offer. We see the division He foretold in families, for example, in the envy that husbands feel when their wives start spending more time with Jesus in prayer, or the brutal ribbing teenagers will take when they announce to their peers that they think God may be calling them to the priesthood or consecrated life. Those who don’t put God first often won’t like the new priorities. It’s an indirect challenge to them, and often they’ll respond the way most kindergarteners respond to the teachers’ pets, simply because the other is good. Those who do not want to prioritize God are often intolerant of those who do.

           At a macroscopic level, we see how much lack of peace has come from those who do not want to give God his due. Historians tell us that the twentieth century was quantitatively by far the most violent century in the history of humanity, with more people executed than in all previous centuries combined. We know that that abhorrent bloodbath was not unleashed in the name of religion, but under the banner of various secularist, anti-religious, or explicitly atheistic regimes like we have seen under Stalin, Hitler, Ataturk, Pol Pot, and others. If the perversion of religion has occasionally led to violence, the prevention and persecution of religion has empirically been worse. While religion has not been successful in restraining every believer’s propensity for violence, the absence of religion—living practically as if God does not exist—has been much less successful. To prioritize God means not just to acknowledge His existence but to pray. In 2011, on the vigil before the 25^thanniversary of John Paul II’s famous interreligious Prayer for Peace in Assisi, Pope Benedict said, “The most precious contribution we can make to the cause of peace is that of prayer.” Prayer helps us to become more like the God whom we address. It makes us far more capable of seeing those with whom we might have a conflict not as enemies but as fellow human beings created and loved by God, so that we will treat them not like Cain behaved toward Abel but as Joseph acted toward his brothers in Egypt.

           The second thing Jesus reveals is the connection between peace and following His commands. Right before Jesus said, “Peace I leave you. My peace I give you,” He spoke of keeping His word and commandments, before adding, “If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love” (Jn 14:21; Jn 15:10). We will never have peace without love, and Jesus stated that all the commandments hang on the two-fold commandment of love of God and neighbor (Mt 22:40). We see this connection very readily in practice. How much more peace there would be if people minimally just kept the Decalogue: there would be no murder, hatred, broken or wounded families, stealing, lying, or envy. There would be intergenerational respect. People would make time to put God first in their lives, and to praise and worship Him. These are basic principles for obtaining that peace that the world cannot give or rob.

           The third practice is to wish peace. When Jesus sent out the 12 apostles and later the 72 disciples, He told them upon entering a house to wish it peace, promising that if a peaceful person lives there, the peace would remain (Mt 10:13; Lk 10:5). Notice that Jesus did not say, “Investigate as to whether peaceful people are there first.” He wanted us to wish peace to everyone, to have a positive prejudice about the people we would meet. This is the exact opposite of the suspicion that often reigns between people who do not know each other, or those from different places, ethnicities, races, cultures, or religions. While Jesus sent out His disciples as “lambs in the midst of wolves,” He sent us with no paranoia about everyone’s being wolves. He wanted us to presume the best, that the person could receive peace. He wanted us to be instruments of peace, sowing it so as to reap it.

           But He wants us to be far more than “peace wishers.” He calls us to be “peacemakers” (Mt 5:9), saying that peacemakers will be called true children of God. God is a peacemaker and we are called to be chips off the old divine block. This is the fourth practice. What does it mean to make peace? Jesus describes various conditions. It means loving our enemies, praying for our persecutors, doing good to those who do evil. It means responding with the weapons of love, mercy and forgiveness rather than the sword. It means learning from and imitating Jesus, who established peace ultimately through dying for those who were waging war against Him, God and others through sin. To be a peacemaker, we must stop the downward spiral of vengeful retaliation. We must never forget the dignity of each person as loved by God, even when the other forgets. We must transcend selfishness, envy, pride, anger, and greed and work patiently to build a culture of encounter, solidarity and brotherhood, even when others resist. We must model ourselves on the Lord’s enduring mercy, seeking to reconcile as we have been reconciled seventy times seven times.

           This is obviously hard. Some would even say it is impossible for human beings. That brings us to the last practice: Cooperation with the Holy Spirit. On the night Jesus rose from the dead, He entered through the closed doors of the Upper Room and twice wished the frightened apostles “Shalom,” or “Peace be with you.” Then He sought to make them peacemakers. He breathed on them the Holy Spirit and said, “Just as the Father sent me, so I send you.” (Jn 20:19-23). Jesus was sending them out with God’s own power to create peace through forgiveness and reconciliation. Pope Francis said in a homily a few years ago that the peace Jesus leaves, gives, and breathes is fundamentally the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit abides in us, He helps us to experience what St. Paul lists as the “fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22). That fruit is not merely subjective, suffusing us with those qualities. It impacts our relations with others and makes it possible for us to prioritize God, keep His commands, wish peace to all, and make peace perseveringly.

          In the midst of so much conflict, when the sword of division cuts deep into individuals, families, societies, and the world, Jesus’ perennial peace plan is needed now more than ever. Now is the time to follow Him on the path of peace He has revealed and to draw others with us onto that way. The peace of the Lord be with you always!

October 4, 2020

           Recently, bishops in several dioceses have begun to lift the general dispensations from the obligation to attend Sunday Mass that they had decreed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Numbers of new infections are low in their regions, schools, places of employment, restaurants, stores, and places of entertainment have reopened, and people have resumed most of the activities of normal life. Combined with Church protocols for safety, which have proven highly effective in preventing the transmission of COVID, there is no reason to continue a general dispensation. For those who are ill, caring for those who are ill, or those with health conditions that would make contracting the coronavirus especially perilous, the bishops have generally maintained particular dispensations.

          These decrees lifting the general dispensation and reminding the faithful of the grave duty to attend Sunday Mass make sense and it is always good when bishops are clear about the precepts of the Church. I am concerned, however, that a primarily canonical response is not the most prudent way to address the present situation where, in most places—according to both surveys and online priest discussion groups—only a minority of those who were regular Sunday Mass-goers in February has returned to regular worship.

          The headlines announcing the removal of general dispensations—which have included “Bishop orders faithful back to the pews” and “Catholics again obliged in conscience to attend Mass”—lay the emphasis on obedience and duty. Even though the language in the most of the decrees does not make explicit that voluntarily missing Sunday Mass without a legitimate reason is a mortal sin, and that unabsolved mortal sins can lead to earthly and definitive self-alienation from God, some Catholics, nevertheless, know that context and will not be able to resist receiving the decrees as an eschatological threat. In ordinary times, that is not the message we want to be emphasizing about Sunday Mass. In these extraordinary times, it strikes me as even less evangelically apposite.

          Many of the faithful have been scandalized by the way Church leaders have treated the sacraments during the early weeks of the pandemic. When civil leaders in many states began to define the worship of God as a non-essential service, less important than access to liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries, many Church leaders acquiesced. Ecclesiastical decisions in various places to suspend access to the Sacraments—even, in some places, quashing the creative and zealous solutions of priests to celebrate parking lot Masses, drive-by confessions, and the Anointing of the Sick in full protective gear—could not help but suggest that “even the Church” regarded the Sacraments as non-essential. It is a challenge for faithful to go from a habit of thinking Sunday Mass is optional for several months to Mass’ suddenly being obligatory again almost overnight.

          Many people have gotten comfortable in the new normal of the pandemic. In priest online discussion groups, several pastors have described that their parishioners have told them that they have not voluntarily returned to Mass in their parishes because they have come to prefer watching Mass making spiritual communions with a cup of coffee from their La-Z-Boy, or viewing livestreams from exquisite Cathedrals with great sacred music, or those featuring priests who are superb preachers. While it is good at least to watch Mass, in a culture of convenience, marked by consumerism both material and often spiritual, many Catholics over the last six months have formed new Sunday habits that they are not eager to give up. Others have simply gotten into the habit of living without Sunday Mass altogether, even virtual.

            That is why I think it is essential for the Church, in hoping to draw people back to Mass, to focus less on obligation and more on the mind-blowing reality of what Mass is. God loved us so much that He not only humbled Himself to take on human form and even further humbled Himself to allow us, His creatures, to crucify Him; He humbled Himself to the extent that He hides Himself under the appearances of bread and wine so that we can spend time in prayer with Him substantially present, and so that we can become one with Him in Holy Communion. God has made possible for us to enter with Him in time into His eternal acts during the Last Supper and on Calvary so that we might journey with Him through the new and eternal Passover from death to life.

            I catechize first communicants and others that far more than the Virgin Mary desired to receive the blessed Fruit of her womb again within at the Masses celebrated by the apostle St. John, far more than all the saints combined have collectively hungered for Jesus in Holy Communion, Jesus even more desires to give Himself to us. He came so that we might “have life and have it to the full” (Jn 10:10) and emphasized that unless we “eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,” we will have no life in us (Jn 6:53). The Eucharist is the greatest loving means to achieve that saving and life-giving end.

              Now is the time to stress not so much our duties toward God but our love for Him and appreciation for what He has done. Watching Mass on our screens is good, but nothing in comparison with entering into Jesus’ presence. Spiritual communions are important but are nothing in comparison with the fulfillment of those desires in actual Holy Communion. Personal prayer at home is great, but pales to the opportunity we have Mass to enter into Jesus’ greatest prayer that redeemed us and brought salvation to the whole world.

              On September 12, the Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Cardinal Robert Sarah, published a letter that he sent to the bishops across the world describing that it is “necessary and urgent to return to the normality of Christian life … and especially the Eucharist.” “As soon as is possible,” Cardinal Sarah wrote, “we must return to the Eucharist … with a renewed amazement, with an increased desire to meet the Lord, to be with him, to receive him and to bring him to our brothers and sisters with the witness of a life full of faith, love, and hope.”

            He reminded us that Jesus gave Himself to us not in a virtual way but in His Body and Blood. “This physical contact with the Lord is vital, indispensable, irreplaceable,” he underlined. “It is necessary that all resume their place in the assembly of brothers and sisters, rediscover the irreplaceable preciousness and beauty of the celebration of the liturgy, and invite and encourage again those brothers and sisters have been discouraged, frightened, absent or uninvolved for too long” to return. He urged us to ponder the witness of the martyrs of Abitene in fourth-century Tunisia, who after being sentenced to death for attending Sunday Mass and asked by their judges why they made such a choice, responded serenely, “Sine Dominico non possumus,” “Without that-which-is-the-Lord’s we cannot live.”

             By that-which-is-the-Lord’s, Cardinal Sarah said they meant several things: they cannot live without the living Word of the Lord; without participating in the sacrifice of the Cross by which we are saved; without the banquet of the Eucharist that sustains us on the pilgrimage of earthly life; without our brothers and sisters in the Christian community that is meant to resemble the communion of persons in the Blessed Trinity; without going to the house of the Lord our sacred, spiritual home; and without the Lord’s Day, which resets our soul and frees us from slavery to work and earthly things so that we might live for God and love. They were willing to die out of love for the Sunday Mass in all of these aspects and their witness eloquently speaks still.

           The whole theme of Cardinal Sarah’s letter is encapsulated by its title, “Let Us Return to God with Joy!” It puts the emphasis on what the Christian response should always be with regard to Sunday Mass: we attend not principally because we have to, but because we want to, out of gratitude to God and out of love. That is what the whole Church should be stressing at this time.