Monday, December 28, 2020

Honouring 2020?

 Blog Post January 2021

    Back in the 1980's and 90's I used to give talks on stress management. Inevitably, one of the hot topics would be the stress people were experiencing from corporate change. I recall reading (I believe it was in Tom Peters book In Search of Excellence) that Matsushita Electronics -  which became Panasonic - had a corporate saying that no change was so valuable that it would be implemented before a ritual honouring of what had gone before. That bit of wisdom struck me as a good thing to remember when change was happening. So you preserve a sign from the old shop. Or you tell old stories about funny events. Maybe brag about achievements in the previous structures.

    This stuff came to mind in the past couple of weeks as we approached the end of 2020. People were talking more and more about the urgency of getting this year over with. It has been a difficult and hurtful and .....(fill in your own descriptor)  year.

    Funny, though, the stress has been in what we are leaving behind. Hopefully less so in what we are going towards, especially with the arrival of the CoVid vaccines. Nonetheless there is a big psychological transition happening. And that means change. The health care system will be doing a lot of review and soul searching. Long term care facilities will take a hard look at their preparedness for something like this in the future. Businesses will plan for hybrid delivery structures for their products. Any or all of these reviews and adaptations are capable of producing their own stress.

    But what can we honour about this painful year 2020 as we leave it?

    Pope Francis has just released a book titled Let us Dream: The Path to a Better Future. In it he says this:

"These are moments in life that can be ripe for change and conversion. Each of us has had our own “stoppage,” or if we haven’t yet, we will someday: illness, the failure of a marriage or a business, some great disappointment or betrayal. As in the Covid-19 lockdown, those moments generate a tension, a crisis that reveals what is in our hearts.

In every personal “Covid,” so to speak, in every “stoppage,” what is revealed is what needs to change: our lack of internal freedom, the idols we have been serving, the ideologies we have tried to live by, the relationships we have neglected............

If we are to come out of this crisis less selfish than when we went in, we have to let ourselves be touched by others’ pain. There’s a line in Friedrich Holderlin’s “Patmos” that speaks to me, about how the danger that threatens in a crisis is never total; there’s always a way out: “Where the danger is, also grows the saving power.” That’s the genius in the human story: There’s always a way to escape destruction. Where humankind has to act is precisely there, in the threat itself; that’s where the door opens.

This is a moment to dream big, to rethink our priorities — what we value, what we want, what we seek — and to commit to act in our daily life on what we have dreamed of."

    Key points in this little excerpt: everyone will experience ‘stoppages’ in their life; the stoppage will reveal to us what is in our heart; it may lead to a change in our life; and (the critical point), “ Where humankind has to act is precisely there, in the threat itself; that’s where the door opens.”

    In the threat itself is where the door opens. If this is true - and it surely is - then this pandemic and by extension the year itself and the bad things in it, need to be seen as what my Jesuit director refers to as a ‘hard gift.’

    Immediately I think of the cancer experience as exactly that. I became aware in the middle of it that this was the most spiritually fruitful time of my life. When I finished with all the treatment, I was able to honour the experience even before I moved in to remission. I am applying that as best I can to 2020. Can you do the same?

    Other writers have this topic on their mind. A story in the Toronto Star on December 24 by Steve McKinley (“Hope”) quotes psychologist Steve Joordens discussing the optimism created by the CoVid vaccine while at the same time the numbers are going the opposite, wrong, way. There is a tension, “and the journey from here to there is going to be very dark and very difficult.” “But that dark and emotional place can also be transformative.”

    There it is again, the same theme as in Pope Francis’ writings. Joordens adds: “To some extent, it is a bit of a rebirth when we come through the other side. It may cause a lot of people to have a serious reflective moment and there’s going to be some lifestyle changes imposed because people have just lost their previous way of existing.”

    Where humankind has to act is precisely there, in the threat itself; that’s where the door opens.

    The honouring that we will be able to do - will need to do - is in the new awareness these hard times have given us, of where we have lost a part of ourselves. Perhaps our generosity, our kindness, our patience.  Maybe our awareness of just how much we need each other, in a world where we act as little gods unto ourselves.

    That awareness is happening at the international level. The World Council of Churches has just released a document titled Serving a Wounded World in Interreligious Solidarity. The Vatican was a signatory to this document. Right in the preamble there is this statement: “This document aims to offer a Christian basis for interreligious solidarity that can inspire and confirm, in Christians of all churches, the impulse to serve a world wounded not only by the Covid-19 pandemic but also by many other wounds.”

    You can see the CoVid awareness of our lack of unity that has developed in this group. It is an awareness that helps us to honour the hard gift of 2020.

    The awareness is happening at the organizational level. My own parish of St. Paul’s has realized that we have to rethink who we are in this world, in this community. The venerable but ‘same old’ practices that serve as the foundation of the parish, we have come to realize, actually are self-referenced and are about maintenance. The awareness has grown that parishes, ours included, have to have a missionary mind-set that reflects Jesus’ directive to his disciples, “Go out .....” That mind-set has to become our foundation or people will stop being interested. This is another awareness grown in the hard gift that is 2020. We certainly honour it.

    And yes the awareness happens at the individual level. Back to Pope Francis and his wonderful insight into what life ‘stoppages’ can do for us personally, what the stoppage of Covid-19 can do for us:

    “In every personal “Covid,” so to speak, in every “stoppage,” what is revealed is what needs to change: our lack of internal freedom, the idols we have been serving, the ideologies we have tried to live by, the relationships we have neglected.......”

Wonderful opportunity, this hard gift. The best stress management, I think, will come from owning the moment and having the freedom to honour the awareness we have just developed.


Happy New Year 2021, everyone! Don’t forget to bring with you the hard gifts you have just received.

Saturday, November 28, 2020

Issues raised by the candidacy of Catholic Joe Biden in the US Presidential election

    The election is over as this is being written. President Trump is soon to be Former President Trump, having pretty much exhausted his legal recourse. Which is not to say he has conceded.

    I do not wish to write a political reflection as that is beyond my pay scale. But I thought it timely to review an issue that was raised during the election, and that is the contradiction in Joe Biden’s Catholicism. On the one hand he is fervent and public and a believable practitioner of his faith. On the other hand, he is clearly a pro-choice politician. He is seen as decent and as empathic, and it is predicted that he will repair some of the great harms that have been done during the previous administration, in the areas of immigration, race relations, climate change, and others. Many evangelical Protestant and Catholic believers focused on his pro-choice and his social justice stands, however, and branded him as a heretic and a socialist. There are notable You Tube videos of Catholic pastors railing against the notion of any Catholic voting for him. More than one Bishop supported such pronouncements.

    So with this piece today, I just want to highlight some writings about a topic that we do not necessarily hear a lot about, and that is the Common Good, and especially the Catholic Church teaching on the Common Good. Are those righteous pastors correct in their interpretation of church teaching?

    U.S. Catholics weigh in with mixed reaction on Biden win NCR Nov 9, 2020:
“The day after the results were announced, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, congratulated Biden on the win.
"We thank God for the blessings of liberty. The American people have spoken in this election," Archbishop Gomez said. "Now is the time for our leaders to come together in a spirit of national unity and to commit themselves to dialogue and compromise for the common good." (Italics added.) ...........
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of Chicago said that "as we now have the results of the election, it is good to remember that our strength in America lies in our unity."
"We commend all who had the courage to compete in the electoral process and participate in our democracy," the cardinal said. "We pray that the Lord will enlighten and sustain those elected in their service to all the people of our country.
"Let us also ask God to free our hearts of regrets and resentments, of pride and contemptuousness. Particularly in this time of pandemic, we must set aside whatever partisan concerns have divided us and turn our energy and passion to serving the common good."(Italics added.)”

    So what is the Common Good? It turns out that it is not an American invention. If anything, Americans are individualists by ethos, and that may be a big part of the reason why they are in such turmoil right now.

    Here is some background on Common Good in Catholic moral teaching.

    Jared Dees in The Religion Teacher. Apr 2017

     "At the foundation of Catholic Social Teaching is the concept of the “common good.”
Here is a definition drawn from Pope St. John XXIII and quoted in the Vatican II document, Gaudium et Spes: the common good is “the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.”

    By common we mean all people. To pursue the common good is to work towards the greatest good for all persons, not the greatest good for the greatest number and certainly not the greatest good for only a specific group of people. There is a difference between the good for a majority of people and the good for all people."

    David Cloutier | Aug 19, 2013 | From the Field |

    “The notion of “the common good” may be the most familiar concept of Catholic social teaching. The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church*  cites it as the first principle of CST, and as something “to which every aspect of social life must be related” (164), and as the “primary goal” of society (165). It may also be one that is subject to the most misunderstandings. ....

    Thus, “the common good” while not the ultimate good, is nevertheless the central aim of our social lives, as affirmed by Gaudium et Spes (#75). We do not exist for ourselves. Pursuing our own private goods, while it may have some positive spillovers, eventually degenerates into an order where only the strong survive, where only those who “play to win” can “make it,” and where every shared enterprise is merely a vehicle for my own personal advancement. In many ways, all our social problems can be seen in the light of our temptation to believe in this awful myth of “survival of the fittest.”
*published in 2004 by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace at the request of Pope John Paul II.

    So here is an argument applying the Common Good principle to the election of Joe Biden:

    Michael Sean Winters: US bishops need to recalibrate their stance toward the culture NCR, Nov 13, 2020.

    “As the bishops prepare to welcome a new administration in Washington, they need to be guided by that concern for the common good and abandon the culture-warrior approach that has plagued their public posture for too long.

    President-elect Joe Biden is now the most prominent Catholic in the country. He speaks powerfully about how important his faith is to him, usually in the context of the monstrous suffering he endured, losing his wife and daughter in a car accident, and then his adult son to brain cancer. He also ran a campaign that highlighted some of the pillars of Catholic social teaching — human dignity, the common good, solidarity — and he did so explicitly. He is not coming at the bishops looking for a fight.

    Yes, from a Catholic perspective, the president-elect is grievously wrong in his support for liberal abortion laws. We Catholics are rightly horrified whenever any group of people, no matter how powerless, is denied legal protection. The taking of innocent human life is wrong no matter the circumstance. But how a politician approaches the issue of abortion is not the only thing to know about them.

    Biden is a man of decency who is wrong, not an indecent man, and if the bishops welcome his presidency in the same nasty, combative way they welcomed that of President Barack Obama, they will live to regret it. They need to abandon the zero-sum, legalistic approach they have followed in recent years ..........
 
    They should look to lower the temperature in the culture wars and reach some accommodations with the Biden administration on the issues where they disagree with the president and work together on the many, many issues about which a Democratic administration is much closer to the teachings of the church than the outgoing administration was, starting with immigration and climate change policy.”
 
    I leave you to weigh that up.

    In the meantime, a Common Good issue has arisen very recently in the matter of Covid-19 vaccines that are being developed. The moral issue raised is that the vaccines were developed using cell lines that date back to the 1960s and 1970s in which tissue was taken from aborted babies. Some of the same anti-Biden voices are arguing that Catholics therefore cannot use these vaccines. Here is one response to that argument:

    Use of Pfizer, Moderna COVID-19 vaccines is morally acceptable, say bishops. NCR Nov25, 2020
“Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Doctrine, and Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Pro-Life Activities, addressed the issue in a memo to their brother bishops.

    A copy of the memo was obtained by Catholic News Service Nov. 24.

    "Neither the Pfizer nor the Moderna vaccine involved the use of cell lines that originated in fetal tissue taken from the body of an aborted baby at any level of design, development or production," the two prelates said. "They are not completely free from any connection to abortion, however, as both Pfizer and Moderna made use of a tainted cell line for one of the confirmatory lab tests of their products.

    "There is thus a connection, but it is relatively remote," they continued. "Some are asserting that if a vaccine is connected in any way with tainted cell lines, then it is immoral to be vaccinated with them. This is an inaccurate portrayal of Catholic moral teaching." .........

    For Dr. Robert Tiballi, an infectious disease specialist in Chicago and a member of the Catholic Medical Association, this indirect use raises an ethical issue for Catholics.

    "The fetal cell lines were not directly used in the Moderna vaccine, but they were indirectly used several steps away from the actual development of the vaccine," he told "Currents News" in a separate interview.

    Any such cell lines were derived from tissue samples taken from fetuses aborted in the 1960s and 1970s and have been grown in laboratories all over the world since then.

    In its 2005 study, the Pontifical Academy for Life said Catholics have a responsibility to push for the creation of morally just, alternative vaccines, but it also said they should not sacrifice the common good of public health because there is no substitute.

    "Catholics can have confidence if there is a great need and there are no alternatives, they are not forbidden from using these new vaccines," Brehany told "Current News," but he added: "There is much the church calls us to do in seeking out alternatives and advocating for alternatives."

    I will leave it there. I trust the voices I have cited here. There are many others arguing in different directions. It can get confusing for sure. Watch out for hidden agendas in what you read, and be sure to stay grounded in church teaching.


Friday, October 30, 2020

“ In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” St. Augustine

How do you deal with controversial topics?

Here is an example from history. Discussions about Baptism were a really big deal in the fourth century. I remember reading years ago the great writings about the necessity of Baptism, and the inclusion of infants in that consideration. The necessity of Baptism hinged on the reality of original sin. The inclusion of infants was controversial in light of an early belief that Baptism washed away all sins a person had committed up to that point. Some argued, therefore,  that people should wait for Baptism as long as possible in their life, so as to not lose the effect of Baptism for whatever sinful pattern might be present in their lives.

St. Augustine (354-430AD) got right into it. But he researched and argued from the teaching authority of the church, right back to apostolic times three hundred years earlier. Infant baptism was there, and so he was adamant that in his own writings he was not introducing anything novel into our faith.

Moreover, he refers at length to St. Cyprian who wrote extensively on the matter of Baptism but who added that in all such discussions, we must attend to St. Paul’s familiar exhortation, “(T)hough I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I have become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.”  Augustine comments: “He (Cyprian) had therefore imperfect insight into the hidden mystery of the sacrament. But if he had known the mysteries of all sacraments, without having charity, it would have been nothing. ..... (W)ith imperfect insight into the mystery, (he) was careful to preserve charity with all courage and humility and faith.....” What a lovely insertion into the dialogue.

Why this little history lesson?

Two reasons: one, we have lost respect for the teaching authority of the church. In so many quarters today in and out of the church, those who disagree with Pope Francis so often go straight to branding him a heretic, and wishing out loud for his papacy to end. One impertinent bishop recently dared the pope to fire him.

The second reason is obvious from the first. The charity urged by St. Cyprian has been replaced by politicized, agenda-driven ideological attacks on the pope. Which means on the teaching authority of the church.

If St. Augustine were alive today, that is where he would start.

Full disclosure: I am a huge supporter of Pope Francis. His challenges to all of us to return to the social justice roots of the Gospel are nothing less than inspired and led by the Holy Spirit.

St. Augustine stopped and considered his position on Baptism in light of church authority. The successor of Peter in 2020 merits that same consideration. This is especially true given that the issues the pope tackles are very big: urging realignment of political and economic policies based on relationships and on human need rather than on power and economic dominance; establishing real pro-life mindsets (ie, supporting mothers with young children) not just pro-birth; rethinking the God-given rights of same sex persons to live in families; advocating for stewardship of the environment, and on and on.

I told you these are big! Don’t you feel it as you read that list? The same intensity undoubtedly drove the writings on Baptism from Augustine’s time! There were big issues in there! But remember, he anchored himself in two things: the tradition of the apostolic teaching authority of the church, and Cyprian’s enunciation of ‘without charity we are sounding brass and tinkling cymbals.’

Political and church leadership in various quarters around the world has introduced and fostered divisiveness, bitterness, and anger as in perhaps no other time in history. In our families, in our governments, and elsewhere we shout and threaten. And we know what topics not to bring up.

Really??

Time for Catholics and Christians of all stripes to dial it down and return to the Gospel. Suck up the disagreements and talk. And listen. Because if we believe anything at all, it has to include that the Holy Spirit will lead us. The job of God has been taken. We are embarrassing ourselves and betraying what Augustine showed us when we act in any other way.
 

Monday, September 28, 2020

Telling our News


    It is probably appropriate to refer to our present time as the age of the pandemic. It is no longer simply the pandemic incident. It has gone on too long for that. Moreover, at time of writing, the numbers are trending upwards again around the world and in our own province. Experts are saying that the dreaded second wave is here.

    What this means is that the pressure we all have felt to adapt our daily schedules and patterns is now not merely an emergency response. It is rather the challenge to look forward to new patterns altogether. For the foreseeable future, we and those we elect have to plan everything with a view to keeping us safe.

    One context that is deeply affected by all this and causing significant pain is that of our inability to enjoy full open gatherings for community worship. Unfortunately, some have mistakenly cast the pain as resulting from a violation of our rights and freedoms to worship.  (This is a quintessentially American response.) That of course is not what is happening. The challenge to adapt in the interest of safety is what is happening.

    As it turns out, the pandemic is looking like an example of what my spiritual director used to refer to as one of the "hard gifts." In this case, great opportunity. I have noticed that the dialogue among church commentators has increasingly turned to the question ‘what does the church need to look like coming out of all of this?’ I mentioned that in my previous post where I referred to discussions of the need for the church to return to its fundamental identity as a mission church. At the heart of the Christian Scriptures is the message that followers of Christ are sent out to proclaim the Good News of our salvation.

    My own parish of St. Paul's is taking this time as a perfect opportunity to re-examine who we are. The literature guiding the effort is the book by Fr. James Mallon, titled Divine Renovation.

    This book was written six years ago – way before the pandemic – but wouldn't you know, Fr. Mallon appears to be prescient In spending a whole lot of effort on the need for our churches to return to their root identity as missionary in nature. In making the case for the changes that he introduced in his own parish, he argues that Catholics have become passive, immature, and complacent. The background for this is multifaceted, and he does a great job laying it out. One of the factors jumps off the pages, however, and that is clericalism. Not necessarily the aggressive, powerful form that we have heard about in some instances, but rather the kind that happily assumes responsibility for the entire spirituality of the Christian community. That community in turn is only too happy to cede the responsibility, leaving them with only the obligation to attend Sunday Mass.

    Here are a few excerpts in Fr.Mallon's own words:

        In our parishes of today, in spite of all the years forming lay ministers, most Catholics remain unawakened, passive consumers of "religion lite."......

        After about 1650 years (from the Peace of Constantine in 315 to the cultural revolutions of the 1960s), this Christian culture has now ended. We now find ourselves in a situation like that of the first Christians. It is once again unpopular to be a Christian. It is risky, costly, difficult, fulfilling and exciting. It is a time of rediscovering the essential identity of all the baptized to be missionary disciples, called to know Jesus and make him known. It is time for all who follow Jesus to heed the call to maturity and to be equipped for service within the community of the Church that takes them far from the altar from which they are sent every Sunday.
        The Church's deepest identity is to be a missionary Church, called to form baptized believers into missionary disciples who go forth, through the grace of God, to build God's kingdom.........

        If belonging is the key, then it opens the door to faith. Behaving, which is discipleship, takes place when the person walks through the door.........

        (In commenting on Jesus' interaction with the rich young man): The expectations of Jesus were not limited to the commitment of becoming his disciple. Once that decision was made, he continued to expect more. He said that "from everyone to whom much has been given, even more will be demanded." (Luke 12:48)  


    Fr. Mallon's words present a great challenge in a time of great opportunity. But here is the thing. Who is going to come and listen to these words and take up this challenge? Some fear that even our regulars may have lost their sense of belonging and so will not be among those numbers. It is already well documented that young folks exited from "formal religion" some time ago. These, however, are the people who will get behind a worthy cause, especially if it has social justice attached to it. They are the people we want to reach. Social justice conflates nicely with mission.  

    We will never reach them, however, if we tell them that we are coming to evangelize them. Or that we want them to be part of an evangelical project. I can just see the eyes rolling. On the other hand, I have always found that people listen respectfully when I tell them of my own experiences and how I believe that the Lord was somehow involved in the outcome. If they show further interest in that, I will get the opportunity to tell them that the death and resurrection of Jesus are our guarantee that we matter to God. I am content to leave it there for them to mull over and for the Spirit to work.

    All of this is to say that we have the opportunity to get clear in our heads that our desire to return to Sunday Mass and resume our usual, familiar, and comfortable pattern of worship, has been brought into sharp relief as a betrayal of our Christian identity if we go home and leave it there.

    Telling our news. Telling our story. We can come out of an otherwise terrible time with a much better sense that this is what Christ asks us to do. Not on the street corners, but in the multiple opportunities that arise every single day to say who we are and what we believe.


Saturday, August 29, 2020

Big Questions

My mother had several mantras for her children. We knew them well and we not only heard them growing up but even after we left home. One of them was, "Remember who you are." She would bring that one out when we were whining or otherwise taking the low road in reaction to some perceived grievance. The mantra was a coded directive to claim the honour but also to live up to the challenge of what she considered was our family legacy. We knew exactly what she meant, in any case.

Looking back on those interactions, I see now that her directive was genius in its own way. She was not telling us exactly what to do, she was rather challenging us to buy into our identity. Who would turn that down? And yet if you accepted the premise of the mantra, you were in fact committing yourself to a course of action, certainly to a noble outlook on what to that point was a grievance or a worry.

Something similar would have happened if she had come at it from a different direction, with a question. What if she had said in the middle of our anger and argumentative interaction with her, "Well who am I then?" There is only one answer to that question, "You are my mother." Once again, however, in giving the answer, we children would have been making a commitment to what that stands for in the moment as well as what she stands for as a member of the extended family. It would be very difficult to give the answer and then to walk away saying, "Well I really don't care."

These kinds of thoughts ran through my head last week listening to the gospel and the ever so familiar question Jesus asked his disciples: "But who do you say that I am?" After all these years of hearing the answers given, doesn't it become clear that Jesus is not asking about himself, he is asking about the disciples. Once you have given the answer, you have made a commitment.

I recall when I was in my late teens and attending a seminary in the US, being saddened at seeing guys leave, and becoming aware that some of them were leaving the seminary, the church, and their faith, all on the same day. I do not know what process they were going through, but it would make sense if some of the problem was that the commitment to their answer to Jesus' question had become too onerous.

In our present day and age, there is arguably a significant fear of Jesus' question. There probably always has been. We sense just before the words come out of our mouth that we are about to make a big commitment to follow what Jesus stands for, and to follow Jesus himself. Too much, I can't do that.

And so we might hedge, as is very popular in our culture, by espousing a nonreligious spirituality, complete with a commitment to social justice.

Other hedges, popular in Christianity, certainly in Catholicism, are liturgical piety and ecclesial clericalism. The former is bound up with ritual, the latter is bound up with power. Both claim vociferously that they are following Jesus. Both are more likely to be ways of avoiding Jesus. They need to stand beside Peter and dwell on Peter's answer to Jesus’ question.

The era of the coronavirus pandemic, I think, is challenging all of us to stand beside Peter. We are post-resurrection people: we would have no trouble agreeing with his answer. (“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”) We would quite possibly, however, have a lot of trouble letting the answer expand, letting the dough rise, as it were, into its full significance for us.

Remember who you are.

Out there in the everyday world are thousands and thousands of people who are hungry for a meaningful, active spirituality. They are not coming to church to satisfy that hunger, because it feels like the church is the purveyor of empty, repetitive ritual. Inside the church are people, including and especially in leadership, who are wringing their hands over the declining numbers in the worshiping congregations. Isn't it obvious, the question that is being begged here? Two groups are missing each other, two groups that have the potential to provide a synergy that would light up the world! Oh. Isn't that what the gospel is about? Isn't that where Peter's answer to Jesus question will lead you? If you spend time with it.
     
Sadly, there is division in the church on how to approach this. Some want to double down on preserving the liturgy in its purity even going so far as longing to bring back Latin. Others say that if we do not become a mission church we will have no one in the pews anyway, and we will have lost our relevance. The divide was addressed in an article I read recently, by Fr. Victor Codina, S.J., The article appeared in the Jesuit publication America, in September, 2019. The title of the article is: Why do some Catholics oppose Pope Francis? I won't try to summarize the article here, but Fr. Codina speaks to the pastoral flavour of the theology of Pope Francis. The article resonated with me, because it seems to me that Pope Francis was standing beside Peter when Jesus asked the question, Who do you say that I am? Pope Francis immediately thought of the poor, the sick, the lost, the wayward, that Jesus had been loving and supporting.

Here is a short excerpt from the article. If we are going to revitalize the church, if we are going to attract people to Jesus, then this commentary is on the mark.  

“It bothers people when he (Pope Francis) says that we should not build walls against refugees but bridges of dialogue and hospitality. He is annoying when, following in the footsteps of Pope John XXIII, he says that the church has to be poor and exist for the poor, that the shepherds have to smell like sheep, that it has to be an outgoing church that reaches out to the peripheries and that the poor are a theological locus, topic or source.”

For those of us who feel like we are clinging to our pews, the answer to building our communities is here. But we really will need to dig deep and remember who we are. Mom had that part right. It starts with ourselves, the leaders will follow us.


Saturday, August 1, 2020

Leaving Anatevka - What to take?



    There is a great scene in Fiddler on the Roof in which the young tailor Motel Kamzoil - who marries Tevye’s daughter Tzeitel - celebrates the ‘new arrival’ of a sewing machine. The people of the village gather around and congratulate the couple as though they had just given birth. Times are changing and this machine will be very important to them. Coincidentally, there is a new current of independent thinking among the youth, and Tevye the father fears that this will destroy their traditions, their way of life. To add a further huge complication, the Jews of the area are under attack from the Russians who are doing their best to take away their livelihood and force the Jews to find new ways to survive. For many, this involves leaving the area. The sewing machine will become important in the transition. It itself is not the transition, but it surely marks it. The couple will never forget the times in which they received that sewing machine.

    Peggy and I were excited like Motel and Tzeitel when our new baby arrived: a new gym style treadmill. The sewing machine image readily came to my mind. And as I thought about it over the next few days, it occurred to me that the image fits more closely than I had imagined at first.

    The Coronavirus has attacked our way of life. It has changed our ability to freely go places, it has robbed many of their income. Like Tevye and his family, we lost even our freedom to worship in the way to which we had been accustomed.

    For the two of us, the ability to move around in the community had included daily visits to the gym, high priority given our health histories. Those visits ceased, and we were left with walking in the community. Perfectly ok, but the weather has a lot to say about how and when you are going to do that! In particular, snow and bitter cold will be here in no time. Anticipating that, we made a big decision to transition to a new routine that would protect us in two ways: against exposure to the enemy virus in a gym, and against the weather elements that stop us from participating at all. The new routine is the treadmill in the basement.

    By itself, this is not at all noteworthy. But it is a bit like Motel’s sewing machine. It occurs as part of a transition to a new era. It does not make the transition, but it does mark it. As with many events in our lives this year, we will never forget when this took place.

    What was life like for those Jewish communities that had to leave everything behind? If you have seen the movie or play, you know that no matter how bad things were ever going to get, what they possessed to give them balance now and forever, was tradition. No-one could take that from them. The challenge, however, was how to incorporate it into the new reality of starting from scratch, and at the same time dealing with the perennial roiling that comes with kids growing up and thinking for themselves.

    Goodness, some of this sounds very familiar. My dad was greatly distressed by the changes brought by Vatican II in the mid 1960's. He kept asking me ‘What were we doing that was so wrong?’ I was so gung ho with Vatican II that I am not sure I gave him a full hearing. But he was upset.

    We are not in a Vatican Council circumstance right now, but we surely have experienced change in liturgies, starting with our ability to attend them. In the course of dealing with the disruption, parishes around the world have learned to stream their liturgies, and to get good at it. The upside of this is participation even if a step removed. The downside is no physical community gathering and no Eucharist. The convenience factor does not at all make up for those two losses. I think there is consensus on that.

    The next evolution - we are in the middle of it - has been the slow reopening of churches for liturgies, with limited seating capacity, strict social distancing rules, and significant limitations on the spoken and sung word by all those present. There is Eucharist, and there is community. And there is greatly slimmed down liturgical celebrations. Where is all that leading us?

    Not too long ago the National Catholic Reporter ran a series in which it asked the question, What next? The Church after Coronavirus.

    To my surprise, the authors and the people interviewed focused almost not at all on the details of the liturgies, as I might have expected they would. They focused instead on the nature of the communities, and what our gatherings are even supposed to be for. Massimo Faggioli, a professor at Villanova University worried that with our ability to choose the community we want to tune into online, we may be inclined to seek out groups with whom we resonate, rather than contributing to the local community of which we are a part. 

    Jesuit Fr. Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator who is president of the Jesuit Conference of Africa and Madagascar, cautions against too much insularity wherein we look inward and end up trapped in bureaucratic and clericalist structures as before. This is an opportunity he argues, for us to look outward to those we have not included. After all, that is central to the teachings of Jesus. In saying this, he is anchoring all our changes in the biggest tradition there is - the Good News of the Gospel.

    Julie Hanlon Rubio is professor at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University. She marvels at the ability to form or join whatever community one wishes, through Zoom. She adds: “Yet I also strongly believe in the idea of a local parish, where you show up to worship with people who aren't like you, but to whom you are connected as members of the Body of Christ. I'm grateful for Sunday mornings that feel like opportunity instead of struggle. But I'm worried about what will be lost when we choose the church we prefer over the one down the street.”   Again, she is pointing at the heart of the Gospel.

    I think that what is coming through here is that there are a lot of changes that may amount to transitions. Those transitions may well include changes within the liturgy. But that is not the emphasis these writers are discerning. Rather, there is a shared excitement that maybe, just maybe, the Church will return to its roots in the social/ redemptive mission of Jesus Christ, which is to bring all people together in love - no-one left out. In the words of Fr.Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator: “I am minded to dream of a post-coronavirus church with doors open to a new Pentecost that blows social distances away and frees consciences of bureaucratic, clericalist and hierarchical structures and certainties in which we were schooled to place our trust. I dream of a church receptive to new ways of practising solidarity and compassion in response to Jesus' commission to be women and men for others.”

    Isn’t this interesting. Doesn’t it hit you that if we emerge from all this with our eyes open and our minds attentive to who we are and to whom we belong, the liturgies will line up just fine? Changed or not.

    We are leaving Anatevka. Dangers of various kinds have forced that upon us. It turns out that difficult as this may be, and as unsettling as the experience has been, this is also a great opportunity. I am not sure what our sewing machine would be as we make our transition. But if we listen to voices such as I just referred to, we would have found our balance in the middle of change. Tevye said it well. Change all around us, anchored by a precious possession. Tradition.

Tuesday, June 30, 2020

Freedom and CounterWill in the Pandemic




In the middle of March break this year we heard that Ontario had declared a State of Emergency because of CoVid 19. Here we are now at the end of June, over 15 weeks later, and the State of Emergency has been extended into July. That is a long time to be living with serious restrictions on movement, shopping, and gathering.

And I suppose the big news at this point is not even that extension. It is that in some jurisdictions the infection rates are exploding again. Why? Because people got tired of waiting. People got angry at being told to wait. And people then refused to wait because they now turned the issue into one of 'rights.'When my rights are being violated by orders to stay indoors, to close my business, to wear masks, etc., than my freedoms are being violated. I will not tolerate that.

On Canada Day what a great time to reflect that somewhere along the line, a huge misunderstanding of freedom has taken place. Don't you hear the echoes of the three-year-old, "You're not the boss of me, I don't have to do that." Don't you hear echoes of the 15-year-old, "I'm old enough to make up my own mind. I'm going to go where I want."

Both of these protests are perfectly normal developmental events. Handled properly they resolve just fine, and healthy development continues.

But the objections we are hearing in the pandemic are not from three-year-olds or 15-year-olds, they are from supposedly mature adults. "You can't tell me what to do."

The largest age group I saw over the years in my practice was the 15 year old group. Parents would be at their wits end, and the kids were angry at the arbitrary, rigid directives from parents who used to be so loving!

That age is a time for everyone to develop an understanding of freedom and ownership.

I used to take the youth to the window of my office and asked them to look out on the street.

Me: "What side of the road are the cars on?"
Youth: "The right side."
Me: "How did they get there?"
Youth: "It's the law."
Me: "What if they decided they didn't want to be told where to drive? That left side might be nice today."
Youth: "There would be accidents."
Me: "Yes. And so the drivers are showing you one of the really important things about growing up. Namely, that you do things because you know they are the right thing to do. If someone told the driver to be sure to drive on the right side of the road, they would reply, 'Why are you telling me that? That's exactly what I was going to do.'

 Growing up, it turns out, involves doing things in a particular way all day long, in spite of being told to do them, because you were going to do it that way anyhow. And in the process you are exercising your freedom to take ownership of a rule, a directive. You will also smoothly learn how to object, to problem-solve, and to negotiate.

The person who recently threatened to have a doctor arrested for issuing a wear-mask order, has not gotten through the adolescent stage yet in which he or she understands that their freedom includes the right to follow that order and take ownership of it. Instead, they are stuck in what we call "counter-will;" the impulse to do the opposite of what I've been directed to do, just on the basis of having been directed to do it.

Our faith is one massive exercise of our freedom to make our own something that has been given to us on authority. I have mentioned previously that the post-modern movement objects to religion partly on that very basis. "I'm not going to be told what to do or what to think. I am my own guide for all that."

I recently heard a wonderful motivational speech in which the speaker said to be true to yourself, don't let anyone else tell you what to think or what you have to be. Partly correct, but incomplete. Jesus said something more or less like that, but what he was referring to was the self that you become when you follow me, when you accept and make your own the truth that “I am the way, the truth, and the life." Using your freedom you then stand firm against anyone or any power that would try to move you off that. Of course, if you haven't moved past the counter-will stage of your life, you will be easy pickings for anyone who says "Why are you doing/ believing all that stuff? They sold you that all your life, time for you to grow up and reject it all! Be your own person!"

The thoughtful person of faith says "Thank you but this IS who I am. I have made it my own. Freely!"

The thoughtful person of mature citizenship has no problem freely accepting the authority of a stay home or don't open or don't gather or do wear a mask order. The counter-will person, by contrast will succumb to the impulse to defy that authority.

In a faith community, the counter-will person may cause you to lose your faith.

In a pandemic, the counter-will person is going to make you sick.

What lessons we are learning. Don’t miss them!

And Happy Canada Day everyone! What a great country we are blessed to live in!

Sunday, May 31, 2020

Gift in the pandemic?


It is the last week of May, 2020, and the Provincial government has just announced an extension of the pandemic state of emergency. Some stores are being allowed to reopen but schools will remain closed for the duration of the current school year. People are getting antsy with all this, and the sacrifices we made in the early going are getting harder and harder. The restrictions are a great burden especially on a warm sunny day. People want to get out, and they want to mingle!

At this point, churches remain closed as well. And it is Pentecost weekend at time of writing. What a sobering thought. That event of 2000 years ago took place during a gathering of thousands of pilgrims who had come to Jerusalem for the annual  'celebration of the early harvest.' When the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles and they started preaching, locals and travellers alike understood them, regardless of their native language. We are told that 3000 people were added to the growing community of followers of Jesus.

That gathering would simply not be allowed today in the pandemic environment. Moreover, we can't even gather to remember it! And so for the 10th+ week we are challenged to reflect on what our gatherings mean: what they mean to the community and what they mean to us individually.

I continue to be moved by the phrase 'transformative sensory experience', written by Randy Boyagoda a few weeks ago in the Globe and Mail, and referring to what happens to us when we gather as community for celebrations of Eucharist at Mass. That phrase sums up what we are missing in not being there. The transformation is in the experience of touching Christ in the Bread, in the community, in the Word.

I believe there is a longing for touch, for connection that makes us whole. Inside the faith context and outside of it. Physical touch, verbal touch, visual touch.

I recall years ago reading Ronald Rolheiser's book "The Holy Longing.' I dug it out again, and found this:  "....(S)pirituality is not about serenely picking or rationally choosing spiritual activities like going to church, praying or meditating, reading spiritual books, or setting off on some explicit spiritual quest. It is far more basic than that. Long before we do anything explicitly religious at all, we have to do something about the fire that burns within us. What we do with that fire, how we channel it, is our spirituality…… Spirituality concerns what we do with desire."

And of course that is where we humans also get in trouble. Where we need healing and redemption. Our desires, our tastes, our wishes for experience take us in all different directions, often contradictory within ourselves, often contradictory to good order, often hurtful – to ourselves, to those we love or don't love, and to our relationships with the God we profess to believe in.

All of this is the back story of the Incarnation. The Son of God coming among us. For us. Our redemption through his death and resurrection to set things right. To let us reset. To heal our hurts. But here's the point Fr. Rolheiser makes that is germane to our present discussion: we talk about the physical body of Jesus being with us for 33 years. "God came to earth and then went home." That language, he says, is misleading and wrong. The Incarnation actually continues. In the Catholic tradition we talk about the Body of Christ, and we mean three things: the physical presence of Jesus who walked the earth; the Eucharist; and the body of believers. Yes. Us. We are the Body of Christ. Christ continues to dwell among us.

You remember, of course, that healings took place when people touched Jesus. The woman in the temple who suffered from a hemorrhage is a prime example. "This text… lays out a pattern… Simply put… just like this woman, we will find healing and wholeness by touching the Body of Christ and, as members of the Body of Christ, we are called upon to dispense God's healing and wholeness by touching others… If you are a member of the Body of Christ, when you forgive someone, he or she is forgiven; if you hold someone in love, he or she is held to the Body of Christ.… Your touch is Christ's touch."

Father Rolheiser goes on to say this does not mean that we forgive sins or that we bind and loose. "It is Christ working through us, who does this… (I)n the Incarnation God has chosen, marvellously, to let his power flow through us, to let our flesh give reality to his power."

Father Rolheiser explains that even after this reconciliation through touching the community of faith, private confession is still needed. (The healing of the woman in the temple was completed when she spoke to Jesus after her bleeding stopped as she touched his garment. Mk 5:25-34) The point for us today is this: "… (T)he basis for Christian ecclesial community, church, is a gathering around the person of Jesus Christ and living in his Spirit."

This is marvellous and heady stuff to contemplate. But contemplate it we should, especially in the challenge presented by the lockdown of pandemic. Especially on Pentecost Sunday. The pain of separation and isolation we are experiencing is in its own way a gift. Or more accurately, perhaps, a pointing towards a gift that we often miss or even take for granted in our faith community. That gift is the gift of God's touch that we give and receive to and from each other through the continuing Incarnation of the Son of God. In us. As Fr. Rolheiser says, it almost seems too good to be true! Indeed. That's how marvellous It Is. That's how much we are loved.

Perhaps we will come out of this horrible time with a new awareness of who we are to each other, how important we are to each other in our brokenness. We are the Body of Christ.

The world should change because of that.

Friday, April 24, 2020

Pandemic and the human condition



In the relative quiet of our mandated ‘stay at home’ status, you get to notice things. Much is being written about such noticing, and I see photos documenting the new - if temporary - world order. One of my favourites was the picture of a man outside in the quiet with recording equipment capturing the sounds you never hear in the din. This is a nice metaphor for the listening we have been able to do while being still. Such is the case with me, anyhow.

And in this quiet time I love noticing dots connect. This time it started with the church being closed to all activities and Mass being streamed. You could attend Mass in the comfort of your home. In your pajamas if you wish. You did not have to worry about the schedule. If you missed the original streaming, it would still be there as a video later. I marvelled at the convenience. At the same time I wondered if the lifting of any formal requirement to attend church would erode church attendance further than it is. We know that attendance has been falling even apart from this new reality.

It happened that I was reading an intriguing paper written by an Anglican clergy friend of mine (thanks David!). It is on the evolution of post-modernism as it relates to Western religion and spirituality. Think of the Modern period as beginning around the industrial revolution in the 19th century. Think of the Post-Modern period as beginning after the world wars and really picking up steam in the 1950's and beyond. In recent years the author notes the influence of internet-based social media communication, and the instant flavour of messages. For example, research has shown that our attention span has decreased from an average of 12 minutes to around 5 minutes. A one second delay in the loading of a Google response results in greatly diminished readership of an item.

In the post-modern world, communications are there to serve us and satisfy our needs. They are generally one way (announcements) and implicitly say ‘respond to me,’ not so much with more information, but to ‘like (me).’

In that context, the ‘father-knows-best’ model of church authority (which in some instances evolved unchecked [read: clericalism] into ‘father-knows-all’), has given way to a tendency to look for a group that thinks the way I do. I become my own centre and have no need for a church experience or church teaching. And yet it turns out that people are interested in spirituality as much as ever. But spirituality devoid of religion. At one time those two were interchangeable.

So goes the argument. If all that is valid, then the pandemic reality that is ours right now has merely intersected a phenomenon that was already well entrenched.

I pondered my own experience of not being able to get into the church while all this was on. The sense of convenience with Mass attendance has given way to a longing. Something is missing, no matter how well done the Mass streaming (and I really like ours at St. Paul’s). What is missing is the community. And the sense of belonging, both before and after Mass. Something about being my own centre doesn’t sit right. Something about composing my own post-modern theology or my own rules or my own detached spirituality doesn’t work. Neither does experiencing the liturgy of Eucharist from afar. I have come to see that during this forced absence. I and a whole lot of other people are hungry for the experience and that is why we watch the streamed version. But our hunger stems from missing the engagement that you get when you are in the presence not only of the community but of the spoken word and the liturgical movements that have been handed to us - gifted to us - over many many centuries.  It matters that we are there for them rather than remaining a step removed from them.

Into these ponderings came an article sent to me out of the blue by a cousin - thanks Christine! It appeared in the Globe and Mail and was written by Randy Boyagoda Principal of St. Michael’s College. It was titled ‘Metaphysical distancing: Have we isolated ourselves from God, too?’ Mr. Boyagoda talks about being deprived of the most taken-for-granted experience of being able to intentionally spend time with God and others. “In the midst of this, I intensely miss the transformative sensory experiences of being in church, especially at this time of the year.” (Holy Week and Easter). He put that well! That’s what I have been missing and what I sense is wrong with making do as we are. He goes on to say that with the distractions in the house and with the ability to move around in the house while the streaming is on, there is the danger that religious rituals will start to feel pointless. Mr. Boyagoda closes with this lovely reflection: “Does that mean we should abandon millennia-old, ever-fresh ways of knowing and being known by God and one another? Does that mean giving up on such abiding and durable sources of sacrificial love and solidarity? Absolutely not.”

Still another dot got connected in this sequence. This one came in the form of an article in the Toronto Star by Brandie Weikle titled ‘Social distancing shows nuclear family doesn’t work.’ My back was up before I started reading because I thought it was going to be a quintessential post-modern reflection on the next step in the evolution of ‘me’ wherein I do not even need my family. To my delight, it went in a very different direction. The point of the article was that in this pandemic time when parents are juggling many balls in the air and living the tension of paying bills, managing work schedules and so on, the disconnected life we are being forced to live deprives us of our best resources - our extended family!  She quotes a professor who stated that humans evolved to live in groups no smaller than 15-25 in number. This number made the group sustainable. The author quotes another woman as saying, “If my mother was here, she would know exactly what I needed or wanted.” Beautiful. The discussion continues with the author musing about how we will come out of the social restrictions we are in right now. We have the opportunity to rethink how to live a more connected life. A life that especially implicates family, and even includes things like larger family groups living under one roof.

The coming together of these dots affirms, I think, that being in ‘community’ is a basic need for humans, no matter our evolution towards the immediate and the disconnected. We don’t have to be prisoners of that evolution. We have a chance to step back and reflect and learn from the pandemic experience. While the scientists are discovering prevention and cure for the disease, the rest of us can be (re)discovering our need for each other and for transformative experiences. Religion is part of that. Religion and spiritual practices in the form of community participation in liturgies, are part of that. 

With the dots seemingly connecting like this, I am grateful for what the pandemic, tragedy that it is, has let us see and hear. I am excited by what it has to offer for the continuing course of our evolution. Will historians call the next decades the Post-pandemic Age? We - you and I - have a chance to shape it, in any case, not just watch it. That goes for our religious leaders as well! Pay attention, yes?

Best wishes to everyone.