Tuesday, February 19, 2013

When he was a cardinal

Many people around the world will have their own personal stories about Pope Benedict XVI. I remember this one.
On January 27, 1988, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger delivered a presentation in New York City titled “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today.”
This lecture was offered St. Peter’s Lutheran Church at 53rd St. and Lexington Ave. in midtown Manhattan. Richard John Neuhaus was pastor of the church at the time and this pre-dated his conversion to Roman Catholicism. The church itself sits below ground. At street level one can look through its glass walls down into the nave of the church as one walks by.
Cardinal Ratzinger was a controversial figure and seemed to daily become more controversial. In 1986 as Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger had signed the “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.” This letter angered the lesbian and gay communities who were very visible leading protests around the church the night of the presentation on Scripture. I lived in a Jesuit community in New York at that time and several of us attended the lecture. Getting into the church meant walking past protestors carrying signs and chanting. We were handed leaflets that identified the protestors as members of the organization “Act-Up.” This group became known for very violent protests in these years.
The church itself was filled to capacity. Pastor Neuhaus was present overseeing the evening, but in attendance were other significant conservative Catholics, including Robert Bork and then Father Avery Dulles. Police were stationed around and in the building. Although Ratzinger spoke in English. I remember nothing of the quality of the English nor do I remember much about the content of the lecture because of what happened during the event.
Because the church was filled to capacity, many of us were seated behind the cardinal and, as best as I can remember, I was probably no more than 20 or 30 feet away from him. He stood at a podium overlooking the main body of the church and the rest of us were seated within its sanctuary. Within a few minutes of Cardinal Ratzinger’s beginning the lecture, individuals stood up all around the room and began yelling and screaming at him and calling him derogatory names. The person beginning the protest sat in the row in front of and to the right of me. I jumped as if reacting to a loud explosion and the loudness only grew. The yelling and screaming grew such that the words of protest could not be understood. Cardinal Ratzinger remained standing at the podium watching what was going on.
Many members of the audience – including some of the prominent Catholics present – began yelling back at the protestors (though I suspect their language was somewhat more mild – one could barely hear over the din). It took a few minutes but the police stormed the church and began removing the protestors who continued to yell and chant and scream as they were dragged outside the building. They continued their yelling and screaming and occasionally reached the windows to pound on them.
Cardinal Ratzinger never moved from the podium. Indeed, once the yelling began he just looked around at the activity with a big grin on his face. He seemed to be enjoying the whole thing. The cardinal completed his lecture, received a standing ovation, and the evening concluded. The lecture itself can be found online at this link:
All I recall about the lecture itself was that it was a deeply theological reflection on Scripture. All I recall about Cardinal Ratzinger was that he seemed perfectly in control of himself.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Revising history


Institutions are skilled at revising their own histories. Winston Churchill, the British prime minister during World War Two, is reputed to have told an opponent that his own place in history would be exalted because he himself would write the history. The Church also indulges in revisionist history. We may not be masters at it but when called upon we can retell history from the most biased perspective as well as any other institution.

I recall attending Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York many years ago when Cardinal John O’Connor, then archbishop of New York, offered Mass on a Sunday honoring the sacrament of matrimony and, specifically, for couples active in the Marriage Encounter movement. Cardinal O’Connor, an otherwise admirable person, described previous decades as confusing to many couples due to controversies over birth control. He then went on to say how positively the Church had responded with the encyclical “Humanae Vitae” while ignoring any mention of the commission established by Pope Paul VI to advise him on a course of action. Moreover, he spoke as if “Humanae Vitae” were welcomed and accepted with no controversy whatever.

I was reminded of this while reading the obituary of Bishop John D’Arcy, former bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, who died recently. The obituary, published by Catholic News Service, completely ignored (or edited out) any mention of Bishop D’Arcy’s courageousness while still a priest in the Archdiocese of Boston. In the 1980s he wrote “a series of letters to his superiors raising alarms about priests he considered troubled and dangerous. The priests were being reassigned to new pastoral duties despite their known histories of substance abuse, sexually abusing children or both, and he urged his superiors to reconsider.” (NY Times, Feb. 4, 2013)

In 1979 Bishop (then Father) D’Arcy was vicar for spiritual development at St. John’s Seminary in Boston in 1979. He “recommended a comprehensive rethinking of the archdiocese’s system of recruiting men for the priesthood.” This included urging that candidates undergo psychological testing.

These letters written by then Fr. D’Arcy came to light in the early part of this century as courts forced the release of archdiocesan documents resulting from lawsuits. In 1984 he wrote newly appointed archbishop of Boston Bernard F. Law asking that he rescind the appointment of the Rev. John J. Geoghan as pastor of a parish in Weston, Mass. “Father Geoghan has a history of homosexual activity with young boys,” D’Arcy wrote. Father Geoghan was later accused of sexual abuse by 130 former parishioners.

D’Arcy was appointed bishop of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend in 1985. At the time there were wags in the Church who thought D’Arcy’s appointment had something to do with an effort to tame at least one part of the progressive Midwestern Church. In retrospect, it seems the appointment was as much an effort to silence D’Arcy from continuing to be a thorn in the side of his superiors in Boston.

Catholic News Service is an official organization within our United States Roman Catholic Church and it should not be surprising that little mention of this would be made. It can be found, however, in obituaries written in secular newspapers. CNS did a fine job summarizing the achievements of Bishop D’Arcy in Fort Wayne and it is best that he be remembered for these achievements. We cannot forget, however, that one priest promoted justice within a very secret system. Were there others we don’t know about? Perhaps then Father D’Arcy never truly appreciated the depth of corruption in the Boston archdiocese. After all, he too was nurtured in the same clerical culture. He just seems to have developed a better moral sense than some of his superiors.

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Striking a blow for imperfection


For many weeks now I’ve been reading a Charles Dickens novel – “Dombey and Son” – and I’m happy to report that I am beyond the 600th page with only 200 to go. This is one of his later novels and it seems to reflect the domestic problems Dickens himself encountered at this stage of his life. Mr. Dombey is an English businessman, a widower, with two children – a daughter in her teens and a son perhaps seven or eight. Early in the novel Dombey’s son dies and Dombey is overwhelmed. His loss, however, has more to do with the fact that he was grooming his son, young as he was, to eventually take over his business. Dombey loves his son only insofar as the son is a means to an end.

Some months after the son’s death Dombey remarries. He needs a wife for appearances’ sake and he chooses a socialite widow who likewise wants a husband for appearances’ sake. At the end of the chapter I just finished, Dombey had ordered his wife, a reluctant hostess, to make an appearance at a dinner party he intends to give for business associates. His wife refuses, demands a legal separation, and storms out of the house with the intention of not returning. The man’s 17-year old daughter, who dearly loves both her father and new mother, runs to her father thinking she will comfort him only to have him strike her violently rejecting her comfort. The girl flees and likewise runs into the streets. I can’t tell you what happens next because I’ve yet to discover it for myself.

Dombey is an arrogant business man who sees everything only through the lens of his own self-importance. He has never taken an interest in his daughter who lives in fear of him yet deeply desires to love him and be loved by him in return.

At this point in the novel all of Dombey’s anger has come forth in one violent blow to his daughter. It doesn’t take much knowledge of psychology to know that such anger is the action of a man who refuses to accept his humanity and therefore who refuses to accept himself as imperfect. Unable to do so, he takes out his anger on both his wife and daughter, judging them inadequate and deliberately hurting both of them in the most violent way.

There is no mention of God having anything to do with this situation in the novel. But this example I’ve just given provides an image of something similar that happens in Luke’s Gospel (5: 1-11) but with a different effect. Moreover, we might even recognize ourselves. Jesus is out in a boat with his disciples the fishermen and they have caught nothing after working through the night. He encourages them to push out farther and to lower their nets for a catch. When they do so and find so many fish that the boat is in danger of sinking, Peter falls to his knees before Jesus with the words, “Depart from me, Lord, I am a sinful man.” In the face of something greater than himself, Peter has the good sense to recognize that he is an imperfect human being. This is not an uncommon reaction when any of us has a genuine encounter with Jesus. We meet the Lord and we know we have met someone not only very different from us, but also someone far above us. We recognize our sinfulness, our inadequacy before him.

What is more important not only for Peter but for us also is that Jesus does not use this strength of his and the imperfection of Peter to hurt or judge Peter. Jesus simply tells Peter not to be afraid. From now on, in this translation, you will be catching men. You will be fishers of men. You will be bringing others to God. Unlike Dombey, Peter knows he is an imperfect man.

What is it we ourselves fear? What would our lives be like if we more frequently went before our God and acknowledged our inadequacy as human beings? Would we hear God telling us not to be afraid? Would we hear him telling us that He made us for a purpose and that He dearly loves us?

 

 

Sunday, February 3, 2013

An aptitude for an attitude


How many times have you been disappointed by someone you admired? Perhaps growing up you had a friend who disappointed you in some way as you grew older. Did you ever experience a teacher that you thought was going to be mesmerizing but who fizzled with the first sentence that came out of his or her mouth? What about a political leader you thought was going to save the city, the state, the nation, and you ended up voting for the other party? I find parishioners are very lenient with us priests who may disappoint the congregation but, unless the priest is totally outrageous, people will continue to at least abide.

In today’s Gospel (Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time "C"), the people of Jesus’ home town became very disappointed with him in very short order. One moment they are cheering him; the next they are ready to kill him. Luke doesn’t explain much of it to us. But it happens quickly, like this. Jesus speaks in the synagogue and receives their adulation. But then they expect he will work a miracle of some sort such as he has already done for people of other towns. But Jesus cites two examples of miracles from the Old Testament which occurred because the people for whom the miracles happened believed that God had effected the miracle. The miracles happened to non-believers who were open to the possibility of God’s work in their lives. Jesus goes so far as to claim that such miracles couldn’t happen for many believers in his home town because they are not open to God’s will in their lives. This incenses the crowd and they want to kill him.

What Luke seems to want us to know, and this is almost the same as what Jeremiah wants us to know in the first reading, is that too often we seem to have decided that we know how God works and usually we think God works for us in ways that we ourselves determine. We often seem to decide what God can do and cannot, what he thinks and what he does not. But God is constantly surprising us. Certainly Jesus did. He was looking for believers who were open to God working in their lives in ways in which God, not the individual, would determine. They would remain faithful to God and not be moved by only the superficial.

It all comes together in the second reading. The attitude which we must have is love. The question in the Gospel is whether or not the people of Jesus’ home town have the aptitude for love. What occurs there is so very early in the ministry of Jesus. Yet it is a sign of things to come. Jesus preaches a message that is first accepted and then later rejected. Faith in Jesus is not as easy as we would always like to think. Can we open ourselves enough to drink in all the possibilities Jesus has to offer to us?

Blessed John Henry Newman wrote that “we do not love because we believe, for the devils believe, yet do not love. Nor do we love because we hope, for hypocrites hope, who do not love. But we love for no cause beyond itself: we love because it is our nature to love; and it is our nature, because God the Holy Spirit has made it our nature.”

The people of Jesus’ home town seem to have been unable to love anyone but themselves. If Paul’s description of love in the second reading bears any meaning at all, then our aptitude for love has to be very broad indeed. Jesus never condemns the folks who reject him. Can we ourselves love those who do not love us?