Growing up with King Arthur (Part Two)

Anyone who has ever been in love knows that the joy that makes us complete is born out of the pain that fashions love which, if it is to have any meaning at all, is always growing, is always choosing, is always deciding. I love being a priest. I am grateful that God chose me to be a priest. I love and enjoy doing priestly things – celebrating the Eucharist, hearing confessions, doing spiritual direction, listening to people, even doing administrative work. I make these choices every day I live. No matter what one’s vocation is, God graces each of us with love and joy.

When we finally recognize that we are loved, we can only be grateful. But love and joy cannot be taken for granted. There is no love or joy that does not cost something. As a popular song once said, “Without a hurt, the heart is hollow.” A priest can love others so much that he loses sight of his own need to be loved. He gives and yet feels empty. A person who loves fully and who recognizes that he is loved in return knows his or her shortcomings. Such a person has acquired a very deep state of humility.

While still a teenager and considering a priestly vocation, Fr. Bill Cleary, the assistant pastor at my home parish, gave me a copy of Fulton Sheen’s book titled “The Priest Is Not His Own.” Whatever wisdom the book contained, I was most fascinated by the title. What did it mean to be “not his own”? Really good priests do not belong to themselves. At their deepest level, priests have no life that is their own. They belong to someone else – to God and to the people they serve.

Two people in a marriage do not belong to themselves. They belong to each other. This commitment is both a source of sadness and a cause for joy. Priests are indeed like everyone else. They need to love and they need love. The priestly vocation in loving is to help others find the God who loves them. Who helps the priest grow in his love for God?

Becoming king of England was certainly a prestigious thing for Arthur. But it was also an awesome duty, a lonely responsibility for a boy becoming a man. It separated him from those whom he loved dearly. It changed his life. He could no longer be the boy he was. He had to grow up. He was one of them, a human being, but now he was also somehow different. He had to become an adult. To be a good king Arthur had to love his people. And loving them now meant serving them in ways he had yet to learn.

The poet Tennyson wrote, “I am a part of all whom I have met.” We are also a part of each other. We are a part of all of us. Yet we try to protect ourselves by becoming rugged individualists wanting to face God by ourselves rather than recognizing our common humanity, our common priesthood.     

When we commit ourselves to the priesthood, or similarly, when a couple commit themselves to each other in matrimony, none of us can project the future. We may have some slight notion about its possibilities. But we cannot see it clearly. The boy Arthur cried when he realized he was to be king of England. Though he could not see the future clearly, he knew that he was no longer his own man. He knew he belonged to England.

Arthur’s life was a life of conversion. All our lives we are continually undergoing conversion. We learn and re-learn. We confess our guilt. We accept God’s grace. Our life in God is a goal we reach not by an upward curve. We sometimes get lost and we need to find ourselves again. We can only rest in the certainty of God being with us on our journey.

Growing up with King Arthur (Part One)

A favorite novel of mine is “The Once and Future King,” T. H. White’s lengthy and imaginative retelling of the legend of King Arthur. The book’s first section – titled “The Sword in the Stone” details the education of Arthur as a boy through the influence of the wizard Merlin. The most creative and imaginative part of the novel, this section offered me an ideal on which I thought the ministry of priests ought to hinge.

White describes how the boy Arthur, under the wizard Merlin’s guidance, becomes king of England. Told with great wit, cleverness and sophistication, Merlin transforms Arthur, known as “the Wart,” into a variety of animals to complete his education as a boy, as a man, as a future knight. One day he is an insect. Another day he is a bird or a hedgehog. Arthur talks to and plays with these animals as if they were personal friends. They become his teachers.

From the birds he learns what it is to see the earth from the sky. From the snakes he learns what it is to crawl on the ground. And so forth. In this way Arthur learns not only that human beings are different from these animals. He also learns something about human nature and he discovers how human beings might get along with each other as well as how they might not.

There comes a day, however, when Arthur, now apprenticed to the knight Sir Kay, finds himself assisting that warrior at a joust. But Sir Kay forgets to bring his own sword with him. He sends Arthur to retrieve it. But because Arthur is basically still a boy, and because he is always in a hurry, and because he is inclined to be lazy, he does so reluctantly. Then he remembers having noticed a sword stuck in a stone in a nearby churchyard. So he decides to borrow it for the occasion. Arthur is in such a hurry, however, that he fails to notice the inscription on the stone. “Whoever pulls this sword from this stone shall be king of England.” With no hesitation Arthur reaches for the sword.

The description of what happens next in the novel is something like a movie suddenly going into slow motion. Arthur hears music and everything around him suddenly becomes very clear. People gathered and so too did the hundreds of animals with whom Arthur had associated himself as a young lad. It was an unusual family reunion.

The animals, his friends, encourage Arthur to pull the sword from the stone. They cheer him on and applaud as the momentous event takes place. When it later becomes clear to Sir Kay and the other knights and ladies what has occurred, they each bow down before Arthur and honor him as their king. The novelist writes that Arthur becomes very upset by this, so much so that he bursts into tears and exclaims that he wishes he had never seen the sword.

This tale touched me deeply. The magical element of talking animals was fascinating enough. The writing kept me interested. But there was something else. Arthur was talented and gifted but he wasted a good deal of these talents as well as time and energy. Like all young people, he couldn’t fully appreciate the community that was his. The “lovers and helpers of Wart” came to support him in his most important moment as an adolescent moving into adulthood. As an adult, Arthur would learn to suffer and to sacrifice and to discover what “growing up” means. And there was no other way to discover this than to do so painfully.

Over time, the tale of “the Wart” has become an instrument helping me to realize how much I idealized my vocation during the years of training in the seminary and beyond. It also helped me realize how much growing up I still needed to do.

For myself the priesthood was a fraternity of caring men who encourage one another, who support one another in somewhat the same way in which animals supported and encouraged Arthur. When ministry becomes difficult or burdensome, I thought, there are brother priests to turn to for solace and comfort. When the priesthood becomes a challenge, there are brother priests to stand with you during those challenges. At the time I believed the priesthood was a place where I would find a nurturing family. I thought of the support I needed but not always the support other priests might need.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so also I love you.” Priests share the Father’s love in a very special way. Jesus smiles upon priests. He says, “You have not chosen me; I have chosen you.” He tells them this “that my joy may be yours and your joy may be complete.” Jesus’ words to his disciples can aptly be spoken to priests and lay people both. Priests ought to reflect constantly on these words in order to deepen their own relationship with the saving Jesus.

My years as a priest have been full of sadness as well as joy. The scandals of sexual misconduct among the clergy have shocked and disappointed both priests and lay people. Both clergy and laity are deeply wounded by the betrayals. In thinking we could be better priests than the generation that preceded us, my classmates and I somehow neglected our own humanness. Grace builds on nature, our theology teaches. We forgot that we too are fallible. Priesthood does not make men better than other human beings. In wanting to be seen as ordinary as other human beings, my generation of priests forgot that all human beings sin and make mistakes. I forgot to consider my own sinfulness.

(To be continued)

Pope Francis on aging

"Dear Brothers, have courage! Half of us are old: I like to think of old age as the seat of wisdom in life. Old people have wisdom because they know they have journeyed through life – like the aged Simeon and Anna in the Temple. It was that wisdom that allowed them to recognise Jesus. We must give this wisdom to young people: like good wine that improves with age, let us give young people this life’s wisdom. I’m reminded of what a German poet said about aging: “Es ist ruhig, das Alter, und fromm” – “age is the time of peace and prayer”. We need to give young people this wisdom."

Pope Francis in his address to the cardinals on March 15

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 53^rd 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:

http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/ratzinger/biblical-crisis.htm

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.

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.

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 600^th 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?

 

 

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?