The Blood of Martyrs Is The Seed of Christians

Martyrs of the 20th Century--
Great West Door of Westminster
Abbey

This past Sunday I noticed a middle-aged man get up and storm angrily out of Church when the priest mentioned the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero, bishop of San Salvador, who was murdered while saying Mass in 1980.  Though Father did not mention that the Archbishop was murdered by American-backed forces in the Salvadoran army, the very mention of the Archbishop and his upcoming beatification obviously stirred the memory of this gentleman and triggered his anger.  It was particularly surprising as our parish, while somewhat heavier than we would like with us “late middle-aged” folk, is pretty liberal, both politically and religiously.   But the mention of the murdered Archbishop, as the preacher was saying, is a reminder that the age of martyrdom is not over. 

Over the great West Door of Westminster Abbey in London, the gothic niches have been filled with statutes with the “Martyrs of the 20^th Century.”  Archbishop Romero stands among them.  In addition to Archbishop Romero, the Catholic Church is commemorated with the memorial to Saint Maximillian Kolbe , the Polish Franciscan who, in 1941, voluntarily took the place of another prisoner in a starvation cell at the Nazi Auschwitz Concentration Camp. 

The Anglican Church is represented by Manche Masemola, Archbishop Janani Luwum, Wang Zhiming, Lucien Tapiedi, and Esther John.  The Orthodox Church is represented by the Grand Duchess Saint Elizabeth of Russia, and the Protestant faith by the Lutheran Dietrich Bonhoffer and the Baptist, Dr. Martin Luther King. 

Martin Luther King, of course, is familiar to us Americans as the great preacher and apostle of non-violence who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955 until his murder by a white racist in 1968.  Just as attempts were made to tarnish the reputation of Romero by his foes both in El Salvador and here in the United States, King was subjected to character assassination by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI who wanted Americans to think that the preacher was a Communist agitator in an effort to discredit his objectives of an America in which there was an equal opportunity for all regardless of race. 

The Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia was a German Princess who married into the Russian Royal Family and converted to Orthodoxy.  (Her younger sister also married into the Romanoffs—married Nicholas II and became the Tsarina Alexandra.)  Elizabeth’s husband, the Tsar's uncle, the Grand Duke Sergei, was assassinated in 1905.  The young widow sold her jewelry to fund a convent of Orthodox nuns who worked among the sick and poor.  She herself headed the convent as its Abbess.  She was arrested during the Revolution and like her sister, the Tsarina, was brutally murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918.   

Manche Masemola was a young South-African woman murdered by her own family in 1928 for converting to Christianity from the traditional tribal religion.  Esther John similarly was murdered in the Pakistani Punjab region in 1960 for having converted from Islam to Christianity.  Archbishop Janani Luwum has a story much like Archbishop Romero’s.  Luwum was primate of the Anglican Church in Uganda and spoke out against the reign of terror in Idi’ Amin’s Uganda just as Romero had spoken out against the death squads in El Salvador.  He was arrested and died in police custody.  When the body was released to the family, it was riddled with bullet wounds.  Some present claimed that Idi Amin had personally shot and killed the Archbishop. 

Dietrich Bonheoffer was a German Lutheran Pastor who, with other Lutherans formed the “Confessing Church” when they found that the official Lutheran Church was collaborating too closely with the Hitler Regime.  Although already in prison by the time of the 1944 plot to kill Hitler by placing a bomb in the conference room where the dictator was meeting with his staff, Bonheoffer was connected with the would-be assassins.  He was hanged on April 9, 1945—just a few weeks before the fall of the Nazi regime.  

Lucian Tapiedi was a Papuan New Guinea Anglican lay evangelist who was killed during the Japanese invasion of that Island during World War II. 

Wang Zhiming was a Chinese Protestant brutally murdered during the Chinese “Cultural Revolution” in 1973  in a stadium before a crowd of 10,000 (mostly Christians) in an attempt to terrorize Christians to give up the practice of their faith.  These ten figures from different parts of the Christian family alert us to the sufferings of Christians today.  Christians in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, India and other countries often hold on to their faith at the cost of their lives. 

When I lived in Rome, I always attended a very special prayer service each Holy Week sponsored by the Community of Sant’ Egidio to commemorate those men and women who in the 20^th and now the 21^st century have laid down their lives for their faith.  We too should remember them—the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians.  

The John Paul Papacy, A Mixed Legacy II

Pope John Paul with Religious Leaders at Assisi
Prayer for Peace 

In my last post I wrote about the ambiguous nature of the Papacy of Pope John Paul II.  It was a papacy that hugely successful and hugely disastrous.  I want to explore that dichotomy further in this posting.

One of the most remarkable events of the papacy of John Paul II was his gathering of religious leaders in Assisi on October 26, 1986 to pray for peace.  Over 160 religious leaders including Archbishop Robert Runcie of Canterbury, the Dalai Lama, and Native American John Pretty on Top met together to pray.  Shinto priests, Lutheran bishops, Buddhist monks, rabbis, mullahs, and Mennonites—representatives of over 45 religious groups—Christian denominations and non-Christian religions from around the world—gathered first to pray in their particular groups and then came together in the beautiful Church of the Portiuncula to pray for peace among the human family. 

Thanks to a remarkable group called the Communità di Sant’Egidio (Community of Saint Egidio) based in Rome, this gathering has been commemorated annually by their organizing other such prayer assemblies in various cities around the world.  Many of us who have lived in Rome see the Community of Saint Egidio as the first and most precious fruit of the Second Vatican Council.  Started by a group of then secondary school students in 1968, what was a small faith-sharing group has grown into an international community that was once nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.  I don’t want to go too far down the road of the Saint Egidio Community in this posting—we can look at it another time—but the Community was very helpful to John Paul in his Papal Ministry and in his work as Bishop of Rome.  John Paul depended on them to organize a second Assisi Peace Prayer on January 24, 2002.

Not everyone was happy with the Interfaith Assembly.  Many neo-traditional Catholics saw this as religious syncretism and were appalled that the Pope would meet on equal footing with Protestants much less with non-Christian religious leaders.  They were even more offended that Catholic sanctuaries were permitted to be used for non-Christian worship.  Even Cardinal Ratzinger had his reservations and threatened not to attend the 2002 prayer unless some changes were made to the program.  In the end there were few concrete effects from the Assisi Prayer, at least as far as the papacy is concerned.  The Saint Egidio community has developed the ties to be able to be an unofficial network for cooperation and collaboration among the various religious groups and to serve as a channel of communication, but the ecumenical and inter-faith advances of John Paul’s reign have not only faded but were for the greater part undone in the papacy of his successor.  Pope Benedict did attend a gathering of religious leaders in Assisi on October 27, 2011 but there was suggestion of common prayer.  It will be interesting to see what Pope Francis chooses to do in pursuing an ecumenical and interfaith agenda during his Petrine Ministry.  

The Crisis of Inter-Religious Dialogue

Plaque commemorating the 1986

Assisi Gathering At the Basilica

of the Portiuncula in Assisi    

In my previous posting I mentioned that Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Pope John Paul II, was anxious to succeed John Paul as Pope in order to correct certain directions that John Paul had set for the Church in his 27 years as Pope.  We have already looked at the imprecise boundaries that John Paul had fostered regarding the validity of the sacramental systems of some Christian denominations, especially in the protocols involving hierarchs of the Anglican and Lutheran communities.  Again, with my jaundiced eye of an historian I think the battle about “valid” and “invalid” orders is much ado about nothing, or more precisely, that it has to do with the politics of certain historical situations rather than with any objective realities, but then I am no theologian and so perhaps I am missing something in a field in which I am only an amateur.  In this posting, however, I want to look at Ratzinger’s discomfort with John Paul’s dealings with non-Christians and especially with those who do not worship “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”  

One of the best known episodes involving John Paul and an alleged trespassing of religious boundaries was that on February 2, 1986 during a visit to Delhi, the Pope was greeted with a traditional Indian rite of greeting and a tilak, a dot of paste, was put on his forehead in welcome.  Detractors claim that the woman administrating the rite was a Hindu “priestess” and that the ceremony invoked various Hindu deities to bless the Pope.  Local Catholic authorities claim that the woman was a Catholic Sister and the rite was purely cultural and not religious.  I frankly don’t know the facts, but certainly if the rite were a Hindu ceremony it would be a potent violation of Catholic doctrine and discipline for any Catholic to participate in non-Christian worship at this level. On the other hand, the tilak has no specific religious significance—it can be given in various forms and designs and it can be a sign of many diverse devotions or discipleship paths—and it also can be merely a cultural tradition.  Whatever the rite and its meaning, however, it caused considerable consternation outside India and especially among evangelicals and Catholic “traditionalists.”

On October 27, 1986 John Paul hosted a Day of Prayer for Peace that was a convocation of 160 religious leaders representing 43 different religious traditions—32 Christian denominations and 11 other religious traditions including Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Shinto, Native Americans, and African ancestral religions.  The celebration was organized by the Community of Saint Egidio, a Roman Catholic fellowship that does remarkable work among the world’s poor and in efforts of peace, and it was held in Assisi.  Organizers arranged for various churches in Assisi to be given over to the diverse religious groups to be used for prayer services in their specific traditions before all came together for a interfaith “celebration” that was not a worship service but which did include prayers for peace in the different religious traditions.  Catholic “traditionalists” were appalled that Catholic worship sites were permitted to be used for non-Christian worship and the various sedevacantist factions claimed that this was one more example of why the person sitting in the Vatican was not actually a “true pope.”  Cardinal Ratzinger knew better, of course, but he was determined that this sort of things should not be repeated as it gave the impression of religious indifferentism—that is that all religions are of equal value and “truth” in their approaches to the Divine.  He initially refused to attend a second gathering organized for Assisi 25 years later; however when plans were made to give the various non-Christian religions gathering rooms in the Sacro Convento for their prayers rather than Catholic worship sites, he relented as was present.  He was present under pressure from Pope John Paul, however, and he was still not pleased with the overall arrangements.  Nevertheless when a third gathering was held in 2011 Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, attended a much modified gathering—a “conference” at which there was no interfaith worship. All in all, it must be said that Benedict has had much lower (some would say more realistic) expectations when it comes to ecumenism and interfaith relations and that the Catholic Church is at the lowest point in its relationship with both other Christian denominations and other world religions since John XXIII’s momentous announcement of changed policies regarding ecumenism and interreligious dialogue on January 25, 1959 when he convoked the Second Vatican Council.   Is this one more step of turning back Vatican II or is it simply a more realistic policy that acknowledges the immense difficulties in healing the breaches within Christianity, much less in building bridges of understanding among the religious traditions in the human family?  In either case, Benedict has made happy neither the progressives who want to move forward on religious dialogue nor the “traditionalists” who want to retreat into the pre-conciliar ghetto and wall up the world outside.  Granted the Holy Father can’t please everyone but this is one more indication of a lackluster papacy. 
Special Greetings to Kevin and Rolf

The Times They Are a Changin'

Sister Mary Spano, an American
Religious Sister working in Haiti

Years ago when I was living in Rome finishing my doctorate I volunteered one afternoon a week at a soup kitchen run by a phenomenal group of committed Catholic laity called the Community of Sant’ Egidio.  Four days a week they served approximately 1500 meals to the poor of Rome.  The place was a madhouse as the lines to get in snaked down the street and it was our task to serve the meals—excellent meals prepared by the kitchens of Al Italia, the Italian airline---to the crowds in a room that seated about 150.  You had to keep moving people through.  Get them in, get them seated, get the food in front of them, and then move them out to make room for those waiting to be next.  The room was noisy and brightly lit and the narrow aisles between the tables congested with people trying to find a place to sit and eat and volunteers trying to deliver the dinners.  One afternoon amid the chaos arrived Cardinal Josef Glemp, at the time the Archbishop of Warsaw in Poland.  These were the peak days of the John Paul pontificate and Glemp was a powerful figure in Rome as well as at home in Poland.  He had a huge retinue—several bishops, a half dozen monsignori, and a band of priests.  They had come to see the soup kitchen but spectators were the last thing needed—there was no room as it was and the servers couldn’t negotiate their way around the phalanx of dignitaries and the whole work began to congeal and grind to a halt.  An older Spanish nun in her gray habit and veil pushed through to the Cardinal and with her hands on her hips and looking him straight in the eye demanded: “have you come here to serve?”  (In Italian it would mean “have you come to wait on tables.”)  The Cardinal was startled by the question and jumping back a bit, said “no, of course not.”  Then she said with disgust:  “That’s too bad; The Son of Man has come to serve not to be served.” And with a contemptuous gesture she turned her back on him and started ordering people out of the way to make room for the waiters.     Another prelate might have put on an apron and gone to work but His Eminence’s visit was a short one and the entourage was soon speeding away in their black Vatican Mercedes from the lines of the poor waiting to be fed. 
     Cardinal Avery Dulles wrote in his book on Catholicism that the first millennium of the papacy was about witness; the second about power; and the third will be about service.  I think one could expand this insight from papacy to the Church as a whole.  The first thousand years were the years of great witness as the Gospel spread through the then-known world.  The second millennium was the consolidation of power—political, social, and economic—of the Church.  Hopefully we are on the cusp of the millennium of Service in which the Church will focus on how it can put itself, its personnel, and its resources (spiritual and temporal) at the betterment of humankind.  But this shift in the Church’s tectonic plates is frightening to those who know only what has been and cannot see the mission ahead.  When someone like our friend Raymond Burke has waited for years to get his red cape with the nine yards of scarlet silk and ermine trim and now sees that the new tune is about waiting on the tables of the poor—it scares him to the core.  And this isn’t just for the boys who buy their glad rags at Gamarelli’s (or as one campy Monsignor friend in Rome calls it “Glamorrelli’s”), but for the newly ordained parochial vicar in Gaithersburg or Madison (or your town or mine) who wears his collar and cuffs clerical vest and six hundred dollar black suit.  I was invited to lunch in one rectory in the Diocese of Arlington recently.  It was a spontaneous invitation—I had been to a funeral and when the pastor heard I was a Latinist he asked me to look at some books he had bought and help identify them—but the lunch was fabulous—soup, salad, entrée, desert—all served on Lennox China on top of a damask table cloth with matching napkins.  There was a good White Burgundy (from France) in Czech crystal goblets.  This wasn’t over the top and given the neighborhood of the parish was not ostentatious display but it does bespeak a model of priesthood which is oriented towards privilege. 

     I think that is really what the attack on LCWR and so many other areas of tension in the Church are about.  In the days of large motherhouses with polished floors and silver candlesticks on the altar, in the days when a white-veiled novice brought Reverend Mother her tea and cookies on a silver tray every afternoon at four,  in the days when the Sisters taught piano in the parlor to little girls scrubbed pink and in organza dresses,  in the days when the Sisters had to be picked up and driven to a funeral or a meeting with the bishop—it all bespoke hierarchy, good order, and a world in which the Church had power.   The Nuns Story, Sound of Music, and Trouble with Angels, anchored a certain view of Church into the minds not only of Catholics but of the general public.  The “nuns” were the public relations success of the Church.  Today’s nuns, on the other hand, wearing jeans and sweat-shirts, getting their hands dirty at work in women’s shelters,  speaking up in advocacy for abused women and children, and not taking s*** from no one—even the men in expensive black suits and high starched collars—are a sign that the days of Father Chuck Bing Crosby O’Malley and Sister Mary Ingrid Bergman Benedict are over.  That may be a pity but the times they are a changin’ and Saint Mary’s has done lost its bells (and belles).  So get used to it and put on your big-boy pants get busy on turning the model around from power and hierarchy to service and preferential option for the poor.