Fed Up With Francis

Well Pope Francis’s favorability ratings among Americans has taken a serious dip.  All I can say is that it is about time.  For two and a half years now everybody has been falling all over themselves over Francis and I have been asking myself: Are they listening to the man???  Really listening???

Well, ok, not everybody was falling all over him.  The Krazies spotted something wrong right from the first.  A Jesuit?!?  Not a good sign!  “Francis”—hmmm, a break with tradition, shoulda been a Pius or an Alexander.   And where is the papal folderol that we had grown used to again???  You know, the fur-trimmed cape, the floppy Santa-hat, the ruby-reds on his feet???  But the regular joes liked it: living simply, eating in the cafeteria with the staff, the used car to get back and forth to the office.  “A poor Church for the poor”—good rhetoric, clever marketing.  But there were a few more who saw the problem: without the fancy shoes and living on the palace, he becomes just another priest doing his job.  I mean he had might as well just get a bicycle to ride around like the Queen of Holland.  Michael Voris was first to sound the blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of a Jesuit claiming to be Pope when the real Pope is still alive.  Now that Mother A. is incapacitated, thank heavens we have Michael Voris to be our infallible guide when the magisterium fails.   

And then there was “who am I to judge.”  That alienated all the Pharisees.  I mean, if the Pope can’t judge then the rest of us can’t keep score.  This time it is Lions 0, Christians 1.  Game’s over.  Son of a Bitch called an “olly olly in free” for sinners.  Damn.  The I’m-holier-than-thou crowd still hasn’t forgiven him for that.  Poor Carol McKinley at Throw the Bums Out 2010, aka The Tenth Crusade, aka What the Pope Really Means, and Janet over at Restore D.C. Catholicism, and Mary Anne at Les Femmes: what will these women do if they can’t cast the first stone at anyone who doesn’t meet their criterion for worthy reception of Holy Communion.  If we don’t get back on track, next thing you know prostitutes and tax-collectors will be entering the Kingdom of Heaven before us. 

But despite all this, still Francis managed to hold on to the vast majority of Catholics.  Only the spiritually elite were seeing it.   Most of us weren’t interesting in sitting in judgment anyway, and most of us liked the Pope being a bit down at the heels after the previous Pope’s somewhat of a dowager’s penchant for damask and old lace.  And all that Swiss Guard, and Gentlemen of His Holiness, and stamping of feet and saluting of soldiers and thrones and things stand in somewhat dramatic contrast to the plain hard wood of the Cross.  The gilded crucifix thing used to work; doesn’t anymore.  So we could live with this guy: we liked it actually.  But then he began to move from the theatrical to the everyday and that increasingly made us uncomfortable. Of course before we run-of-the-mill Catholics realized we were being hoodwinked by this somewhat commonplace excuse for a pope, there was the famous Father Hunwicke, a refugee from women-priested Anglicanism who has been appalled at Francis’ disdain for the pontifical; but then the good Father is a subject of her Britannic Majesty and so can’t imagine life beyond the fantasy realm of Queens and palaces.  And our own America presbyter vagans, Father Z, another convert, has been beside himself about the Pope’s everyday style.  Why did these people become Catholics anyway: it certainly wasn’t the Gospel.  What did you go out into the desert to see?  A pope dressed in fine clothes?  Those who wear elegant clothes and live luxuriously are found in palaces.    If you don’t like a down-at-the-heels Jesuit from Buenos Aires, you certainly aren’t going to be happy with a carpenter from Nazareth. 

But then it began to get a little to hot-in-the-kitchen for the rest of us.  Frankly, when it comes to the immigrant thing, a lot of us want Donald Trump for Pope.  I mean if this Francis fellow wants to ramble on about Africans swimming ashore at Lampedusa, who cares?  Let the I-talians deal with their own problems, but when he starts talking about those Latino types climbing over our border wall with their diseases and their penchant for drugs and rape and violence, well, he should stick to things he knows about. 

And then it only got worse.  He won’t pontificate at the Traditional-Latin-Mass-of-All-Ages-and-Everywhere-Like-Jesus-did-at-the-Last-Supper (you know when he gave the Apostles Holy Communion—in one kind—on the tongue as they knelt around the table), but he’ll pontificate about Climate Change and how he thinks capitalism is ruining the earth.  He should stick to faith and morals.  In this age of abortion and rampant birth control and same-sex marriage any pope has more than enough to keep him busy without interfering with fracking and strip-mining and deforestation and human trafficking.  I don’t go to Church to hear about this world; I go to hear about the next world.  I mean, we are going to be in heaven (or hell) a long time; much longer than we will live on this earth.  So who cares about this world.  God gave it to us to dominate so strip ‘er bare and make what money you can doing so.  There’s no sin in being rich.  Jesus endorsed trickle-down economics when he told us about how that poor fellow, what was his name?  Lazarus?  How he used to eat the crumbs from the rich man’s table.  We need to hear more about that—what was it that Ronald Reagan said: when enough crumbs fall all boats rise.  No, this Francis fellow will destroy America as we know it.   He’s got to go.  Never trust a Pope who wears black shoes; he isn’t the real McCoy.  

Bazinga.  

Evangelical Catholicism: The Challenges of A Catholic Response to the Migrants at Our Border

Pope Francis Preaching at 

Lampedusa, July 2013 

In my next posting I will begin the story of Elizabeth I and her refashioning of the Ancient Church of England into what will become contemporary Anglicanism—though I don’t think good Queen Bess would recognize it or be particularly happy with it, Anglicanism today being in some respects “too Catholic” for her taste and in others respects being “too Protestant,” in such matters as the admission of women to the ministries of bishop and priest, the blessing of same sex marriages, or a determinative voice for the laity in Church governance.  (Elizabeth’s objection to the laity having a determinative voice would be rooted in her opposition to democratic procedures in the Church which she believed—in considerable contention with Parliament—should by under the royal dictate.  But as for what Anglicanism has become in the centuries since Elizabeth, be patient: it will take us a while to get there.   In this posting I am going to return to the topic of Evangelical Catholicism and will probably alternate the two topics for a while. 

We have looked at the foundations for what George Weigel calls “Evangelical Catholicism”: a Catholicism rooted in and drawing its strength from “Word and Sacrament.”  Evangelical Catholicism cuts through both the Jesuitical sophistry of neo-Thomism and the sissified piety of nineteenth-century neo-gothic romanticism and returns to the Patristic sources of understanding the Christian life in terms of the Holy Scriptures and the Sacramental Practice of the Church. Such an evangelical Catholicism invites the faithful to—indeed demands of them—an intense commitment to Christian discipleship in which they mature into a deep and true spirituality as well as the moral capacity to make life-choices rooted in their zealous conviction that the Kingdom of God is not some future other-worldly picnic in the skies with Grandma and all our other lost loved ones, but a present, here-and-now this world reality for those who “listen to the Word of God and put it into practice.” 

Let’s start unpacking this ideal by examining its implications for a real-life crisis in which we find ourselves today in America: the plight of the immigrants, particularly but not exclusively children, who are illegally crossing our borders each day.  What should our attitude towards those migrants be? 

Many people—including many Catholics—can only look at the issue simply in terms of “The Law.”  They are breaking the law.  They are illegal.  Therefore, they have no rights and we have no responsibilities towards them.  Like those whom I mentioned in the posting about Lawrence Kohlberg and the stages of moral development who are fixated on the idea of law—whether law qua law as some sort of unchanging and binding moral absolute or law as stabilizing social convention—many simply say because they are “illegal” we have no moral responsibility for them and they should simply be turned back, put on buses or trains, sent home to where they came from.  But for the Evangelical Catholic, how would the word of God guide us in our moral response to the migrants?  Pope Francis had much to say—and said it well—from an evangelical perspective in the homily he gave at Lampedusa last summer.  Granted he was talking about migrants to Europe and not to the United States, but the moral principles he laid down are not confined to one particular situation.  They are universally applicable. 

God’s two questions echo even today, as forcefully as ever! How many of us, myself included, have lost our bearings; we are no longer attentive to the world in which we live; we don’t care; we don’t protect what God created for everyone, and we end up unable even to care for one another! And when humanity as a whole loses its bearings, it results in tragedies like the one we have witnessed.

"Where is your brother?" His blood cries out to me, says the Lord. This is not a question directed to others; it is a question directed to me, to you, to each of us. These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death. How often do such people fail to find understanding, fail to find acceptance, fail to find solidarity. And their cry rises up to God! Once again I thank you, the people of Lampedusa, for your solidarity. … Yet God is asking each of us: "Where is the blood of your brother which cries out to me?" Today no one in our world feels responsible; we have lost a sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters. We have fallen into the hypocrisy of the priest and the levite whom Jesus described in the parable of the Good Samaritan: we see our brother half dead on the side of the road, and perhaps we say to ourselves: "poor soul…!", and then go on our way. It’s not our responsibility, and with that we feel reassured, assuaged. The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are insubstantial; they offer a fleeting and empty illusion which results in indifference to others; indeed, it even leads to the globalization of indifference. In this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others: it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business!

…

"Adam, where are you?" "Where is your brother?" These are the two questions which God asks at the dawn of human history, and which he also asks each man and woman in our own day, which he also asks us. But I would like us to ask a third question: "Has any one of us wept because of this situation and others like it?" Has any one of us grieved for the death of these brothers and sisters? Has any one of us wept for these persons who were on the boat? For the young mothers carrying their babies? For these men who were looking for a means of supporting their families? We are a society which has forgotten how to weep, how to experience compassion – "suffering with" others: the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep! In the Gospel we have heard the crying, the wailing, the great lamentation: "Rachel weeps for her children… because they are no more". Herod sowed death to protect his own comfort, his own soap bubble. And so it continues… Let us ask the Lord to remove the part of Herod that lurks in our hearts; let us ask the Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty of our world, of our own hearts, and of all those who in anonymity make social and economic decisions which open the door to tragic situations like this. "Has any one wept?" Today has anyone wept in our world?

What are the moral principles we can derive from the Holy Father’s homily at Lampedusa?

1.   The migrants are our brothers and sisters, children of the same Father.

2.   We have a moral responsibility for the lives and safety of our migrant brothers and sisters.

3.   The goods God created in this world are not given to one nation or another but are created for the welfare of all God’s children regardless of nationality.

4.   Much of the suffering that has driven the migrants to leave their homes to seek not only opportunity but safety has been caused by the economic and political factors of our seemingly developed societies.

5.   Failure to respond to the humanitarian needs of our migrant brothers and sisters is grossly sinful, a narcissistic indifference to the plight of human suffering

6.   The appropriate response to the tragedy facing migrant people today is a compassionate solidarity of championing their right to seek a better life, and certainly, at the minimum,  to respond to their immediate need and give them safety, health care, food, and protection.  

But Lampedusa was not Francis final word.  He did, about two weeks ago, address a message particular to the situation we are facing on our southern border. 

Many people who are forced into emigration suffer and often die tragically; many of their rights are violated, they are obliged to separate from their families and, unfortunately, continue to be subjected to racist attitudes and xenophobia.Faced with this situation, I repeat what I stated in the Message for this year’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees: “A change of attitude towards migrants and refugees is needed on the part of everyone, moving away from attitudes of defensiveness and fear, indifference and marginalization — all typical of a ‘throwaway culture’ — towards attitudes based on a culture of encounter, the only culture capable of building a better, more just and fraternal world”.Furthermore, I am keen to call attention to the tens of thousands of children who emigrate alone, unaccompanied, to escape from poverty and violence: this is a class of migrants who, from Central America and from Mexico, cross the border with the United States of America in extreme conditions, in search of a hope that that most of the time is in vain. They increase day by day. Such a humanitarian emergency demands, first of all, urgent intervention, such that these minors are received and protected. Such measures, however, will not suffice, where they are not accompanied by information policies concerning the dangers of such a journey and, above all, which foster development in their Countries of origin. Finally, to face this challenge, it is necessary to draw the attention of the entire International Community in order that new forms of legal and safe migration be adopted.

Francis calls the response of those who feel no obligation to the least of Christ’s brothers and sisters for what it is: racist attitudes and xenophobia.  We need to move away from the fear, the indifference, the zeal to protect for ourselves what we have, rather than be willing to share what we have been given, and the tendency to ostracize those who are different from us.  We need to move towards a culture of what John Paul II called “Solidarity”—the realization that God’s plan for the human family is a vulnerable and trusting interdependency.  In the long term we need to eliminate the need for people to flee their homes in order to be safe  from gangs or to achieve an economic sufficiency, but while we heal the wound we need the Band-Aid as well.  The immediate needs of the people at our borders for safety, for food and shelter, and above all for dignity and respect must be met.   I am not extolling Francis’ admonition on the matter of refugees because it is Francis’ but because it is consistent with the Scriptures and reflections a course of action based on moral principles.  It is not simply the Catholic response, but reflects an evangelical Catholic response.  Those who opt otherwise are no more authentic in their Catholic faith than are those who claim that they can be both truly Catholic and favor abortion, or the death penalty, or any undermining the culture of life. 

Let Whomever Has Ears With Which To Hear, Hear

Pope Francis preaching on
Immigration at Lampedusa, July
2013

The issue of the day is the destiny of the men, women, and especially children that have come to the southern borders of our country looking for safety, for a better life, and to belong to a society which they see as far greater than that in which they had been born.  No one important—of either political party, of the Congress or the Presidency or the Judiciary, of the governors of the various states or their peoples—are ready to give them a welcome.  To the contrary, hostile mobs surround the busses that are meant to transport them to the “processing centers” demanding that they be thrown back across the border and never allowed a future in this country.  I can understand that.  This is a land of limited opportunity.  As the gulf between the those who have and those who have not grows wider and wider; as the middle class slides steadily into a life of less while the few rich grow even more obscenely rich, there is barely enough for you and for me; how can we allow the little that is left be stretched even further?  Perhaps we should look back at the homily that Pope Francis gave just over a year ago at Lampedusa  about the immigrants that are flooding the shores of Europe.  Yes, he was talking about immigration to Europe and we are talking about immigration to our nation, you objection is?  No, these words are meant for us as well. 

HOMILY OF HOLY FATHER FRANCIS



"Arena" sports camp, Salina Quarter
Monday, 8 July 2013

 Immigrants dying at sea, in boats which were vehicles of hope and became vehicles of death. That is how the headlines put it. When I first heard of this tragedy a few weeks ago, and realized that it happens all too frequently, it has constantly come back to me like a painful thorn in my heart. So I felt that I had to come here today, to pray and to offer a sign of my closeness, but also to challenge our consciences lest this tragedy be repeated. Please, let it not be repeated! First, however, I want to say a word of heartfelt gratitude and encouragement to you, the people of Lampedusa and Linosa, and to the various associations, volunteers and security personnel who continue to attend to the needs of people journeying towards a better future. You are so few, and yet you offer an example of solidarity! Thank you! I also thank Archbishop Francesco Montenegro for all his help, his efforts and his close pastoral care. I offer a cordial greeting to Mayor Giusi Nicolini: thank you so much for what you have done and are doing. I also think with affection of those Muslim immigrants who this evening begin the fast of Ramadan, which I trust will bear abundant spiritual fruit. The Church is at your side as you seek a more dignified life for yourselves and your families. To all of you: o’scià!

This morning, in the light of God’s word which has just been proclaimed, I wish to offer some thoughts meant to challenge people’s consciences and lead them to reflection and a concrete change of heart.

"Adam, where are you?" This is the first question which God asks man after his sin. "Adam, where are you?" Adam lost his bearings, his place in creation, because he thought he could be powerful, able to control everything, to be God. Harmony was lost; man erred and this error occurs over and over again also in relationships with others. "The other" is no longer a brother or sister to be loved, but simply someone who disturbs my life and my comfort. God asks a second question: "Cain, where is your brother?" The illusion of being powerful, of being as great as God, even of being God himself, leads to a whole series of errors, a chain of death, even to the spilling of a brother’s blood!

God’s two questions echo even today, as forcefully as ever! How many of us, myself included, have lost our bearings; we are no longer attentive to the world in which we live; we don’t care; we don’t protect what God created for everyone, and we end up unable even to care for one another! And when humanity as a whole loses its bearings, it results in tragedies like the one we have witnessed.

"Where is your brother?" His blood cries out to me, says the Lord. This is not a question directed to others; it is a question directed to me, to you, to each of us. These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death. How often do such people fail to find understanding, fail to find acceptance, fail to find solidarity. And their cry rises up to God! Once again I thank you, the people of Lampedusa, for your solidarity. I recently listened to one of these brothers of ours. Before arriving here, he and the others were at the mercy of traffickers, people who exploit the poverty of others, people who live off the misery of others. How much these people have suffered! Some of them never made it here.

"Where is your brother?" Who is responsible for this blood? In Spanish literature we have a comedy of Lope de Vega which tells how the people of the town of Fuente Ovejuna kill their governor because he is a tyrant. They do it in such a way that no one knows who the actual killer is. So when the royal judge asks: "Who killed the governor?", they all reply: "Fuente Ovejuna, sir". Everybody and nobody! Today too, the question has to be asked: Who is responsible for the blood of these brothers and sisters of ours? Nobody! That is our answer: It isn’t me; I don’t have anything to do with it; it must be someone else, but certainly not me. Yet God is asking each of us: "Where is the blood of your brother which cries out to me?" Today no one in our world feels responsible; we have lost a sense of responsibility for our brothers and sisters. We have fallen into the hypocrisy of the priest and the levite whom Jesus described in the parable of the Good Samaritan: we see our brother half dead on the side of the road, and perhaps we say to ourselves: "poor soul…!", and then go on our way. It’s not our responsibility, and with that we feel reassured, assuaged. The culture of comfort, which makes us think only of ourselves, makes us insensitive to the cries of other people, makes us live in soap bubbles which, however lovely, are insubstantial; they offer a fleeting and empty illusion which results in indifference to others; indeed, it even leads to the globalization of indifference. In this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference. We have become used to the suffering of others: it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business!

Here we can think of Manzoni’s character – "the Unnamed". The globalization of indifference makes us all "unnamed", responsible, yet nameless and faceless.

"Adam, where are you?" "Where is your brother?" These are the two questions which God asks at the dawn of human history, and which he also asks each man and woman in our own day, which he also asks us. But I would like us to ask a third question: "Has any one of us wept because of this situation and others like it?" Has any one of us grieved for the death of these brothers and sisters? Has any one of us wept for these persons who were on the boat? For the young mothers carrying their babies? For these men who were looking for a means of supporting their families? We are a society which has forgotten how to weep, how to experience compassion – "suffering with" others: the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep! In the Gospel we have heard the crying, the wailing, the great lamentation: "Rachel weeps for her children… because they are no more". Herod sowed death to protect his own comfort, his own soap bubble. And so it continues… Let us ask the Lord to remove the part of Herod that lurks in our hearts; let us ask the Lord for the grace to weep over our indifference, to weep over the cruelty of our world, of our own hearts, and of all those who in anonymity make social and economic decisions which open the door to tragic situations like this. "Has any one wept?" Today has anyone wept in our world?

Lord, in this liturgy, a penitential liturgy, we beg forgiveness for our indifference to so many of our brothers and sisters. Father, we ask your pardon for those who are complacent and closed amid comforts which have deadened their hearts; we beg your forgiveness for those who by their decisions on the global level have created situations that lead to these tragedies. Forgive us, Lord!

Today too, Lord, we hear you asking: "Adam, where are you?" "Where is the blood of your brother?"

At the end of Mass, the Pope said the following words :

Before imparting my blessing to you I want to thank you once again; you people of Lampedusa, for the example of love, charity and hospitality that you have set us and are still setting us. The Bishop said that Lampedusa is a beacon. May this example be a beacon that shines throughout the world, so that people will have the courage to welcome those in search of a better life. Thank you for bearing this witness! And I also want to thank you for your tenderness which I have felt in Fr Stefano himself. He told me on the boat what he and the parochial vicar do. I thank you all, and I thank you, Fr Stefano.

Where is your brother?  When will acknowledge that these men and women and children crossing the borders are our brothers and sisters—brothers and sisters!!!  Unless, of course, we are some sort of unbelievers who don’t take God at his word—these are our brothers and sisters we are turning our back on.  Governor Perry and Speaker Boehner and President Obama and the whole lot of them, Democrat or Republican, make me ashamed in how they exploit this situation for political purposes.  To quote the Pope:

These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death. How often do such people fail to find understanding, fail to find acceptance, fail to find solidarity. And their cry rises up to God!

I am grateful that Cardinal O’Malley and Bishop Kicanas went to the border and celebrated the Eucharist there, handing the Body of Christ through “the wall,” that symbol of how selfishly sinful we are.  There is nothing more un-Catholic than that wall.  God did not put a wall of separation between peoples: in fact Christ died to bring down any wall of separation between God and us or between us and one another. But where are the majority of our bishops?  Where are our clergy?  Silent as they were for centuries in the face of slavery.  Silent as they are in the face of state-sponsored murder in the death penalty.  Silent as they are in the face of so many gross systemic injustices.  When the history of the Church comes to its final conclusion in the face of the King who comes on his royal throne to separate the nations as a Shepherd separates the sheep from the goats (cf Mt 25:32), the response of American Catholics to the plight of our immigrant brothers and sisters will be as shameful as any inquisition, as collaboration in the Holocaust, as the burning of “heretics,” as the sex abuse scandal.  We need to change that while there is still time.