That Old Time (Catholic) Religion

I remember the ancient days in which "liberal" wasn't a dirty word, and "conservative" didn' necessarily carry a religious connotation. That was back when civil rights laws were enacted, when social programs were seen to be a good idea...and back when the Catholic Church was known for its famous progressives.

So does the author of this article, Suzanne Camino, who explains why she is still a Catholic:

I went to catechism classes where they told me that being Catholic was about serving the poor and seeing Jesus in every suffering person. 'If you want peace, work for justice,' were the oft-quoted words of Pope Paul VI, the pope we prayed for and listened to while I was in elementary and junior high school.

Copies of the Catholic Worker newspaper were distributed in the vestibules of the conservative Midwestern parishes we belonged to as I was growing up. I learned that the Catholic faith that moved Dorothy Day to action was the same faith that I should be nurturing for myself. The local Catholic newspaper featured stories of brave young women working with victims of political violence in El Salvador, among them Jean Donovan and Dorothy Kazel, women we would eventually mourn and revere as martyrs and models of Christian faith at work in the world.

This was the Catholic Church I learned. It was a church that celebrated the reforms of Vatican II, that reached out toward other faiths, that focused on the needs of the poor and the oppressed, that looked at abortion as a social problem to be approached with great compassion and in the much larger context of the 'seamless garment' of respect for all human life, at every stage. This was a church where women were emerging from their invisible, supportive roles to become leaders, to preach the gospel from the pulpit, to offer the body of Christ to communicants, and to head the newly-empowered parish councils. It was a church determined to keep pace with the times and there was every evidence that the pace would continue.

[Thanks, Rex Saxi, for pointing me to that article.] Like the political landscape, the Catholic Church has shifted to the right, it seems. But I remember the Catholicism Ms. Camino is talking about; although I am and have always been an Episcopalian, I attended a Catholic high school, at which the nuns were activists and feminists and all-around great role models for young women.

I imagine the Catholics of my (and Ms. Camino's) youth are still around and, more to the point, the people they educated and influenced, like Ms. Camino, are still around, too. Some of them have become Episcopalians, where they could find the familiar liturgy along with inclusion of women and gays, and broad ecumenism. "The Episcopal Church welcomes you," is the slogan.

If you read the papers, you probably know that the Episcopal Church is having its own travails over those very issues, and is at risk of schism, both between the U.S. church and the rest of the Anglican Communion, and within the U.S. church itself. The issue around which the controversy centers is the consecration of an openly gay bishop, but there were signs of a broader division, over a number of issues, that I remember seeing many years before. It seems that in many Episcopal congregations, if you support some of the very things that may have drawn Catholics away from their own church, the Episcopal church isn't so welcoming.

Of course I hope and pray that the rent can be healed, that the via media that is the foundation (I was taught) of the Episcopal Church will continue to mark a way in which diverse but sincerely held views can be respected. But I worry that it will not be, and then the old-time progressive Catholicism of Ms. Camino's youth and mine may become very attractive.

Assuming it, too, survives the ravages of time.

Do the Right Thing

It sucks to be second.

That seems to be the message the U.S. government is sending the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. The second worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil has been overshadowed by the worst (9/11, of course). More to the point, the victims and survivors of the World Trade Center attacks were compensated quite generously, while, as this Chicago Tribune article points out, many of the Oklahoma City families are struggling:

"`You don't count,'" is how Randy Ledger, an Oklahoma City survivor, says he and other victims of the attack interpreted the snub from Congress. "`You're just a bunch of redneck hicks down in Oklahoma.'"

Ledger, 48, a custodian in the Murrah building, suffered multiple skull fractures, brain damage and hearing loss, and has two chunks of glass embedded so near his spine that surgeons are reluctant to operate. Other shards periodically still work their way out through his skin.

After 10 years, he is still battling the federal Department of Labor over a worker's compensation claim.

Now certainly there were differences between the 9/11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing. One, as the article points out, is that 9/11 left Congress feeling an economic imperative to rescue the airlines from potentially devastating lawsuits.

Another is that the Oklahoma City attack was perpetrated by Americans. When the U.S. governments screams "Terrorist!" they don't very well like to be pointing home. That some of our own people could be inspired to hate our government so much that they would murder fellow Americans for being employed by that government is not something any of us like to think too much about.

But I think the more telling issue is economic. Many of those killed on 9/11 were well off financially, and the compensation after the fact was based on income, as the same article points out:

Kenneth Feinberg, the Washington, D.C., attorney who was the fund's special master and decided the amount of each multimillion-dollar award, questioned the fairness of Congress' instruction to replicate the tort system and base compensation on the lifetime earning potential of each victim. That decision ensured that the richest survivors received the most.

"The system . . . fuels divisiveness among the very people you're trying to help," Feinberg said. "The fireman's widow comes to me and says, `My husband died a hero, why am I getting a million dollars less than the banker who shoveled pencils for Enron on the 103rd floor?'"

"That decision ensured that the richest survivors received the most." Yeah, there weren't a lot of rich people in the day care center, or the Social Security office, or any of the other offices in the Murrah building. And I can't help thinking that's why their families are depending on charity while the families of the 9/11 victims suffer through the loss of their loved ones at least knowing they can pay the bills.

Not to say that our government should be making everyone millionaires for having a loved one in the wrong place at the wrong time. But if we're going to take care of the victims of one terrorist attack, it is only right that we do more to aid the victims of other such attacks. And we must do so without regard to their income: to do otherwise is to say that some American lives are more valuable than others. Our system is founded on equality, and we like to think we are a compassionate nation. Let's prove it by taking care of the people who suffered in Oklahoma City.

Christian Hijackers

I wish I was beating a dead horse. No such luck.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is, according to this article in The New York Times, going to participate in a TV program that portrays Democrats as opposed to people of faith.

I am a person of faith. Although I am not a registered Democrat, I vote with them more often than not. And I certainly don't hold with the judgmental (Matthew 7:1, anybody?), compassionless (we don't even have to leave the chapter: Matthew 7:12 has that one covered) views that Frist and his fellow participants in this witch-hunt seem to be supporting.

Here's one thing we can agree upon: there are people who are intolerant of and opposed to the message of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, those people are the religious right-wingers.

The message of Jesus Christ is clear: he associated with society's outcasts; he condemned greed; he demanded that we care for the poor and the imprisoned; he challenged the authorities, both religious and political. There's a whole book about it: it's called the New Testament. I recommend Frist and friends read it, and stop hijacking Christianity for their own self-serving purposes. Matthew's got a message for them about the real priorities of people of faith,.

May Light Perpetual Shine Upon Him

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. (Matthew 5:4)

I've been realizing in the last few days, as he approached the end of his life, how much Pope John Paul II meant to me.

I'm not Catholic. I disagreed with his staunchly conservative views opposing birth control (including condoms), abortion, women or married men in the priesthood, and an assortment of other things. But I never doubted that he held those views out of sincere and thoughtful consideration and faith.

Certainly his personal history (how cool is it that an actor and poet became pope?) and the charisma he displayed, particularly in the early years of his papacy, were appealing. I'm from Chicago, a city that is not only heavily Catholic, but also contains a Polish community the size of many cities in Poland. When the new pope came to Chicago and celebrated mass in Grant Park, most businesses (including the bookstore chain in whose headquarters I worked at the time) closed, and we all went to Popestock. Likewise, he was greeted as a star in the 130 or so nations of the world he visited.

But I see that charisma for what it is, and that's not the source of my admiration. It has more to do with global issues. He stood firmly against war, against the death penalty, against torture in any form, and didn't let political pressure quiet him. He drew attention to the economic disparities between the very rich nations and the very poor, and pointed out our duty as Christians with respect to that. He was the first pope to set foot in a synagogue and in a mosque. And he had the courage to admit the errors of the Catholic Church--from its condemnation of Galileo to the blind eye it turned to the Holocaust. I honor John Paul II, Karol Wotyla, for all of that.

Most important, though, in recent years here in the U.S., the religious right has tried to hijack the Bible, to turn the Gospel's message of love, charity, and responsibility to care for one's fellow human beings, into a message of control and often hatred. They've given Christians a bad name in this country, and it's been hard against the onslaught of high-profile hate-mongers like Falwell and company to remind people that that is most emphatically not the message of Christianity. But John Paul II had the high profile and the media savvy (as a prolific, best-selling author, as well as a public figure) to be that spokesperson for the true Gospel, the one that condemns violence and commands love. And I think he understood how important that was, and never ceased, even as his health waned.

And for that, I honor him. For that, I miss him.

I pray that the college of cardinals, in choosing his successor, will also know how important that was. A lot of us, Catholics and other Christians, are counting on it.