Still gnawing on Pope Francis’s recent letter about joy. (Caution: 1,000+ wds) Francis wrote (in 34) that “in today’s world of instant communication and occasionally biased media coverage, the message we preach runs a greater risk of being distorted or reduced to some of its secondary aspects. In this way certain issues which are part of the Church’s moral teaching are taken out of the context which gives them their meaning. …” I have a problem here. For the past year, I focused on a “secondary aspect” of the Church’s teaching (about immigration), and this year I am focusing on another secondary aspect (about marriage). I intend to keep the two in sight simultaneously as well as I can, because I am appalled by the frequency with which Catholics accept the Church’s teaching on one of these issues while rejecting the other. Political party or ideological stance trumps Church teaching, in the lives of so many people who claim to be faithful Catholics! If I reach left and reach right and try to bring them together, does that put me in the heart of the Church? Absolutely not! It gives me three projects. (What did Thomas Aquinas do when he was through with his thousands of projects? Love matters: the fat man levitated.) So what’s the context that gives them meaning? God loves his people. Francis: “The biggest problem is when the message we preach then seems identified with those secondary aspects which, important as they are, do not in and of themselves convey the heart of Christ’s message.” In the midst of all my talk about immigration, what really matters? It’s the face of Jesus, a remarkable child, looking over the edge of a blanket as he bounces along on the back of a donkey heading south into exile in Egypt. You are not alone. There’s much to say, more to do – but that’s the heart of it. Francis (35): “Pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed.” Am I obsessed? Likely so. Is my style disjointed? Perhaps incurably so. Do I have a multitude of doctrines in mind? Indeed, and trimming it to three is not a cure. Am I intent of imposing these ideas? I am inclined to plead innocent here, or guilty with explanation. I try not to “impose,” but I argue with vigor. Is that the same? (Is that honest?) Here’s what I think about imposing or not imposing. I recall a book by Herman Wouk, entitled “Here Is My God.” Wouk was a great novelist, Pulitzer Prize winner, World War II era; his best known work was “The Caine Mutiny.” He also wrote some nonfiction, including his explanation of Orthodox Judaism. I read it about 40 years ago, and it made a huge impact on me. I do not remember details clearly, but the impression he made was about a paradox about details. Specifically, the weirder Wouk got, and the less like my life the details of his life were, the closer I felt to him. For example (if memory serves at all), he wrote about wearing tassels on his prayer shawl. I don’t have a prayer shawl, and I don’t like tassels. But when he explained what the tassels were for, and what they meant to him, I was certain that he knew what he was talking about. I was certain that he spoke to God, and he listened to God. I was certain that the God whom he knew was the same God I know. It was as if he had picked up an old-fashioned rotary-dial telephone, and explained how the thing works when he called his grandmother to make her laugh. The tool didn’t matter; I was fascinated by the details about the conversation that leaked out of the corners of the description of the phone. The farther Wouk’s experience got from my experience, the more familiar it seemed. He talked about tassels, and that was not a shared experience. But the tassels were about his effort to hear God who speaks with love, and his effort to respond obediently. Tassel-shmassel: I think I got the point. Wouk’s phone is not my phone. But his God is my God. But he couldn’t make his point without the phone – or the tassel, or whatever. From Wouk, I learned that I should explain what I think, what I experience, what I know, who I love. I shouldn’t water it down to an easy lowest common denominator, some common grey stew. People who listen can sort out the blanket from the child. Maybe I will talk about immigration, and the person who hears me will resolve not to cuss at tailgaters during rush hour any more. I don’t have to understand the link. I do have to speak clearly about what I know. Francis: “When we adopt a pastoral goal and a missionary style which would actually reach everyone without exception or exclusion, the message has to concentrate on the essentials, on what is most beautiful, most grand, most appealing and at the same time most necessary.” “… on the essentials, on what is most beautiful …” Did he say that what is essential and what is most beautiful are the same? Solzhenitsyn quoted this idea from Dostoievski: “Beauty will be the salvation of the world.” So what did Solzhenitsyn write: He wrote a grim tale about a prisoner in a grimy camp in a frigid and desolate Siberian wasteland. Where was the beauty in “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich”? I think that Solzhenitsyn did succeed in showing what courage and loyalty and gratitude look like, refined and purified by suffering – and I think they are indeed beautiful. Essential, beautiful: I accept the link. What I’m writing about marriage is unlike what I wrote about immigration. With immigration, my principal target audience was thoughtful Catholics; I argued from principles. With marriage, my target audience is emotional Christians: it’s mostly narrative. With immigration, my key point was: the Lord demands that we offer hospitality. With marriage, my key point is, marriage is shockingly rich and majestic and beautiful. Keep talking, Francis. I’m listening.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 02:41:12 +0000
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