Ordo Amoris and The Good Samaritan

We lost the Pope early this week, on Easter Monday. He was laid to rest this morning in the Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, hands down the most beautiful of the major churches in Rome, in my humble opinion.  After what would be his final act as Pontiff, blessing the multitudes gathered in St. Peter's Square to celebrate the most important holiday in Christendom, Pope Francis retired to his residence in the Vatican where he left this world at 7:15AM local time. 

May he rest in peace.

It's interesting that in one of his final meetings with a world leader, Francis met with the Vice President of the United States. The late Pontiff made no bones about his opposition to the current US administration, especially regarding its stance on immigration, refugees, and mass deportation.

One may be tempted to think the VP lectured the ailing Pope on Catholic teaching that he believes justifies mass deportation, just as he lectured Germans that they're being too hard on Nazis or to Volodmyr Zelenski that he wasn't sucking up enough to the current POTUS.. But it doesn't appear the Easter Sunday meeting between the two was anything more than an exchange of pleasantries and the all-important photo-op. 

The rift between the Pope and the VP began with a Fox interview in January where the VP addressed how his administration's policies on deportation and foreign aid, jibe with his Christian faith. He said this: 

You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country. And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.

He went on to claim that the "far left" inverts that hierarchy.

Then he attached a name to the hierarchy during a social media squabble:

Just google “ordo amoris.” ...the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory (Stewart, a British commentator and former politician) really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?

On a very basic level, the VP is right of course. Ordo amoris, first introduced to the Church by Saint Augustine in the early Sixth Century, makes clear that all forms of love are not equal. Scripture puts love of God and love of one's parents squarely at the forefront, as clearly stated in the Ten Commandments. From there the other kinds of love we share with others naturally follow. 

How absurd would it be if we for example, sent our entire paycheck to charity without leaving enough to feed our own family?

To the best of my knowledge not explicitly mentioned in scripture, love of oneself might also reside at the center of the hierarchy. More than anything, ordo amoris addresses the practical aspects of life in relation to the practice of faith. We are only human after all.

Much like the instructions we hear on every commercial flight when we are told that in the case of the loss of cabin pressure, we should place the oxygen mask over our face before helping others do the same, it is practical and logical to assume we are not in a good position to help others if we don't help ourselves first.

The same goes for love. 

But what about the idea that beyond our family and other loved ones, there is a hierarchy of categories of relationships, each one less worthy of our love and charity than the one proceeding it?

Was that what Jesus had in mind when he commanded his disciples to love one another as he had loved them? Did he have a hierarchy which determined how much he doled out his love and compassion to each of them?

With that logic, one could easily construct an infinite number of categories to separate people in the hierarchy chain. How about fellow members of a particular faith or political party? Or members of the same ethnicity or race? What about fans of the same football team? 

If I were to use that logic, woe be to the Trumplican, Muslim, Indonesian, Green Bay Packer fan who happens to cross my path during a crisis. 

The VP's interesting take on Catholic theology was not lost on Pope Francis who shortly before his final health crisis, wrote an encyclical to the bishops of the United States where he states that the universal dignity of every human being surpasses all other concerns. He wrote:

...Jesus Christ, loving everyone with a universal love, educates us in the permanent recognition of the dignity of every human being, without exception. In fact, when we speak of “infinite and transcendent dignity,” we wish to emphasize that the most decisive value possessed by the human person surpasses and sustains every other juridical consideration that can be made to regulate life in society. Thus, all the Christian faithful and people of good will are called upon to consider the legitimacy of norms and public policies in the light of the dignity of the person and his or her fundamental rights, not vice versa.

You can read the encyclical in its entirety here. 

On the true ordo amoris, Francis writes:

Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups. In other words: the human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation. The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the “Good Samaritan” (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.

To current ears, the phrase "Good Samaritan" implies anyone who does a good deed, generally above and beyond the call of duty. But in the time the parable found in the Gospel of Luke was written, the Samaritans were a group of people who shared a common mistrust and emnity with the Jews (the original recipients of the Gospel). From the perspective of a contemporary dyed-in-the-wool believer, the term "good Samaritan" might have the same impact as calling someone a "good athiest", which is precisely why the story is so compelling and revolutionary.

Answering the question "who exactly is my neighbor?" Jesus proposed the story of a man, presumably a Jew, who is robbed and left for dead on the side of a road. Two upstanding members of the Jewish community, a priest and a Levite have neither the time not the inclination to help the man. Next comes a Samaritan who cares for the man's wounds then takes him to an inn where he asks the keeper to care for the man until his return where he will compensate the innkeeper for all his expenses.

Which of the three Jesus then asked, was doing God's will? Not even willing to let the word Samaritan cross his lips, the questioner responded: "He who showed mercy on him."

"Now go and do likewise" was Jesus' reply.

Our neighbor in other words, is all of humanity.

In his encyclical, Francis places the migrant fleeing terror, oppression, and all other sorts of indignities at home at the center of Scripture. He leads off his letter describing the Jews' Exodus from Egyptian slavery and the Holy Family's escape into Egypt, fleeing a jealous and "ungodly" king. (Could there be someone currently in our midst that the Pope had in mind?).

In the late Pope's words, The Holy Family:

are the model, the example and the consolation of emigrants and pilgrims of every age and country, of all refugees of every condition who, beset by persecution or necessity, are forced to leave their homeland, beloved family and dear friends for foreign lands.

The late Holy Father did not discount the practical concerns of society facing an influx of immigrants:

one must recognize the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival.

And yet:

the act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness.

Much has been made about the differences between Pope Francis and his immediate predecessors. But those differences were as much if not more about style rather than substance.

Conservative pundits in the US and perhaps elsewhere, couldn't hide their giddiness at this Pope's passing. To them he was an unapologetic progressive, even a heretic who was bent on destroying the Church and its traditions. Liberals on the other hand lamented that Francis did not do enough to reform the Church, changing all the things about it they didn't like. I guess the fact that the bitterly divided Church still remains intact, at this writing anyway, means that Pope Francis did a pretty good job. 

Shortly after he became Pope, in 2013, I wrote this piece about how the dean of American blowhard ultra-conservative talking heads, the late Rush Limbaugh, was particularly unhappy with Francis, particularly with his views on capitalism. I pointed out in the piece that while Limbaugh couldn't say enough good things about Francis' two predecessors, Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II, he either didn't know or ignored that those two were also very critical of systems that place the making of money ahead of basic human dignity. In fact their views on the subject were hardly different at all from Francis's.

Naturally right now there is a spirited debate about who will be chosen to carry on as Pope. Conservatives have made a list of candidates they feel will best represent their interests and liberals have done the same. But the story of the Good Samaritan is so central to the faith that whoever ends up wearing the "shoes of the fisherman" in a few weeks' time, will be loathe to go against it, J.D. Vance's opinion notwithstanding.

I closed that post with this thought:

We may claim the Almighty for ourselves but God is neither liberal nor conservative, Democrat nor Republican. He is neither a Communist nor a Capitalist. His message doesn't belong exclusively to the Right nor to the Left, to the Jew or the Gentile, or to you or me. It belongs to all of us.

Somehow we're just all going to have to accept that.

Talking Point Number Three: Islamophobia

As long as I could remember, my mother dreamed of visiting Greece. While celebrating Christmas Eve 1994 at my parents' home shortly after her retirement, I opened a small package with my name on it under the tree. Inside was a ticket for an Aegean Cruise which was to be spent with my parents. Already in my thirties, I was between relationships and feeling particularly alone at the time, so it was the perfect moment for such a trip. "Maybe you'll meet someone" my mother suggested.

The trip took place in spring of the following year. It began in Athens, a city fascinating for its antiquities, less so for its more contemporary aspects. We spent a few days there before embarking on the cruise. It so happened there was a strike of dock workers at the port of Piraeus where we were scheduled to board the ship, aptly named the Marco Polo. That strike proved fortunate as the travel company arranged for us to meet up with the ship farther down the coast enabling us to visit more of mainland Greece including the ruins of the city of Corinth whose first century Church was the recipient of a series of letters from Saint Paul which would become part of the New Testament. 

Close by we boarded the ship which took us first to the picture postcard islands of Mykonos (famous for its windmills) and Santorini, before sailing to more substantial places, first south to Heraklion, the capital of Crete. There we visited the most ancient site of our trip, the Bronze Age Palace of Knossos, center of the ancient Minoan Civilization. From there we sailed east to the island of Rhodes where my mom and I took an excursion to the city of Lindos, featuring its own city in the air (Acropolis), its magnificence in my estimation anyway, eclipsing the more famous one in Athens. 

The following day was spent entirely at sea with a sail-by (if there is such a term) of the island of Patmos where legend has it, the Apostle John wrote the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible. 

Had our trip ended there, it would have been a smashing success. But in retrospect it was just getting started. We were headed for Turkey.

One of our stops on the western coast of Turkey was the city of Çanakkale, strategically located at the entrance to the Dardanelles (also known as the Straight of Gallipoli for you WWI buffs), the narrow inlet that connects the Aegean to the Sea of Marmara, then via the Bosporus which bisects the city of Istanbul, the Black Sea. About one half hour from Çanakkale sit the ruins of the ancient city of Troy. 

With that visit in mind, to get into the spirit of the trip, I bought along a copy of the Odyssey to read during our time at sea. As is often the fate of good intentions however, there were far too many distractions to seriously consider Homer's epic poem: attending to my father's fragile health, the result of his over-exposure to the Aegean sun, thoughts of my own sad state of affairs back home, and perhaps most of all the female members of the ship's staff, sunbathing topless on the top deck of the ship. 

My own twentieth century Odyssey, complete with the semi-naked sirens, ended up in Istanbul, the most breath-takingly beautiful, exhilarating, fascinating, complicated, exhausting, frustrating and magnificent place I've ever visited.

But that's a story for another day and besides, I'm way off track of the subject at hand.

I bring this up because of all the great experiences of our trip, there is one thing that has stuck in my head perhaps more than anything else with the exception of our time in Istanbul. It was a comment made by our tour guide in Kuşadası, Turkey en route to the location of another place that plays a key role in the history of Christianity, the city of Ephesus. Our guide was a Turk about my age who in addition to his engaging personality and encyclopedic knowledge of the material he presented to us, had a great command of colloquial English. As this was our first port-of-call in Turkey he took it upon himself to introduce us to the Turkish nation, its culture, its history (selected parts of it anyway), its language, and the predominant religion of its people, Islam. Then he made the comment I will always remember. He said emphatically:

"We are Turks, NOT Arabs."

That little tidbit was not news to me nor I'm guessing was it news to most of our fellow travelers, although I could be wrong. We Americans, who constituted the majority of our group, have a deserved reputation for being remarkably ignorant of the world outside our borders, as has been made quite obvious since the events of this past October 7, and I'm sure our guide was aware of that.

Of course, I can't read his mind nearly thirty years after the fact, but by the way he made that comment, not as an aside but rather as a talking point, I couldn't help but think what he was really saying to us was this:

"We are not terrorists."

For a little context, remember this was 1995, a little more than six years before the mother-of-all terrorist attacks that took place on September 11, 2001. By 1995, acts of terrorism were commonplace all around the world and their perpetrators were a varied lot with a diverse set of axes to grind. The terms jihad, al-Qaeda and Islamophobia were not yet household words in the non-Muslim world in 1995 and international terrorism was far from the exclusive domain of Arab-Islamic extremists, as it remains today.

Yet they were up there.

Shortly before our trip, the deadliest act of terrorism (at the time) on American soil, the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building happened in Oklahoma City. 168 people lost their lives and hundreds more were injured. I distinctly remember early speculation on who were the perps. Al-Qaeda, who had already committed several acts of terrorism directed at Americans overseas was high on the list. Of course that was wrong, the barbarous act in Oklahoma was committed by home grown American ultra-right-wing extremist terrorists.

In my last post I mentioned that there is a problem with the term Islamophobia. It was probably coined in the 1920s but came into common usage sometime in the 1990s, resurrected some say by Islamists as a parallel term to antisemitism, that is, the distrust and hatred of Jewish people. Beyond describing hatred of Muslims, in a cynical sense this word could be used to deflect criticism of Islam, equating the criticism of the religion with racism, much as the charge of antisemitism is sometimes used to deflect criticism of Israel.

Let me say this: hatred directed at Muslim people is real and like antisemitism, it is a scourge on humanity. There should just be a better word for it.

The problem with the term "Islamophobia" is that it does not, at least in its etymological sense, mean the hatred of a people as does the word antisemitism *, but rather the fear of a religion.

As our friend the Turkish tour guide pointed out, Islam is not confined to a single ethnicity or race. Because it is a missionary faith like Christianity, anyone can be a Muslim.

Given that, it should be obvious that the fear of a particular religion is not the same as the hatred of a people. The next question then should be this, can it be reasonable to fear a religion?

Well, when someone invokes the name of God before blowing him or herself up along with several innocent people on a bus, or intentionally flying an airplane into a skyscraper filled with thousands, or raping, torturing and butchering men women and children in their homes as they go about their daily lives, I'd say, yes, it is reasonable to fear that.

It is argued that all of these acts when done in the name of Islam, are a perversion of the religion, that Islam actually condemns in no uncertain terms the killing of innocent people. I have argued that myself in this space. 

Unfortunately like all religious dogma, there are loopholes. 

Some, such as the contemporary atheist philosopher and popular commentator Sam Harris, would say there are more such loopholes in Islam than in other contemporary religions, making it particularly dangerous. As I am far from an expert on Islam, I am not in any position to say if that is true.

What I do feel qualified to discuss is my own faith tradition, Christianity, specifically that of the Roman Catholic Church.

One obvious loophole in Catholicism is perhaps its most beautiful attribute, the spirit of forgiveness raised to an act of God through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, otherwise known as Confession. By openly revealing our sins we humble ourselves before God (through the intervention of a priest) and come to terms with the fact that yet another thing that binds us humans together is that we all make mistakes; we all fall short of the perfection of God. Most important of all, while forgiving our sins, God calls upon us to "forgive those who transgress against us". 

For me, one of the most powerful passages of the New Testament concerns forgiveness:

Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Matthew 18:18

In other words, we are bound by our grudges big and small that we carry around through life like millstones around our necks. Forgiveness unbinds us of the millstone. Forgive, and we will be free of the burden, and can be forgiven ourselves.

This is one of the central tenets of Christianity.

However, in practice, like so many aspects of Catholic dogma, confession long ago came to be a ritual whose spirit got lost somewhere along the way. For many Catholics, reconciliation is all about one's own redemption while forgetting all that other boring stuff. Confession to many, is like a get out of jail free card in Monopoly, justifying bad actions in advance, knowing full well that a trip to the confessional and the penance of few Hail Marys will make everything AOK.

Obviously, that's not how it was intended to work. 

Yet for innumerable Catholics from little old ladies picking flowers without permission to professional hitmen, from priests abusing children to their bishops who swept their actions under the rug, sins big, small and enormous are intentionally committed by Catholics with the full expectation that God has their back, so long as they jump through the right hoops.

So much for good intentions.

Now anyone with a shred of history in their head, knows that the sins of the Roman Catholic Church are profound and numerous. The Crusades, the Inquisition, need I say more? I could go on all day but I won't. If there ever was a religion worthy of inciting fear, it would be the one in which I am a member.

I'm not certain how much the two acts of the Church I just mentioned were inspired by Christian scripture, or simply the acting out of tribal instincts in response to socio/political/economic events of the day, while using a cut and paste version of scripture to justify them. I suspect more the latter than the former. My guess is that Sam Harris would agree when he compares Christianity favorably to Islam, (remember he's an atheist so he rejects both). When Harris compares the two faiths as he has done recently, he doesn't point out those quite obvious examples of brutality committed in the name of Christ. Instead, Harris argues that morally speaking, we in the West (whatever that entails), as a civilization have come a long way since the days of the Crusades, and that the East has a lot of catching up to do. This, according to Harris, is a result of Islam holding them back. 

Sam Harris is not alone in defying current political correctness by singling out Islam as a backwards force. Here is link to a video of a lecture given by the popular astro-physicist Neil deGrasse Tyson introduced by Steven Weinberg, discussing the relationship between Islam and science.

I'm fairly certain that a vast number of people in the non-Muslim world, are not aware of the golden age of Islam of which Professor Tyson speaks. Coinciding with the Arab Empire, at the time the largest empire the world had ever known, it was a period of tremendous breakthroughs in human knowledge all brought to the world by Arab scholars, inventors, mathematicians, scientists, philosophers and other learned individuals. All this took place in what we in the West refer to as the "Dark Ages", a time when in Tyson's words, "the Europeans were busy disemboweling heretics". I might add that the Europeans at the same time, under the authority of the Church, were also busy burning books, attempting to destroy much of the accumulated knowledge of the world at the time, especially that written by pagans such as Plato and Aristotle, under the assumption that the only knowledge worth preserving was to be found in the Bible. 

Meanwhile the Arabs were taking much of that knowledge and translating it into Arabic. Had they not, scores of works of ancient philosophy, science, medicine and mathematics, may have been lost forever. 

And then it all stopped according to Tyson; scientific inquiry among Arabs ground to a halt somewhere in the 13th Century. He attributes this decline to one man, Imam Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. According to Tyson, al-Ghazali codified Islam, much in the same way that St. Augustine codified Christianity. Among the tenets that al-Ghazali came up with Tyson says, is that "mathematics is the work of the devil." 

"Nothing good can come out of that philosophy" Tyson retorted.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has made a brilliant career of making complex scientific ideas accessible to the masses. I am a member of those masses. But simplification in order to explain an idea is not the same as dumbing something down in order to make a point, which he unfortunately does here. 

Parts of his premise are correct, in the period between 750 and 1258 CE, corresponding to the years of the Arab Empire, or more accurately the Abbasid Caliphate, centered in Baghdad and extending from Spain through Persia, there was an explosion of ground-breaking contributions made by Arabs in the fields of science, medicine, philosophy and education. He is also correct about the decline of those contributions, (although not nearly as abrupt as he claims) at the end of that period and from which there has been no significant recovery.

And yes, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, was indeed a profoundly influential Muslim cleric. some say second only to Mohammad himself regarding his influence on the faith. But al-Ghazali was also a polymath: an intellectual, a scholar, mystic, philosopher as well as theologian. He was as much a part of the golden age of Islam as anyone, as well as being a great influence on many non-Muslim philosophers including Maimonidies, Thomas Aquinas, and David Hume. 

Tyson states that al Ghazali taught people "how to be good Muslims", implying that to mean strict, unquestioning fealty to the Quran being the cornerstone of the faith, and that all earthly pursuits such as mathematics and science were not only fruitless but also contrary to the teachings of scripture. 

This could not be further from the truth. Al Ghazali was a firm advocate of reason and critical thinking and judgement. He insisted that earthly pursuits like math and science, which he groups together with philosophy, were essential studies, not in conflict with matters of faith. Reading a bit of his work, you can judge for yourself:

There are those things in which the philosophers believe, and which do not come into conflict with any religious principle. And, therefore, disagreement with the philosophers with respect to those things is not a necessary condition for the faith in the prophets and the apostles (may God bless them all). An example is their theory that the lunar eclipse occurs when the light of the Moon disappears as a consequence of the interposition of the Earth between the Moon and the Sun. ….

We are not interested in refuting such theories either; for the refutation will serve no purpose. He who thinks that it is his religious duty to disbelieve such things is really unjust to religion, and weakens its cause. For these things have been established by astronomical and mathematical evidence which leaves no room for doubt. If you tell a man, who has studied these things— so that he has sifted all the data relating to them, and is, therefore, in a position to forecast when a lunar or a solar eclipse will take place: whether it will be total or partial; and how long it will last —that these things are contrary to religion, your assertion will shake his faith in religion, not in these things. Greater harm is done to religion by an immethodical helper than by an enemy whose actions, however hostile, are in his yet regular. For, as the proverb goes, a wise enemy is better than an ignorant friend.

From  Tahāfut al-Falāsifa (Incoherence of the Philosophers)

In his thesis, Tyson gives little credence to the reasonable possibility that the decline of the scientific contributions of Arabs is likely to be attributable to the decline of their Empire after the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols (incidentally, ancestors of the modern-day Turks) in 1258, and the subsequent centuries of invasions by the Crusaders.  Instead, he insists that the strict religion foisted upon the Muslim people by al-Ghazali is the sole culprit.

Why? 

Well, al-Ghazali gets the last laugh on this one as he seems to have anticipated Neil deGrasse Tyson's comments by some nine centuries:

The greatest thing in which the atheists rejoice is for the defender of religion to declare these [astronomical demonstrations] and their like are contrary to religion thus the path for refuting religion becomes easy if the likes [of this argument defending religion] are rendered a condition [for its truth].

Again, from  Tahāfut al-Falāsifa

As one commentator noted, had Tyson spent five minutes reading the Wikipedia entry on al Ghazali, it "could have prevented him from completely misquoting Al Ghazali and shamelessly misrepresenting history." 

Indeed.

Yet even the staunchest defenders of Islam are at a loss to fully explain why there was never a rekindling of the glory days of scientific inquiry in the Arab and more broadly, the Muslim world since the twelfth century.

And the same people are even more at a loss to explain the horrific acts committed in the name of Allah.

But in this respect at least, Muslims are not alone in lamenting the fact that some of their brothers and sisters in faith have used their sacred scripture to justify abhorrent acts. 

Here is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Israeli people shortly after the 10/7 Hamas attacks in their country:

You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.

Amalek, or the Amalekites, were enemies of the nation of Israel from biblical times.  

This is from the First book of Samuel, Chapter 15:

Thus says the Lord of hosts: ‘I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he ambushed him on the way when he came up from Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’ 

The God of the Old Testament didn't fool around.

It's hard to look at Israel's response in Gaza after the 10/7 attacks and not think this is what Netanyahu had in mind.

But for my money, historically speaking, the most devastating line of scripture found in any of the sacred texts of all three of the Abrahamic religions combined, (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) is found in the same Gospel of Matthew of the New Testament that I quoted from above.

You probably know the story. Jesus has been brought to the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate by the people of Jerusalem who insist he be punished for blasphemy for claiming he was the Son of God, and for other stuff that pissed them off. Pilate, the story goes, was warned by his wife to spare the life of Jesus because she had a troubling dream about him the night before. Despite his efforts to grant his wife's wishes, the last thing Pilate needed was an uprising on his hands, so he gave in to the crowd but not before admonishing them and passing the responsibility of Jesus' fate on to them, literally "washing his hands" of the affair. Here is their response to him:

Then answered all the people, and said, 'His blood be on us, and on our children.'

Matthew 27:25

"The people" the writer of the Gospel is referring to here, are the Jews. There you have it, scriptural proof that the Jews killed Jesus who in the view of Christians is the son of God, This is their confession. Not only are they condemning themselves, but their children as well, into eternity. Two millennia and counting worth of antisemitism along with all the pain, suffering and unspeakable horror that came from it, can be summed up in nine simple words. They are scriptural justification for hatred.

Take a deep breath to put all that into perspective. 

Of course, anyone who has ever taken those nine words to heart, and there have been many hundreds of millions throughout history, didn't bother with a couple other crucial verses in the same story, one taking place a few hours before, the other a few hours later in the narrative. 

When the officials came to arrest Jesus, one of his disciples took his sword and cut off the ear of one of the officials. This is what follows:

Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?

But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?

Matthew 26:52-54

If you are a Christian, you believe that the death and resurrection of Jesus are God's plan for the salvation of the world. That is why the day we commemorate Jesus' death is called "Good" Friday. Without Good Friday, there would be no Easter Sunday commemorating the central event of the faith.

The people who sent Jesus to his death were merely actors in God's plot.

And how are we to think of those people?

For that we turn to another Gospel:

And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left. Then said Jesus, Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment and cast lots.

Luke 23:34-35

There you have it, if Jesus himself is asking God for the forgiveness of the people who arrested him, spit at him, mocked him, beat him, nailed him to a tree to die then cast lots for his clothing, then who are we to condemn them?

This brings us to what I believe is the central question at hand, what comes first, scriptural verses that inspire hatred, or the hatred itself which becomes justified through a selected reading of scripture?

I would strongly advocate for the latter-- that hatred comes first. People who see religion only as a negative force in the world single out all the horrific acts that have taken place in the name of God, but are loath to point out the acts of good that come from religion. I've heard Sam Harris claim that you don't need religion in your life to be a good person, to which I agree. At the risk of sounding like a cliché, some of the best people I've known have been atheists. Conversely, I think it's obvious that you don't need religion to be a bad person either. Some of the gravest acts against humanity, especially in the last 150 years have been carried out without any religious pretext at all.

In defense of religion I will say this: fear and hatred are very natural human responses to adversity; they are self-defense mechanisms we inherited from our pre-historic ancestors. No, we don't need religion to teach us how to hate those who have done us wrong, real or imagined, we're all very capable of that on our own, thank you very much. 

But what about virtues such as kindness, charity, patience, selflessness, justice and the "golden rule" which all faiths promote and aspire to?

These virtues do not come naturally, they need to be taught.

What about loving our enemies as Jesus commanded? 

That idea is so outrageous, absurd and un-natural that despite all my doubts about whether God exists, it  is the one thing that truly confirms my faith, simply because it's hard for me to believe that this command was made up by a mere mortal as it goes against every instinct of our earthly being. 

Yet there it is.

Religion, like all human inventions (Artificial Intelligence immediately comes to mind), is a tool that can be put to good use and bad. Today being New Years Eve, it is customary to think of the people we have lost over the previous 364 days. The person I'm thinking about at the moment is Rosalyn Carter, who along with her husband the former president, spent the last half of her life in service, building homes with her own hands for the homeless. The Carters are examples of people who put their faith to good use. They are far from unique as there are people of all creeds in every corner of the planet who put their faith to good use in the service of others and help make the world a better place. 

Which makes me think of one of the humblest tools the Carters put into service in their work for Habitat for Humanity, the lowly hammer. 

In the right hands, that hammer can be used to build homes for the homeless and other wondrous things. 

In the wrong hands it can be used to bash somebody's head in.

Religion is no different. 

CODA

* There is a bit of a problem with the word antisemitism as well, as included in the Semitic peoples are Arabs. Yet the word is exclusively used to describe prejudice against Jewish people. 

** An even more demonstrable error in Neil deGrasse Tyson's lecture on Islam and science is his mention of a quote President George W. Bush made supposedly after the 9/11 attacks. Bush did say "Our God named the stars", loosely quoting Psalm 147:4, but he did not deliver those words after the terrorist attack, and certainly not as a means to compare and contrast Christians and Muslims as Tyson implies. 

Rather, Bush made the remark during a tribute to the seven astronauts killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. The president in fact made it crystal clear after 9/11 that Muslims are as much a part of the fabric of American life as any other group and denounced in no uncertain terms the prejudice and hatred against them that followed the attack and continues to this day. Here is a link to a speech the former president gave during a visit to the Islamic Centre in Washington, D.C., less than a week after the attack.

Where Are You From?

The name of a mutual friend came up the other day during a conversation with a colleague on the morning ride to work. On an Instagram post, our friend wrote about her new job and added how happy she was to be "back home in Ohio." 

This got me wondering about the places where we come from, the place we identify as our home.

Our friend originates from a fairly small town, so it probably shouldn't be surprising that growing up, her day-to-day world existed beyond her own hamlet. That might be why people from small towns tend to identify at least as much with their home state as their hometown.

But I've noticed that particularly in Ohio, state identity extends beyond small towns and into decent sized cities like Toledo, Akron and Dayton, and even into the three major metropolises, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus.

Consider this post coming from a Cleveland website celebrating the "20 best things about living in Ohio." The same site also published a piece listing the 12 things to hate about living in Ohio.  Interestingly, some of the same things appear on both lists!

It's not as if you wouldn't find a Chicago publication describing the state this city happens to be in. But it would be written in much the same way as if it had it been about Wisconsin, Indiana or Michigan, in other words, close-by places to spend your free time when you want to get out of the big city. In fact, I would venture to guess that Chicagoans spend far more of their free time visiting places in those three states than destinations in their own state.

My family certainly does.

The thing is this, with the exception of writing it on our return address or during tax time, most Chicagoans hardly ever think about Illinois, let alone identify with it.

It turns out, outsiders don't always identify Chicago with Illinois either. In what has become for better or worse, the unofficial anthem of this city, here is where the song's author, the great bluesman Robert Johnson places our fair city:

Oh, Baby don't you want to go...

Oh, Baby don't you want to go...

Back to the land of California

to my sweet home, Chicago.

Don't we wish?  

Contemporary performers change the lyrics to be more geographically correct. Eric Clapton simply changed one word making the line read: "Back from the land of California." 

But the more common contemporary line is this: "back to the same ol' place.." 

How lame is that?

Anyway...

While we here in the Windy City identify more with our city than our state, our provincialism goes beyond that. Chicago is known as a city of neighborhoods and rightfully so. It is not uncommon, although much less so today than it used to be, for people to live in one neighborhood their entire life. And it goes still deeper than that. A great number of people who grew up in this city identify themselves not with the neighborhood in which they grew up, but with the Roman Catholic parish in which they lived, even if they weren't Catholic and never set foot in the parish church. 

So if you grew up on the South Side, you might say you were from St. Sabina's, Little Flower or Christ the King Parish, and folks, (South Siders that is), would immediately know where you were from. On the North Side you might say you were from Queen of Angels or St. Margaret Mary. Or on the West Side, from Our Lady of Sorrows, or Resurrection Parish which no longer exists today except in the hearts and minds of people who grew up there and still call it their place of origin. 

There is no East Side of Chicago, (that would be the lake), although there is a neighborhood called Eastside which happens to be just south of the neighborhood called South Chicago. And if you happen to be from there, you might say you were from St. Michael the Archangel Parish. Just don't confuse that with St. Michael's in Old Town, on the North Side.

That might raise a few eyebrows because Chicagoans if they identify with a parish or not, definitely identify with which side of town they're from, North Side or South Side. Then there's the West Side, a little harder to define, technically the part of the city west of the Chicago River, but in reality, it's the area west of the river that straddles the north/south border of the city, Madison Street by a few miles or so in either direction. West Siders sometimes identify themselves as either North or South Siders, unless of course like me, they don't. 

Perhaps the most tangible symbol of the two sides of Chicago are our two Major League baseball teams, the Cubs and the White Sox. Their ballparks are virtually equidistant from Madison Street. Home plate of Wrigley Field where the Cubs play, sits 36 blocks north of Madison and its counterpart at "new" Comiskey Park, (I refuse to call it by its corporate sponsor name), home of the White Sox, is 35 blocks south.

One of the first things you learn when you move to Chicago is that you can root for one team or the other, but not for both. I'd have to say White Sox fans hold more of a grudge, which is common for South Siders who often live with a chip on their shoulder. A White Sox fan will proudly tell you that his or her two favorite baseball teams are the Sox, and any team playing the Cubs. 

As I've said before in this space, it's kind of an unrequited hate. There are Cub fans who claim to feel the same about the Sox, but they really don't.

This is something people outside of Chicago just can't comprehend. I remember being in a bar in Savannah, Georgia during the baseball playoffs and quite surprisingly the Cubs were still playing ball. I struck up a conversation with a local at the joint who, knowing I was from Chicago, said I must be excited that the Cubs were in the playoffs. I told him no, not really because I'm a White Sox fan. 

The guy looked at me like I was from Mars. 

On that train ride mentioned above, my colleague theorized that states for which people have a strong affinity, are perhaps the ones with huge state universities with strong athletic programs, usually football. Ohio certainly is such as state, as is Georgia.

I had never thought of that.

Basketball is the sport Indiana University is most famous for, and in that most state-conscious of states, the nickname of their team is also the nickname of the state, and also how its people proudly refer to themselves, Hoosiers. I can't think of any other state that has adopted an official nickname as enduring or widely accepted. Theories abound but like the term Yankee, no one really has a clue exactly what a Hoosier is or where the name came from, but it's been around since the early 19th century.

A group of Hoosier fans exhibiting their state/school pride on the Chicago L.

The most famous sporting event in the state of Indiana takes place in its capital and largest city, Indianapolis. In case you were wondering how much folks in that city relate to their state, the most poignant moment during the annual Indianapolis 500 motor race is the traditional rendition of the song: Back Home Again in Indiana.

Michigan has two major state universities with sports programs to match. While in Detroit several years ago, I was listening to local sports radio and the topic of conversation was "who do you hate more, Ohio State or Michigan State?" Judging by the response, obviously Detroiters, who have teams represented in all the major professional sports leagues, also love their collegiate Wolverines who play an hour down the road in Ann Arbor, but not Michigan teams in general.

Outside of the Motor City though, I've found that Michiganders, yes that's what they're called, are also very attached to their state, even to the big city. The words, "the corner of Trumbull and Michigan in Corktown" or shortened to just "The Corner", have a magic ring to any person from Michigan above a certain age as they evoke memories of the late, great Tiger Stadium which stood at that intersection in that neighborhood of Detroit. 

Ask someone from Michigan where he or she is from in the state, and I'll bet my first born they'll hold out their right palm, fingers closed together, which is roughly the same shape as the state of Michigan, (excluding the Upper Peninsula), and point on their hand where their town is located. 

Where's Kalamazoo you ask? Why it's right on the lifeline, toward the bottom of the hand. 

How about Traverse City? Around the point where the tip of the pinky meets the ring finger. 

Saginaw? Just below the base of the thumb.

And so on. 

Unlike Michiganders, Illinoisans outside of Chicago (known by us as "downstaters"), don't show much interest in their state's only metropolis but rather, return Chicago's indifference to them in spades. You're just as if not more likely to find St. Louis Cardinal fans in places like Springfield and Carbondale, than Cubs fans. Unfortunately, the territory of White Sox fandom doesn't extend far beyond the southern fringes of the Chicago metropolitan area, which could be one of the reasons Sox fans are perpetually crabby. By contrast, rooting for an out-of-state team in Ohio would practically be grounds for excommunication from membership in the state. 

Illinois is a reliably blue state, ONLY because of Chicago and its dominance over the state's population. Divorce the city from the state and a Democrat wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell to get elected to a statewide office in a Chicago-less Illinois. Obviously, the exact opposite is true up here where Republicans don't even bother to run for local offices. 

Sadly, in these days of extreme polarization in the realm of American politics, the rift between Chicago and Downstate Illinois grows by the minute.

Then there are the states that if independent from the U.S., would rate by themselves as sizable countries. I'm talking of course about Texas and California, places that have such a strong identity of their own that you couldn't help identifying with them, even if you're from a megalopolis like LA or Houston.

I won't even attempt to crack that egg.

Perhaps the most familiar image of state identification in popular culture is when Dorothy and her dog Toto travel from their completely black and white world and arrive in the magical Technicolor Land of Oz. As they step out of their time and space travel machine, otherwise known as their house, Dorothy famously says: "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." 

It's a great line, one I use all the time to describe any out-of-the ordinary situation.

Frank Baum, the author of the novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which inspired the movie, paints a much bleaker image of Kansas and especially of Dorothy's caretaker aunt and uncle than the movie does, so much so, you wonder why on earth the girl is so anxious to get back home. 

Incidentally at the time he wrote the book, Baum called the neighborhood of Logan Square on the West Side of Chicago, just a stone's throw from Humboldt Park and in the parish of St. Sylvester, home.

Just as I did, sixty years later. 

My original home is where I'll wrap this thing up. The truth is, I identify with all those places just mentioned.

Whether you come from a small town, a big city neighborhood or an entire state, whether it's the local parish or a point on the palm of your hand you most identify with, there's still no place like home, even if you can't go there again.

So, where are you from?

Our Lady of Paris

"The Virgin of Paris" Early 14th Century,
a masterpiece of late Gothic art,
in the transcept of Notre-Dame de Paris

Ever since the day I first walked from Manhattan to Brooklyn across its pedestrian walkway in 1979, I've had a love affair with the Brooklyn Bridge. A work of tremendous beauty, that magnificent 19th century structure is the perfect blending of structural engineering, architecture, and history, especially the heartrending  story of the contibutions of the thousands of individuals who built it, not a few of whom who gave their lives (including its chief designer John Roebling), during its construction. That, combined with ts loaction in the heart of New York City makes the walk across it over the East River between the two boroughs in my opinion, the single greatest example of the urban experience.

One day about twenty five years ago, I found myself on the Brooklyn side of the bridge. It was a difficult time in my life, filled with loss and the confusion that follows. As I gazed upon that magnificent creation, I took comfort in the thought that despite the painful loss I was going through at the time, the Brooklyn Bridge, and all it had meant to me over the years, would always be there.

Some years later, the unthinkable happened. Two hijacked commercial jets, one coming from the north, the other from the south, deliberately slammed into the two towers of the World Trade Center, just a stone's throw from the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge. Back in Chicago, 780 miles away, I watched on TV in horror with my wife and infant son as the South Tower then the North Tower collapsed taking with them the lives of nearly 3,000 innocent people.

Weeks after the initial shock and mourning for the lives lost that day, for their families and for the City of New York, I recalled that moment at the bridge and realized how foolish I had been. Perhaps it was because I had lived a sheltered life in a world that for a good part of my existance had been relatively peaceful, at least on my side of the globe. Violence and destruction of that magnitude in a place I loved and was intimately connected to was inconceivable. If the mighty Twin Towers could flatten like pancakes thanks to the diabolical efforts of a handful of men, nothing, not even that beloved bridge was safe. After 9/11, my new mantra became, "take nothing for granted."

The cathedral as seen from the Left Bank in January, 2005.
This week's fire destroyed the entire roofline and
the 19th Century spire at the transcept.

Here at the outset,  I must I point out there is absolutely no parallel between the September 11 attacks and what happened last week in Paris. The fire that destroyed much of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in that city was an accident, of that I am certain. Not one life was lost (at least as far as we know at this moment) and there were few serious injuries, none of them life threatening. For that we should be eternally grateful. 

The comparison is a personal and purely superficial one. Once again I was caught off-guard. You see, if there is any work of human hands in the world that means as much to me as the Brooklyn Bridge, it would be the Cathedral of Paris. Long before I set foot inside, an obsession with Medieval Gothic architecture drove me to study Notre-Dame de Paris inside and out from front to back, every nook and crannie of it. For many years to me it was without question the greatest building on earth, the perfect combination of heart breaking beauty, magnificent craftsmanship, brilliant structural engineerng, the moving story of the fierce devotion of the community of believers who built it, its role as the symbolic heart and soul of the nation of France and its people, and of course by any standard, a great work of art. Words cannot describe how I felt as I learned the news on Monday that the cathedral was in flames. In denial, I assumed when I saw the early images of the fire on my computer at work, just as I did when I first saw smoke coming out of the hole in the World Trade Center punctured by a plane, that the emergency responders on the scene would soon have everything under control.

Then I saw a photograph of the great 19th Century spire above the transcept consumed in flames. At that moment a colleague at work, himself from France and well aware of the situation, came back from lunch and told me the spire had already collapsed into the church. I was broken hearted. Something I dearly loved, a place that gave me great joy during my formative years, a sense of peace in troubled times, (I visited it for the first time the same year as my Brooklyn Bridge epiphany), and a place I visited so often that it became a dear friend, would soon be no more...

The West facade of  of Notre-Dame  de Paris

...or so I thought.

The fire worked its way to the north tower (the one on the left in the photograph above) where firefighters worked valiently to halt its spread. Had they failed and the tower's structure become sufficiently weakened, the massive bells in the tower's bellfry would have broken free and collapsed to the ground. With them, all hope for saving the building would have been lost.

Catastrophic as the damge to the building was, thanks to the quick thinking and hard work of the firefighters, the tower and its bells remained intact.. Expecting the worst when I woke up Tuesday morning, the news was encouraging. Allthough the spire and timber roof where the fire began were destroyed, the stone vaulting directly underneath the roof survived nearly intact. Early morning photographs showed the interior covered with debris, a little worse for the wear, but still intact. The most remakable news of all was that most of the stained glass including the two magnificent rose windows pictured below, one on either side of the transcept also survived.

The North Transept Rose Window

The South Transept Rose Window

The fire brought out the most remarkable display in people, a veritable rainbow of hues, luminances, and saturations of human nature, in all its glory and well, not so much. The night of the fire, thousands of Parisians lined the quais on the Left Bank of the Seine to watch in disbelief as their cathedral burned, mournfully singing hymns as the flames illuminated the towers of the church and the surrounding neighborhood in an eerily beautiful light. 

The following day, President Emmanuel Marcon declared the church would be completely restored, practically good as new in five years, presumably in time for 2024 when Paris is to host the Summer Olympic Games. Even before the French president opened his mouth, tens of millions of Euros were already pledged by weathly individuals and corporations to rebuild Notre-Dame. By Thursday morning, two days after the fire was officially declared extinguished, over one billion Euros had been pledged, yes indeedy some of it believe it or not, coming with strings attached, mostly in the form of demands for extreme tax breaks in return for the contributions. 

St. Joan of Arc, 19th Century sculpture
by Charles Desvergnes

That display of spontaneous philanthropy turned heads and triggered significant consternation from all corners, ranging from historical preservation groups who questioned the irony of why raising funds for the necessary restoration of the cathedral before the building was nearly lost was almost as difficult as trying to draw blood from a stone, to advocates for practically every charity on the face of the earth who threw up their hands in disgust at the record amount of money raised in the blink of an eye for an effort they deemed so much less worthy than their own. 

It didn't take long for conspiracy theorists to come up with the idea that the cathedral was torched, conceiving of plots to destroy the church carried out by folks whom those theorists do not like, more often than not, Muslim extermists. And people of faith got into the act by proclaiming it was nothing less than an act of God which spared the church  from total destruction. Unfortuantely for those fine theories, facts, physics and common logic explain how the fire started unintentionally, and how despite the serious nature of the blaze, most of the church managed to survive intact, even without the direct intervention of the almighty.   

Portal of the Virgin, West Front of the Cathedral.
Originally installed between 1210 and 1220,
many of these stone figures were behaded during the
French Revolution and retored during the mid-19th Century.  

All evidence points to the source of the fire as being the result of restoration work carried out in the transcept of the cathedral. Ironic as they are, devastating fires such as these, resulting from the heat producing tools necessary for restoration work, in close proximity to the highly inflammable materials the buildings are constructed of, are painfully common. Off the top of my head, I can think of at least three such fires here in Chicago in recent years, two of which left only the walls of historic churches standing, and the third in our own Roman Catholic cathedral which was saved only through a little luck (that the fire was caught in time), and the remarkable efforts of firefighters.

That Notre-Dame didn't suffer more damage is due to the fact that the firefighters there managed to contain the blaze to the wooden roof which can be considered a separate structure from the main body of the building. Beneath that roof as I mentioned earlier, is the stone vaulting which one sees from inside the church, the majority of which withstood the flames and the heat of the fire. The great weight of that vault is transferred to the enormous flying buttresses, one of the building's most distinct features, which flank the outside of the cathedral. Had the vault been severely compromised, the delicate balance between the downward force of the vault counterbalancing the lateral force of the flying buttresses might have dramatically shifted, causing the buttresses to crush the outer walls of the cathedral. That this did not happen is a testament to the brilliance of the Medieval builders of Notre-Dame, and to the wise approach that was taken to combat the fire.

However there is one thing about this event than cannot be explained away so easily: its timing. The April 15, 2019 Notre-Dame de Paris fire took place during the midst of the biggest existential crisis in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, in one of that institution's most recognizable symbols (perhaps second only to St. Peter's Bascilica in Rome), AND during Holy Week no less, the single most important week of the year in the calendar of the Church.

The nave of the Cathedral
In this photograph you can see part of the
stone vaulting and the magnificent organ
which itself dates from the 19th Century
but contains components which date
back much earler.

A non-believer can easily dismiss all this as pure coincidence. But to someone who takes his or her faith seriously, especially a Catholic for whom symbols mean a great deal, the timing of this devastating fire certainly has to give one pause to think.

As a Catholic myself, it pains me to say that the institution I love is rotten to the core, at least the administration of it. If there is a God who takes a personal interest in the goings on of this planet, He, She (or They if you prefer), must be supremely pissed at the Church who claims to be His, Her, or Their representative on earth. For even naive Catholics who once assumed that the sexual abuse of children at the hands of priests, dreadful as it is, was only a rare and isolated occurrance, it has now become terribly obvious that the scourge is pandemic in the Church. Much as I like and respect the current Pope Francis, he has done very little to instill the faith in his flock that the Church will unequivocally do everything in its power to end that unspeakable and despicable crime, as well as many other abuses of power in the Church. Culpability, knowledge and most damning, the failure to act upon this cancer in the Church goes all the way to the top to the point where it is impossible to give anyone in any position of power in the Roman Catholic Church a pass.

Clearly the Church needs a radical reboot in order to survive and what better time for this message to come to us than the week before Easter?

The Gospels describe an event that took place in Jerusalem the week before Jesus's crucifixion, where he turned over the tables of the profaners of the Temple, evicting them from the sacred place and telling the perplexed authorities: "destroy this Temple and I will raise it again three days." Can anyone honestly say that at this point in its history, the Roman Catholic Church doesn't need God to come down and do the same thing?  You might think I'm crazy to say this (and I'd be the first to agree with you), but maybe, just maybe that is exactly what happened last Monday.

Christians recognize the Friday before Easter as the holy day when we commemorate the day Jesus died, yet we call it "Good Friday", Those who are perplexeed by that name, forget the fact that without Jesus's death, there could be no Resurrection hence, without Good Friday, there would be no Easter, the central tenet of the faith.

Shrine devoted to Our Lade of Guadalupe from 1949,
the only such shirne in Eurpoe 

Believers or not. I think we can all agree that good things have come out of the horrible fire at Notre-Dame de Paris last week. Because of it, people have come out of their slumber about our sites of cultural heritage, those places around the world that define who we are as a people and as a civilization. The point has been hit home that once they're gone, they can never be replaced. Perhaps we'll all learn not to take any of them for granted.

For an ever so brief a moment, in fact it's probably over by now, the fire brought much of the world together, Catholic or not, in universal sorrow for the potential loss of such a treasure. Not that I ever want to test this out, but one could only hope that were such a catastrophe to befall a cultural heritage site that is not a Christian church, for example the mosque known as the The Dome on the Rock in Jeruslaem, the Hindu/Budhist Temple Angkor Wat in Cambodia, or the Taj Mahal in India, that we of the Christian faith will respond in kind.

Perhaps the most appropriate and heart warming thing that happened last week was that three modest but historic African American churches in Louisiana that were torched by a white supremacist young man in the past month, all reported significant spikes in contributions to their own re-building programs, presumably in response to the fire in Paris.

Clearly, the fire at Notre-Dame de Paris was catastrophic, but it was in no sense at all tragic. All the good that has and will certainly come as a result of it without the loss of a single life is truly a miracle. Despite President Macron's overly optimistic timeline, the cathedral will be restored, that is for certain. As far as I'm concerrned,  I may never set foot inside my old friend again, and that is perfectly OK with me. As long as my children and God-willing their children, and theirs and hopefully the dozens of generations of children to follow will have the opportunity to set foot inside the magnificent cathedral that truly belongs to the enitre world, something which at this moment looks very likely, wherever I am, I will be pleased.

Our Lady of Paris is very much alive.
Joyeuses Pâques, Happy Easter!

POST SCRIPT: I'm very happy to report that unless otherwise noted, everything shown in the photographs in this post has survived the fire.

The Reason for the Season

Last night as is my Christmas Eve custom, while waiting for our children, still with visions of sugar plums, video games and other goodies dancing in their heads, to fall asleep so I could set out their presents under the Christmas tree, I settled in front of the TV to watch the delayed broadcast of Midnight Mass from the Vatican. The familiar strains of the ancient Christmas liturgy were all there along with the pomp and circumstance, the haunting choral music, the fancy people in the front rows, the panoply of languages including Latin, all the smells and bells, and the endless procession of Cardinals embellished in their lavish vestments, preceding the Holy Father, Pope Francis I, as he made his way up the nave of the enormous St. Peter's Basilca. This would be the current pope's fifth Christmas Eve mass at St. Peter's, which took place shortly after his 81st birthday.

To some, the over-the-top pageantry of the Roman Catholic Church in all its glory, in its premier venue on its premier occasion, belies the simple story it is commemorating, that of a poor man and his pregnant wife, forced to leave home and travel a grueling journey at the decree of a far off emperor. When it came time for the mother to give birth, no one would open their doors to these strangers, so the couple was forced to find refuge in a barn, placing into service the animals' feeding trough as the bed for their newborn. Of course theirs was no ordinary child, and the good news of the birth of Jesus, the eternal sign of God's being one with His people, was not delivered first to the fancy people, the leaders of the community, the property owners, the righteous, self or otherwise, those in good social standing with comfortable lives, but to the poor and dispossessed, the outcasts, those at the lowest levels society, namely the shepherds out watching their flocks in the middle of the night. Their sheer terror of coming face to face with an angel of the Lord must have been only slightly allayed when he proclaimed to them:

Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

Now whether you believe that Jesus is the Son of God, or believe in God at all, you have to admit that this is one hell of a story that not only gives many of us some degree of hope in a troubled world, but also provides a valuable insight into the human experience as a lesson in humility. Imagine if you will, the King of Kings, Wonder Counselor, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace coming into this world born in a stable, watched over by the untouchables of polite society. Some might argue that it's such an unlikely story, only God could have come up with it.

Likewise, in its infancy, Christianity was itself an outcast, its members persecuted as heretics, tortured mercilessly before being killed mercifully for daring to proclaim their faith in this radical, revolutionary new religion. Needless to say, more than two thousand years after the birth of Christ, Christianity remains the most dominant of the establishment religions of the world, unrecognizable from its humble origins. And Christians, 1,637 years since their faith became the officially sanctioned religion of the Roman Empire, have done more than their share of persecuting.

No, you won't find much humility at Christmas Mass in St. Peter's in the Vatican, nor for that matter, here in Chicago at Holy Name Cathedral. My family learned that lesson exactly eleven years ago yesterday when we attended Christmas Eve Mass in the cathedral, my mother's parish church. By the time we arrived for mass, about fifteen minutes early, the seats in the pews were all taken save for two, way up at the front of the church. We asked the people seated there if my wife, then eight and one half months pregnant with our daughter, and my septuagenarian mother could sit in the available spots. No, the people sitting in the pew told us, they were saving those spots for their late-coming friends. My wife and mother ended up standing with my son and me for the entire mass. To this day I wonder if the irony of that situation ever registered in the minds of those people who turned my elderly mother and very pregnant wife away.

Today in Pope Francis, we have a pontiff who is doing his utmost to move the Catholic Church away from its climate of self-righteousness and privilege, and closer to its humble beginnings emphasizing the fundamental core values of love, forgiveness, compassion and charity. More than his predecessors, Francis has made a point of advocating for the outcasts of society, namely the sick, the poor, the incarcerated, and most recently, the refugee. In a world whose direction seems pointed in the opposite direction with the recent election of populist demagogues who feed off anger and fear of the stranger, Francis's message is a simple one, be not afraid. When Francis speaks at Midnight Mass in St. Peter's of the plight of the Holy Family as strangers in a strange place turned away by the townsfolk, it should come as no surprise that he would make a connection between the Christmas story and the plight of people living today. Sure enough, early this morning Pope Francis told the world:

The faith we proclaim tonight makes us see God present in all those situations where we think he is absent. He is present in the unwelcomed visitor, often unrecognizable, who walks through our cities and our neighbourhoods, who travels on our buses and knocks on our doors.

This same faith impels us to make space for a new social imagination, and not to be afraid of experiencing new forms of relationship, in which none have to feel that there is no room for them on this earth. Christmas is a time for turning the power of fear into the power of charity, into power for a new imagination of charity. The charity that does not grow accustomed to injustice, as if it were something natural, but that has the courage, amid tensions and conflicts, to make itself a “house of bread”, a land of hospitality.

In his Christmas Eve homily, Pope Francis, who has never hidden his disdain for the current lot of populist leaders including our own president, minced no words this morning when he compared them to one of the most notorious of New Testament villains:

So many other footsteps are hidden in the footsteps of Joseph and Mary. We see the tracks of entire families forced to set out in our own day. We see the tracks of millions of persons who do not choose to go away but, driven from their land, leave behind their dear ones. In many cases this departure is filled with hope, hope for the future; yet for many others this departure can only have one name: survival. Surviving the Herods of today, who, to impose their power and increase their wealth, see no problem in shedding innocent blood.

Them's truly fightin' words, the pope equating contemporary world leaders with the man whom Christians believe ordered the slaughter of all male infants in Judea, out of jealousy of the newborn King, whose birth he was informed of by the gift-bearing visitors from the East.

For his part, the Christmas Eve message from the President of the United States was a self-congratulatory tweet proclaiming that he won the "war on Christmas" as evidenced by the number of Americans who were once again using the term "Merry Christmas."

Little does this man seem to understand that the real war on Christmas lies in our selfishness, our indifference, our lack of compassion and understanding for our brothers and sisters, certainly not in our reluctance to use the word Christmas in deference to our friends who do not celebrate the holiday.

The pope closed his message with a prayer to God to wake us from the slumber of that indifference:

Moved by the joy of the gift, little Child of Bethlehem, we ask that your crying may shake us from our indifference and open our eyes to those who are suffering. May your tenderness awaken our sensitivity and recognize our call to see you in all those who arrive in our cities, in our histories, in our lives. May your revolutionary tenderness persuade us to feel our call to be agents of the hope and tenderness of our people.

It is that fire of the revolutionary spirit of the early church that Pope Francis hopes to ignite in the hearts, minds and bellies of all of us, believers and non-believers alike.

When this pope speaks these words the chorus of angels proclaimed to the shepherds outside of Bethlehem so long ago:

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, and good will toward men...

...he is not uttering a trite slogan found on greeting cards once a year, but proclaiming a call to action for us, this day and every day. It is a message of self-reflection and hope for people the world over of good will, whether they believe or not.

In other words, it is truly meaningless to say the words merry Christmas without living them.

May all of us learn to live those words in the coming new year.

And a very Merry Christmas to all!


Post script:

Pope Francis's 2017 Christmas Eve homily can be found in its entirety here.

Could There be a Silver Lining?

Shortly after it was published in 1982, I bought a copy of the book Chicago Churches and Synagogues: An Architectural Pilgrimage, written by George Lane with photographs by Aligmantis Kezys. It covered a subject that had always interested me and frankly, I was a little pissed that it came out before I had the chance to work on a book like this myself, at least the photographic part of it. I was assuaged only after learning that the two authors were Jesuit priests, and resigned myself to the fact that they were probably the right men for the job.

As its secondary title indicated, the book centered around church architecture, with entries chosen for their historical and architectural merit. Another sore point, none of the churches I ever belonged to made the cut. But that's all water under the bridge, the book inspired me to visit a great many of the 125 houses of worship covered, especially the Catholic ones which I felt the most comfortable walking around and taking a peek. 

Last week I broke open my copy to get some information for a piece I wrote on the possible closing of the painfully beautiful St. Adalbert Church in Pilsen. Flipping through the pages of the thirty four year old book is heartbreaking as a good number of the churches that Kezys photographed and Lane so eloquently wrote about are now gone, some destroyed by fire, but most of them demolished.

Since the book was published, a massive purging of Catholic parishes took place, initiated in the late eighties and realized in 1990 under the episcopate of Joseph Cardinal Bernadin. In one fell swoop, Bernadin closed 28 parishes and several more schools. I don't have evidence to support it but I think it's safe to say the Catholic Church in Chicago lost a good number of members then as many people who had the only church they ever knew taken out from under them, simply gave up on the faith rather than join another parish.

Here is an article from the New York Times written in 1990 that describes the final mass at one of the churches featured in the book, St.Bridget on the south side. That parish was supporting itself just fine thank you very much; it was in the black when the archdiocese in its infinite wisdom deemed it had to close. The church survived big time urban renewal, being smack dab in the path of the planned construction of the Stevenson Expressway, which jogged a little to the north to avoid it, but it could not survive Cardinal Bernadin. The building was demolished in 1992.

Over the years, the number of young men entering seminary has plummeted. The archdiocese now ordains an average of 10 new priests per year, many of them, middle aged men. The average age of a working priest is currently about 60 years old and rising. One report I read predicted that if the current trend continues. by the year 2030. there will be approximately 230 priests serving in the Archdiocese of Chicago. When you consider there are now 351 parishes in the archdiocese, something has to give. That something it appears will be many more church closings, making the 1990 purge look like a tea party.

Then there was the seven times seven times seven hundred pound gorilla in the room, the priest sex abuse scandal. It's impossible to quantify the damage the combination of child abuse at the hands of priests and the subsequent cover-up by bishops has caused the Church. Beyond the obvious damage to the lives of the children involved, the collateral damage to the Church includes the understandable lack of trust of church authority that has developed among the faithful. More serious is the damage to the vocation of the priesthood. What once was considered a profession that garnered the utmost respect, since the sex scandal, priests are often treated with scorn and derision. Tens of thousands of hard working, dedicated, good priests and bishops have had to pay the price for a handful of sick individuals, the criminal negligence of some of the higher ups, and the general public's eagerness to lump them all together. I wouldn't be surprised if because of the tragedy, the projected numbers of the ratio of priests to churches in Chicago fourteen years from now, will prove to have been optimistic. 

There is another issue in the Church that hasn't been covered much in the wake of all the really terrible stuff, but is lying just below the surface, ready to rear its ugly head at any moment. Many people don't realize it but the Catholic Church does not speak with one voice, but is as divided along ideological lines as much as the society in which we live. One would find it difficult to find common ground between the left and right extremes in the Church, other than both calling themselves Catholic. That's not to say you won't find Catholics with nuanced beliefs that don't fit neatly into an easily defined ideological camp; in fact more than likely they constitute the overwhelming majority of Catholics in this country. If so they are truly the silent majority, it's the extremes on both sides who seem to be getting all the attention, (sound familiar?), and I don't think it's at all out of the question that there will at some point in the near future be a movement to split the Catholic Church along ideological lines.

Given all that, I'm afraid the recent announcement of the plans to close one of the most beautiful and important churches in the city of Chicago is only the tip of the iceberg for the bad times that lie ahead for the Roman Catholic Church, in the United States anyway.

With the very existence of the Church at stake, it may seem trivial to fret about church closings in a city with an over-abundance of Catholic churches. But if you believe that, you just don't get it. Chicago is still in many ways nothing more than a large collection of provincial villages. Folks may know their own neighborhood-village like the back of their hand, but drop them in another part of town and you may as well have dropped them off in Timbuktu.

They say that all politics is local. The same is true for religion but with much narrower constraints. We like to think Catholicism (as the word implies) is a universal religion. The reality is that for many Catholics, faith begins and ends at the front door of their parish church. As I pointed out in my last post, many native Chicagoans identify themselves more with the parish they grew up in than the neighborhood. Lifelong bonds are formed there. Church buildings were built with the blood, sweat, and tears of folks for whom many of the current parishioners can trace their own roots. Likewise, rivalries sometimes friendly, sometimes not, exist among neighboring parishes. Having an administrator come from out of town (like Cardinal Bernadin or the current archbishop, Blaise Cupich), and tell parishioners to give up their own church and go worship at a neighboring parish is somewhat akin to the commissioner of the NFL coming to Chicago and telling fans of the Bears to give up their team and root for the Green Bay Packers.

Obviously, this strong connection to one parish at the exclusion of all others is not how it is intended to be. Much as I hate to admit it, there is a very compelling argument for church consolidation in Chicago. A good example is a non-Catholic church found in the Lane/Kezys book. It was the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany on the near west side. This Richardsonian-Romanesque building was one of the loveliest churches in Chicago, with a small but devoted congregation, whose former pastor is the wife of a friend of mine. Sadly, through death and attrition, the dwindling congregation could no longer afford to pay their pastor and decided to go it alone without any clergy. Eventually with less than ten parishioners showing up on any given Sunday, the Church of the Epiphany closed its doors in 2011.

Sad and touching as the story of the tenacity of that congregation is. I strongly believe that a church community needs to be connected to the life of the greater community. That's a little hard with a congregation numbering in the double digits, let alone single digits. I can't count the number of sermons and homilies I've heard over the years that centered on the need to extend one's faith beyond the front door of the church. As they often do, those sermons fell upon many deaf ears. 

If there is a silver lining to all this, perhaps the inevitable shakeup that is coming to Chicago and other archdioceses across the country, will serve as an awakening and a renewal for the lives and faith of many Catholics. Closing parishes will be a bitter pill to swallow, especially if the guys with the fancy robes and the big pointy hats approach the sensitive issue of the displacement of parishes without compassion, as if it were merely a business decision regarding the bottom line. If they expect to have any flock left, Catholic bishops will have to do some compromising themselves. Perhaps they could start by addressing the shortage of priests by challenging the centuries old practice of forbidding married men from entering the priesthood, an issue I still have a few reservations about, but what the heck. They might even take the radical step of ordaining women, something I cannot for the life of me see any good reason not to do. These steps certainly will not solve the problem of the shortage of priests by themselves, they might even drive some ultra-conservative Catholics away, but I think they would be positive actions in the direction of the revival of the Church, something it desperately needs.

Here I'll take the lazy man's way out and give the last word to Martin E. Marty from an article for Boston College Magazine, lamenting the passing of the urban Catholic Church. Dr. Marty who says it so much better than I possibly could, concludes his piece with the following:

Whoever cares about the Church and the city, the soul and the spirit, has to hope that within the changes Catholicism in America has undergone there can be resurrection. We will not again see "the Church confident," or "the Church triumphant," but we can hope to see the Church well-poised to help gather people of God on their pilgrimage to the eternal city, inspiring them to help build a more humane temporal city along the way.