Bishop Paprocki's Promising Career

There's an article today in the State Journal-Register about the appointment of Bishop Thomas John Paprocki (diocese of Springfield in Illinois, my diocese) to the small group of bishops that is charged with "reforming" (translated: reigning in) the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the the largest national group of women religious in the United States.

Near the end of the article, there's a link to Rocco Palmer's Whispers in the Loggia (great source for the inside scoop on Catholic hierarchy).  Rocco has speculated about Bishop Paprocki's promising career in the Church.  Uh-huh.  No big surprise.  Bishop Paprocki's first year in Springfield -- with his bashing of the governor on multiple occasions and his use of a Christmas Eve homily to strike out at Muslims (including Americans who are Muslim) as a group who deserve to be profiled -- had "aiming for the big leagues" written all over it.  He will be an archbishop someday; place your bets early.  When that happens, Springfield's loss will be someone else's pain.

Makes me wonder about that chatter that Timothy Cardinal Dolan is supposedly papabile.  If he is, and if Paprocki is in good with Dolan--hey, isn't that a good lead on a red hat for Mrs. Paprocki's son?  But no, even chess can't be plotted out too many moves in advance.  And let's not count Cardinal Dolan as such a rich candidate for that special pad in Rome.  There was much speculation back in the eighties about Joseph Cardinal Bernardin's odds of becoming the first American pope, and sadly, Bernardin died in 1996, nine years before the next conclave.  (Joseph Bernardin as pope -- wouldn't that have been nice?  A holy man and a down to earth man and a man who knew how to listen -- as well as speak with a prophetic voice.)  Here's hoping Cardinal Dolan has a long, happy life of service to the Church -- especially to "the least of these" -- the poor, the uninsured, the ill:  those who sometimes get overlooked when bishops decide what they should say, what they should do as conservative justices on the Supreme Court and the ultra right-wing of the Republican party contemplate ways to take down the Affordable Care Act.  And the same for Bishop Paprocki (who, to his credit, used his expertise as a lawyer to help found a legal clinic for the poor in Chicago):  may he have a good, long career of serving God's people, especially the poor and the marginalized.

Am I being too catty here, talking about "careers" rather than vocations when discussing the hierarchy?  Oh, I still believe a bishop -- or a pope, for that matter -- has a vocation.  But let's be honest.  It's not only the Holy Spirit at work when a bishop gets appointed or gets promoted; even in the election of a pope, there is plenty of politics at work.  Let's not be naive.

 

Of course, none of that means the Holy Spirit cannot also be at work in the Church -- though this means that political leanings in the hierarchy, as well as institutional prejudice against women in leadership roles, can unfortunately also thwart the will of the Holy Spirit if people in the hierarchy are willing to let that happen.  Human cooperation with God's will -- or resistance to God's will:  that's a very old story indeed.

The long and short of it:  I find myself wishing conservative prelates well.  But, at least in the case of Bishop Paprocki and Cardinal Dolan, I do finding myself hoping (hoping hard) that neither of their career ladders go straight to the top.  Let's stop short of Rome.  Way short. 

Good Friday: My Smallness, God's Great Goodness

I went for a long walk this morning at the nature center not too far from my home.  I love this place; it's one of two places where my wife has my blessing to scatter my ashes.  We go there at least once a month with our son; our dogs usually go with us.  We've spotted three deer standing together in a heavily shaded spot near the edge of the trail.  We've seen many turtles, countless geese and ducks, a couple of beavers, and a small snake or two.  Walking the trail and glancing out at the pond, I almost always feel the presence of God.  It's one of the places where I feel closest to God, in fact, on par with the afternoons of solitude I sometimes spent on the shores of Lake Huron as a teenager.

As I walked the trail this morning -- with my wife and son in Chicago for a few days -- I realized how timeless the trees and the life cycle of birds are, and how timeless and endless the process of decomposition is.  The logs that are decaying now will crumble within a few more years, and they will again become part of the earth.  Yet new trees will exist -- in that place, or ten yards over -- or, if a poor decision is made by some short-sighted person and the nature center is someday turned into a subdivision, well, trees will grow elsewhere.  But nature continues.  As much as we need to respect and protect the natural world, the whole process of birth, growth, and death is timeless.  Yet, paradoxically enough, those particular trees and vines and birds and deer are very much a part of this moment.  The same is true for me.  I am alive now, and someday I will not be alive -- not on earth, anyway, not in my current, flawed form.

And it's true for every last one of us.  I'm small; we are all small.  Look up at the sky on a star-filled night and  try convincing yourself that you are not small.  The closest stars, other than the sun, are billions of miles away (and the sun is 93 million miles from us).  This planet has existed for billions of years.  The dinosaurs have been gone for 60 million years.  Infinity is almost the right word here.  Yes, we are small.

And yet we matter.  The individual human being matters -- if not to all the people around that person, then at least to God.  The least of our brothers and sisters, Christ tells us, must be viewed as deserving of love and respect.  (Yes: millions of boys, girls, women, and men have been allowed to starve to death due to the callousness of other human beings -- that is our doing, not God's.  Genocides have been committed -- our doing, not God's.)  God loves each individual person born at any point in human history.  I'm convinced of that.  I can't prove it to you; I wouldn't put much stock in anyone who said they had hard evidence that God, the creator, is not just the great clock-maker of deistic lore.  No, it's a matter of faith.  But it's a belief that is at the core of my faith.  Good Friday is at least partly about God's infinite creativity, God's infinite love for us very finite creatures, and God's willingness to come to live among us and help us learn how to die to self -- our foolish, materialistic ways; our violent, inhumane ways of dealing with other people and the world of nature; our willingness to dehumanize others; all signs of our brokenness, our sinfulness -- so that we may live more fully in the love of God that nurtures and redeems.  God creates, God loves, God transforms.

For me, Good Friday is about God's great goodness, a goodness that is shared generously with me despite my smallness:  my limited life span, the limitations of my body and mind; my brokeness as a sinner.  And God's nature truly helps me to realize that death and decay do not mean the end of everything good.  The God I worship is the creator of life, the creator of all good things.  There's just no way death gets the last laugh when that God is the inventor of all creation.

This Rich Mullins song came to mind near the end of my walk, so I found it on YouTube as soon as I got home.  This is from a chapel service at Wheaton College, one of his last performances before his death in 1997.  The song is all about grace, and nature, and God's love which is both more powerful and more gentle than anything we can imagine.  Not a bad song, I think, for a holy day that focuses on God's redemptive love and our own frailty as God's creation.

James Martin on the Church and Gays and Lesbians

James Martin, S.J. -- who is always worth a read -- has written an especially worthwhile piece ("Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity") on how the Church deals with, and often fails to respect, people who are GLBTQ.  Martin's piece appears in the current edition of America magazine.

A quick quote to motivate you to click over and dig further into Martin's essay.

What would it mean for the church to listen to the experiences of gays and lesbians?  First, it would mean willingly and honestly listening to what it is like to grow up as a homosexual child and adolescent.  It would mean paying attention to the voices of young people who feel persecuted or who are bullied.  It would mean taking seriously the heightened threat of suicides among gay and lesbian youth, which is, after all, a “life issue.”

Also this:

Some Catholic leaders lead off with the “thou shalt nots” and never get to the “thou shalts.”  If all gays and lesbians hear about is the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage (to the exclusion of anything else about gays and lesbians), then it’s perhaps not surprising that many would report feeling rejected.  This way of proceeding has always struck me as surprising.  It would be as if the first thing that a priest said to a group of married Catholic couples at a retreat was not “Welcome,” but “No extramarital sex!” Or if a group of Catholic business leaders was greeted at a luncheon by a bishop who said, “No unfair wages!”  Or if a group of Catholic physicians was told at the beginning of a conference, “No abortions!”  Gay people sometimes feel as if the “thou shalt nots” are the entirety of the church’s teaching on who they are.  Because sometimes that’s all they hear. 

I like to imagine that folks like James Martin are the future leadership of the church in North America.  Not betting lots of money on that -- but hoping, yes, I'm willing to hope.

God Embraces Outcasts -- Then & Now

Thom, author of the blog Faith in the 21st Century, has a great post today in which he considers how the socially marginalized (the outcasts from Proper Mainstream Christian Society) would come into play if Jesus were to appear in our midst and offer us a fresh version of his teaching that "tax collectors and prostitutes are entering heaven before you" (Luke 11:46).  Well worth a read.

Advent: Less Running, More Stillness

I was googling around a few minutes ago, in search of a quick, one-off Advent reflection.  (I haven't picked up the Advent booklet at my bedside in several days:  too busy.)

This is the line I came across on the Internet.  I know nothing about the author or what else he has written.  But it works for me right now.  It fits the spiritual state I'm in at the moment.  And it speaks to this time of waiting.

“Advent: the time to listen for footsteps -- you can't hear footsteps when
you're running yourself.” -- Bill McKibben

I need to slow down.  I need to stop running.  I need to get myself quiet on the outside, and then quiet on the inside as well.  Avail myself of the possibility that Christ might just be willing to take up residence in my flawed soul.  Make myself available to the peace that God is willing to offer -- and which I must be willing to accept.

Advent 2011.  The season when what I really need is fewer bright lights, less noise, less shopping, less greed for what appears in the ads from the big box stores.  And more moments waiting for the peace and love and mercy of God, which most likely will come in small moments, quiet moments.

Making and Finding Silence in Advent

We are now in the first week of Advent.  I love Advent; I love what it's all about -- waiting for God and, as we wait, trying to make a home for God in our hearts.  It's a liturgical season that is, in a sense, all about getting pregnant -- getting pregnant with Christ.  Each of us, female or male, old or young, can help bring Christ into this world.  Each of us is responsible for saying yes to God's call and now we wait for God's presence to grow in our souls rather than in a womb.

For me, silence has to play a role in all this waiting.  Otherwise I get caught up in the hustle and bustle of the commercial enterprise that is Christmas 2011, a season of bargains and parties and food and outward trappings that often fail to lead me back to the spirit of quiet possibility -- the sacredness -- found in "mangers" both ancient and modern.  (There's a "manger" two hundred yards to your right or left, if you're willing to keep your eyes open and you don't require farm animals or straw.  Humble, unassuming places where one can be open to the in-breaking of God in our world.  Places where the incarnation still seems like it has a real chance of occurring in the human soul, even in this busy, high tech era known as 2011.)

Now, in the middle of the night as I write this, I realize that I may not have an easy time of finding silence each day during Advent.  Plenty of Christmas carols in the air, some of which I like a good deal.  (A friend just sent our family a beautiful CD of Christmas carols performed by a girls choir.  We'll be playing that many times in the coming weeks and finding food for our souls in the playing.  Thanks, Jeanne!)  Still -- if I want to find moments of quiet during Advent, I'm going to have to kill the remote and turn off the car radio more often and stop myself from blathering on, too.

I'm going to have to make silence, in other words.  Valuing silence at different points during the day is helpful (perhaps essential) if I hope to make space in my heart for Christ's love, Christ's mercy, Christ's grace.  And maybe cultivating an inner spirit of quiet is essential if I hope to attain the equilibrium to share a bit of that love with others too -- since even in the quiet of the manger, the doorway was left open for shepherds, travelers from afar, and even (let's face it) curious livestock.  I have to imagine that Mary and Joseph savored the quiet -- occasionally broken by the Christ child's cries, for sure -- before they let those strangers in, before they pulled back the blanket a bit to let the visitors see the innocent face of love.

Martin Sheen -- Interviewed by the NCR

Great interview of Martin Sheen in the National Catholic Reporter.  A superb actor, sincere Christian, and good father and citizen.  Not to mention a damn good TV president...

Merton and Contemplation . . . on YouTube

Someone reading out loud the first chapter ("What is Contemplation?") from Thomas Merton's beautiful little book, New Seeds of Contemplation.  Have some coffee handy.  The voice could put you to sleep.  Merton's words, however, may deepen your life.

"Contemplation is also the response to a call: a call from HIm Who has no voice, and yet Who speaks in everythat is, and Who, most of all, speaks in the depths of our own being: for we ourselves are words of His."