Resurrecting Chicago

“The Hummingbird Project” dropped from above into my heart on a gray day of restrictions. This film raised several questions in my mind: What is the value of time? What if I think I have all the time in the world to accomplish what I want to do, but my circuits short out too early? What if someone else beats me to the prize? My life’s goal is trashed.  What if the Amish convince me to drop out of this complex world of capitalism, which drives me ever faster to accomplish what  think I need to do before my expiration date?

Vincent, played by Jesse Eisenburg in this film, is stressed to the breaking point when he seeks some relief from his own devils of success and speed.  He is a young technocrat who is diagnosed with stomach cancer. He experiences the certitude of his death as his body rests exhausted in a massage therapy session.  During massage Vincent’s soul is freed to wander and it can unburden itself. He begins to accept that he will soon be untimely ripped from the womb of his existence.  He should have a long life in front of him, but he doesn’t.

Vincent knows that he will succumb to his disease and eventually stop moving at all.  Jesse learns that life is more important than success and he begins to relate like an uncle should to his two nieces. Vincent respects religious belief when he instructs his crew to remove a fiber stream  from the deep underground of an Amish farmer’s field. Some things are more important than money, more significant than success.

I saw a hummingbird this morning dancing among the pansies growing abundantly in the hanging basket next to my birdfeeder.  He’s not worried abut time. No, just living, just living.

The road to home-church may be open post-pandemic.

When will things get back to normal? It would be nice to receive from the chalice again and it would be great to see everyone’s face again.  It would be comforting to be able to relate to each parishioner with a greeting of peace or a handshake after Mass. Yes, it would be great to get back to how things were before the restrictions.

But, getting back to “normal?” I’m not sure I want our Church to go back to the norm of 3o% attendance and 5% of parishioners supporting the remnant. That’s how things were as we entered the pandemic era.  If we go back to normal we’ll soon be facing nearly empty churches.  Just look at  Catholic attendance at Mass in England or Germany or the Czech Republic or France. The churches in Europe are empty for the most part and those who are there are members of the baby-boom generation.  These parishioners are dying out. There are few millenials, fewer z-generation Catholics.

The Catholic Church in the West is in crisis.  It was declining before the pandemic and we can look forward to a steeper fall now. I don’t think we can expect many to come back to Church post restrictions. No, they are not coming back. They are out of the habit of going, or worse don’t see any need to go.  Then, what happens? Some new form of Church?

What if God is calling us to something greater? A renewed Church. The Church resurrected with a new mission and vision? What if God is calling us to write a new story? What if we don’t go back to normal?

Those who have left the Christian Church or were even baptized in the Church but now write “none” when asked their religious preference, are now 20% of the US adult population. “Oh, they’ll be back to receive the sacrament of marriage or to baptize their children.” In the past two decades, marriages are down over 50% cancelling out the desperate answer “they’ll be back.” If they have a child or two, there will be likely no baptism.

What if we have to start over? Church buildings have fallen into ruin once more as they have  in the past. What if Catholic Schools — as strong in academics as they are,–what if they are on their way out? There were over a thousand children in my elementary school when I went. My high School was a respected Catholic school with over eight hundred in attendance each day.  Both schools are long gone.

I have been a pastor of four  elementary schools.  Each of these schools were staffed with administrators who had no business managing anything much less a Catholic school. The administrators had long ago separated from the mission of the parish. Each principal developed their own turf-school. It wasn’t pretty. Let’s face it: the majority of our Catholic schools are secular. We are raising up smart citizens to compete in a complex society. We are not inspiring a new way of living in discipleship and in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is not an actively immigrant country anymore.  We don’t need parochial schools to save our religion. It’s not working anyway.  There are two hundred children in our parochial school and a similar amount in our religious education program. They are not present at the Eucharist on Sundays. The school system of discipleship is over now.

SO WHAT DO WE DO?

We have to re-imagine the church. Catholic home-schooling may be closer to the ideal of forming disciples than anything else. It seems to me that we have to renounce secularism and the creed of self. With that basis, parents can actually pass on the basics of the Faith and the entire family develops together. The domestic church may not be the entire answer but it must be a foundation for a re-vitalized church.

Our Right to Demonstrate
for Life.

I’ve been thinking of what Cardinal George wrote a few years before he died. It is about the future of the Catholic Church in our country.  He surprised me with the idea that he foresaw that he would likely die in a hospital bed  and his successor would die in a prison cell. Then, the next bishop would die in the public square. The following successor would work to restore the local Church.

In today’s WSJ (3/29/21), Josh Holdenreid of the ANAPA Legal Institute reveals that several media giants have censored and kicked out religious organizations which present moral stands which are these days considered politically incorrect.  Opinions based on religious beliefs are simply censured because they oppose the prevailing woke culture. Never mind the first amendment. Forget respect for your neighbor’s opinion. Prevailing mores concerning transgender equity, homosexual marriage and abortion rights, for example, are sacred cows.  Contrary opinions are not allowed by the woke culture.

I am waiting for the moment when someone stands up during a homily to challenge me concerning current beliefs on freedom. It could be about gender rights (I won’t be using socially correct pronouns), abortion, gayness or simply a confrontation, for example, about who can receive the Eucharist in our Church. “Why are you excluding other Christians from Holy Communion? Why are you against inclusion?” A scenario like this is going to happen.

I may be sued someday for refusing to marry two gay individuals. I may end up in jail for preaching sacred gender as presented in Genesis. My opinion — and the Church’s teaching — is that a man and a woman are made for one another and human life is reborn through family life. Some deranged person might decide to shoot me (since he has a right to carry) in the confessional because I represented Catholic Church morals opposed to the prevailing mores on marriage.

It’s Holy Week. Today’s stational church is St. Praxedes in Rome. St. Praxedes was a second century Christian woman who did all she could to rescue her contemporaries who were trying to live up to the Christian way of living at a time when the Church was suffering persecution. She hid Christians, fed them, ransomed them and finally gave her life for Christ. Her church is built on the ruins of her family home and is a reminder that we today might very well have to face persecution and death for beliefs. We, too, might have to die in the public square.

Dante, that great medieval poet, authored “The Divine Comedy,” the journey of a soul from hell, through purgatory to heaven.  Along the way, Dante is accompanied by a guide who knows the way through the stages of life. The “comedy” is far from funny, but it does lead from dark places to the happiness of heaven — in literary terms, a comedy.

Stephanie Paulsell in a recent issue of The Christian Century (2/24, 21) says she likes to read some book during Lent, a companion in the dark places she travels as Lent lengthens.  Poetry sheds light on the ordinary details of life and helps us to see how these insights make common things unique.  Artists learn to show us how to see. Van Gough paints a small boat floating on a tranquil river and I see what he wants me to see, the water is shimmering and alive as it moves. The artist Kay Dyer paints but this time in words when she looks down a well for stars at night. And, there they were.

During this Lent I’m reading  “The Passion and the Cross,” a recent book by Ron Rolheiser. I’m reading it by hearing a skilled narrator unfold the book for me on my Kindle. I just open my heart and listen to Rolheiser, a companion on my journey this Lent. I am so deft at reading quickly that I can miss the meaning –as in “I’m always forgetting what I read.” So, I press “start” and I hear Rolheiser’s words spoken fresh to me and Lent, then, becomes unique to me, new again.

Passion Sunday is in two days. No palms this year, at least during the Masses. Along with the congregation, I’ll be waving virtual palms and leaning on the insights of the man who has been next to me all of Lent. It’s good to know that I do not have to make this journey alone. Easter is for all of us, the goal of the comedy.

There aren’t many films that interest me these days. Sci-Fi flicks are too crazy for me to follow and blood-guts action films don’t do it for me, either. So, I watch documentaries and the nature channel, mostly. But, since HBO and a few other premium services were, for Thanksgiving, offering a week of free access, I found two films that I thoroughly enjoyed.

“The Giant” (Handia) tells the story of a man born in the 1830s in Basque country who was afflicted with acromegaly, commonly known as gigantism.  It’s the story of two brothers. One goes off to war and returns three years later with war wounds, which include a non-functioning right arm and hand.  He comes back to find that his brother Joaquin has grown into a man nearly eight feet tall and weighing over four-hundred-and-fifty pounds. He, too, is compromised by physical pain from pressure on his joints and musculature as he continues to grow. Both  brothers had planned on working the tiny farm that their aged father still tried to maintain.  Since farm work is so intensely physical, they both knew that farming would be impossible for them to do, so Martin, the veteran, convinces his brother to join a circus and becomes his agent.  As an attraction, Joaquin is a hit.  At first money rolls in but eventually Joaquin’s ability to travel and work  diminish. The story continues as disagreement among the brothers increases. Joaquin the giant, finally dies in his late thirties.

The film is in the Basque language with a few scenes in Spanish and one scene is in English. Subtitles are provided but the cut and paste job of editing makes the film hard to follow sometimes.  However, the cinematography and musical score are wonderful. Not only do we see glorious scenery of Basque country but also haunting visuals of the anguished Juaquin  as he struggles to find himself in his grotesque body.

The other film, “The Coda,” features Patrick  Stewart as a renowned English pianist who in his old age finds himself conflicted when he tries to play with passion and expertise.  His anxiety nearly consumes him and would have except for a female journalist who brings hope back into his life. The writing is wonderful and the background score features classic piano which plays throughout  the life of this good man. It is a love story, a love story about finding love, losing it, and finding it again.. Music helps him cope with loss and makes him understand others. This is a powerful film with a great story, simple and winsome.

Both films are worth seeing more than once. However, now that the free week of premium channels is over, I’ll have to find another way to experience these two remarkable films again.

Thanksgiving Day is tomorrow and for many of us there will be no family gatherings around the dining room table. This year’s contagion makes it an act of charity to avoid gatherings where we could pass on more than just the experience of dining together. The virus is cunning in its ability to get around our social distancing, hand washing and masking. Regardless, we need to remember this Thanksgiving with special regard. It is the Thanksgiving-in-separation.  Distancing makes us realize how important presence is to us.

Virtual meetings and interactions through ZOOM remind us of how we aren’t hugging one another, how were not bringing food to a common table, how we can’t spontaneously look around to see reactions when when Uncle Henry tells a joke or when little Janey’s slice of pumpkin pie lands in her lap. I’ll miss the tradition in our family when gathered around the Thanksgiving feast before grace, we each mention something for which we are grateful. It’s a rare moment of intimacy unique to my family’s Thanksgiving tradition.

Maybe next year, I’ll appreciate Thanksgiving Day in a fresh way. I’ll look around the table and see  wives and children,  younger adults, the older generation and the newest child and think, “Thank you, Lord, for everyone here. I never realized how much each  member of my family has meant to me until the opportunity was taken away last year. But here were are now and as the old hymn says, “It is well with my soul.”

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I haven’t added a post here in a long time.  Don’t call me lazy because I have been writing, just not for this blog. My interest moved to enrolling in a class titled “Imaginative Writing.”  I hadn’t read much in fiction and far less of poetry. So, I found myself dutifully writing several short stories and trying my hand at poetry. Bottom line: I finished the course with a sense of satisfaction and also a renewed appreciation for writers who can write great stories and keep their focus. Poets, too, help us to see in ways we mortals would otherwise be blind to. I think I’ll look for another class to take which will push me along the road to more interesting writing.

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Sister Abilia, eighth grade teacher and diminutive Franciscan Sister who tried valiantly to control her students while they dealt with the hormonal vagaries of being fourteen years old, held out to us as a model of virtue the severe holiness of Padre Pio, now St. Pio. Her descriptions of Padre Pio’s piety contrasted with the ups and downs of teenage life in the eighth grade. Who would not be impressed with accounts of the bearded Capuchin’s bleeding hands and the marks of the nails which Padre Pio tried to hide with sleeves which reached down to his palms? When he prayed the canon of the Mass with hand extended, the photos taken of his hands with their dark marks made me uneasy.

Eve and Adam, a bas-relief on a sarcophagus.

Though he did not leave the monastery where he lived for decades, the faithful came for healing, mainly of their hearts.  I remember that Sister Abilia reminded us that he listened to confessions for many hours each day. She thought we should go to confession often –another allusion to hormones that regularly raged through the eighth grade.

My own teenage curiosity led me to find out that the Santo was not always nice to be around. His brothers in community had to tolerate all the hordes of people that invaded the monastery daily if only to glimpse the good father. Padre Pio was sometimes harsh and grumpy. When I found that out I realized that saints are not perfect, no matter what artists over the centuries have led us to believe. All of us have an undeniable shadowy side. The effects of original sin are with us stomping around in our hearts, even the best of hearts.

These days the iconoclasts are tearing down the statues of our American historical icons including Christopher Columbus (It isn’t his fault that he became the “discoverer” of America)  Robert E. Lee and other Confederate heroes are hunted and knocked off their pedestals. Jefferson is in trouble. Washington, too. There are thunderclouds even over the sixteenth president’s images. Some are re-thinking the Lincoln memorial in D.C.

Cardinal Dolan in a piece for the Wall Street Journal a few weeks back reminds us that we’ve had movements like this before. America’s historical personalities all had flaws, “yet all of them still contributed a lot of good to our nation’s progress.” Later in the article he says “…I want to remember the good and the bad, and recall with gratitude how even people who have an undeniable  dark side can let light prevail and leave the world better.”

Yes, Cardinal Dolan.  Just think of

St. Peter the Apostle and St. Padre Pio.

What is this?  It looks like a gathering of residents in a retirement center. Many are white-haired, not necessarily impaired men but certainly up there in years. The older ones are sagging in their chairs, canes and walkers at hand.  Not all are overweight, but to be honest, most, even the dark haired,  are out of shape.   Everyone is more or less focused on the head table where three leaders are facing the rest of us.  This morning’s discussion is what to do about the diminishing number of community members and the lack of younger members. 

“We need to pray every day for more vocations,” one priest has risen to say. Another joins in saying “All religious communities are feeling the pinch these days.”

Another priest with dark hair offers: “I keep going to these vocation conferences and I meet quite a few young men who show some interest In our community but they don’t follow up with me. I think young people today are too distracted by trying to achieve the best social position that they can. They have so many job opportunities and possible adventures to think about, they just aren’t listening for a divine call.” We are being drowned out by the secular culture.”

One of the white-haired group, Father Gravitas gets up to address the group: “I was talking to a member of the Passionists and they are diminishing in numbers, too.  And, no vocations!  Maybe we should join with them and form a new community.  We could call it the ‘Congregation of the Pascal Mystery!’ We would then proclaim the passion and death of Christ as the solid way to a Resurrected life.”

“Yes!” the dark-haired guy says, “then we could turn to the inquirer at a vocation conference and challenge them to join us: “Come, die with is!”

This brought a smile to the face of Father Gravitas and chuckles from those who were listening.

“I think St. Benedict, the founder of community life, would love that!” says another member of the group.

“Mmm… Sounds interesting to me,” one of the head-table leaders says. “Maybe we should join forces and use the motto, “Let’s die to ourselves and rise with Christ!” The oldest priest rises, grabs hold of his walker and leans forward earnestly. “O my gosh, he says, “who would want to join such a crazy group?”

“Well, it is biblical.”  This comment is from one of the two men at the head-table.  “Remember when Our Lord waited until Lazarus died to announce his intention to go to visit the burial site? The apostles were aware the Sanhedrin had  decided that it was imperative that one man die for the sake of the people.  Thomas, one of the apostles, said, “Let us also go that we may die with him.” (John 11; 16).

Another response: “Some young people want to make their lives mean something.  They don’t want to join an organization but a movement, the more revolutionary the better. Remember, Jesus had told them all that he waited to go up to be with Lazarus and family because he said “It will be for your good and for the good of your faith.” (John 11; 15)

Father Gravitas rises slowly and says slowly: “Maybe this is the only thing we should be saying at vocation conferences.  With certainty in our voices, maybe we should stand in front of a huge, black banner that challenges passersby with the bright words: “Come Die with Us!”