by Tim Kirchoff
At some point in 2015 or early 2016, I noticed that the prayers of the faithful at my home parish often included an intention regarding "just and comprehensive immigration reform." Not merciful, but just. The prayer was not that people who try to come to America be treated mercifully, but that they be treated justly.
On its surface, a prayer for "justice" in immigration laws seems like something that one might hear from people who favor stricter enforcement of our immigration laws, but it takes on a different meaning when it comes from people who sympathize deeply with the concerns and interests of the undocumented. Justice, they seem to say, is better than what the undocumented are subjected to under the existing legal regime.
Curious, I began to look for prayers about immigration from the pro-enforcement side. But at the time, the only prayers I could readily find that seemed related to the immigration issue but were not in favor of the immigrants themselves were aimed toward ensuring the safety and success of law enforcement in border regions, and to the extent that the prayers were directed against anyone, it was against drug traffickers.
I no longer have the resolve to spend any length of time researching what sorts of prayers immigration hawks might be offering in the age of Trump, but at the time, it struck me that it would be rather difficult for anyone to pray that all the undocumented be deported. By the same token, one could hardly pray that the individuals, families and communities that are affected by deportation or the ever-present fear of deportation continue to suffer in those ways.
My point is not that some immigration hawks know deep down that the policies they defend are not just in God's eyes. OK, well, maybe it is, but only tangentially. More basically, I think the prayers offered by both sides are actually compatible. Most advocates for immigrants and refugees would happily pray for the safety and success of border enforcement agents in apprehending drug traffickers and dangerous criminals, and I suspect that those who pray for border patrol agents would also be willing to pray that our country institute and enforce immigration policies that are in accordance with justice.
Such shared prayer may be helpful in finding ways for different sides to agree with minimal equivocation, and this in turn might help rebuild a shared recognition of the goods we hold in common. In trying to pray together, we are not only trying to invite the "other side" into our words and concerns, but to bring both sides' concerns before God. Each side must not only concede that the other side has something of value that they are trying to protect, and then further surrender the question to God.
That process is, in theory, what legislative chaplains are supposed to facilitate, and why the story about Paul Ryan pressuring the House chaplain to resign was so fascinating to watch. At first, the story was that Fr. Pat Conroy was being fired because of overly partisan prayers; the narrative later changed to Republican dissatisfaction over the pastoral care he was offering.
In the first narrative, a prayer before a debate on the Republican tax bill was supposedly read as being critical of the bill's intentions. If indeed Republicans took umbrage at the chaplain praying that they, '"be mindful that the institutions and structures of our great nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle” and that they “guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans,”' then it would seem to be a case of, to borrow Shakespeare's phrase, protesting too much. If a prayer that the lawmaking process serves the common good (and especially the poor) strikes you as a jab against your intentions despite the fact that your allies frequently invoke those same ideas in support of the legislation, then perhaps your own intentions are not so good.
A well-composed prayer in the context of a political debate is a challenge; it cannot be merely perfunctory or platitudinous, or it accomplishes nothing. Nor can it be partisan, or it only makes the debate more acrimonious: when the person praying forgets that God is the intended audience, and instead tries to use religious language to partisan ends, then they're not praying so much as cheerleading.
At its best, prayer is the necessary starting point for a shared process of policy discernment. If the prayer contains conscious equivocation-- for example, in abortion debates, both sides claim to represent human rights-- then treating each side's concern as sincere and not just political posturing is a necessary precondition for resolving the tension.
Prayer gives us an opportunity to engage our consciences. It is a way of asking ourselves whether what we are trying to accomplish is truly in line with what we believe to be morally correct, and of recognizing that people who disagree with us may nonetheless be acting in good faith.
In short, finding ways to pray together about politics is an interesting challenge. Let's try it more often.
Showing posts with label tim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tim. Show all posts
Monday, June 3, 2019
Monday, April 1, 2019
TRH on Catholic Normalcy No. 2: Primary Priorities
by Tim Kirchoff
I’d like take a break from my colleagues’ discussions of family life and Christian vocation to talk about something far more worthwhile: politics. More specifically, the primary season is (already!) beginning, and candidates for every level of office are looking to build momentum.
If nothing else, the 2016 election proved how much primaries matter. The awful choice with which we were confronted in the voting booth in November was the result of a lengthy series of primaries in which candidates, party officials, media personalities, and voters all made decisions that contributed in some way to the result. Trump’s fixation on building a wall was not inevitable, nor was Trump’s nomination, or Clinton’s. If we are conscientious in the way we approach the 2020 primary season, we may be able to make a much more satisfying decision next November, or if we fail in 2020 as we did in 2016, at least we will have dared something different.
As Catholics, we are not politically unified. Many of us are more likely to argue with fellow Catholics over partisan politics than we are to argue with members of our respective parties about moral policies. We focus more on justifying our voting patterns and partisan affiliations than actually influencing our parties for the better. We are sycophants when we ought to be prophets, representing our respective parties within the Church more than the Church in our political parties.
What would happen if, for just one year, we reversed this dynamic? Instead of trying to change someone’s mind (or even just convince ourselves) about the merits of one party or candidate, let’s challenge our parties to be worthy of the support they demand of us.
I have in mind one issue for each major party—one subject on which the party orthodoxy is so willfully morally blind that even the slightest challenge to it would be noteworthy and ever-so-welcome.
Republicans
The administration’s family separation policy was, from the very start, a moral travesty, and the depth of this policy’s turpitude has only become more apparent with time. The administration, with other viable policy alternatives, decided to detain children separately from their parents before their asylum hearings. These children were traumatized and maltreated, apparently with few or even no considerations made as to how they might be reunited with their parents afterward. All of this was done, rather transparently, in order to try to scare people away from applying for asylum. That is, people who were trying to enter America legally were subjected to needless and deliberate cruelty in order to dissuade people from attempting to enter through this entirely legal method.
Catholics who lean Republican must not hide from this awful truth. The Republican Party needs to understand the intentions and effects of this policy. If you’re a Catholic who leans Republican, talk to your politically-active friends about the family separation policy. They should be willing to agree that any reasonable person would be entirely justified in regarding the administration’s policy as deliberately cruel, and that "never seeing your children again" is.
Democrats
The board members of Democrats for Life of America have been quite vocal lately. Charles Camosy recently suggested that there is room in the Democratic presidential primary field for a pro-life candidate. I confess I see a great deal of appeal in the idea of a pro-life democrat like the governor of Louisiana stepping forward and showing just how much of the Democratic Party is in fact open to a pro-life candidate, regardless of whether they end up winning the nomination.
Here, though, I want to focus on what the laity can accomplish on the ground, as opposed to actions that depend entirely on the decisions of politicians. Michael Wear’s recent essay in The Atlantic offers insights that are more immediately relevant.1
Speak to your Democratic friends about the good work done by pro-life activists. Praise pro-lifers, and let your friends in the Democratic Party know that the single best way for a presidential candidate to get your attention would be to acknowledge the pro-life movement in good faith.
The biggest obstacle, which I have thus far ignored, is that many Catholic Republicans will be inclined to think of the family separation issue as something that was fabricated or, at best, exaggerated by biased media, and many Catholic Democrats have a view of the pro-life movement that is colored by the worst elements of the movement. Catholic partisans will not be in a position to argue what I suggest above, because too few of them will even be prepared to believe the argument in the first place. Catholics on both sides are more prepared to believe partisan sources than members of their own Church.
The bishops, for all their faults in moral leadership, can at least offer us an example here. The bishops have different interests and areas of activism, but they fundamentally trust -- or at least do not eagerly contradict -- USCCB committees on other issues. The bishops trust each other on abortion, immigration, and the environment more than they trust partisan sources.
We in the laity, meanwhile, have very little trust in each other. In losing trust in each other, we lose the ability to witness to the whole of the Gospel. We have become too much part of our parties, too defined by the dominant political culture, rather than living out our vocations in the different parts of the political spectrum. Catholics on the right aren't sufficiently familiar with the Church's involvement in serving immigrants, much less engaging in solidarity with immigrants. Catholics on the Left repeat tired lines about abortion opponents as being merely "pro-birth," and in the worst cases issue barely a whimper in defense of the unborn,2 so far divorced are they from the realities of pro-life activism.We need to pursue at least some small ways that we can renew trust in each other.
I’d like take a break from my colleagues’ discussions of family life and Christian vocation to talk about something far more worthwhile: politics. More specifically, the primary season is (already!) beginning, and candidates for every level of office are looking to build momentum.
If nothing else, the 2016 election proved how much primaries matter. The awful choice with which we were confronted in the voting booth in November was the result of a lengthy series of primaries in which candidates, party officials, media personalities, and voters all made decisions that contributed in some way to the result. Trump’s fixation on building a wall was not inevitable, nor was Trump’s nomination, or Clinton’s. If we are conscientious in the way we approach the 2020 primary season, we may be able to make a much more satisfying decision next November, or if we fail in 2020 as we did in 2016, at least we will have dared something different.
As Catholics, we are not politically unified. Many of us are more likely to argue with fellow Catholics over partisan politics than we are to argue with members of our respective parties about moral policies. We focus more on justifying our voting patterns and partisan affiliations than actually influencing our parties for the better. We are sycophants when we ought to be prophets, representing our respective parties within the Church more than the Church in our political parties.
What would happen if, for just one year, we reversed this dynamic? Instead of trying to change someone’s mind (or even just convince ourselves) about the merits of one party or candidate, let’s challenge our parties to be worthy of the support they demand of us.I have in mind one issue for each major party—one subject on which the party orthodoxy is so willfully morally blind that even the slightest challenge to it would be noteworthy and ever-so-welcome.
Republicans
The administration’s family separation policy was, from the very start, a moral travesty, and the depth of this policy’s turpitude has only become more apparent with time. The administration, with other viable policy alternatives, decided to detain children separately from their parents before their asylum hearings. These children were traumatized and maltreated, apparently with few or even no considerations made as to how they might be reunited with their parents afterward. All of this was done, rather transparently, in order to try to scare people away from applying for asylum. That is, people who were trying to enter America legally were subjected to needless and deliberate cruelty in order to dissuade people from attempting to enter through this entirely legal method.
Catholics who lean Republican must not hide from this awful truth. The Republican Party needs to understand the intentions and effects of this policy. If you’re a Catholic who leans Republican, talk to your politically-active friends about the family separation policy. They should be willing to agree that any reasonable person would be entirely justified in regarding the administration’s policy as deliberately cruel, and that "never seeing your children again" is.
Democrats
The board members of Democrats for Life of America have been quite vocal lately. Charles Camosy recently suggested that there is room in the Democratic presidential primary field for a pro-life candidate. I confess I see a great deal of appeal in the idea of a pro-life democrat like the governor of Louisiana stepping forward and showing just how much of the Democratic Party is in fact open to a pro-life candidate, regardless of whether they end up winning the nomination.
Here, though, I want to focus on what the laity can accomplish on the ground, as opposed to actions that depend entirely on the decisions of politicians. Michael Wear’s recent essay in The Atlantic offers insights that are more immediately relevant.1
“There is no sense that anti-abortion Republicans are influenced by the stories of women like Dr. Jen Gunter or Erika Christensen. There is no sense that pro-choice Democrats are aware of sincere pro-life Americans, or take seriously the claim that abortion is an attack on the very human dignity Democrats rightly invoke (and, yes, many anti-abortion Republicans ignore) when discussing immigration, poverty, or human rights. Now our politics are only for the absolutists, those who deny any place for doubt or humility.
[…] I have spoken with women who work at pro-life pregnancy clinics who condemn any language that shames women or increases the moral burden women feel. They work with pregnant women who are facing immense pressures and seemingly impossible situations every day, and approach the issue of abortion with compassion, not callousness.”What I would like to see from the Democratic side is a repudiation of the talking points that denigrate pro-lifers, either by pretending that pro-life pregnancy clinics don’t exist, or by pretending that these clinics exist only to shame and coerce women into giving birth. The truth is that the people most involved in the pro-life cause are working not to deny women a choice, but to empower them and give them the necessary resources (financial and otherwise) to recognize that abortion is not their only option.
Speak to your Democratic friends about the good work done by pro-life activists. Praise pro-lifers, and let your friends in the Democratic Party know that the single best way for a presidential candidate to get your attention would be to acknowledge the pro-life movement in good faith.
* * *
The biggest obstacle, which I have thus far ignored, is that many Catholic Republicans will be inclined to think of the family separation issue as something that was fabricated or, at best, exaggerated by biased media, and many Catholic Democrats have a view of the pro-life movement that is colored by the worst elements of the movement. Catholic partisans will not be in a position to argue what I suggest above, because too few of them will even be prepared to believe the argument in the first place. Catholics on both sides are more prepared to believe partisan sources than members of their own Church.The bishops, for all their faults in moral leadership, can at least offer us an example here. The bishops have different interests and areas of activism, but they fundamentally trust -- or at least do not eagerly contradict -- USCCB committees on other issues. The bishops trust each other on abortion, immigration, and the environment more than they trust partisan sources.
We in the laity, meanwhile, have very little trust in each other. In losing trust in each other, we lose the ability to witness to the whole of the Gospel. We have become too much part of our parties, too defined by the dominant political culture, rather than living out our vocations in the different parts of the political spectrum. Catholics on the right aren't sufficiently familiar with the Church's involvement in serving immigrants, much less engaging in solidarity with immigrants. Catholics on the Left repeat tired lines about abortion opponents as being merely "pro-birth," and in the worst cases issue barely a whimper in defense of the unborn,2 so far divorced are they from the realities of pro-life activism.We need to pursue at least some small ways that we can renew trust in each other.
1 Also the author of a book that helped radically change the way this long-time Republican thinks about politics and the Obama administration.↩
Wednesday, February 27, 2019
TRH on Racism No. 4: Racism and Original Sin
by Tim Kirchoff
Some time before the publication of the USCCB's new pastoral letter on racism, I noticed that several bishops—including Cardinal Cupich and Archbishop Chaput, who are hardly on the same side of the political spectrum—had referred to racism as America’s “original sin.” I hoped that the letter could provide some insight into what precisely they meant by it. I was a little surprised when I got through the entire letter without that term even appearing, though I found it very briefly referenced in some of the supplemental materials.
I was not the only one to experience disappointment in reading the bishops' letter. I've noticed several criticisms of it, particularly as people have had more time to read and process it. The biggest criticisms I’ve seen are aimed at the failure to adequately address the Church’s role in perpetrating and perpetuating racism, and the absence of any discussion whatsoever of the term “white privilege.” Gratitude that the bishops are addressing racism collectively for the first time in a while has been replaced with disappointment in how little they managed to actually say. My disappointment was easier to get over, not least because the term I wanted to see explored is more obscure.
Regardless, I was still a bit puzzled by the proposition that racism is America’s original sin when a homily on a certain Holy Day of Obligation reminded me that Mary, under the title of the Immaculate Conception, is the official patroness of the United States. Almost immediately, the ideas began to react in my head like baking soda and vinegar in a grade school science project.1
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception proclaims that Mary was miraculously conceived without original sin, and with the help of God’s grace remained free from sin for her entire earthly life. Being free from sin was not something Mary accomplished on her own: it was God who rescued her from the consequences of humanity’s fallen condition. In doing so, God showed us what he hopes to accomplish in all of us, but we make a mistake when we assume that this work has already been completed in us. Original sin is something we inherited from our first parents, and we have to accept that we still have to deal with its consequences, even after baptism.
Similar things can be said of racism. We have inherited our country's racial difficulties from previous generations. We still have to deal with the consequences of their misdeeds today: in the economic circumstances of minorities, in laws that unfairly (if sometimes indirectly or unconsciously) target minorities, and in cultural narratives and tropes that carry with them racist undertones. For Americans today, racism is as inescapable as original sin, and we should not assume that, as a society, we have overcome centuries of persecution in a few decades, all through our own efforts. Even if we were to say that either the emancipation of slaves or the Civil Rights movement represent a sort of baptism, and even if we were to set aside racism against other ethnic groups, we would still have to deal with concupiscence, a tendency to fall back into sin.
In the end, I have come to understand the connection of the theological concept of original sin to modern institutional racism as an analogy.2 It's a framework for thinking about these issues in ways that keep us from seeking simple solutions. It is not just that racism has played some part in the American story from the very beginning and continues to affect us, but that we must not act as if its consequences can be overcome by human effort alone. I should not say that I have genuinely overcome racism, and I should not say that our society has genuinely overcome racism, any more than I can say we have overcome original sin.
My interpretation of the proposition that racism is America's original sin is, in many ways, disposable. But for me, remembering that Mary was immaculately conceived reminded me that I am not, and helped me think about what the bishops actually wrote about racism being a sin in more fruitful ways.
"Open Wide Our Hearts" is not the first time racism has been called a sin, even by the USCCB, but the simple act of putting racism in the category of "sin," if we carry that proposition to its conclusion, might help lay necessary groundwork for expanding the conversation on race beyond those who are or who strive to be woke.
As the moderator of a Facebook discussion group, I've seen accusations of racism derail or outright end more than one conversation. No matter how the accusation of racism is intended, the person being accused receives it as being somewhere between an ad hominem argument and outright profanity. Many generally well-meaning people don't know how to receive or process the suggestion that their arguments or perspectives betray some form of racism without perceiving all the deeply negative connotations of that term. This is a significant obstacle to anything resembling a national conversation on race- or even just one within the Catholic Church in America.
In thinking of and analyzing racism as a sin as the bishops do, we are in a certain sense liberated from the shame-inducing connotations associated with the label: we can think of racism as we think of avarice, gluttony, lust, or pride (if we understand pride as thinking of oneself as having greater worth or dignity than others, then racism is a form of pride). We can use terms like temptation, concupiscence, culpability, scrupulosity, and vincible or invincible ignorance in the context of race conversations.
In accepting original sin as an analogy for thinking about racism in the context of American society, and even more so treating racism as a sin in itself, we can adapt familiar Catholic paradigms to help us understand and lessen the deleterious effects of racism in our society.
Some time before the publication of the USCCB's new pastoral letter on racism, I noticed that several bishops—including Cardinal Cupich and Archbishop Chaput, who are hardly on the same side of the political spectrum—had referred to racism as America’s “original sin.” I hoped that the letter could provide some insight into what precisely they meant by it. I was a little surprised when I got through the entire letter without that term even appearing, though I found it very briefly referenced in some of the supplemental materials.
I was not the only one to experience disappointment in reading the bishops' letter. I've noticed several criticisms of it, particularly as people have had more time to read and process it. The biggest criticisms I’ve seen are aimed at the failure to adequately address the Church’s role in perpetrating and perpetuating racism, and the absence of any discussion whatsoever of the term “white privilege.” Gratitude that the bishops are addressing racism collectively for the first time in a while has been replaced with disappointment in how little they managed to actually say. My disappointment was easier to get over, not least because the term I wanted to see explored is more obscure.
Regardless, I was still a bit puzzled by the proposition that racism is America’s original sin when a homily on a certain Holy Day of Obligation reminded me that Mary, under the title of the Immaculate Conception, is the official patroness of the United States. Almost immediately, the ideas began to react in my head like baking soda and vinegar in a grade school science project.1
The dogma of the Immaculate Conception proclaims that Mary was miraculously conceived without original sin, and with the help of God’s grace remained free from sin for her entire earthly life. Being free from sin was not something Mary accomplished on her own: it was God who rescued her from the consequences of humanity’s fallen condition. In doing so, God showed us what he hopes to accomplish in all of us, but we make a mistake when we assume that this work has already been completed in us. Original sin is something we inherited from our first parents, and we have to accept that we still have to deal with its consequences, even after baptism.Similar things can be said of racism. We have inherited our country's racial difficulties from previous generations. We still have to deal with the consequences of their misdeeds today: in the economic circumstances of minorities, in laws that unfairly (if sometimes indirectly or unconsciously) target minorities, and in cultural narratives and tropes that carry with them racist undertones. For Americans today, racism is as inescapable as original sin, and we should not assume that, as a society, we have overcome centuries of persecution in a few decades, all through our own efforts. Even if we were to say that either the emancipation of slaves or the Civil Rights movement represent a sort of baptism, and even if we were to set aside racism against other ethnic groups, we would still have to deal with concupiscence, a tendency to fall back into sin.
In the end, I have come to understand the connection of the theological concept of original sin to modern institutional racism as an analogy.2 It's a framework for thinking about these issues in ways that keep us from seeking simple solutions. It is not just that racism has played some part in the American story from the very beginning and continues to affect us, but that we must not act as if its consequences can be overcome by human effort alone. I should not say that I have genuinely overcome racism, and I should not say that our society has genuinely overcome racism, any more than I can say we have overcome original sin.
My interpretation of the proposition that racism is America's original sin is, in many ways, disposable. But for me, remembering that Mary was immaculately conceived reminded me that I am not, and helped me think about what the bishops actually wrote about racism being a sin in more fruitful ways.
"Open Wide Our Hearts" is not the first time racism has been called a sin, even by the USCCB, but the simple act of putting racism in the category of "sin," if we carry that proposition to its conclusion, might help lay necessary groundwork for expanding the conversation on race beyond those who are or who strive to be woke.
As the moderator of a Facebook discussion group, I've seen accusations of racism derail or outright end more than one conversation. No matter how the accusation of racism is intended, the person being accused receives it as being somewhere between an ad hominem argument and outright profanity. Many generally well-meaning people don't know how to receive or process the suggestion that their arguments or perspectives betray some form of racism without perceiving all the deeply negative connotations of that term. This is a significant obstacle to anything resembling a national conversation on race- or even just one within the Catholic Church in America.
In thinking of and analyzing racism as a sin as the bishops do, we are in a certain sense liberated from the shame-inducing connotations associated with the label: we can think of racism as we think of avarice, gluttony, lust, or pride (if we understand pride as thinking of oneself as having greater worth or dignity than others, then racism is a form of pride). We can use terms like temptation, concupiscence, culpability, scrupulosity, and vincible or invincible ignorance in the context of race conversations.
In accepting original sin as an analogy for thinking about racism in the context of American society, and even more so treating racism as a sin in itself, we can adapt familiar Catholic paradigms to help us understand and lessen the deleterious effects of racism in our society.
1 I find this analogy fitting because, compared to some other people I could name, my thoughts on this subject are probably about on the level of a grade school project.↩
2 As it turns out, the term seems to have been popularized by a book published some time ago. I haven't read the book, and don't know to what degree my understanding lines up with the author's, or either Cupich or Chaput's understanding of the term. This is just the way of thinking about the term that I find most interesting and useful.↩
Monday, September 17, 2018
Reflections on a Presentation by Sr. Helen Prejean
by Tim Kirchoff
I attended the second iteration of the Life and Justice Conference this past weekend, just as I said I would in my last post. As happened last year, I feel like I left the conference with a number of fragmentary thoughts— puzzle pieces that I know make part of a bigger picture (or seamless garment), but I don’t yet know precisely how.
Sr. Helen Prejean’s keynote was the most engaging part of the day. There is much from her presentation and from the other sessions that I haven't fully processed yet. What follows are my most fully-formed thoughts and reactions.
As I arrived on Saturday morning, there were about 6-8 people standing outside the venue, holding various hand-drawn signs accusing Sr. Prejean of distorting Catholic teaching. As I passed them, one informed me that Sr. Prejean supported pro-abortion politicians. I had been vaguely familiar with the idea that Helen Prejean is not particularly admired on the Catholic Right, though even now I have trouble understanding precisely why they hold her in such suspicion.1
The Speech Itself
Sr. Prejean mainly focused on capital punishment, discussing how she became involved in the issue and several arguments for and against it.
Ministering to and empathizing with death row inmates led her to recognize that the basic human dignity of death row inmates is not obliterated even by their heinous crimes. Furthermore, she saw that capital punishment brings no real comfort to victims’ families.
Two aspects of her criticism of capital punishment strike me as particularly pertinent and worth repeating:
1. Racism: 70% of executions today are in states that formerly practiced slavery, states in which Jim Crow laws attempted to perpetuate racial oppression. The majority of cases in which the death penalty is actually enforced, moreover, involve a poor defendant of color, often in cases where that person of color kills a white person. Whether intentionally or not, capital punishment seems like a continuation of Jim Crow.2
2. Collateral damage: it forces good people serving on juries or as prison guards and wardens to participate in killing a fellow human being who has already been rendered helpless and harmless. She spoke of jurors who are haunted by their choice and of prison guards who are unable to sleep after participating in an execution. Participating in capital punishment, in itself, can be deeply traumatizing.
Abortion’s Collateral Damage
During the Q&A session, one woman asked her about her stance on abortion. In response, Sr. Helen returned to a point she had made about murderers—that they are more likely to be motivated by panic or desperation than callousness—to suggest that it is important to have genuine empathy for mothers in difficult situations, and that we should focus on assisting them in their circumstances, rather than assuming that their choice stems from a callous disregard for the life of their child.
Sr. Prejean’s response to the abortion question struck me as incomplete in two ways. First, she missed what struck me as a natural extension of her discussion of the collateral damage of the death penalty: if the recognition of the inviolable human dignity of the death row inmate results in jurors and prison guards being haunted by the experience even years later, then ought we not expect that the recognition of the humanity of the unborn might lead to similar effects among all those involved in abortion?
Building a post-abortion society, ultimately, means more than making abortion illegal, and more than making sure that mothers and children have adequate care available to them. It will also mean recognizing and addressing abortion's collateral damage. Women may feel guilty decades later for getting an abortion. Men may have pressured their partners into abortions, or their partners may have procured abortions against their wishes. Parents might convince their daughter that abortion is her only chance at the future she deserves. Abortionists and abortion clinic workers are told by law and society that they are helping people exercise their own fundamental rights, but at the cost of innocent lives. These varying forms of guilt and grief are all wounds that will remain for decades after the end of abortion.
In this sense, ministries like Project Rachel, which provides retreats and counseling for women who have had abortions, will be crucial in helping us understand what a truly post-abortion society looks like. Sr. Helen's ministry to victims' families and prison staff as well as death row inmates ought to give clues, or at least encouragement, in pursuing post-abortion healing for both individuals and society.
A Tired Canard
If post-abortion healing is an under-explored subject, the proposition that pro-life activists need to empathize with and support women in crisis pregnancies has been discussed to death. What troubles me about it is that this argument is often delivered as if it is novel, when in fact pro-life activists took it to heart long ago.
Saying that pro-lifers need to provide support and resources for women considering abortion is a bit like saying that the Catholic Church in America needs to implement practices to prevent the sexual abuse of children. The various institutional ministries of the Church in America have already implemented VIRTUS training to recognize all of the signs and grooming behavior associated with sexual abuse. Not everyone in the pews can identify grooming behaviors, and many bishops haven’t yet been held accountable for their failures, but to say that the Church isn't trying to prevent abuse ignores the diligence and vigilance of so many people who work in Catholic institutions.
Similarly, the pro-life movement on the ground is spending considerable effort and expense taking care of women in very difficult situations. Even if many supposedly pro-life politicians and pro-life voters haven't yet learned this lesson, Sister Helen's proposition was hardly revolutionary among the people in the audience who focus their activism on trying to end abortion.
Usually, when I hear people talk about how the pro-life movement needs to take care of women in crisis pregnancies, it comes across as a challenge to the movement or a reason for rejecting it, seldom acknowledging the degree to which their recommendations are already reality.3
Stepping Back
But perhaps I am not being fair in my interpretation of Sister Helen's statement. The woman who asked her seemed to be proceeding from a similar mindset as the half-dozen people who had been protesting outside-- namely, the assumption that Helen Prejean is not a friend of efforts to end abortion. The question was an attempt to extract an affirmation of the idea that abortion is, in fact, bad. I can't imagine how many times she has had to answer a similar question, and her response, on some level, was an articulation of what kind of pro-life activism she would be most comfortable with. She was asked to give a conceptual affirmation to anti-abortion efforts, and she gave precisely that.
But conceptual affirmations are not enough when we are talking about ministries that people pour their lives and souls into. Helen Prejean's ministry is deserving of admiration for her personal virtues and wonder at the way God has worked through her. The same is true of anti-abortion activism, especially to the extent that it involves empathizing with and accompanying women facing monumentally difficult situations.
We shouldn't be seeking affirmation from each other the way the woman at the conference sought affirmation from Helen Prejean, as if it were squeezing blood from a stone. Nor do we really gain anything by taking the approach of the protestors outside-- critiquing each other without for a moment appreciating the work God does in and through each of us.
At the risk of being even more insufferable than I usually am, I want to close with a challenge -- a challenge to look closely and charitably at a ministry related to a topic you're not entirely comfortable with. Look at issues of race or immigration or abortion through the eyes of someone like Helen Prejean who has dedicated their life to understanding the issue and ministering to people in their greatest need. Look for the ways the Holy Spirit is at work in their ministry, and hold on to that perception.4 Look for things to admire more than reasons to criticize.
I attended the second iteration of the Life and Justice Conference this past weekend, just as I said I would in my last post. As happened last year, I feel like I left the conference with a number of fragmentary thoughts— puzzle pieces that I know make part of a bigger picture (or seamless garment), but I don’t yet know precisely how.
As I arrived on Saturday morning, there were about 6-8 people standing outside the venue, holding various hand-drawn signs accusing Sr. Prejean of distorting Catholic teaching. As I passed them, one informed me that Sr. Prejean supported pro-abortion politicians. I had been vaguely familiar with the idea that Helen Prejean is not particularly admired on the Catholic Right, though even now I have trouble understanding precisely why they hold her in such suspicion.1
The Speech Itself
Sr. Prejean mainly focused on capital punishment, discussing how she became involved in the issue and several arguments for and against it.
Ministering to and empathizing with death row inmates led her to recognize that the basic human dignity of death row inmates is not obliterated even by their heinous crimes. Furthermore, she saw that capital punishment brings no real comfort to victims’ families.
Two aspects of her criticism of capital punishment strike me as particularly pertinent and worth repeating:
1. Racism: 70% of executions today are in states that formerly practiced slavery, states in which Jim Crow laws attempted to perpetuate racial oppression. The majority of cases in which the death penalty is actually enforced, moreover, involve a poor defendant of color, often in cases where that person of color kills a white person. Whether intentionally or not, capital punishment seems like a continuation of Jim Crow.2
2. Collateral damage: it forces good people serving on juries or as prison guards and wardens to participate in killing a fellow human being who has already been rendered helpless and harmless. She spoke of jurors who are haunted by their choice and of prison guards who are unable to sleep after participating in an execution. Participating in capital punishment, in itself, can be deeply traumatizing.
Abortion’s Collateral Damage
During the Q&A session, one woman asked her about her stance on abortion. In response, Sr. Helen returned to a point she had made about murderers—that they are more likely to be motivated by panic or desperation than callousness—to suggest that it is important to have genuine empathy for mothers in difficult situations, and that we should focus on assisting them in their circumstances, rather than assuming that their choice stems from a callous disregard for the life of their child.
Sr. Prejean’s response to the abortion question struck me as incomplete in two ways. First, she missed what struck me as a natural extension of her discussion of the collateral damage of the death penalty: if the recognition of the inviolable human dignity of the death row inmate results in jurors and prison guards being haunted by the experience even years later, then ought we not expect that the recognition of the humanity of the unborn might lead to similar effects among all those involved in abortion?
Building a post-abortion society, ultimately, means more than making abortion illegal, and more than making sure that mothers and children have adequate care available to them. It will also mean recognizing and addressing abortion's collateral damage. Women may feel guilty decades later for getting an abortion. Men may have pressured their partners into abortions, or their partners may have procured abortions against their wishes. Parents might convince their daughter that abortion is her only chance at the future she deserves. Abortionists and abortion clinic workers are told by law and society that they are helping people exercise their own fundamental rights, but at the cost of innocent lives. These varying forms of guilt and grief are all wounds that will remain for decades after the end of abortion.
A Tired Canard
If post-abortion healing is an under-explored subject, the proposition that pro-life activists need to empathize with and support women in crisis pregnancies has been discussed to death. What troubles me about it is that this argument is often delivered as if it is novel, when in fact pro-life activists took it to heart long ago.
Saying that pro-lifers need to provide support and resources for women considering abortion is a bit like saying that the Catholic Church in America needs to implement practices to prevent the sexual abuse of children. The various institutional ministries of the Church in America have already implemented VIRTUS training to recognize all of the signs and grooming behavior associated with sexual abuse. Not everyone in the pews can identify grooming behaviors, and many bishops haven’t yet been held accountable for their failures, but to say that the Church isn't trying to prevent abuse ignores the diligence and vigilance of so many people who work in Catholic institutions.
Similarly, the pro-life movement on the ground is spending considerable effort and expense taking care of women in very difficult situations. Even if many supposedly pro-life politicians and pro-life voters haven't yet learned this lesson, Sister Helen's proposition was hardly revolutionary among the people in the audience who focus their activism on trying to end abortion.
Usually, when I hear people talk about how the pro-life movement needs to take care of women in crisis pregnancies, it comes across as a challenge to the movement or a reason for rejecting it, seldom acknowledging the degree to which their recommendations are already reality.3
Stepping Back
But perhaps I am not being fair in my interpretation of Sister Helen's statement. The woman who asked her seemed to be proceeding from a similar mindset as the half-dozen people who had been protesting outside-- namely, the assumption that Helen Prejean is not a friend of efforts to end abortion. The question was an attempt to extract an affirmation of the idea that abortion is, in fact, bad. I can't imagine how many times she has had to answer a similar question, and her response, on some level, was an articulation of what kind of pro-life activism she would be most comfortable with. She was asked to give a conceptual affirmation to anti-abortion efforts, and she gave precisely that.
But conceptual affirmations are not enough when we are talking about ministries that people pour their lives and souls into. Helen Prejean's ministry is deserving of admiration for her personal virtues and wonder at the way God has worked through her. The same is true of anti-abortion activism, especially to the extent that it involves empathizing with and accompanying women facing monumentally difficult situations.
We shouldn't be seeking affirmation from each other the way the woman at the conference sought affirmation from Helen Prejean, as if it were squeezing blood from a stone. Nor do we really gain anything by taking the approach of the protestors outside-- critiquing each other without for a moment appreciating the work God does in and through each of us.
At the risk of being even more insufferable than I usually am, I want to close with a challenge -- a challenge to look closely and charitably at a ministry related to a topic you're not entirely comfortable with. Look at issues of race or immigration or abortion through the eyes of someone like Helen Prejean who has dedicated their life to understanding the issue and ministering to people in their greatest need. Look for the ways the Holy Spirit is at work in their ministry, and hold on to that perception.4 Look for things to admire more than reasons to criticize.
1 This is also true of right-wing contempt for Fr. James Martin. I have no particular affection for any Catholic celebrity activists, but neither do I see much point in heaping contempt on someone just because they have the admiration of other Catholics whom I happen to dislike. Based on what other people at the conference said later, part of the excuse for disliking Helen Prejean is based on her signing on to a draft of an anti-war statement that was then revised to include support for abortion and published without notifying her of the changes. If she also happened to support politicians who happen to be pro-choice on abortion, that’s… a different issue, but not worth denouncing a person’s entire public ministry and activism.↩
2 The New Jim Crow has been on my reading list since college. Still haven’t read it. “Whoops” doesn’t seem to cover it.↩
3 It would be nice, just once, to see someone not involved in the pro-life movement acknowledge the existence of crisis pregnancy centers without accusing them of being absolutely evil.↩
4 Editor's Note: Here at The Restless Hearts, Erin has shared reflections on race, from her perspective as a white educator working with students who are people of color: Part One | Part Two | Part Three.
Also, I brought back some reflections from the US-Mexico Borderlands on immigration as well as thoughts on development from an immersion in Uganda.↩
Monday, August 6, 2018
Playing with some Pro-Life Puzzle Pieces
by Tim Kirchoff
I enjoy jigsaw puzzles. Trying to figure out each individual puzzle piece’s place in the bigger picture and trying to find how it fits with other individual pieces is engaging for me.
Attending the Archdiocese of Chicago’s inaugural Life and Justice Conference last September was, in some ways, like opening a new jigsaw puzzle. There were many individual moments from that day that I knew fit together, but knew would take time to figure out where in the bigger picture they belong. With the next iteration of this conference taking place next month (registration is open), I’d like to take some time to lay out a few puzzle pieces and suggest a few ways they might fit together.1
The event is, to the best of my understanding, a re-thinking of the annual training and commissioning of the leaders of parish pro-life groups. It now provides training, resources, and opportunities for networking for other parish ministries as well, including immigration activism, anti-violence initiatives, and food pantries.
The conference is part of a larger attempt in the Catholic Church in the United States to make more apparent the fact that the Church’s political activism and charitable efforts are inseparable. In several dioceses across the country, including Chicago, pro-life ministries and other causes have been brought under the same institutional umbrella.
The event itself began with a keynote and Q&A with Cardinal Cupich, followed by breakout sessions and a closing Mass.
During the Cupich Q&A, a woman stood up to ask for advice about a challenge she faces as the leader of her parish’s pro-life committee. She noticed that most parishioners averted their eyes when walking by her display table, and she worried that this was because parishioners had a pre-formed idea of what a pro-life activist looks like—a moralist, waving gory images. This stereotype didn’t represent her or what she wanted her parish’s pro-life group to be, and she wanted to know how she could make the pro-life cause seem more inviting.
Cardinal Cupich, as anyone who knows about the politics of the American bishops would predict, readily sympathized with her concerns. He recommended that she broaden the scope of the group’s activities to include discussions of, for example, the death penalty.
In the subsequent breakout session, a man who has been a prominent figure in the pro-life movement for decades criticized the Cardinal’s advice. Talking about other issues like the death penalty might alienate other people who would otherwise want to be part of the pro-life movement, he warned.
All three of these speakers—the woman, the cardinal, and the pro-life leader—clearly want the pro-life movement to grow, to appeal to a broader range of people and achieve the movement’s goal of building a society that better defends human dignity, not least by ending abortion.
Cardinal Cupich argued that the more interconnected our advocacy is, the more compelling it is. This is true- we need leaders and people on the ground working on issues across partisan lines to make the interconnectedness of these issues more apparent. But I think we also need people who specialize. We need people who focus on individual issues and people who focus on connecting the issues. These groups, moreover, should not get caught up in fighting each other. In fact, they need each other.
Some people will be drawn in by comprehensive witness, but others will be drawn in by the one issue they care most about. Not all of the pro-life movement’s allies are ready to embrace everything the Church teaches (though perhaps they have rubbed off a bit too much on the Catholics they associate with- I have both sympathies with and reservations about the “ecumenism of hate” argument), but if the Church limits her public witness to only speaking about abortion, that does a disservice to the beauty and integrity of the Church’s social teaching and, more to the point, an injustice to the people whose lives and dignity are threatened by other problems.
Catholics across America are engaged in the work of justice, whether it is in regard to immigration or abortion or criminal justice reform. We may disagree with each other on strategies and even on policies, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the Church's witness to justice would not be complete without each one of us, engaged in our own unique vocation. I do not profess to know precisely how all of these vocations (all of these puzzle pieces) fit together, but I do insist that they all form part of a bigger picture.
I have little doubt that the conference next month will give me as much food for thought as last year's. Sr. Helen Prejean is scheduled to give the keynote. I’m not entirely sure what she will have to say to us in Illinois, where the death penalty has been abolished for some time.2 Will she discuss the need for more work on prison reform, and ministering to prisoners? Will she take interest in the fact that women come to Illinois from nearby states like Indiana and Iowa for abortions, and whether this gives a particular urgency to pro-life work in this state? Or will she discuss another topic entirely? I only have to wait a month to find out.
↩
I enjoy jigsaw puzzles. Trying to figure out each individual puzzle piece’s place in the bigger picture and trying to find how it fits with other individual pieces is engaging for me.
Attending the Archdiocese of Chicago’s inaugural Life and Justice Conference last September was, in some ways, like opening a new jigsaw puzzle. There were many individual moments from that day that I knew fit together, but knew would take time to figure out where in the bigger picture they belong. With the next iteration of this conference taking place next month (registration is open), I’d like to take some time to lay out a few puzzle pieces and suggest a few ways they might fit together.1
The event is, to the best of my understanding, a re-thinking of the annual training and commissioning of the leaders of parish pro-life groups. It now provides training, resources, and opportunities for networking for other parish ministries as well, including immigration activism, anti-violence initiatives, and food pantries.The conference is part of a larger attempt in the Catholic Church in the United States to make more apparent the fact that the Church’s political activism and charitable efforts are inseparable. In several dioceses across the country, including Chicago, pro-life ministries and other causes have been brought under the same institutional umbrella.
The event itself began with a keynote and Q&A with Cardinal Cupich, followed by breakout sessions and a closing Mass.
During the Cupich Q&A, a woman stood up to ask for advice about a challenge she faces as the leader of her parish’s pro-life committee. She noticed that most parishioners averted their eyes when walking by her display table, and she worried that this was because parishioners had a pre-formed idea of what a pro-life activist looks like—a moralist, waving gory images. This stereotype didn’t represent her or what she wanted her parish’s pro-life group to be, and she wanted to know how she could make the pro-life cause seem more inviting.
Cardinal Cupich, as anyone who knows about the politics of the American bishops would predict, readily sympathized with her concerns. He recommended that she broaden the scope of the group’s activities to include discussions of, for example, the death penalty.
In the subsequent breakout session, a man who has been a prominent figure in the pro-life movement for decades criticized the Cardinal’s advice. Talking about other issues like the death penalty might alienate other people who would otherwise want to be part of the pro-life movement, he warned.
All three of these speakers—the woman, the cardinal, and the pro-life leader—clearly want the pro-life movement to grow, to appeal to a broader range of people and achieve the movement’s goal of building a society that better defends human dignity, not least by ending abortion.
Cardinal Cupich argued that the more interconnected our advocacy is, the more compelling it is. This is true- we need leaders and people on the ground working on issues across partisan lines to make the interconnectedness of these issues more apparent. But I think we also need people who specialize. We need people who focus on individual issues and people who focus on connecting the issues. These groups, moreover, should not get caught up in fighting each other. In fact, they need each other.Some people will be drawn in by comprehensive witness, but others will be drawn in by the one issue they care most about. Not all of the pro-life movement’s allies are ready to embrace everything the Church teaches (though perhaps they have rubbed off a bit too much on the Catholics they associate with- I have both sympathies with and reservations about the “ecumenism of hate” argument), but if the Church limits her public witness to only speaking about abortion, that does a disservice to the beauty and integrity of the Church’s social teaching and, more to the point, an injustice to the people whose lives and dignity are threatened by other problems.
Catholics across America are engaged in the work of justice, whether it is in regard to immigration or abortion or criminal justice reform. We may disagree with each other on strategies and even on policies, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the Church's witness to justice would not be complete without each one of us, engaged in our own unique vocation. I do not profess to know precisely how all of these vocations (all of these puzzle pieces) fit together, but I do insist that they all form part of a bigger picture.
I have little doubt that the conference next month will give me as much food for thought as last year's. Sr. Helen Prejean is scheduled to give the keynote. I’m not entirely sure what she will have to say to us in Illinois, where the death penalty has been abolished for some time.2 Will she discuss the need for more work on prison reform, and ministering to prisoners? Will she take interest in the fact that women come to Illinois from nearby states like Indiana and Iowa for abortions, and whether this gives a particular urgency to pro-life work in this state? Or will she discuss another topic entirely? I only have to wait a month to find out.
1 If the details are vague in the retelling, it is because they are fuzzy in the recalling. However, broad strokes should suffice.↩
2 The pro-life activist discussed above pointed this out in his critique of the Cardinal’s recommendations. Governor Rauner brought up the idea of reinstating the death penalty this past spring, probably as a campaign issue, but his proposal seems to have gone nowhere so far.
Monday, July 2, 2018
On Hypocrisy
One of my least favorite patterns in contemporary political discourse is our collective fixation on hypocrisy. The controversy that erupted over Sarah Sanders’ ejection from a restaurant provides a convenient and recent example. People on both sides immediately compared the situation to the Masterpiece Cakeshop controversy that was recently settled by the Supreme Court. The Left gloated about someone on the Right being denied service, just as a gay couple had been denied a wedding cake by a baker; meanwhile, the Right gloated about the Left now availing itself of a right (to refuse service) that they had so wholeheartedly opposed in the case of the bakery.
That the analogy between these cases is far from perfect is beside the point.1 Each side gleefully points at the other’s willingness to abandon their standards when circumstances change.
We can see a similar case almost perennially with respect to the filibuster or judicial nominations in the Senate. The majority will often threaten to bypass or abolish the filibuster, while the minority protests that the filibuster is one of our country’s most important checks on the power of the majority. Then, when the party in power changes, each side points to the other party’s previous stance as a justification for their newfound contempt for or love of the filibuster. Now, with the retirement of Justice Kennedy, Senate Democrats seem poised to try to use the upcoming midterm to block any judicial nominee that Trump puts forward, citing Republican obstruction on the Merrick Garland nomination.
Neither side actually knows what they want the rules to be. They only want the rules to favor their side in their pursuit of power. Neither side seeks integrity. Instead, both use the other’s lack of integrity as an excuse to avoid taking responsibility for their own hypocrisies.
This is the opposite of Jesus’ prescription that we should remove the logs from our own eyes before we presume to pluck a splinter from anyone else’s. Others’ hypocrisies are not legitimate excuses for us. The standard which we measure out for others is the standard by which we shall be measured.
I would like to approach the USCCB’s outspokenness on the current immigration situation through this lens. The bishops are speaking out loudly and unanimously against the separation of children from their parents in detention, and the Catholic Left is rightly elated. The Catholic Right, meanwhile, might remember how much the Left sulked when the USCCB was pushing, for example, the Fortnight for Freedom, and take that as an excuse not to join the USCCB in condemning the administration’s actions today. The Left can then take the Right’s current reticence on immigration as an excuse to not join in the next time the Church’s stance on an issue becomes politically useful for conservative politics.
Again, this is the opposite of what we ought to be doing. If the boldness of the bishops’ stance on immigration makes you uneasy, think about what response you would like to see from other Catholics when the bishops speak out on an issue they aren’t comfortable with. On the other hand, if the idea of the bishops joining the Resistance is an exciting one, think about what you would like to see from other Catholics right now, and keep that in mind the next time the bishops speak up on an issue you are not so comfortable with.
If you want Catholics to listen when the bishops speak about abortion, then listen now. If you want Catholics to listen to the bishops now, then make sure you’re willing to listen the next time the bishops speak out. Otherwise, it’s time to start being honest about whether your Catholicism comes before your partisan identity.
 |
| The sign I carried at the Keep Families Together march in Chicago. It'll be just as appropriate at the March for Life in the January cold as it was in the summer heat. |
1 In the case of the bakery, it was not a categorical denial of service, but a refusal to provide a particular kind of product.↩
Monday, June 11, 2018
Gunsplaining and the Pro-Life Endgame
by Tim Kirchoff
The question of the pro-life endgame was recently brought back into public discourse by Kevin Williamson’s ouster from The Atlantic in light of tweets he made about hanging being an appropriate punishment for abortion and, to a lesser extent, by the Idaho Republican primary for Lieutenant Governor, where in a debate, one of the candidates, Bob Nonini, asserted that there ought to be criminal penalties for abortion and nodded when pressed on whether the death penalty would be an appropriate punishment.
When Donald Trump assented to the proposition that women who have abortions ought to be punished, several pro-lifers were quick to distance themselves from his comments and point out that, prior to Roe v Wade, women were seldom, if ever, jailed for procuring an abortion, and criminal penalties for abortion were only used as leverage to get women to agree to testify against abortionists.
Some such people must have contacted Bob Nonini, the candidate from the Idaho Primary mentioned above: in his clarification of his seeming assent to the proposition that the death penalty should be imposed on women who procure abortions, he said that he intended the death penalty to be part of the statute only as a deterrent and that “it is my understanding that in the history of the United States, long before Roe was foisted upon this country; no woman has ever been prosecuted for undergoing abortion. That is for practical reasons, as well as for reasons of compassion.”
If Nonini had already understood that American women were not prosecuted for abortions even when abortions were illegal, he would have made that point in the debate; he almost certainly conferred with pro-life activists before issuing this clarifying statement. Like many in the pro-life movement, he knows that abortion is murder, but is not so certain about what America’s abortion laws ought to be in light of that knowledge.
When pressed on the point as Nonini was, some may bite the bullet and agree that abortion, as murder, should carry the same penalties as murder, and are thus easily labeled by their opponents as extremists. Others are not comfortable with that final conclusion, but are unable to explain why. Their interlocutors perceive this group as either refusing to acknowledge the logical conclusion of regarding abortion as murder, or are unable to perceive it; if pro-lifers are not dangerous extremists, they are either disingenuous or dimwitted.
There are similarities between this kind of bad-faith critique of pro-lifers and the rhetorical strategy described by Adam Weinstein as “gunsplaining” in the Washington Post. I had seen this strategy in action myself: opponents of gun control would pick fights over technical terms like “assault rifle” to try to expose the ignorance of people who said that they would support a ban on assault rifles. As Weinstein explains, “[The goal of gunsplaining] is not to foster deeper understanding of these weapons, but to further a group identity of firearms owners as beset by a dumb or dishonest adversary, to flatter their insecurities and tell them they don’t need to take gun controllers seriously because you can’t reason with ignorance.”
Gunsplainers, like the critics of the pro-life movement discussed above, try to avoid engaging with people who actually know the subject well (and there are plenty such experts, both in the pro-life and anti-gun movements), unless they can use that person to paint the entire movement as extremists, as they did when retired Supreme Court Justice Stevens penned an op-ed suggesting a repeal of the 2nd Amendment. Their goal isn’t to learn from others, to inform them, or even to argue, but to humiliate others in the service of their own views. I am far more sympathetic to the (admittedly somewhat ignorant) targets of such people than I am those who wield their knowledge as a cudgel.
This latter group, for all their pretense of insight, nonetheless fails to understand their opponents on the most basic level. The desire for stronger laws against abortion or guns starts not in the head, but in the heart—with a horror at the lives lost, and anger at the fact that our legal regime—the way our laws are written and enforced—seems almost deliberately ineffective at reducing the death count. Their position begins with a desire for us to say, as a society, “Never again!”
The question of the pro-life endgame was recently brought back into public discourse by Kevin Williamson’s ouster from The Atlantic in light of tweets he made about hanging being an appropriate punishment for abortion and, to a lesser extent, by the Idaho Republican primary for Lieutenant Governor, where in a debate, one of the candidates, Bob Nonini, asserted that there ought to be criminal penalties for abortion and nodded when pressed on whether the death penalty would be an appropriate punishment.
When Donald Trump assented to the proposition that women who have abortions ought to be punished, several pro-lifers were quick to distance themselves from his comments and point out that, prior to Roe v Wade, women were seldom, if ever, jailed for procuring an abortion, and criminal penalties for abortion were only used as leverage to get women to agree to testify against abortionists.
Some such people must have contacted Bob Nonini, the candidate from the Idaho Primary mentioned above: in his clarification of his seeming assent to the proposition that the death penalty should be imposed on women who procure abortions, he said that he intended the death penalty to be part of the statute only as a deterrent and that “it is my understanding that in the history of the United States, long before Roe was foisted upon this country; no woman has ever been prosecuted for undergoing abortion. That is for practical reasons, as well as for reasons of compassion.”If Nonini had already understood that American women were not prosecuted for abortions even when abortions were illegal, he would have made that point in the debate; he almost certainly conferred with pro-life activists before issuing this clarifying statement. Like many in the pro-life movement, he knows that abortion is murder, but is not so certain about what America’s abortion laws ought to be in light of that knowledge.
When pressed on the point as Nonini was, some may bite the bullet and agree that abortion, as murder, should carry the same penalties as murder, and are thus easily labeled by their opponents as extremists. Others are not comfortable with that final conclusion, but are unable to explain why. Their interlocutors perceive this group as either refusing to acknowledge the logical conclusion of regarding abortion as murder, or are unable to perceive it; if pro-lifers are not dangerous extremists, they are either disingenuous or dimwitted.
There are similarities between this kind of bad-faith critique of pro-lifers and the rhetorical strategy described by Adam Weinstein as “gunsplaining” in the Washington Post. I had seen this strategy in action myself: opponents of gun control would pick fights over technical terms like “assault rifle” to try to expose the ignorance of people who said that they would support a ban on assault rifles. As Weinstein explains, “[The goal of gunsplaining] is not to foster deeper understanding of these weapons, but to further a group identity of firearms owners as beset by a dumb or dishonest adversary, to flatter their insecurities and tell them they don’t need to take gun controllers seriously because you can’t reason with ignorance.”
Gunsplainers, like the critics of the pro-life movement discussed above, try to avoid engaging with people who actually know the subject well (and there are plenty such experts, both in the pro-life and anti-gun movements), unless they can use that person to paint the entire movement as extremists, as they did when retired Supreme Court Justice Stevens penned an op-ed suggesting a repeal of the 2nd Amendment. Their goal isn’t to learn from others, to inform them, or even to argue, but to humiliate others in the service of their own views. I am far more sympathetic to the (admittedly somewhat ignorant) targets of such people than I am those who wield their knowledge as a cudgel.
This latter group, for all their pretense of insight, nonetheless fails to understand their opponents on the most basic level. The desire for stronger laws against abortion or guns starts not in the head, but in the heart—with a horror at the lives lost, and anger at the fact that our legal regime—the way our laws are written and enforced—seems almost deliberately ineffective at reducing the death count. Their position begins with a desire for us to say, as a society, “Never again!”
Would it be a good thing if more people who favor greater restrictions on guns or abortion could explain what sort of legal regime would be better than the status quo? Of course! But any pedant who tries to expose the ignorance of members of the general movement on the finer details of the issue will be understandably, and I think rightly, ignored. If they refuse to acknowledge those people who can provide coherent explanations, instead talking down to the less eloquent members of the movement, they don't deserve to be heard.
Before we expect other people to open their minds to argumentation, we must often begin by opening our hearts to them.
Before we expect other people to open their minds to argumentation, we must often begin by opening our hearts to them.
Monday, May 14, 2018
Facebook Isn't Designed as a Medium for Debate: Moderating a Facebook Discussion Group
by Tim Kirchoff
Last fall, I joined the moderating staff1 of the Facebook group Catholic Social Thought, Politics, and the Public Square. That I have yet to go out of my way to recommend this discussion group to my friends, given how many of them are conscientious and politically-engaged Catholics, might be seen as a sign that I don’t think participating in the group would be a good use of their time and energy. The group, at its worst, can be rather inhospitable, but some very good conversations happen there, and most importantly I still believe in its mission. My main intention in writing this is to remind myself of why I do this, but If my reflections on my time in the group happen to persuade you, dear reader, that this group is worth a shot, I would welcome your participation.
The Medium
The most obvious difference between this Facebook group and the various debate forums I participated in as a teenager is the lack of anonymity. Yet in my mind, the far more significant difference is that Facebook is not designed as a medium for debate. There is no quote function, old posts and comments are hard to find, and, most glaringly of all, the portion of my computer screen dedicated to the text of people’s posts and comments is only about a quarter of my screen’s width. Comments only a few short paragraphs in length can sometimes seem like impenetrable walls of text, while “clever” one-liners or hot takes get the expected applause. As a medium for intellectual debate, in which arguments and counter-arguments are carefully examined and picked apart, Facebook fails utterly.
But on the other hand, if you are interested in the other person precisely as a person with a wealth of knowledge and complicated personal experiences and you want to understand their perspective on a given topic better, then Facebook’s sub-thread system works well, and you’ll eagerly click to “see more” or “continue reading.”
The Mission
It’s a good thing, then, that the group is not oriented toward fostering traditional debates. Rather, the group guidelines are meant to encourage what Pope Francis calls a culture of encounter. Members are encouraged to participate not in such a way as to win an argument, but to engage the holy in the other. If a person feels as if a conversation is not moving in a productive direction, the guidelines encourage them to disengage as they feel appropriate, and others are encouraged to assume that a person who hasn’t replied to their comments isn’t actively avoiding their no-doubt-devastating argumentation, but rather, is preoccupied with their other, more pressing duties (and what duty is less pressing than arguing in Facebook comment sections?).
The guiding principle of the group is to respect each other’s narratives. That phrase, when I first read it, did not seem to be written in my native language, but I came to grasp its meaning soon enough. Group members need to respect the way other people understand themselves. Statements along the lines of “you can’t be transgender and Catholic,” or denunciations of, for example, all Libertarians or all Communists as heretics are not allowed. All claims about what the Church teaches, or what is “truly” Catholic should be backed up by a citation to a relevant Church document.
This rule is not intended to obfuscate Church teaching or discourage people from explaining and defending it, but rather, to prevent people from using the magisterium as a cudgel. This is supposed to ensure that people who hold minority or even fringe perspectives can have a space to explore the resources of the Church’s tradition without being browbeaten or harassed for not accepting everything the Church teaches, or for not fitting into someone else’s overly-narrow view of what it means to be Catholic.
The group’s founding was inspired by the 2012 election, in which both vice presidential nominees, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, were Catholic, and the Church’s relationship with the partisan divide briefly took center stage as Catholics debated the extent to which Paul Ryan’s hawkish fiscal policies were compatible with the Church’s social teaching. The lesson I take from the group’s origin is that, theoretically, either Joe Biden and Paul Ryan (or, more likely, people who sympathize with one or the other) could have the space to explain themselves and how they understand their policies in light of the Church’s teachings. Before we throw mud at fellow Catholics across the aisle, we should try to understand them on their own terms, and the group is intended to facilitate this.
The Mundane
This lofty purpose is easily forgotten in the day-to-day workings of the group. Most of my time in the group is spent checking and approving submitted posts and monitoring discussion to make sure things don’t get out of hand.
Discussions in the group often take on the same tenor as arguments that could be found anywhere else on the web, or, dare I say, cable news. In this predominantly left-wing group, any article about Paul Ryan will see half a dozen comments about Ayn Rand2 for every comment that even briefly entertains the notion that Paul Ryan intends to serve the common good (a notion that I once found much easier to hold). Discussions of Trump overwhelmingly (and understandably) skew negative. When right- and left-leaning members do clash, the exchange often sounds like the repetition of talking points. In the discussion of mainstream politics, I rarely see attempts by either side to step outside their own biases to understand others beyond what they need to win an argument.
When the battle lines are not so clearly drawn, though, conversation is possible. A recent discussion of how the Church should engage indigenous religions and superstitions (prompted by a story about a summit of exorcists in Rome dedicated to this topic) saw various group members bringing forward what they understood of beliefs and practices in different parts of the world. No particular conclusions were drawn from the conversation, but all who participated seemed to walk away with a greater appreciation of others’ insights and the complexity of the issue.
Genuine trolls are rare, and generally dealt with on sight. It’s usually pretty obvious when someone comes in with the intention of stirring up trouble. But behavior that falls short of the guidelines is a frequent temptation even for well-established members. When discussing a topic for what seems like the thousandth time, it’s all too easy to fall into familiar patterns of argumentation rather than encountering the other person as a child of God.
I’m no paragon of the guidelines, either. One of the first things I was told about moderating was that I should see it as a ministry, but it’s a piece of advice I often forget. When someone says something controversial, I sometimes find myself exasperated at the extra work the subsequent conversation might give me, when a more ideal response would be to welcome the new perspective and try to bring it into conversation with other members and especially with the principles of Catholic social teaching. Too often, I find myself valuing a superficial peace in the group over the possibility for the kind of encounter that the guidelines are supposed to enable.
I had hoped that participating in the group would provide me with insights into how to bridge the partisan divide within the Church. I'm sorry to report that I have little good news on that front. But something that my participation has made clear to me that I think is not well-enough understood is the degree to which the divide within the Church is not simply a matter of disagreement, but of hundreds of insults and resentments which have only compounded over the years. Online discussions will have little direct impact on policy, but our words still matter. The way we treat each other (even when talking in the abstract about the "other side) matters. With every exchange, we can either deepen the divisions, or look for the good in the other.
Last fall, I joined the moderating staff1 of the Facebook group Catholic Social Thought, Politics, and the Public Square. That I have yet to go out of my way to recommend this discussion group to my friends, given how many of them are conscientious and politically-engaged Catholics, might be seen as a sign that I don’t think participating in the group would be a good use of their time and energy. The group, at its worst, can be rather inhospitable, but some very good conversations happen there, and most importantly I still believe in its mission. My main intention in writing this is to remind myself of why I do this, but If my reflections on my time in the group happen to persuade you, dear reader, that this group is worth a shot, I would welcome your participation.The Medium
The most obvious difference between this Facebook group and the various debate forums I participated in as a teenager is the lack of anonymity. Yet in my mind, the far more significant difference is that Facebook is not designed as a medium for debate. There is no quote function, old posts and comments are hard to find, and, most glaringly of all, the portion of my computer screen dedicated to the text of people’s posts and comments is only about a quarter of my screen’s width. Comments only a few short paragraphs in length can sometimes seem like impenetrable walls of text, while “clever” one-liners or hot takes get the expected applause. As a medium for intellectual debate, in which arguments and counter-arguments are carefully examined and picked apart, Facebook fails utterly.
But on the other hand, if you are interested in the other person precisely as a person with a wealth of knowledge and complicated personal experiences and you want to understand their perspective on a given topic better, then Facebook’s sub-thread system works well, and you’ll eagerly click to “see more” or “continue reading.”
The Mission
It’s a good thing, then, that the group is not oriented toward fostering traditional debates. Rather, the group guidelines are meant to encourage what Pope Francis calls a culture of encounter. Members are encouraged to participate not in such a way as to win an argument, but to engage the holy in the other. If a person feels as if a conversation is not moving in a productive direction, the guidelines encourage them to disengage as they feel appropriate, and others are encouraged to assume that a person who hasn’t replied to their comments isn’t actively avoiding their no-doubt-devastating argumentation, but rather, is preoccupied with their other, more pressing duties (and what duty is less pressing than arguing in Facebook comment sections?).
The guiding principle of the group is to respect each other’s narratives. That phrase, when I first read it, did not seem to be written in my native language, but I came to grasp its meaning soon enough. Group members need to respect the way other people understand themselves. Statements along the lines of “you can’t be transgender and Catholic,” or denunciations of, for example, all Libertarians or all Communists as heretics are not allowed. All claims about what the Church teaches, or what is “truly” Catholic should be backed up by a citation to a relevant Church document.
This rule is not intended to obfuscate Church teaching or discourage people from explaining and defending it, but rather, to prevent people from using the magisterium as a cudgel. This is supposed to ensure that people who hold minority or even fringe perspectives can have a space to explore the resources of the Church’s tradition without being browbeaten or harassed for not accepting everything the Church teaches, or for not fitting into someone else’s overly-narrow view of what it means to be Catholic.
The group’s founding was inspired by the 2012 election, in which both vice presidential nominees, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan, were Catholic, and the Church’s relationship with the partisan divide briefly took center stage as Catholics debated the extent to which Paul Ryan’s hawkish fiscal policies were compatible with the Church’s social teaching. The lesson I take from the group’s origin is that, theoretically, either Joe Biden and Paul Ryan (or, more likely, people who sympathize with one or the other) could have the space to explain themselves and how they understand their policies in light of the Church’s teachings. Before we throw mud at fellow Catholics across the aisle, we should try to understand them on their own terms, and the group is intended to facilitate this.
The Mundane
This lofty purpose is easily forgotten in the day-to-day workings of the group. Most of my time in the group is spent checking and approving submitted posts and monitoring discussion to make sure things don’t get out of hand.
Discussions in the group often take on the same tenor as arguments that could be found anywhere else on the web, or, dare I say, cable news. In this predominantly left-wing group, any article about Paul Ryan will see half a dozen comments about Ayn Rand2 for every comment that even briefly entertains the notion that Paul Ryan intends to serve the common good (a notion that I once found much easier to hold). Discussions of Trump overwhelmingly (and understandably) skew negative. When right- and left-leaning members do clash, the exchange often sounds like the repetition of talking points. In the discussion of mainstream politics, I rarely see attempts by either side to step outside their own biases to understand others beyond what they need to win an argument.
When the battle lines are not so clearly drawn, though, conversation is possible. A recent discussion of how the Church should engage indigenous religions and superstitions (prompted by a story about a summit of exorcists in Rome dedicated to this topic) saw various group members bringing forward what they understood of beliefs and practices in different parts of the world. No particular conclusions were drawn from the conversation, but all who participated seemed to walk away with a greater appreciation of others’ insights and the complexity of the issue.
Genuine trolls are rare, and generally dealt with on sight. It’s usually pretty obvious when someone comes in with the intention of stirring up trouble. But behavior that falls short of the guidelines is a frequent temptation even for well-established members. When discussing a topic for what seems like the thousandth time, it’s all too easy to fall into familiar patterns of argumentation rather than encountering the other person as a child of God.
I’m no paragon of the guidelines, either. One of the first things I was told about moderating was that I should see it as a ministry, but it’s a piece of advice I often forget. When someone says something controversial, I sometimes find myself exasperated at the extra work the subsequent conversation might give me, when a more ideal response would be to welcome the new perspective and try to bring it into conversation with other members and especially with the principles of Catholic social teaching. Too often, I find myself valuing a superficial peace in the group over the possibility for the kind of encounter that the guidelines are supposed to enable.
I had hoped that participating in the group would provide me with insights into how to bridge the partisan divide within the Church. I'm sorry to report that I have little good news on that front. But something that my participation has made clear to me that I think is not well-enough understood is the degree to which the divide within the Church is not simply a matter of disagreement, but of hundreds of insults and resentments which have only compounded over the years. Online discussions will have little direct impact on policy, but our words still matter. The way we treat each other (even when talking in the abstract about the "other side) matters. With every exchange, we can either deepen the divisions, or look for the good in the other.
1 “Staff” might be an overstatement. At the moment, I’m the only moderator other than the group's founder.↩
2 Every time someone on the Left mentions Ayn Rand or the Koch brothers, or someone on the right brings up Saul Alinsky or George Soros, I die inside just a little.↩
Monday, April 9, 2018
When You Don't Like Your Liturgy
by Tim Kirchoff
I found myself dreading Easter this year. Not because I had any particular fondness for my Lenten discipline, but because I knew that liturgical musicians at my home parish would once again start singing my absolute all-time favorite (I’m being sarcastic) song—a cover of Leonard Cohen’s song Hallelujah, re-written to be about the Passion.1 They can’t sing it during Lent because of Catholicism’s no-Alleluia-in-Lent tradition, but from the Easter Vigil up through Pentecost, it’s likely to be the communion reflection hymn in any given week, and there’s a chance that they’ll play it on any given weekend in ordinary time.
This isn't their only song that annoys me, but it is the only one that has ever made me feel an urge to shout an obscenity in the middle of Mass. In fact, I almost missed Easter Mass last week. I didn't want to go to my home parish because I assumed (correctly, according to my family who attended) that they would sing the song, but wrongly assumed that nearby parishes would still have their usual Sunday evening Masses: I ended up commuting an hour both ways to a 7 PM service, just in order to avoid hearing a few minutes of singing.
I hate this song. It distracts me from prayer as I go up to receive the Eucharist. But it's just as clear that not everyone in the parish shares my distaste for this song: some people evidently love it, and it deepens their experience of prayer as they receive the Blessed Sacrament. The choir certainly likes it, and I’ve noticed that one of the ushers will gently sway to the music and hum along as he guides the communion line.
But knowing that other people are edified by it hasn’t changed the fact that I don’t like the song or the way it’s performed, and each passing year has only intensified my dislike and made it harder to pinpoint exactly what about it I dislike. As the Romans used to say, “de gustibus non est disputandum”—taste is not to be argued over.
Once, back in my undergraduate days, a friend joined me for a daily Mass at my dorm, only to leave shortly before Mass started when she learned that the priest was going to use the offertory table—moved to a position about 5 feet in front of the seats—as the altar. She was disturbed by the idea of foregoing a perfectly good altar in favor of an unconsecrated offertory table.
As for me, I was already accustomed to this priest’s style of liturgy, and I could intuit why he did what he did. He wanted to make the liturgy more intimate, to let us witness the Eucharist up close. Plus, I think he didn’t like the idea of having only two or three congregants sitting 15 feet away from the altar when the whole Mass could take place within only a few square feet. But whatever his intentions, his attempt to make the liturgy more intimate and accessible served to alienate my friend.
There are some who would say that it’s wrong to try to use a secular song in a liturgical context, or that using an offertory table as an altar is liturgical abuse. That was the mindset through which I was originally introduced to thinking about the liturgy (aside from grade school catechism), but I no longer see much point in entertaining those thoughts.
My distaste for certain songs or deviations from liturgical rubrics is not the result of some well-developed philosophy of musical aesthetics or even a sense of liturgical reverence. In liturgy, what uplifts one person may annoy, distract, or even disturb another. Some act by liturgical minister may make it easier for one person to see God at work, but another person might see that same act as the minister trying to draw attention to themselves. Even if their choices make that liturgy distinctly unappealing to me, as long as the person is trying to draw people into actual participation in the Mass, then I don’t have it in me to condemn them. I’ve found myself drawn into liturgy by priests’ ad libs as well as by the prescribed texts of the Mass. Sometimes my prayer is facilitated by what a liturgical minister says or does, sometimes it's despite their actions, but in the end a valid Eucharist is a valid Eucharist.
Conversations about liturgy too often try to universalize subjective aesthetic or theological tastes. It’s one thing to write an essay about either traditionalist or contemporary forms of liturgy in order to make it easier for an audience to understand how to engage that style fruitfully, but it's quite another to dismiss or demean—even implicitly—other legitimate ways of celebrating the Mass.
I’ve seen people on both sides of the liturgy wars accuse the other side’s ministers (be they lay or ordained) of celebrating the liturgy as a way of drawing attention to themselves rather than Christ and the Gospel. But they never recognize how their own preferred style can be similarly exploited by ministers who are more into performance than drawing people into participation, or how the other side's preferred liturgical forms can help lead people to an experience of God's presence that might be harder for those individuals to access in other styles of liturgy.
At this stage in the Church's history, all Catholics celebrate the same Mass, but not in uniform ways. That's not necessarily a bad thing: it means that it's more likely that a person will be able to find a liturgy that they can genuinely participate in, rather than one they must endure for the sake of fulfilling their obligation.
I once found it easy to overlook the use of an offertory table in place of an altar for the sake of making the Mass more intimate, but now I cannot stand musical choices that so many of my fellow parishioners find beautiful and emotionally resonant. Given the choice between wishing for or trying to effect a change in my parish, thus denying these people something that draws them deeper into prayer when I am in no position to provide an alternative, and wishing praying that I could find value in the music, or at least tolerate it a little better, I know which I ought to prefer. If only it were that easy.
1 One of the verses goes as follows: The soldier who had used his sword/ to pierce the body of our Lord/ said 'truly this was Jesus Christ our savior'/ he looked with fear upon his sword/ then turned to face his Christ and Lord/ fell to his knees, crying 'hallelujah!'
↩
Monday, March 19, 2018
Institutions and Missions
by Tim Kirchoff
About a month into my freshman year of high school, the student body gathered in the chapel for an announcement: the school would be closing at the end of that academic year. Although the school was supposedly part of the archdiocesan seminary system, only one alumnus in the previous 15 years had gone on to be ordained. The school, furthermore, was projected to incur a $1 million deficit that year. It was not financially sustainable, nor was it serving its intended mission. Such were the arguments for closing the school.
A day or two later, we were invited to assemble in the auditorium in the presence of a counselor. A number of students took the opportunity to voice their anger and grief. Some wanted to fight to keep the school from closing. One or two claimed that, because of this decision, they would never again consider pursuing a priestly vocation. As for me, I struggled to understand why the school’s failure to produce enough priests was sufficient reason to close it in light of all of the other good things it accomplished. If the young men who attended the school didn’t also happen to be the same ones God was calling to ordination, was that really the fault of the school?
None of us wanted to believe that the diocese was right to close our school, but in the end we accepted the decision and went about our classes. The seniors applied for colleges, the other students applied to other high schools to finish their diplomas. The curricula at other schools were comparable to, if not better than, what the high school seminary had, and those who wanted to maintain the community we’d built gravitated toward the same schools. Those of us who were still interested in vocational discernment were invited to participate in a new monthly program at the diocesan college seminary.
The school’s educational mission could be fulfilled in any number of other schools; its unique role as a seminary could be fulfilled through other means. The old school building, meanwhile, was converted into the new headquarters for the archdiocese. Nothing was lost by closing the school... from a certain point of view, anyway.
Neither my new school nor the new discernment program gave me the same sense of community — the same experience of grace — that I had in my freshman year. Monthly meetings were no substitute for daily interactions with priests and peers in the midst of discernment, or for all-school Masses three times a week.
(But then again, the sense that we were discerning the same call probably had little or nothing to do with my freshman year community. No more than one or two of my classmates ever attended the replacement program. Perhaps the sense of community I felt among my freshman year classmates was in some ways caused or facilitated by the fact that we knew that our time together would be so limited.)
Even now, it’s hard to guess how many ways my unusual high school experience affected me, but I’m confident in saying it was my first real opportunity to think about the sometimes-strained relationships between the Church’s institutional ministries and their stated missions—if not the Gospel.
It’s probably a bit odd for a Domer to say this, but our loyalties shouldn’t ultimately be to institutions or even traditions within these institutions. We can find security and comfort in them, but their real value lies in whether and how they make God’s grace present in the world. Our institutions must not lose sight of their ministries.
A Catholic university, for example is above all an educational institution and a community dedicated to the search for truth. The creation of ever-more programs or buildings needs to be weighed against the needs and best interests of the students who may have to pay increased tuition or donors who might feel pressured to support this new project instead of other causes.
Athletic programs or new student centers or academic buildings may help foster community among students and other members of the university community (I honestly LOVE the idea of the social sciences being housed in the same new building to facilitate cooperation within and between disciplines), but these projects must be pursued for the right reasons — oriented toward meeting the needs of people, rather than just having more impressive numbers to show off.
Parishes, for their part, may have many traditions or programs to which parishioners are emotionally attached, but such things must not be preserved just out of sentimentality. Rather, they should continue out of an appreciation for their role in the parish's ministry to its members and the surrounding community. For example, preserving a set of parish traditions from European immigrants in what is now a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood can be justified as an attempt to bridge different elements of the Catholic tradition, but if it is just a cultural festival, something is wrong.
Institutions and programs ultimately need to justify themselves in light of the ministry they are trying to achieve. This is not to say that any program whose value in the Gospel is not immediately apparent ought to be shut down and its resources distributed elsewhere, but that, as happened to my high school, sooner or later, the opportunity costs will definitively outweigh the ministerial benefits.
Sometimes, beautiful and historic religious institutions outlive their usefulness. Sometimes, they manage to stay open precisely because they have left behind some aspect of their mission in favor of pursuing a more worldly measure of success. Sometimes, they might close even when they are in the midst of rediscovering and rededicating themselves to their mission- and that, in turn, prepares the members of that institution to carry on that mission even after the institution closes.
About a month into my freshman year of high school, the student body gathered in the chapel for an announcement: the school would be closing at the end of that academic year. Although the school was supposedly part of the archdiocesan seminary system, only one alumnus in the previous 15 years had gone on to be ordained. The school, furthermore, was projected to incur a $1 million deficit that year. It was not financially sustainable, nor was it serving its intended mission. Such were the arguments for closing the school.
A day or two later, we were invited to assemble in the auditorium in the presence of a counselor. A number of students took the opportunity to voice their anger and grief. Some wanted to fight to keep the school from closing. One or two claimed that, because of this decision, they would never again consider pursuing a priestly vocation. As for me, I struggled to understand why the school’s failure to produce enough priests was sufficient reason to close it in light of all of the other good things it accomplished. If the young men who attended the school didn’t also happen to be the same ones God was calling to ordination, was that really the fault of the school?
None of us wanted to believe that the diocese was right to close our school, but in the end we accepted the decision and went about our classes. The seniors applied for colleges, the other students applied to other high schools to finish their diplomas. The curricula at other schools were comparable to, if not better than, what the high school seminary had, and those who wanted to maintain the community we’d built gravitated toward the same schools. Those of us who were still interested in vocational discernment were invited to participate in a new monthly program at the diocesan college seminary.
The school’s educational mission could be fulfilled in any number of other schools; its unique role as a seminary could be fulfilled through other means. The old school building, meanwhile, was converted into the new headquarters for the archdiocese. Nothing was lost by closing the school... from a certain point of view, anyway.
Neither my new school nor the new discernment program gave me the same sense of community — the same experience of grace — that I had in my freshman year. Monthly meetings were no substitute for daily interactions with priests and peers in the midst of discernment, or for all-school Masses three times a week.
(But then again, the sense that we were discerning the same call probably had little or nothing to do with my freshman year community. No more than one or two of my classmates ever attended the replacement program. Perhaps the sense of community I felt among my freshman year classmates was in some ways caused or facilitated by the fact that we knew that our time together would be so limited.)
Even now, it’s hard to guess how many ways my unusual high school experience affected me, but I’m confident in saying it was my first real opportunity to think about the sometimes-strained relationships between the Church’s institutional ministries and their stated missions—if not the Gospel.
It’s probably a bit odd for a Domer to say this, but our loyalties shouldn’t ultimately be to institutions or even traditions within these institutions. We can find security and comfort in them, but their real value lies in whether and how they make God’s grace present in the world. Our institutions must not lose sight of their ministries.
A Catholic university, for example is above all an educational institution and a community dedicated to the search for truth. The creation of ever-more programs or buildings needs to be weighed against the needs and best interests of the students who may have to pay increased tuition or donors who might feel pressured to support this new project instead of other causes.
Athletic programs or new student centers or academic buildings may help foster community among students and other members of the university community (I honestly LOVE the idea of the social sciences being housed in the same new building to facilitate cooperation within and between disciplines), but these projects must be pursued for the right reasons — oriented toward meeting the needs of people, rather than just having more impressive numbers to show off.
Parishes, for their part, may have many traditions or programs to which parishioners are emotionally attached, but such things must not be preserved just out of sentimentality. Rather, they should continue out of an appreciation for their role in the parish's ministry to its members and the surrounding community. For example, preserving a set of parish traditions from European immigrants in what is now a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood can be justified as an attempt to bridge different elements of the Catholic tradition, but if it is just a cultural festival, something is wrong.
Institutions and programs ultimately need to justify themselves in light of the ministry they are trying to achieve. This is not to say that any program whose value in the Gospel is not immediately apparent ought to be shut down and its resources distributed elsewhere, but that, as happened to my high school, sooner or later, the opportunity costs will definitively outweigh the ministerial benefits.
Sometimes, beautiful and historic religious institutions outlive their usefulness. Sometimes, they manage to stay open precisely because they have left behind some aspect of their mission in favor of pursuing a more worldly measure of success. Sometimes, they might close even when they are in the midst of rediscovering and rededicating themselves to their mission- and that, in turn, prepares the members of that institution to carry on that mission even after the institution closes.
Monday, February 19, 2018
When a Neo-Nazi Wants to Be Your Congressman
by Tim Kirchoff
At the beginning of this month, I attended a screening and discussion of the film Selma held at a local Baptist church and co-sponsored by my home parish. The film had many moments that gave me pause, but what stuck with me most came from the discussion afterwards.
I have lived in this same town for most of my life, but most of the other participants had been living here for several decades longer, and could remember when the town had a well-deserved reputation for racism. One person recounted a story of a black plumber he’d hired who was afraid to go to the local hardware store to pick up the parts he needed to complete a job. Another reported that there had been a cross burning in front of a black family’s home as recently as 1990.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called Chicago the most segregated city in America, and my home town is part of that sprawling metropolis. It wasn’t really surprising to hear that the town had a racist past, but the stories made it all seem that much more real.
A few days later, the news broke that Arthur Jones, a neo-Nazi Holocaust denier who lives the next town over from me, is the presumptive Republican nominee for the local Congressional race. My initial impulse was to ignore him: he stands no chance of winning in this heavily democratic district, and he is clearly just a perennial candidate who runs in the hope of getting attention for himself and his ideology.
But his presence is hard to ignore. This despicable man lives a proverbial stone’s throw away from me, and he has enough local support to get on the ballot.1 Clearly, this area’s racist past is not entirely behind it. Although it has ceased to exercise meaningful political influence, explicit racism is not dead.
This sort of unambiguous evil ought to meet sharp opposition… but neo-Nazis and other advocates of white supremacy seem to thrive on attention regardless of whether it’s positive or negative, and that alone makes me hesitate to give it to them.
Arthur Jones has no chance of winning even if the Democratic primary2 goes to the far-left challenger over the pro-life incumbent, and the Republican Party apparently plans to make their rejection of Jones’ candidacy absolutely clear by pouring resources into a write-in candidate.
Nazi is a cultural shorthand for absolute evil, something that must be resisted at every turn. But as long as this sort of overt racism is a marginal force in politics and culture, I don’t think it’s necessary for me to spend any more energy to oppose them than I have in writing this blog post, unless Jones plans a rally to turn the district into the next Charlottesville (at which point I would feel obliged to join in the counter-protests) or his supporters start threatening minorities (which is more of a matter for law enforcement anyway).
This style of overt racism may have been a significant problem more recently than I thought, and it may persist as a marginal force well into the future, but in America today, Nazis are not the face of racism. Racism today is not the same as when Dr. King fought it. The problem is not explicit discrimination or overt racism, but subtler, systemic forms of racism—laws and institutions and biases that victimize minorities, often without directly or intentionally targeting them. And so although Nazis are almost literally begging for attention today, I don’t think the form of racism they represent is what I ought to spend my own time and energy trying to understand and fight against.
The subtler forms of racism are more worthy of attention, but they are also much harder for me to identify with certainty. Subtle racism, as suggested by the adjective, is not begging to be noticed. I wouldn't know where to begin looking for it in my city government, which unanimously enacted a Welcoming City3 ordinance last spring. If only in that way, my community seems to have come a long way in the last few decades. But if nothing else, the Selma viewing and subsequent discussion showed me that racism is always just a little bit closer than I want to believe it is.
The major change in the apparent culture of my hometown doesn't actually mean that it's free from the subtler forms of racism, nor does my capacity to notice and reject obvious forms of racism mean that I can pretend to be "woke." At this point in my life, I'm not prepared to recognize and combat systemic racism; the best I can do is listen to others as they communicate their own perspectives and experiences (as Erin Conway did in her previous blog post).
It's largely pointless to seek out confrontations with attention-seeking racists like Arthur Jones or Richard Spencer, and I have only the faintest idea where to begin in understanding and combating the subtler forms of racism that continue to have deleterious effects on minorities. In short, contemporary race issues leave me feeling frustrated, confused, and powerless-- but maybe that's the right place to start.
At the beginning of this month, I attended a screening and discussion of the film Selma held at a local Baptist church and co-sponsored by my home parish. The film had many moments that gave me pause, but what stuck with me most came from the discussion afterwards.
I have lived in this same town for most of my life, but most of the other participants had been living here for several decades longer, and could remember when the town had a well-deserved reputation for racism. One person recounted a story of a black plumber he’d hired who was afraid to go to the local hardware store to pick up the parts he needed to complete a job. Another reported that there had been a cross burning in front of a black family’s home as recently as 1990.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called Chicago the most segregated city in America, and my home town is part of that sprawling metropolis. It wasn’t really surprising to hear that the town had a racist past, but the stories made it all seem that much more real.
 |
| An example of the pictures shared on his official campaign website. |
But his presence is hard to ignore. This despicable man lives a proverbial stone’s throw away from me, and he has enough local support to get on the ballot.1 Clearly, this area’s racist past is not entirely behind it. Although it has ceased to exercise meaningful political influence, explicit racism is not dead.
This sort of unambiguous evil ought to meet sharp opposition… but neo-Nazis and other advocates of white supremacy seem to thrive on attention regardless of whether it’s positive or negative, and that alone makes me hesitate to give it to them.
Arthur Jones has no chance of winning even if the Democratic primary2 goes to the far-left challenger over the pro-life incumbent, and the Republican Party apparently plans to make their rejection of Jones’ candidacy absolutely clear by pouring resources into a write-in candidate.
Nazi is a cultural shorthand for absolute evil, something that must be resisted at every turn. But as long as this sort of overt racism is a marginal force in politics and culture, I don’t think it’s necessary for me to spend any more energy to oppose them than I have in writing this blog post, unless Jones plans a rally to turn the district into the next Charlottesville (at which point I would feel obliged to join in the counter-protests) or his supporters start threatening minorities (which is more of a matter for law enforcement anyway).
This style of overt racism may have been a significant problem more recently than I thought, and it may persist as a marginal force well into the future, but in America today, Nazis are not the face of racism. Racism today is not the same as when Dr. King fought it. The problem is not explicit discrimination or overt racism, but subtler, systemic forms of racism—laws and institutions and biases that victimize minorities, often without directly or intentionally targeting them. And so although Nazis are almost literally begging for attention today, I don’t think the form of racism they represent is what I ought to spend my own time and energy trying to understand and fight against.
The subtler forms of racism are more worthy of attention, but they are also much harder for me to identify with certainty. Subtle racism, as suggested by the adjective, is not begging to be noticed. I wouldn't know where to begin looking for it in my city government, which unanimously enacted a Welcoming City3 ordinance last spring. If only in that way, my community seems to have come a long way in the last few decades. But if nothing else, the Selma viewing and subsequent discussion showed me that racism is always just a little bit closer than I want to believe it is. The major change in the apparent culture of my hometown doesn't actually mean that it's free from the subtler forms of racism, nor does my capacity to notice and reject obvious forms of racism mean that I can pretend to be "woke." At this point in my life, I'm not prepared to recognize and combat systemic racism; the best I can do is listen to others as they communicate their own perspectives and experiences (as Erin Conway did in her previous blog post).
It's largely pointless to seek out confrontations with attention-seeking racists like Arthur Jones or Richard Spencer, and I have only the faintest idea where to begin in understanding and combating the subtler forms of racism that continue to have deleterious effects on minorities. In short, contemporary race issues leave me feeling frustrated, confused, and powerless-- but maybe that's the right place to start.
1 Undoubtedly some people who sign his petitions just think that the incumbent should get a challenger and don’t ask questions or research his positions beforehand (how often does one actually think to ask someone gathering signatures to run for office, “Are you a Nazi?”), but the 91 people who gave him write-in votes in the 2016 general election must be aware of and probably agree with his despicable views.↩
2 I was already planning to take a Democratic ballot primarily for the sake of this race. For more than a year now, the Democratic Party has been in crisis as to whether it will give pro-life Democrats a place at the table, or whether the party is willing to further alienate pro-life voters at a time when the Republican Party looks less appealing than ever. It’s almost as if both sides of the aisle are conspiring to create an opening for a moderate 3rd party.
↩
3 Cable news would call it a sanctuary city law, but its advocates insisted on the term "welcoming city," since "sanctuary" carried negative connotations in their minds.
↩
Monday, January 22, 2018
My Experience of Spiritual Imposter Syndrome
by Tim Kirchoff
When I applied to be a campus missionary with FOCUS, I did not particularly expect that they would accept me; I imagined the typical campus missionary as zealous and gregarious and thought of myself as cerebral and introverted. I figured that, even if I were not the right fit for them, the application and interview process might help me learn something about myself. I remember praying several times for the courage to be truthful instead of giving the interviewers the answers I thought they would want to hear; I thought that striving for honesty would make me more open to receiving whatever lessons God wanted me to learn from the interview process.
As I had guessed, I was not the right fit for FOCUS, but instead of emerging from the experience with greater self-knowledge, I found myself wracked with self-doubt. I had been persuaded that, not only did I not have the right personality to be a campus minister, but I lacked the kind of personal relationship with God that was a fundamental prerequisite for any kind of Christian life.
My final interviewer was the one who put this suggestion in my head. He thought that my responses in the previous stages of the interview process—including my personal testimony and answers to questions about my background and faith life—did not seem to indicate that my thoughts and actions stemmed from a personal encounter and relationship with Christ, a concept which he explained with a series of impressive-sounding quotes from Scripture and elsewhere. I could not be a campus missionary, leading college students into a loving personal relationship with Jesus, if I myself did not have that kind of relationship: as he put it, I could not give what I did not have.
After this conversation, I joined the other interviewees in the chapel, where we had time for personal prayer and reflection. When I arrived in the chapel, the daylight was beginning to fade; by the time we left the chapel for dinner, night had fallen. My thoughts followed a similar trajectory.
What were my reasons for going to Mass, or studying and defending the Church’s teachings? As far as I could tell, I hadn’t been acting out of a fear of Hell or desire for Heaven, but if I wasn’t acting out of a genuine love of God, either, then my motives must have been vain, selfish, and worldly. I may have wanted to think that I was serving God, but I must have been acting out of a self-righteous desire to do the right thing, or the inability to seriously contemplate any worldview other than the Catholic one, or a lazy refusal to abandon familiar surroundings and religious practices, or perhaps in order to surround myself with the sort of wonderful people I’d met in Notre Dame’s Catholic subculture—and in order to fit in, I fooled them as well as myself into thinking I was a good Catholic, when really I lacked the sine qua non of the Christian life.
Before I knew it, I had dismissed as vanity every attempt I had ever made to follow God’s will and concluded that any subsequent effort I could make would be equally vain. The only thing that could make my efforts meaningful was an encounter with Christ, something I could not provide for myself—and something which did not seem to be forthcoming on God’s end, either.
Some people come to know God through a single moment, a profound encounter with the person of Christ that is a wellspring for their faith for the rest of their lives. It is a gift that gives them both motivation and direction. It is a gift that I thought I needed.
I don’t know how many times in the next few months I tried to open my heart to God, but to no apparent effect. The thought would leap from the back of my mind— “is it finally going to happen?”—and derail my attempt at prayer.
I tried to keep going in my daily life as I had before the interview, but my confidence and motivation slowly diminished. I thought that further discerning or realizing my vocation was dependent on developing a relationship with God. The longer I waited, the harder it became to find joy or meaning in activities I had previously found fulfilling, particularly writing and attending daily Mass.
That summer, I discussed my interview experience with a few close friends. They managed to persuade me that the interviewer was both theologically and morally wrong to question my status before God in that way, and that I did not actually need the particular kind of divine encounter and conversion experience that the interviewer had in mind—yet my prayer life still did not return to normal, and in some dark corner of my psyche, an insidious doubt remained and festered, and it has emerged periodically to haunt me.
To give just one example: At a parish town hall meeting about what we wanted from a new pastor, I heard a number of fellow parishioners talking about continuing existing programs, or getting young people back in church, or getting the word out about the church, or various issues related to management and maintenance. Nearly every comment seemed oriented more toward sustaining the institution, or, at best, Catholicism as a tradition, rather than serving and being accountable to Christ.
I itched to stand up and point out that pattern, but I was afraid that I would not be able to give voice to my instinct that the institutional focus was insufficient without giving some sort of validation to the faulty view of relationship-with-God that the interviewer had imposed on me almost two years prior. I decided it was wiser to stay silent, but afterwards, I still wasn’t sure whether my thoughts about my fellow parishioners made me a hypocrite.
This past summer, two and a half years after the interview weekend, I received the closest thing to an answer to my doubts, the closest thing to consolation that I expect to receive in this life. It was an experience of God’s presence of an intensity that I had not felt since before the interview. The chief effect of this experience was the restoration of my confidence that God’s grace was at work in my life. This, in turn, gave me an odd sense of gratitude for everything I had endured as a result of the interview.
The sense that God had been with me throughout my period of doubt and struggle did not change the fact that I had suffered, but it did give meaning to the first few months of suffering and the following two years of doubts. God allowed me to suffer these doubts, but, through God's grace, I was protected from deeper doubts about either God or his Church. Moreover, God continued to work through me even as I doubted, and could turn even my doubts into tools by which I might serve the Kingdom. Carrying this burden has made me more capable of understanding—and hopefully making lighter—the burdens others carry.
This includes understanding, if only to a limited extent, why people who have suffered spiritual trauma sometimes have difficulty coming back to Church. Despite telling myself over and over again not to hold a grudge against FOCUS as a whole for the words of one member, or even a grudge against the interviewer himself, I still don’t know how I feel about that organization, and that was the primary reason I did not attend a conference they were hosting in my home city that I had no reason to doubt would be excellent. But even setting FOCUS aside, I felt uneasy even this past fall when I heard a homily that stressed the importance of a relationship with Jesus.
I suspect that, regardless of the status of my relationship with God, I will continue to have a strained relationship with that particular pastoral approach. The language of personal encounter and relationship—the language used by FOCUS and other evangelical-influenced circles within Catholicism—is still foreign and unnatural to me, and I suspect that many who embrace it are not sufficiently aware or wary of its shortcomings.
I do not tell my story simply to offer it as a case study about the potential pitfalls of integrating elements of evangelical spirituality into Catholic pastoral practice, but I think my story does serve that purpose. If sharing my story in this way helps to temper and nuance this increasingly common pastoral approach, it is just one more way in which my suffering can be made to serve a good purpose.
The kind of personal encounter and relationship which the interviewer so prized is a gift—but it is not a gift that God gives to everyone just for the asking. Some of us may, in the end, have to be content with forming our consciences according to the Church’s teachings and trusting that we are receiving God’s grace through the Sacraments.
When we open ourselves to God’s grace, we will not always recognize how or when He enters into our lives and work, and recognizing it in the same way evangelicals do ought not be a prerequisite for considering oneself a faithful Catholic or a follower of Christ.
When I applied to be a campus missionary with FOCUS, I did not particularly expect that they would accept me; I imagined the typical campus missionary as zealous and gregarious and thought of myself as cerebral and introverted. I figured that, even if I were not the right fit for them, the application and interview process might help me learn something about myself. I remember praying several times for the courage to be truthful instead of giving the interviewers the answers I thought they would want to hear; I thought that striving for honesty would make me more open to receiving whatever lessons God wanted me to learn from the interview process.
As I had guessed, I was not the right fit for FOCUS, but instead of emerging from the experience with greater self-knowledge, I found myself wracked with self-doubt. I had been persuaded that, not only did I not have the right personality to be a campus minister, but I lacked the kind of personal relationship with God that was a fundamental prerequisite for any kind of Christian life.
My final interviewer was the one who put this suggestion in my head. He thought that my responses in the previous stages of the interview process—including my personal testimony and answers to questions about my background and faith life—did not seem to indicate that my thoughts and actions stemmed from a personal encounter and relationship with Christ, a concept which he explained with a series of impressive-sounding quotes from Scripture and elsewhere. I could not be a campus missionary, leading college students into a loving personal relationship with Jesus, if I myself did not have that kind of relationship: as he put it, I could not give what I did not have.
After this conversation, I joined the other interviewees in the chapel, where we had time for personal prayer and reflection. When I arrived in the chapel, the daylight was beginning to fade; by the time we left the chapel for dinner, night had fallen. My thoughts followed a similar trajectory.What were my reasons for going to Mass, or studying and defending the Church’s teachings? As far as I could tell, I hadn’t been acting out of a fear of Hell or desire for Heaven, but if I wasn’t acting out of a genuine love of God, either, then my motives must have been vain, selfish, and worldly. I may have wanted to think that I was serving God, but I must have been acting out of a self-righteous desire to do the right thing, or the inability to seriously contemplate any worldview other than the Catholic one, or a lazy refusal to abandon familiar surroundings and religious practices, or perhaps in order to surround myself with the sort of wonderful people I’d met in Notre Dame’s Catholic subculture—and in order to fit in, I fooled them as well as myself into thinking I was a good Catholic, when really I lacked the sine qua non of the Christian life.
Before I knew it, I had dismissed as vanity every attempt I had ever made to follow God’s will and concluded that any subsequent effort I could make would be equally vain. The only thing that could make my efforts meaningful was an encounter with Christ, something I could not provide for myself—and something which did not seem to be forthcoming on God’s end, either.
Some people come to know God through a single moment, a profound encounter with the person of Christ that is a wellspring for their faith for the rest of their lives. It is a gift that gives them both motivation and direction. It is a gift that I thought I needed.
I don’t know how many times in the next few months I tried to open my heart to God, but to no apparent effect. The thought would leap from the back of my mind— “is it finally going to happen?”—and derail my attempt at prayer.
I tried to keep going in my daily life as I had before the interview, but my confidence and motivation slowly diminished. I thought that further discerning or realizing my vocation was dependent on developing a relationship with God. The longer I waited, the harder it became to find joy or meaning in activities I had previously found fulfilling, particularly writing and attending daily Mass.
That summer, I discussed my interview experience with a few close friends. They managed to persuade me that the interviewer was both theologically and morally wrong to question my status before God in that way, and that I did not actually need the particular kind of divine encounter and conversion experience that the interviewer had in mind—yet my prayer life still did not return to normal, and in some dark corner of my psyche, an insidious doubt remained and festered, and it has emerged periodically to haunt me.
To give just one example: At a parish town hall meeting about what we wanted from a new pastor, I heard a number of fellow parishioners talking about continuing existing programs, or getting young people back in church, or getting the word out about the church, or various issues related to management and maintenance. Nearly every comment seemed oriented more toward sustaining the institution, or, at best, Catholicism as a tradition, rather than serving and being accountable to Christ.
I itched to stand up and point out that pattern, but I was afraid that I would not be able to give voice to my instinct that the institutional focus was insufficient without giving some sort of validation to the faulty view of relationship-with-God that the interviewer had imposed on me almost two years prior. I decided it was wiser to stay silent, but afterwards, I still wasn’t sure whether my thoughts about my fellow parishioners made me a hypocrite.
This past summer, two and a half years after the interview weekend, I received the closest thing to an answer to my doubts, the closest thing to consolation that I expect to receive in this life. It was an experience of God’s presence of an intensity that I had not felt since before the interview. The chief effect of this experience was the restoration of my confidence that God’s grace was at work in my life. This, in turn, gave me an odd sense of gratitude for everything I had endured as a result of the interview.
The sense that God had been with me throughout my period of doubt and struggle did not change the fact that I had suffered, but it did give meaning to the first few months of suffering and the following two years of doubts. God allowed me to suffer these doubts, but, through God's grace, I was protected from deeper doubts about either God or his Church. Moreover, God continued to work through me even as I doubted, and could turn even my doubts into tools by which I might serve the Kingdom. Carrying this burden has made me more capable of understanding—and hopefully making lighter—the burdens others carry.
This includes understanding, if only to a limited extent, why people who have suffered spiritual trauma sometimes have difficulty coming back to Church. Despite telling myself over and over again not to hold a grudge against FOCUS as a whole for the words of one member, or even a grudge against the interviewer himself, I still don’t know how I feel about that organization, and that was the primary reason I did not attend a conference they were hosting in my home city that I had no reason to doubt would be excellent. But even setting FOCUS aside, I felt uneasy even this past fall when I heard a homily that stressed the importance of a relationship with Jesus.
I suspect that, regardless of the status of my relationship with God, I will continue to have a strained relationship with that particular pastoral approach. The language of personal encounter and relationship—the language used by FOCUS and other evangelical-influenced circles within Catholicism—is still foreign and unnatural to me, and I suspect that many who embrace it are not sufficiently aware or wary of its shortcomings.
I do not tell my story simply to offer it as a case study about the potential pitfalls of integrating elements of evangelical spirituality into Catholic pastoral practice, but I think my story does serve that purpose. If sharing my story in this way helps to temper and nuance this increasingly common pastoral approach, it is just one more way in which my suffering can be made to serve a good purpose.
The kind of personal encounter and relationship which the interviewer so prized is a gift—but it is not a gift that God gives to everyone just for the asking. Some of us may, in the end, have to be content with forming our consciences according to the Church’s teachings and trusting that we are receiving God’s grace through the Sacraments.
When we open ourselves to God’s grace, we will not always recognize how or when He enters into our lives and work, and recognizing it in the same way evangelicals do ought not be a prerequisite for considering oneself a faithful Catholic or a follower of Christ.
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