Is Francis a leftie?

The short answer is "No."  He has yet to change any Church teaching on abortion, homosexuality. contraception or divorce.

But he says interest things like this, spoken at Mass on October 17:

“In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’ The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements. The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?”

This sounds to me like a loving rebuke to the "Shiite" wing of the Catholic Church, which has being in the ascendancy for the last 30 years. You know who I mean: the mean-spirited, one-issue Catholics who judge everyone (but themselves) as to whether they are sufficiently Catholic. They have no love, no perspective and no mercy. The kind of folks proud to be Catholic but uninterested in being Christian.

Now, the pope has issues them a major challenge: stop being idolators to ideology that prevents your from seeing your fellow human beings as neighbors worthy of love, respect and care. By itself, the pope's stance is a signal change to the way the Church has been run.You can already see some of the worst offenders, like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, scurrying to show fealty to the Holy Father and to claim they have always been opposed to single-issue Catholic groups.

So much for the good news.

But what does a Church look like that is nicer about presenting its teachings, but doesn't change them? Are we to expect more dialog? Perhaps a chance to explore contentious issues more fully? It's a little like visiting Uncle Buddy who used to be a violent alcoholic and a racist. He just came home from rehab. Is it safe to visit again? And what happens when we decide to discuss Obamacare?

But, first steps are important, as long as they are followed by second and third steps. The first step was to ratchet down the rage. It's possible that this alone will encourage Catholics to start dialoguing with each other. I hope this is so. But I tend to doubt that openness and dialog will happen by themselves. There is still too much room for prelates to hide their true feelings in order to advance in the system, or merely to keep their place in it. As long as priests and bishops are afraid to speak their minds (or even to have a mind of their own) there is little chance for honest dialog.As long as Catholics can stroke their sense of religious superiority by holding this belief or that, without regard to the harm they are doing to the Church, there will be little opportunity for progress.

Pray that the seed of peace that Francis has planted will throw out roots strong enough to break up the rigid pavement of ideological thinking!

The Good Purge

I was chatting with a once-Catholic-now-Protestant friend about a Catholic funeral he had attended. "It was just a Mass!" he exclaimed, as through that was a problem. What it came down to was that he had expected a eulogy -- for this to be more of a memorial service than "just" a Mass. I explained that in Catholic way of death, there are many moments of interaction with the deceased and with the process of death -- starting when death approaches, through the death itself, to preparations for the funeral, the wake, the funeral Mass and finally, to the committal, the collation dinner and beyond. Some Catholic death rites don't have a eulogy, some do, and many place it it various locations -- the wake, the Mass, the committal or even the collation.

But I surprised myself when I heard myself talking about our view of the time after death. Maybe the Spirit was speaking through me to my friend and to myself.

Catholics don't see our relationship with the dead as severed completely by death. We (as do many other religious people and, I suspect, even atheists) continue to think our our departed loved ones as part of our lives. They are in our memories, of course. But that's the least of it. They are also the ones to whom we speak or to whom we pray for guidance and support. And, perhaps uniquely among religions, we pray for them.

The Catholic teaching about Purgatory has come in for its share of dings in the last few decades. But there is one sense, at least, that makes it useful. It is that the departed soul's journey toward holiness is not over. That there is more left to do. That there is more that can be done.

In the old days, we would pray for the soul's quick departure from Purgatory, as though only our prayers could push souls closer to God and into Heaven. This is problematic for a few reasons. Does a popular, beloved or well-known person get pushed out of Purgatory faster than one with few or no friends? Is Purgatory populated with crusty, unloved old timers who have no hope of getting on the fast track to Paradise? Seems not to accord with a God who is All Good, does it? And doesn't the soul have to do the work (with the help of God's grace) of approaching holiness -- just as we do one earth?

So if we pray for them, then why? One reason might be an opportunity for us to meditate on the true nature of God. For Catholics can see God as a being whose mercy and solicitude extends beyond death. Where others worry that a person's earthly deeds are all that matter, and that the home run derby of holiness ends at the moment of death, we see it extending indefinitely. The God of boundless love continues to work with souls -- even with the most twisted and recalcitrant, I'd wager -- far beyond the time when he should (by human standards) stop caring. But how can an All Loving God and Father ever stop caring? Why should death stop his care? Can human being top God in their love for the departed?

When we pray for the dead, it is to support and encourage them in their journey home toward God. To help them see what must be shed -- hatred, jealousy, pettiness -- that was not shed in life. And to take on what was not or could not have been taken on in life -- kindness, courage and largeness of heart.

Pilate's really good question

What is truth?


Why are Christians so allergic to it?

Do the ends justify the means?

Can you break one commandment in order to fulfill another?

The ongoing furor over the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, has highlighted for me the tenuous relationship that some Christians have with the truth. I've noticed that many of those who are the most fervent in their opposition to the new health care law are conservative Christians. Aside from the US bishops, who opposed the law because it would "force" them to pay for contraceptive care, many of the law's opponents (at least those of my acquaintance) are aligned with fundamentalist and conservative Christian groups.

Which is fine. If you don't like Obamacare, that's your business.  But where I have been bewildered is the degree to which these people are willing to pass along the most absurd and outlandish claims about the effects of the bill.

The latest has been the story that the computer sites responsible for signing people up for care are costing the taxpayer over $660 million! The precise figure, taken from theHotAir, is a whopping $634,320,919! Now, I work in IT. And you could buy an awful lot of servers, and get a helluva lotta coding and networking done for $600 mill! If this figure were correct, the conservatives' wrath would be justified. Talk about wasteful spending!

But a little sleuthing would several things:

1. The only news outlets speaking about this figure are far-right, government hating  conspiracy sites
2. The Republican congressional leadership, which could use all the ammunition it can get to fight O-Care, has not used this figure
3. No major news outlets  -- CBS, CNN, NPR, etc. -- have run stories on this
4. Many of the news outlets carrying the story use very similar titles: "WE PAID $634 MILLION FOR THE OBAMACARE SITES AND ALL WE GOT WAS THIS LOUSY 404," basically meaning that "concerned citizens" were linking over and over to the original story 

This doesn't mean that the story is wrong, of course. You'd have to find out more about the way the ACA's IT work is being funded. But it certainly raises any number of red flags about the veracity of the story.

Yet right wing Christians continue to flog the story as though it was, um, gospel. And I suspect that the most work they did was to copy the link and paste it into their news site.

What is this all about? Do conservative Christians really feel it's OK to lie in the pursuit of their agenda? Or do they just get really overexcited when they find the perfect rejoinder to those pesky skeptics and lukewarm Christians who dog them so much for pesky facts?

No doubt there are some Christians who feel their lies are a form of civil disobedience to the forces of evil. If Hitler (sorry Mr. Godwin) were to ask you where the Jews were hiding, wouldn't you lie and say "I don't know"? I would.  But Der Fuehrer aside,  are there other people or groups that Christians would feel honor-bound to mislead? Given the hatred that some of these have for Democrats and for Obama in particular, I wonder.

But maybe these Christians are just so convinced of the rightness of their arguments that they don't look too closely when a news story comes along that fits their preconceptions. Did pro-choice protesters bring jars of feces into the Texas Lege? That sounds like the work of monsters who would kill babies. It must be so! Is Obama planning to shoot millions of US citizens as Glenn Beck recently claimed? Sure -- the Antichrist would stoop to any evil! But shouldn't the first red flag about a news story be whether it confirms what you already believe? I have seen folks on the right and the left fall for this one. Anyone looking for the truth ought to worry when a story is just too good to be true. It's a form of moral negligence to pass along stories that paint yourself as good and your enemies as ungodly.

There's sadness about this situation on several fronts. First of all, Christians, at least as much as anyone else, should cherish the truth. After all, they follow the one who claimed to be "The Way, the Truth and the Life, " and who said "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free." Except under unusual circumstances,  wouldn't honesty be the best policy for his followers? The other sad aspect of Christians flirtation with dishonesty is that it makes them pawns in a political game that does not have their interests at heart. No politician is impervious to manipulating the masses, But at this point in history, it's the Republican party that has painted itself as the party of virtue, good stewardship and patriotism --however much the facts might belie that self-assessment.

Christians have a duty to find the truth, to protect the truth and the honor the truth. Anything less puts them in league with the Father of Lies, who has drawn many to destruction in the supposed pursuit of the good and the holy.

Poper Scooper

I was reading a HuffPost article noting that the Onion, the satirical journal, scooped the AP by three months.

The Onion from July...

..and the AP from today:

All laughter aside, poor Pope Francis is beset by those who wish that he would just shut up and read from the catechism--in Latin, preferably. If I were him, frankly, I would tire of these busybodies and fire a couple to bring the rest into line.

Anyway.

All this got me thinking about gays, their detractors and church law. Church Law states pretty clearly that:

"tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved. CCC 2357 

Ouch.

But I wondered tonight about those who are quick to adopt this teaching of the Church. Did the teaching come first, and then they ordered their opinions to fit it? Or did their opinions come first, and they use the teaching as cover?

Imagine I was a human being who loved gays but desired to obey all Church teaching. A transcript of my brain's subspace chatter might read like this: "Wow! Gays are great! And they say that gay sex is awesome! I have attended so many gay weddings and had a great time with all my gay friends. And they are such wonderful parents. Also, gays have made so many important contributions to culture. They make everything awesome! But, what's this? Church calls homosexuality "disordered"? Oh well. I guess I'll have to change everything I believe about gays. From now on, I will disapprove of their lifestyle and behavior."

Or, is this more like it? "Gays are sick sodomites and gay sex is disgusting! They have no business getting married -- or worse, raising kids! They're perverts and are hell bound! What's this? The Church says I'm right! They are "intrinsically disordered." Thank goodness! I'm going off to Church right now to thank God for making me right. And straight!"

I don't know ANY Catholic or Christian of any kind who was positively inclined toward gays and who changed his or her mind because the Church said so. Folks like these either stay in the Church and fight, or leave the Church entirely. But I know more than my share of Catholics who are relieved that the Church can be a cover for their gay-hatred.

Pope Francis's tolerance toward all "sinners" (which to me does not automatically include gays) is a welcome first step of many that are needed to bring the Church into line with the modern world and with Christ's gospel of love and forgiveness. It's no surprise that some in the Vatican want to pull him in a more comfortable direction. I can only pray that his way of love prevails and that the Church finally has a grown-up conversation about gay love, natural law and the good news of the gospel. Church law should never be a cover for hatred and intolerance, an excuse for people to avoid dealing with their own evil.

Rewriting Matthew 25

'Come, you who are blessed by my Father.

Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry and you cut my food stamps;

I was thirsty and you gave me a fracked aquifer;

A stranger and you erected a fence against me;

Naked and you gave me your dirty castoffs;

Ill and you defunded my health care;

In prison and you profited from me.

With apologies to St. Mathew

 

I don't know what has come across my country.

We have always had a thread of selfishness about us, but we also had the sense that we should help each other as well. Maybe it's because we haven't had a world war or economic depression to remind us that we are all vulnerable to the same threats to our lives and well-being. But we certainly have come a long way from the days of social cohesion born of necessity.

In my hometown, the first credit union in the country was opened by immigrants who didn't trust their money to the institutional banks run by the "English." They contributed their nickels, quarters and dollars into a common fund, then lent to each other at affordable rates. Don't pay your bills and you had the community to answer to. The loan payments were fed back into the common fund, strengthening the community rather than profiting some high-falutin' executive at a faceless bank with no ties to the community, nor any interest in the community's health.

We have come a long way from the days when people banded together for the common good. Today, we are more likely to advocate for our sacred rights to stand apart and alone -- to do what we want with our properties, to fire our guns at anything that moves, and to be vulnerable to the concerted efforts of corporate and political interests that only have their own interests at heart. We clamor to dispossess those at the bottom of the economic ladder, while congratulating the vultures perched at the top for their great perspicacity and good sense to have inherited wealth from their grandparents.

But where the irony really hits the fan is that many of the rapacious at the top and self-destructive at the bottom claim to be representing Christianity. There's no better indication that my countrymen have confused American-style capitalism with the faith of Jesus Christ than the recent imbroglio about the ACA --  a bill that would halt the predatory insurance practices that have bankrupted thousands of American families unable to afford healthcare, and have led to the premature deaths of many others who have exceeded their lifetime caps.

Now I don't think that being Christian means Americans have to martyr themselves economically to pay for medical care for all. If covering all Americans was a budget-busting guarantee of economic insolvency for the nation, then we would need to think twice about whether we were being wise. But the ACA is not a budget-buster, and was been crafted to have minimal impact on the deficit.  There is no martyrdom or threat to our way of life if another 30 million people are covered. Quite the contrary.

At the end of the day--at the end of the age--we will be asked simple questions. Not how many times we attended Mass, nor our score at the firing range, nor how many votes we got or how many dollars we raised for our political party, nor how many square feet were in our second homes. We will be asked whether we did what we could to help the hungry, thirsty, alien, naked, sick and imprisoned.

The degree to which Americans  can align their answers to those questions with their political passions is the degree to which the nationalism that burns in their breasts is in line with the tenets of our Savior, whose ethics cross class, social, national, political, and economic barriers.