The Second Vatican Council has been described as a missionary council, convened to engage the world within and outside the church. Pacem in Terris, written by Pope John XXIII during the Council, departs from all previous encyclicals in its address, not to the church alone, but “to all Men of Good Will.” It is this missionary impulse, more than any other, which I believe has been lost and must be found.
I’ve been thinking of St. Isaac Jogues. He did not come to North America as a tourist. He did not come to report and leave. He came to live, as a member of the community. He would live and die among the people he was called to serve.
In one of Jogue’s first letters home he writes that he is learning the language of the Hurons. First task: he learned the language of the people he served.
When I talk to my children and their friends, I am struck by the inability or the unwillingness of those in the hierarchy of the church to learn the language. And, trust me, there is a new language to be learned. The Oxford American Dictionary had chosen the word of the year for 2012, "GIF." It's short for graphic interface format.
When I heard “Gif,” I thought they were talking about a brief moment in time, as in, “I’ll be there in a jiff.” I still don’t know what graphic interface format means.
I see this failure of language most painfully and plainly when we talk about homosexuality and marriage. My husband and I were shocked to realize, a decade or more after we graduated, how many of our best friends from Notre Dame were, and are, gay. Back in the ‘70’s, we had no idea. But neither did our gay friends. We — all of us — had no language for it. One of our friends, a priest, says, “If I had realized on the day I entered seminary that I was gay, I would have packed my bags and left.”
By the time he had the language to understand his orientation, he also had the skills and experience to integrate his attractions into the rest of his life. He remains a celibate priest, one who knows that his sexual orientation is towards men.
Our oldest child’s godfather is gay. When we asked him to stand as Abram’s godfather, he was a Trappist monk. He left the monastery and met the man who became his life partner and companion for over thirty years. He has been a faithful and loving presence in our son’s life, and now in the lives of his children.
My children have friends who came out in middle school. They grew up with homosexual friends. They have shared dorm rooms and locker rooms and road trips and sleepovers with them and they know the experience to be unremarkable.
My middle daughter grew up with a girl whose parents are devout Catholics. So is their daughter. She is also gay. She and her partner could not marry in the Catholic Church, but they put together a very Catholic Liturgy of the Word. She and her spouse want to have children. But they will not pursue IVF or any other form of artificial insemination, because it is against Church teaching. My daughter will point out that, at the same time her lesbian friend is struggling to stay in the Church, she has straight, Catholic friends who are undergoing IVF without any concern for Church teaching.
Who, my daughter asks, is the faithful one?
So, here we are, in the aftermath of an expensive campaign regarding same sex marriage. Expensive, in terms of time and money, but also in terms of people who’ve come to believe that the Church only counts sexual sins.
Those entrusted with implementing Vatican II’s Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy published guidelines. A section regarding the tabernacle reads:
An issue closely linked to that of the altar is the tabernacle. We can hardly give here prescriptions of a general and uniform character. An attentive study needs to be made in each case, with due attention to the material and spiritual circumstances proper to each place. Artists will little by little suggest the best solution.
Artists will lead. Why? Because the tabernacle is about beauty, the beauty within and the beauty without. The one who seeks and the One who is sought, held in beauty. Artists speak and work in the language of beauty.
How will this kind of leadership that is needed to address human sexuality, the leadership to learn the language of beauty and faithfulness in previously unexpected places, happen? Little by little. It will take time and thought and reflection and prayer.
How will artists lead? By suggestion. Not fiat. Just as the Council sought to persuade rather to anathematize.
Forty years ago, if I thought of homosexuals at all, they were shadows, not people I knew and loved. In that time, which is no time at all, the world’s awareness of the variations of human sexuality changed in ways I still do not understand.
I never know which words to use: Husband and husband, wife and wife, spouse, partner? I seldom get all the initials, LGBTQIA, in the right order. I confess I am confused that the California legislature passed a bill making it illegal to offer gay conversion therapy to minors, while keeping it legal to give minors drugs that will suppress naturally occurring hormonal changes in trans-gendered children. Governor Jerry Brown calls the one therapy “quackery” and the other “science,” but we’re not far enough down this road to speak with certainty about much in the way of therapy, other than to acknowledge that medical fads (Remember frontal lobotomies? Refrigerator mothers?) of all sorts have done great harm.
I am reluctant to agree to sweeping changes in our understanding of marriage. And that includes my grave misgivings about the way heterosexuals have redefined marriage not as a lifelong relationship, but as one governed by changing moods and affections. I have even heard the lukewarm vow, “As long as you both shall love,” pronounced at (heterosexual) weddings.
Wide reading and lived experience tells me a child is best raised by her married, biological mother and father. Also, lived experience has left me with the memories of other revolutions that were supposed to be about increased freedom and greater equality. Remember no-fault divorce? It was supposed to even the playing field and advance the cause of women’s progress. It has been a disaster for women and children. Poverty has increased, not decreased, and single women and their dependent children suffer.
“Little by little” is the way of the wise, especially when the path is newly cut and still rough, with few reliable maps to warn of pitfalls and dangers.
But, just as I am reluctant to endorse radical changes in ancient practices, so am I reluctant to act as if no practices can, or should, ever develop. We have a lot to learn.
The missionary impulse, I think, is akin to what psychiatrists call the “therapeutic alliance.” The physician seeks to ally with whatever in the patient is healthy or seeks health. That leads us back to the language of the Council as we address all men and women of good will and say that we are unable, at this time, to give “prescriptions of a general and uniform character. An attentive study needs to be made in each case, with due attention to the material and spiritual circumstances proper to each place.”
We need to learn the language. Learning the language requires interaction with those who speak it. Learning the language requires listening. Learning the language requires interpretation. I may know how a word is received in my language, but I may not understand how it is received in yours. I know what a gesture means in my language, but I may not understand what it means in yours.
Sometimes, when people don’t know the language, they start talking louder and more emphatically. It’s easy to get the impression today that faith in Christ is a series of intellectual assents. The scoring works just like a personality quiz in Ladies Home Journal. Check off a sufficient number of boxes and you’re inside. Below a certain number, you’re out.
I sit in the library looking at copies of Christmas carols Jesuit missionaries wrote in the Algonquin language. I wonder at the time it took to take the story and bring it to a people for whom the phrases “house of David” and “land of Judah” had no meaning. It meant learning Algonquin stories first. What place in their imagination could stand for Bethlehem? Translating the story meant learning what in their stories and culture affirmed the gospel of Christ, and weaving the stories they received with the stories they brought.
That’s the faith. We’re living a life, hearing the ancient stories and telling our own, joining them as believers have done for centuries.
So what of the beautiful idea, shining from the heart of the Roman bureaucracy, that artists will lead us? The vision that those whose life is beauty will lead us to beauty. Perhaps we would be wise to begin here by talking to people who do the hard work of love. By love I mean the daily hospitality and charity of my son’s godfather and his partner. What might happen if their bishop asked to meet with them, asked to hear about the last thirty years: the heart problems and the money woes and the care they together gave to E’s dying mother. What if they listened as the bishop spoke about his understanding of Church teaching? Perhaps all of us will find that their stories translate into a language we can understand together.
When, at the conclusion of Matthew’s gospel, the risen Christ tells his disciples to go into all the world, making disciples of people in every nation, we assume that the call is purely geographical. But we know there are borders of heart and mind and custom. There are borders of identity and upbringing. The whole earth is mission territory and the Church is called to learn the languages that we might share the good news of Christ.
Melissa Musick Nussbaum words of courage and \"mission territory\" reminded me of the homily given by the bishop at my daughter's confirmation nearly eight years ago. In a sea of 120 candidates, he spoke of two issues: abortion and same sex marriage. The Holy Spirit was present but not in his words to these young boys and girls. My daughter's sponsor, a devout gay man and dear friend would have walked out if he could have jumped over half the congregation, the half not seen at any regular liturgy since. And, my daughter has not been the same since, at least concerning her rhythm as a Catholic. Her spiritual rhythm, however, remains stronger than ever. The Holy Spirit does embrace her and she continues her mission...as a woman of faith, of purpose, of choice, of compassion... sadly (for me) yet happily (for her) away from the institutional church.
If advent means anything, it must mean listening, it must mission and the \"artist\" in us all must shed light on the world, on a church in need. We are mission.
Peace,
Mark Joseph Williams
As always, this columnist thinks with clarity and compassion and writes beautifully.
While the columnist makes many important points, as an adoptive parent, I cringe (yet again) at the thoughtlessness that is evident in the comment \"a child is best raised by her married, biological mother and father.\" My son's married biological parents were in no way \"best able\" to raise him, and thank God they chose adoption for him. The debate over same-sex marriage has led to opponents, especially those following Church teaching, to cite natural law in such a way as to denigrate families built by adoption. Columnists such as Ms. Nussbaum, and many Catholic priests, focus primarily on same sex vs. opposite sex couples and how chidren join their families, forgetting that many adoptive families with Catholic, married, opposite sex parents have adopted children. Those children are reading their columns and hearing their homilies. They keep reading and hearing they are somehow less of a person or a lesser member of the family. Learning the language of homosexuality may be new to Ms. Nussbaum, but learning the language of adoption should not be.
I so enjoyed reading the essay by Melissa Musick Nussbaum about the journey all of us have taken to find a language for our brothers and sisters who offer to God a sexuality unfamiliar to the majority of the population but a sexuality just as ordained by God who bestowed it on them. I do not think one has to give up the ancient traditions of marriage to be inclusive to others. Her comment that alludes to the fact that a child is best raised by two biological parents occurs in less than 50% of the population, and we know from familiarity with far too many examples that a child raised with two biological parents who neither respect each other or their children will reap the consequences.
I do not remanticize about gay couples raising children any more than I can look back and romanticize about my husband and I raising our own famiy - the overall joy watching our own children grow amidst intermitant illnesses, quandires, crises, and general tiredness for long periods of time. Physical work became easier over time while emotional work continued to increase. Why would we not share this grace from God with everyone?
We sold our home almost seven yeas ago to two men who had two adopted siblings from Haiti. They later adopted a baby. Our home was fine from the five of them until they were asked to adopt five siblings. Our understanding from secondary sources in that they initially said, \"no\" and later said \"yes.\" After adding four rooms to our former home, they are now raising a family of eight children for whom they did not plan anymore than they planned to be gay. They are also living in a state that does not allow gay marriage, so they have had to spend an extraordinary amount of money to not only adopt the children as individual adults but also spend money on legal papers which allow them to sign for medical treatment for each other as well as for the children. I think these must be some of the luckiest children in the world, and before condeming their adoptive parents, I would ask anyone to go and live in a family of eight children for a few weeks and then meditate on what they had exprienced.
While I cannot comment on sacramental marriage which is the chruch's purview, I can say that the bishops' opposing legal marraige in several states keeps children like these from having the legal protections they disserve. However good their lives are now, some of them were old enough when adopted to have other less favorable memories. Why are they denied the rights of other children because of our lack of inclusiveness?
I am a father of a lesbian daughter, who has had a baby daughter with her partner who carried the baby to term. The sperm donor is Brazilian, they did the insemination themselves. My God created us all the good the bad and the ugly. My God (I believe) gave us two (2) rules to live by \"love they God with you whole heart and soul and your neighbor as thy self\". The rules don't say if thy neighbor is only white, straight, Christian, etc., etc. The hierarchy of the Catholic church have made rules that are not in accordance with these two basic rules of life, give to us by Jesus Christ himself. The hierarchy of the Catholic is 200 years behind the human race. They are all male, average age is in their 70's and they a celibate. For thousands of years they have lead their parishioners through fear and intimidation. Guess what the generations of Catholic has evolved from fear and intimidation to ask \"WHY!\" We are now 50 years from the 2nd Vatican Counsel, unless the hierarchy of the Catholic Church adjusts to the needs in this 21st century, the Church will fragment itself into splinter groups who believe into the basic rules to live a good life as a Christian.
Sincerely,
J.D. Streeter
Wonderful reflection. As I read it, I was reminded of two things. The first is my own Confirmation as a 16 year old teenage girl in 1976. The Bishop's theme for his homily on that sacred day was \"all those girls at the Catholic highschool who are pregnant.\" I was so conflicted, asking myself why I would want to be confirmed as a member of \"that\" church? Yet, while I probably didn't have the words to express it at the time, I somehow knew that that Bishop was not \"the Church.\" At the reception afterwards, many of students enjoyed watching a Franciscan Sister very clearly expressing to the Bishop that she thought that his homily was totally out of line. I know who personified Christ for us that day.
The other more recent memory I have is of a relatively recent homily related to a Gospel reading focused on Jesus and the lepers. The priest asked who are the lepars among us today? Two he identified are those who suffer from mental illness, and divorced Catholics. He commented that he thought it was past time to welcome our divorced brothers and sisters in Christ back to the Eucharistic Table. Again, who images Christ?
This is a beautiful, compassionate, Christian column. As a dedicated, practicing life-long Catholic I need to read these thoughts as I ponder all these changes in our society.Many of us struggle with how to reconcile church teaching with our Christian beliefs that we accept each person as they are, and how God created them. We cannot force gay and lesbian people to fit into our marriage and living patterns. We need theologians to listen to them and help us all develop ways that they can live their sexual lives as Christians and within our church. I don't think they can go against their sexual orientation. ANd why should they? They don't fit into our mold. There needs to be another mold.