Mowgli and the Missionary

My novel "Mowgli and the Missionary" is now available as an ebook for Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, and the Apple iBookstore. Read the first two chapters for free by clicking here.

Homosexual "Marriage": Theological, Political and Pastoral Considerations

These are three short talks I've posted in mp3 audio format to the web site of the Catholic parish where I serve as Director of faith formation. They can be downloaded by clicking here.

"We can live without sex, but we can't live without intimacy": Homosexuals, Celibacy, and the Theology of the Body

The headline jumped out from the December 13 edition of The Washington Post: “Gay Christians Choosing Celibacy Emerge From the Shadows.” As the call for “homosexual marriage” increases at an alarming rate, it is encouraging to know there are homosexual persons embracing and promoting their call to virginity--while expressing spiritual insights into that sacred vocation for all.

The article featured Eve Tushnet, a 36-year old writer and speaker who converted to Catholicism in 1998, when “she thought she might be the world’s first celibate Catholic lesbian.” She writes for spiritualfriendship.org, a blog for celibate homosexual Christians that draws thousands of visitors each month.

Tushnet says that celibacy “allows you to give yourself more freely to God.” The focus of celibacy, she says, should be not on the absence of sex but rather on deepening friendships and other relationships. She urges people not to focus so much on the sex they can’t have, but on other avenues where they can experience true intimacy.

Tushnet uses the image of a kaleidoscope: “The jewels inside are desires. If you turn it one way, it’s lesbianism. If you rearrange them, it can be community service or devotion to Mary.”

Tushnet’s words shed much needed light on a world obsessed with the physical pleasures of sex, while failing to understand the interpersonal and sacrificial communion that constitutes genuine intimacy--that sex and intimacy aren’t necessarily one and the same

This truth was presented in the article most presciently by Julie Rodgers, a lesbian hired this fall to serve homosexual persons in the chaplain’s office of Wheaton College, a prominent evangelical school in Illinois. While holding that God does not bless same-sex relationships, Rodgers sees injustices done to homosexual persons by churches, and tries to heal them.

“Evangelicals are really trying to figure out what to do,” Rodgers told The Washington Post. “There is a real panic about how to move forward. How do we think and talk about sexuality? We haven’t had a robust understanding around celibacy in the past. We are trying to find a congruence between faith and spirituality that does not try to align with traditional marriage but does recognize that we can live without sex, but we can’t live without intimacy.”

We can live without sex, but we can’t live without intimacy. If we were to write a list of five truths the world desperately needs to hear, this would certainly be one of them.

Yet this is really nothing new. Catholics have a ready answer for Rodgers’ observation “We haven’t had a robust understanding around celibacy in the past,” and her question “How do we think and talk about sexuality?”

The answer? St. John Paul II and his Theology of the Body.

John Paul II did not address homosexuality specifically in the Theology of the Body, but he gave ample attention to celibacy, which he called “an exclusive donation of self to God.” The following quotes shed much light on the celibate vocation to which many heterosexuals and all homosexuals are called. Each quote is from a series of talks in the spring of 1982:

“The observation, “When they rise from the dead they neither marry nor are given in marriage” (Mk 12:25) indicates that there is a condition of life without marriage. In that condition, man, male and female, finds at the same time the fullness of personal donation and of the intersubjective communion of persons, thanks to the glorification of his entire psychosomatic being in the eternal union with God.”(March 10)

Paraphrasing Jesus in Matthew 19:11-12, Pope John Paul II said:

“I shall speak to you of continence. Undoubtedly, you will associate this with the state of physical deficiency, whether congenital or brought about by human cause. But I wish to tell you that continence can also be voluntary and chosen by man for the kingdom of heaven.” (March 17)

Explaining what it means to be celibate for the kingdom of heaven, Pope John Paul II said:

“Continence for the kingdom of heaven is certainly linked to the revelation of the fact that in the kingdom of heaven people ‘will no longer marry’ (Mt 22:30)…. Because God will be ‘everything to everyone’ (1 Cor 15:28).

“Such a human being, man and woman, indicates the eschatological virginity of the risen man. In him there will be revealed, I would say, the absolute and eternal nuptial meaning of the glorified body in union with God himself through the ‘face to face’ vision of him….

“Earthly continence for the kingdom of heaven is undoubtedly a sign that indicates this truth and this reality. It is a sign that the body, whose end is not the grave, is directed to glorification. Already by this very fact, continence for the kingdom of heaven is a witness among men that anticipates the future resurrection….

“So, then, continence for the kingdom of heaven bears, above all, the imprint of the likeness to Christ. In the work of redemption, he himself made this choice for the kingdom of heaven.” (March 24)

Speaking further of this likeness to Christ, Pope John Paul II said:

“Whoever consciously chooses such continence, chooses, in a certain sense, a special participation in the mystery of the redemption (of the body). He wishes in a particular way to complete it, so to say, in his own flesh (cf. Col 1:24), finding thereby also the imprint of a likeness to Christ.” (March 31)

I'll Throw In My Lot With This Dubious Group

“The Bible and the Catholic Catechism do not teach the same Jesus.”

“In order for Catholicism to be true the Bible has to be false.”

“You need to be born again and find a Bible preaching church before it is too late. The one you’re in is going to take you to Hell because it preaches ‘another Jesus.’”

“I didn’t write these two books (the Bible and the Catholic Catechism) but to say that they teach and believe the same thing is untrue.”

“Anyone who honestly looks at God’s Word and compares it to what the Catholic church teaches, will see that the two are VERY different doctrines.”

These are sample comments left by a visitor to this blog. I’m touched by his concern for my eternal fate, and by his sincere effort to convert me to follow who he calls “my Jesus” (perhaps to distinguish his from everyone else’s).

Yet I’m befuddled by the assumptions that underlie his comments. He seems to think that no Catholic has ever read the Bible, or has ever read it carefully, and that he is pointing out Biblical truths that have somehow escaped the attention of Catholics (both in the hierarchy and the laity) for centuries.

I think of people with far greater intellectual ability, spiritual depth, self-less love and faithful courage than myself, and how so many of them could be duped by this allegedly false doctrine--and yet have accomplished countless heroic deeds nevertheless.

I think of people like Thomas Aquinas, Augustine of Hippo, and his poor mother Monica, who prayed for decades that her son would exchange debauchery for un-Biblical blasphemy--perhaps she should have left well enough alone. I think of Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Jerome, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross,  Therese of Lisieux, and Catherine of Siena--how could such highly intelligent, spiritually strong, loving and courageous people have missed what was right in front of their noses?

Not to mention Francis of Assisi, Joan of Arc, Ambrose, Anselm, John Chrysostom, Athanasius, and Ignatius of Antioch; how could they have been so blind?

Then there’s Ignatius Loyola, Bonaventure, Albert the Great, Patrick, Benedict, Scholastica, Dominic, Vincent de Paul, Maria Goretti, Agnes, and Dominic Savio. (The latter three being children who were allegedly led astray. Then there’s John Bosco, who dedicated his life to allegedly leading children astray.)

Or how about Anthony of Padua, Cecilia, Clare of Assisi, Rose of Lima, Nicholas, Elizabeth Ann Seton, and Martin de Porres?

Or Maximilian Kolbe, Teresa of Calcutta, Kateri Tekakwitha, Francis Xavier, Katharine Drexel, Thomas More and Francis de Sales?

Let’s not forget Francis Xavier Cabrini, Damien of Molokai, Charles Lwanga and his companions, Paul Miki and his companions, Edith Stein, and Pier Giorgio Frassati.

This list, of course, is just the tip of an enormous iceberg; but according to my blog visitor it’s a list none of us should strive to be on.

What puzzles me is this: Jesus said “I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) Good fruit can only come from someone who is united to Jesus, the true vine. He makes the same point in Matthew 7:18: “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a rotten tree bear good fruit.”

The lives of the people I’ve listed, as well as countless others who have called themselves Catholic, are overflowing with the kind of good fruit that is described to a tee in Matthew 25:34-36.

“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 gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.”

“The righteous” (as the parable names them) confess that they had no intellectual understanding at the time that they were serving Jesus--they didn’t even recognize him. Yet Jesus assures them that such intellectual realization of his presence or identity, or differences in interpretation of doctrine, or any other such mental disciplines take a back burner on judgment day.

“Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine [whether you intellectually understood or realized it at the time] you did it for me.”

In other words, it is possible to recognize Jesus in the unconscious depths of our heart whether or not our minds are in sync, for that’s where we recognize him most clearly.

Evangelicals, however, like to replace the real ending of this parable with this notion that better fits their narrow theology:

“However—because your doctrinal understanding differed with some of your brothers and sisters, because you might not have even consciously recognized me when you served me and my people, despite all that you have done for me, BECAUSE YOU DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS ME—depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

That simply isn’t what the Gospel says. What it does say is this:

In John 14:6 Jesus says no one goes to the Father except through him. In saying this he clearly defines who he is: The Way, The Truth, and The Life. Some people recognize Jesus consciously, and consciously express faith in him. There are others who recognize The Way, The Truth and The Life (read “Jesus”) in their hearts, but cannot intellectually name him as Jesus. Jesus clearly lives through their actions, because their actions are from him--The Way, The Truth and The Life--even though they cannot give intellectual assent.

By that same token, Christians can have doctrinal differences based on different interpretations of Scripture but still be welcomed as one into the kingdom.

The Evangelical doctrine limits the Word of God to what’s printed in the pages of the Bible, while the Catholic Church proclaims what the Gospel of John teaches, that Jesus himself is the eternal Word of God, that while he is present in Scripture he is not confined to it, nor even to the Church he established upon Peter and the Apostles.

The Catholic Church teaches that the fullest way to experience life in Christ while on this earth is through participation in the life of the Church he established. This does not mean that only those fully joined to the Church can be saved. All can be saved who seek the Way, the Truth and the Life in their hearts, regardless of their intellectual framework, because they are really seeking Jesus, and Jesus knows that. And Jesus can do much without our help or our knowledge.

Catholics, Evangelicals, and many other folks are in the same boat. The many heroic people who were both listed and unlisted in this article understood that, Evangelicals don’t. I’ll throw my lot in with the former, and join in Jesus’ prayer that we all may be one.

Are We Like the Prodigal Son's Father or His Brother?

In his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium Pope Francis wrote the following:

“A Church that ‘goes forth’ is a Church whose doors are open. Going out to others in order to reach the fringes of humanity does not mean rushing out aimlessly into the world. Often it is better simply to slow down, to put aside our eagerness in order to see and listen to others, to stop rushing from one thing to another and to remain with someone who has faltered along the way. At times we have to be like the father of the prodigal son, who always keeps his door open so that when the son returns, he can readily pass through it.”

In light of recent discussions about a place in the Church for those in “irregular situations” (homosexuals, cohabiting couples, those in civil marriages, the divorced and remarried) we need to ask: are we more like the father or the older brother in this parable?

The younger son’s sin was egregious; he essentially told his father to drop dead. His inheritance was more important than his father, and he didn’t want to wait for his father’s death to get it. “As far as I’m concerned, Dad, you’re already dead; I only want your money, not you.”

Yet the father keeps the door open for the rebellious son to come home; he embraces and kisses him before the boy confesses his guilt (a key detail in the story), welcoming him into the company of the family even before a formal reconciliation has taken place.

The older son offers no such welcome; he has closed the doors and locked them tight. From his perspective his father’s actions are a terrible injustice. He has been a faithful son, but he was never given a party. Yet his loser little brother demanded his inheritance while his father was still alive, wasted it on immoral living, and then has the nerve to come back home--and he gets a party? How is that even remotely fair? As far as the older son is concerned, when his younger brother left home it was good riddance--and don’t let the door smack you as I close it on your way out.

The father’s response to the older boy was essentially this: “Son, it’s true you have always been part of the family--but we really weren’t a family while your brother was gone. What you were a part of was incomplete. Now that your brother is home we’re a family again, we’re whole, and we have to celebrate that!”

Pope Francis wrote:

“The Church is called to be the house of the Father, with doors always wide open. One concrete sign of such openness is that our church doors should always be open, so that if someone, moved by the Spirit, comes there looking for God, he or she will not find a closed door.”

Are the doors of our communities open not only to those who fully see their need to change, but also to those who are still on the journey toward repentance? Can we find some place in our midst for them to feel the kind of welcome that can lead them to the light?

The younger son’s epiphany came in a pig sty; can we open our doors, find some place for people in irregular situations in the Church, so their epiphany can come in the arms of the Body of Christ?

Ministry Amid Civil Marriages and Cohabitation

One of the many eye-catching paragraphs of the mid-term report from the Extraordinary Synod on the Family reads as follows (under the heading “Positive Aspects of Civil Unions and Cohabitation”):

“A new sensitivity in today’s pastoral consists in grasping the positive reality of civil weddings and, having pointed out our differences, of cohabitation. It is necessary that in the ecclesial proposal, while clearly presenting the ideal, we also indicate the constructive elements in those situations that do not yet or no longer correspond to that ideal.”

This does not mean we should recognize civil marriages and/or cohabitation as licit expressions of life in the Body of Christ; it means we should identify good elements that exist in these and use them as a foundation to lead people to the fullness of what God wants for them. Recall the principle established by the Synod that we discussed in my previous post:

“Discerning and affirming values present in irregular situations means we find the good in a situation and build upon it, rather than condemning the situation outright. Instead of using an approach that says “You’re wrong, you’d better change your lifestyle or you’re going to hell” (which immediately builds walls of defensiveness and alienation and accomplishes nothing), we use an approach that begins with “You’ve got some good things going for you, I can see where God has been working in your life,” which builds the trust and openness that is the foundation for a respectful examination of other things that need to change.”

This requires the doors to the Church be open to people in irregular situations, offering a place of welcome where they will be lovingly encouraged to grow. An open door does not mean validation of irregular lifestyles, nor does it necessarily mean full participation in the sacraments; it means validation of the person as a child of God in need of a nurturing place to grow, and perhaps inclusion in the sacraments where appropriate.

This section of the report referenced Evangelii Gaudium, an apostolic exhortation given by Pope Francis in 2013. Paragraph 47 of that document states (emphasis added):

“Everyone can share in some way in the life of the Church; everyone can be part of the community, nor should the doors of the sacraments be closed for simply any reason.”

“Simply any reason” does not refer to the canonical requirements for admission to the sacraments, for they are soundly established. It refers to arbitrary impediments placed at the discretion of pastors which are counter-productive to ministry. Speaking of the Eucharist in particular, Pope Francis wrote that it “is not a prize for the perfect but a powerful medicine and nourishment for the weak…. Frequently we act as arbiters of grace rather than its facilitators. But the Church is not a tollhouse; it is the house of the Father, where there is a place for everyone, with all their problems.”

Guided by this principle, the report said of civil marriages and cohabitation:

“All these situations have to be dealt with in a constructive manner, seeking to transform them into opportunities to walk towards the fullness of marriage and the family in light of the Gospel. They need to be welcomed and accompanied with patience and delicacy, as subjects for the evangelization of the family.”

Principles of Ministry to People in Irregular Situations

We’ll soon turn our attention to another portion of the midterm report from the Extraordinary Synod on the Family that raised eyebrows: how it spoke of “positive aspects of civil unions and cohabitation.” But first we need to understand three foundational principles of ministry that were spelled out in this document:

1. We must keep our gaze on Jesus and imitate his gaze.

2. We must operate from the “law of gradualness,” not “gradualness of the law.”

3. We must discern and affirm the values present in wounded families and irregular situations, then work from there.

Let’s briefly visit each of these principles.

1. With regards to imitating Jesus, Pope Francis says we must practice the “’art of accompaniment,’ which teaches us to remove our sandals before the sacred ground of the other.” This means we recognize the dignity of every human being as a child of God made in his image and likeness and treat them accordingly, no matter their situation.

2. The “law of gradualness” recognizes that nobody goes from their current state of imperfection to the fullness of the divine image in one leap. Everyone grows in stages--some grow more quickly than others, some may be able to skip some steps while others move one at a time, some fall back a step after taking two forward, etc. The law of gradualness calls for patience, and trust in the varied ways God works in people’s lives.

This is not to be confused with “gradualness of the law,” the fallacy that the law does not apply to people who have not yet reach the stage where they can follow it, that the law should be adapted according to each individual’s ability to follow it.

3. Discerning and affirming values present in irregular situations means we find the good in a situation and build upon it, rather than condemning the situation outright. Instead of using an approach that says “You’re wrong, you’d better change your lifestyle or you’re going to hell” (which immediately builds walls of defensiveness and alienation and accomplishes nothing), we use an approach that begins with “You’ve got some good things going for you, I can see where God has been working in your life,” which builds the trust and openness that is the foundation for a respectful examination of other things that need to change.

Such an approach is reminiscent of the words of St. John XXIII in his opening address at the Second Vatican Council:

“The Church has always opposed these errors, and often condemned them with the utmost severity. Today, however, Christ’s Bride prefers the balm of mercy to the arm of severity. She believes that present needs are best served by explaining more fully the purport of her doctrines, rather than by publishing condemnations.”

With those principles established, we’ll examine some of the “irregular situations” the Synod discussed in my next post.