Recently in John Paul II Category

A week ago was the tenth anniversary of the controversial Declaration "Dominus Iesus" (Lord Jesus), from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which in 2000 was headed up by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, today Pope Benedict XVI.

Anyway, I say it was controversial because it made some claims about Jesus which are often considered somewhat politically incorrect. Claims like Jesus is the only name under which anyone is to be saved from an eternity separate from God, or that the Church He founded is the one true Church.

I read the document this morning for the first time ever. I felt like most of it was pretty common sense, provided that the person reading it professed to believe in the content of Holy Writ. If the document is politically incorrect or offensive to modern ideas of religious pluralism or relativism, it is because the New Testament and the Jesus of Nazareth described therein are rather offensive to those.

But I find that the most difficult Gospel teachings to accept often turn out to be the most beautiful.

The most dominant image used to describe God's love for mankind in Scripture is matrimonial -- the love of a husband for his wife. The declaration reads:

And thus, just as the head and members of a living body, though not identical, are inseparable, so too Christ and the Church can neither be confused nor separated, and constitute a single "whole Christ". This same inseparability is also expressed in the New Testament by the analogy of the Church as the Bride of Christ (cf. 2 Cor 11:2; Eph 5:25-29; Rev 21:2,9).

Because there is often perceived a disconnect between the two. Christ is all-loving, all-affirming; the Church is cold and rigid. Christ comforts. The Church burdens. Christ welcomes. The Church excommunicates.

Why the apparent difference? I would surmise that it is because the Church is clear and unmistakable in the world today, while Christ is more shrouded in the past, more ephemeral and thus more vulnerable to wishful thinking. In other words, it is much easier for us to make whatever we want out of "Jesus" than it is to make whatever we want out of the Church. Christ isn't walking around giving interviews or writing books. The pope is.

This is not to say that Christ is not loving and welcoming. Quite the opposite. But as Christ is welcoming, so too is the Church. It is the Church's job to preserve a proper understanding of Christ in the world today. The farther one gets away from Christ's teachings as propogated by the Church, the more one's understanding of Christ becomes contaminated by one's own wishful thinking. The Christ in our heads is then not Christ at all. Just a repository of our own opinions, costumed up to look like a 33-year-old bearded Jewish carpenter.

If any of the Church's teachings strike us as cold or unloving, like (and I hope this does not upset anyone too much) her teaching on marriage, then it is not her teaching but a teaching of Christ himself that we find so cold and unloving. Does that mean Christ is cold and unloving? Or might it mean that our understanding of the issue needs to be corrected or sharpened?

Anyway, I think that is what Cardinal Ratzinger was getting at. Just throwing it out there.

Speaking of marriage ...
as I read the declaration this morning it got me thinking about my future married relationship. St. Paul makes clear that the mystery of marriage actually points to the mystery of Christ and the Church -- distinct but inseparable entities. Beginning on that fateful day in late September, T and I will continue to be distinct individuals, but we will be inseparable. As one body.

Mind blown.

Been thinking a lot about the Holy Spirit lately. Fr. J said in his homily last Sunday said that the Holy Spirit "makes the difference." It makes the difference between a loving church community and a cold and distant one. It makes the difference in a generous and giving person and a miser. It makes the difference between a person who is ready to change and a person who is stuck in his old ways.

David Mills of "First Things" magazine wrote this week about "Spirituality without Spirits," or the modern popular concept and lifestyle of "spirituality" as opposed to supposedly cold hard "religion."

He writes about Lady Gaga -- who may not be so celibate after all -- telling a newspaper that although she was raised Catholic, she now prefers a more "spiritual" type of God.

"There's really no religion that doesn't hate or condemn a certain kind of people, and I totally believe in all love and forgiveness, and excluding no one," she says.

Mills debunks the whole "spirituality" myth -- which is that one can be spiritual without the actual relationship with the kind of Spirit that one encounters only in religious practice. To be religious is to be spiritual -- to engage with and encounter a true spirit that is beyond us, that challenges us, and that can change us.

I'm presently reading a book by John Paul II on the Holy Spirit: Dominum et Vivificantem: The Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World. That first Latin part means "Lord and Giver of Life," which is what we Catholics call the Holy Spirit every Sunday at Mass.

Because every human heart desires God, I think it can certainly be said that persons who subscribe to these sorts of popular, ephemeral, non-substantive types of "spirituality" are looking, objectively, for the Holy Spirit. In other words, everyone wants life, and the Holy Spirit stands ready to give it to them to the full. But their perception, often received from popular media, is that the Holy Spirit, and the Church to which He gives life, will not give them the kind of happiness that they seek from living spiritually.

Why? Because of the moral claims that they make. It's that "Holy" with a capital "H" that some of us find so unnerving. That's what, I suspect, Lady Gaga is talking about. She thinks that religion is about hating and condemning people. That's her concept of morality. If it was my concept of morality, I would agree with her. A lot of people would, and that I suspect is why the concept of "spirituality" is so appealing, why so many characterize themselves as "spiritual but not religious."

But religion, at least the Christian religion, is about loving and accepting and including people. But therefore it must be about hating and condemning certain lifestyles and practices, both in our own lives and in the world writ large, that are fundamentally incompatible with loving our neighbor the way Christ loves us. If certain sexual practices -- and let's be frank, the vast majority of objections people have to the moral claims of the Church come down to sexual practices -- are condemned and excluded by the Church, that is the reason.

The reason why certain practices must be excluded may not always be clear to us, but many things regarding God are not always clear, and nonethless true. My purpose here is not to make the case for these teachings. That would take many more blog posts. I simply say the basis of these teachings is not hate and exclusion, but love and inclusion -- of all people.

The concept is rooted in scripture, as John Paul II notes in his book. In John Chapter 16, Jesus tells his disciples that when the Holy Spirit comes, He will "convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment."

Well there's the rub. All you have to do is watch a few episodes of "Intervention" to know that we human beings do not like to be convinced of our own sin -- of our imperfections and our need to change. Religion -- Holy Spirituality -- does that. Spirituality does not.

An op-ed columnist named Ross Douthat at the New York Times of all publications is wondering whether Benedict XVI is actually a better pope than John Paul II. I don't agree with the whole thing, but it is interesting:

The world didn't always agree with Pope John Paul II, but it always seemed to love him. Handsome and charismatic, with an actor's flair and a statesman's confidence, he transformed the papacy from an Italian anachronism into a globe-trotting phenomenon. His authority stabilized a reeling church; his personal holiness inspired a generation of young Catholics. "Santo subito!" the Roman crowds chanted as he lay dying. Sainthood now!

They will not chant for Benedict XVI. The former Joseph Ratzinger was always going to be a harder pontiff for the world to love: more introverted than his predecessor, less political and peripatetic, with the crags and wrinkles of a sinister great-uncle. While the last pope held court with presidents and rock stars, Cardinal Ratzinger was minding the store in Rome, jousting with liberal theologians and being caricatured as "God's Rottweiler." His reward was supposed to be retirement, and a return to scholarly pursuits. Instead, he was summoned to Peter's chair -- and, it seems, to disaster.

Douthat touches on one of the reasons I have not been quick to criticize Pope Benedict. It just seems so easy to target the man. Who out there with any cool points is actually backing him? What pop culture icons has he befriended? Not Stephen Colbert, as much as I love that guy. Bono was friends with John Paul II, but not Benedict. Benedict has always been considered in the conventional unwisdom of popular culture to be a creepy crumudgeon.

That is what popular culture typically thinks of people who are defined first and foremost by their commitment to moral goodness. I say "first and foremost" because in the popular cultural context, John Paul II was not defined "first and foremost" by his commitment to moral goodness. Oh, he wrote several books on sexual morality that ran completely against the popular stream. But mainstream popular media just sort of glossed over that.

It is impossible to gloss over anything with Pope Benedict XVI. He stands for principle as strongly as John Paul II did, in a far less assuming and less charismatic way, yet more intimidating to the secular media. When the scandals in America first broke in 2002, it was the bishops that took the brunt of the criticism. John Paul II was largely unscathed. Perhaps that was in part because the man was dying. But the scandals that were uncovered then, and continuing to be discovered today, took place before he began to really lose health. Yet it was understood that it was the bishops, not JPII, who really screwed up. I don't mean to say that that was incorrect. But if it was a fair assessment back then, with JPII, why is it not equally fair this time, for Benedict? Because Benedict is, quite simply, an easier target.

But as far as I can tell and from what I've read of his writings and the writings of others about him, he does not appear very different from other humble servants of the Lord and His Church who are today known as saints. He may never be canonized himself. But he appears to be a man with a good heart, who didn't strong-arm anyone to become pope in the first place. Basically, to me, he just seems like a good man who doesn't deserve all the flak he's getting.

So the high-flying John Paul let scandals spread beneath his feet, and the uncharismatic Ratzinger was left to clean them up. This pattern extends to other fraught issues that the last pope tended to avoid -- the debasement of the Catholic liturgy, or the rise of Islam in once-Christian Europe. And it extends to the caliber of the church's bishops, where Benedict's appointments are widely viewed as an improvement over the choices John Paul made. It isn't a coincidence that some of the most forthright ecclesiastical responses to the abuse scandal have come from friends and protégés of the current pope.

Speaking of, the Vatican Monday made it clear that bishops are supposed to follow the law and report allegations of sex abuse to local civil authorities. Why that needed to be spelled out for men many of whom have doctorates, I don't know. But that is part of the life of the Church over millennia: common understanding of teachings and procedures is assumed to be understood until it needs to be spelled out.

The Vatican rules for handling sex abuse charges against priests can be found here.

From Matthew Chapter 16, verses 24:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me."

This does not mean that we wish pain and punishment upon ourselves, or that we directly seek such things.

I used to think wrongly that the example of Christ is a kind of masochism. I could live my life my way, or I could live it God's way. And my way would be easy and feel good, at least by comparison, while God's way would hurt and be very difficult. It might even make me miserable. So what. I deserve it, right?

I thought God's way meant foregoing all my desires, even those which He gave me that are not sinful. The result was that in trying to decide which path I would choose in life -- ordained priesthood, marriage, whatever -- I could not admit to myself what I really wanted.

Lots of people are afraid to admit to themselves what they really want. I'm convinced a lot of guys out there are afraid to admit that they really do want to be ordained priests. They're afraid to do something so radically different with their lives. Still others are afraid to admit that they really want to get married and have kids. Others are afraid to admit they want to do missionary work, or that they want to write, or be a doctor or a musician or an accountant. The main reason devout religious folks are afraid to admit what they want is because they think -- again, wrongly -- that it is somehow selfish. To admit what I want means I focus on that instead of what God wants for me.

That may be a common error to find amongst Catholics, but that does not mean the error is itself Catholic.

Let me put this very simply. God does not play games. If He wants you to do something in particular with your life, He will place that desire in your heart. It is Satan's chicanery that makes you believe you are selfish to follow it. Admit to yourself what you want, because chances are* you want it because God wills it.

But the key is, once we admit to ourselves what we want in life, and once we start pursuing that good that God wants for us, we have to really pursue it. We can't take a detour from the suffering that we encounter in pursuit of the good because we think God wants us to never encounter any suffering.

Jesus came with a clear mission. He pursued it and it was His joy, and His Father's joy -- the salvation, redemption and sanctification of mankind. He did not directly seek to bring suffering upon Himself. But as it began to appear that He would face great suffering and revilement and defilement for His pursuit of this mission, He did not flee. That, His apostles did. It is Jesus who shows us "God's way," and the disciples who show us "our way." It is not that the disciples did something with their lives that they really did not want to do. They wanted to follow Jesus and share in His mission. But they shared in it only until the threat of suffering and death revealed itself. Then, they ran.

Jesus begged His Father to spare Him suffering and death. So we may.

But when, if He was to do the will of His Father, His suffering proved inevitable, He did not run. He did not retreat in the face of pain. John Paul II wrote in 1995** that our current cultural climate

... fails to perceive any meaning or value in suffering, but rather considers suffering the epitome of evil, to be eliminated at all costs. This is especially the case in the absence of a religious outlook which could help to provide a positive understanding of the mystery of suffering.

The Holy Father was saying not that suffering is the greatest thing in the world, but that it is not the worst thing in the world. What is the worst thing in the world is to retreat, to at one moment enthusiastically pursue the path down which God is calling us, only to run in fear the next moment. We may know that the one will hurt for a time, but we know with even greater certainty that fleeing like cowards will surely make us miserable wretches for the rest of our lives.

Because deep down, we want to follow God. We want to live our lives the way He wants us to. We know that the only way we can really be happy is to follow Him, even if, and perhaps partly because, it will often require great courage.






*It is necessary to examine, of course, the moral legitimacy of the desires in our hearts. For example, it is possible that someone may desire something which is morally illegitimate, like the death of his roommate***. In those cases, one often has to look deeper for the good that he hopes to achieve by killing his roommate, and find morally legitimate ways to achieve it.
**Evangelium Vitae -- "The Gospel of Life," paragraph 15
***Don't worry, roommate. We're cool.