Thomas Merton at 100

Had he lived, Thomas Merton (January 31, 1915 – December 10, 1968), who hid himself behind the cloister walls only to become America's most famous Trappist monk and something close to a household Catholic name, would have been 100 today. For members of my generation who were discerning a religious vocation or who were otherwise seriously interested in Church issues, Merton was a major resource. His literary output was enormous, beginning with his unexpected 1948 best-seller, The Seven Storey Mountain, which recounted the story of his early life and spiritual search that led him to Roman Catholicism and priesthood in the Cistercians of the Strict Observance (Trappists) at the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky. That and his 1953 monastic journal, The Sign of Jonas, enormously influenced me personally at a time of particular turbulence in my own adolescence and early adulthood. 

Merton went on to write about all sorts of subjects - from monastic spirituality, to liturgy, to changes in the Church, to civil rights, and other political issues. I can hardly here try to do justice to his lengthy bibliography or to his wide-ranging interests and influence. I have, however, personally always been especially attracted to his journals, his more personal reflections on his life, his vocation and the Church and world in which all that was taking place. Last year, I re-read the 7-volume set of his now published journals. So today, in honor of his centennial, I will just recall a few quotations from those journals that I believe speak specifically to the priestly and religious vocation in the Church and that still seem to me to be particularly appropriate to highlight at this juncture in the Church's story.

“The life of Christ in the soul of the priest depends in large measure on the priest’s attitude toward the ‘needy and poor’ – the materially poor, if he deals with them, or, at heart, the spiritually underprivileged in the community where all are supposed to be materially poor together.” (August 12, 1952)

“Not to judge success in priestly life by narcissistic standards – success is not what makes me admired. Success of a priest is fruit in the lives of others. Real fruit, not a river of compliments.” (July 19, 1956)

“Maybe what is wrong with American Catholicism is that it is in large measure Protestant rather than Catholic. Whether this be true or not, one would look in vain for any of the trace of the spirit of Medieval Catholicism in America or in this monastery – its broadness, its universality, its all-embracing compassion, its joy, its understanding of man and his nature, its cosmic outlook, its genuine eschatology; its asceticism; its mysticism; its poetry.” (December 7, 1958)

“God is asking of me, the unworthy, to forget my unworthiness and that of my brothers and to dare to advance in the love which has redeemed and renewed us in the divine likeness.”
(April 29, 1961)          

“To announce peace is something quite other than to preach it – it is not to exhort men to be peaceable, but to announce that the Lord has broken through the wickedness and confusion of the world to establish His kingdom of peace.” (December 20, 1961)

“I am a Christian, and a member of a Christian community. I and my brothers are to put aside everything else and recognize that we belong not to ourselves but to God in Christ. That we have vowed obedience that is intended to unite us to Christ ‘obedient unto death – even the death of the cross.’ That without our listening and attention and submission, in total renunciation and love for the Father’s will, in union with Christ, our life is false and without meaning. But in so far as we desire, with Christ that the Father’s will may be done in us as it is in heaven and in Christ, that even the smallest and most ordinary things are made holy and great. And then in all things the love of God opens and flowers, and our lives are transformed. This transformation is a manifestation and advent of God in the world.”

(April 9, 1965)  

“The crux of the matter seems to be to what extent a Christian thinker can preserve his independence from obsessive modes of thought about secular progress. (Behind which is always the anxiety for us and for the Church to be ‘acceptable’ in a society that is leaving us behind in a cloud of dust.) In other words, where is our hope? If in fact our hope is in a temporal and secular humanism of technological and political progress, we will find ourselves, in the name of Christ, joining in the stupidity and barbarism of those who are despoiling His creation in order to make money or get power for themselves. But our hope must be in God. And he who hopes in God will find himself sooner or later making apparently hopeless and useless protests against this barbarism of power.” (April 15, 1965)

"I admit that when one believes, then the liturgy is a place of holiness and sharing in God’s presence and in His peace. But for me this was even more true in the old Liturgy – though also true of concelebration, true of my own Mass – I can’t seem to find the differences that are declared to be so important.” (July 13, 1967)

    

Free Expression and its Discontents

Now that the initial panic and political posturing that accompanied the Sony film The Interview and then the terrorist murder of the French Charlie Hebdo cartoonists have abated, it is time to look more carefully and dispassionately at some of the issues those events have highlighted.

My concern was first aroused during the initial contretemps surrounding the movie, North Korea's hacking damage to Sony, the presumed threat of further damage, and Sony's initial decision not to release the movie as scheduled. At the time, I had no interest in seeing the film and no intention to do so. Still, I agreed with the President and others who considered Sony's action somewhat cowardly. That said, I was appalled to hear serious voices advocating the movie because of some supposed obligation (on the part of citizens) to the First Amendment. 

Our famous First Amendment, however, imposes no obligations upon anyone - except government. In its original iteration, it imposed an obligation only on the Federal Government. Congress shall make no law ... Its problematic extension to state governments is a separate issue, which we can ignore for now. Even assuming its applicability to all levels of US government - federal and state - what the First Amendment does is prohibit the government from restricting citizens' free exercise of religion, speech, etc. It does so in recognition of the fact, already evident in the 18th century, of pluralism of opinions (religious, political, and otherwise) in our society and a philosophical commitment to maintaining the necessary pre-conditions for a free society.  Constitutional jurisprudence has minimally circumscribed these fundamental freedoms, rightly prioritizing these rights as essential for the functioning and survival of a free society and the freedom of expression (religious, political, and otherwise) which that requires. 

All religions and philosophical or political persuasions have a common interest in maintaining these freedoms from state encroachment. That is why I have consistently been uncomfortable with laws regulating "hate speech" and with the punishment of so-called "hate crimes," which penalize not just criminal acts (already illegal) but the opinions of those who perpetrate them. 

What the First Amendment does not do, however, is require me or anyone else (or any private non-governmental institutions) to agree with or endorse in any way someone else's spoken or written opinions. What we must do is acknowledge and respect the legal right of anyone to express beliefs or views we may strongly disagree with or even find fundamentally abhorrent. Therefore, no one should normally expect the state to intervene to protect us from having to hear or read words which offend us. Nor, needless to say, is anyone free to use violence to avoid being offended or to punish the offender. In civilized societies, under normal conditions the state - and only the state - has a legitimate monopoly on violence. So the violence inflicted on Sony and, a fortiori, the murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists was criminal and should be punished accordingly.

That said, however, everyone (apart from government) remains free (as free as the offenders) to express one's disagreement and to take offense - free therefore to boycott an offending entity, for example, and to encourage others to do so. That too is part of the interplay of ideas that characterizes a free society. That means that one can completely condemn, for example, the criminal killing of cartoonists, without feeling any sympathy for their cartoons. 

Indeed, if one aspires to be not just a free society but a decent, humane, and - dare one suggest - even a just and moral society, then one can and should express appropriate disdain for those free expressions that violate reasonable standards of decency and taste, not to mention one's deeply held religious or other beliefs. That too is a consequence of pluralism. 

A free society may have to tolerate all sorts of undesirable expression; but for pluralism to work effectively it is also important that citizens be imbued with a certain sense of mutual acceptance, which will then socially stigmatize (without legally prohibiting) offensive expression. To the extent that American pluralism has worked as well as it has over the years, that is in part because legal freedom of expression has been balanced by a social consensus that significantly stigmatizes being gratuitously offensive.

That too, of course, can go too far - not only fostering pluralism by stigmatizing offensiveness, but also inhibiting expressions of legitimate differences of opinion. Just as legal freedom needs to be balanced by the social stigmatization of gratuitous offense, so too one's readiness to take offense must be balanced by an acceptance of the legitimacy of differing opinions, beliefs, and values. Where that is lacking, we encounter the excesses of so-called "political correctness," which end up inhibiting the free speech and expression that are so essential for society. Nowhere is this perhaps more of a challenge than at universities which must somehow simultaneously promote mutual respect and tolerance while encouraging the free exploration of different and challenging ideas.

Mozart

Today is Mozart's birthday. Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart was born in Salzburg on this date in 1756 and was baptized the following day. (He died in Vienna on December 5, 1791.) The name Chrysostomus reflects the fact that, until the confusing calendar changes of 1969, January 27 was celebrated as the feast of Saint John Chrysostom.

Mozart, as everyone knows, was something of a child prodigy, who began composing at the age of five. He was the son of one of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg's musicians, and he too served as one of the Prince-Archbishop's court musicians until dismissed by him, which freed him for greater things in the imperial capital Vienna. The child prodigy grew up to be one of the greatest - if not the greatest - composer of the classical period.

Mozart composed many Masses, and his truly glorious liturgical music has always been for me one of his great attractions. He personifies a time when the traditional precept to "hear" Mass could be quite literally fulfilled in a most esthetically pleasing and satisfying way. Sadly, Mozart's Masses are now completely confined to the concert hall and recordings and seldom ever enrich Catholic worship as they were originally intended to do.

In 1970, I spent July and August studying German in Salzburg, Austria. Not surprisingly, Salzburg has made the most of being Mozart's hometown. That summer I saw my first two Mozart operas, Die Zauberfloette and Don Giovanni. And on the feast of the Assumption (a legal holiday there), I heard Mozart's Kronungsmesse sung in several of the city's churches. That "Coronation" Mass has always been one of my favorites - along with Mozart's last Mass, his Requiem, that he was still working on up until his tragic and untimely death. I can clearly remember the first time I ever heard Mozart's Requiem. It was January 19, 1964, a televised "Month's Mind" Pontifical Mass for President John F. Kennedy, celebrated by Richard Cardinal Cushing at Boston's Holy Cross Cathedral. I remember how mesmerized I was, awestruck by something more beautiful than almost anything I had ever heard before.

Imagine if the Church's worship could still attract such quality music today!

Downton Secrets

The most refreshing moment in the 4th episode of Downton Abbey's 5th season came when Lord Grantham finally said to the incorrigibly obnoxious Sarah Bunting (whom the rest of the family for some inexplicable reason keep inviting to dinner despite her obvious inability to be even minimally polite), “Only one thing I would like, and that I would like passionately! It is to see you leave this house and never come back!” Unfortunately, it was Lord Grantham who then left the room, leaving the unpleasant Miss Bunting still seated at the table! In so many respects, son-in-law Tom Branson has made a productive and sensible life for himself at Downton, but he seems somehow unable to resist Bunting's putative charms. In the real world, of course, Tom would presumably be able to charm any number of pretty village girls, without constantly having to reenact the French (or Russian) Revolution! 

Other than Tom's mesalliance with Sarah, almost everyone at Downton seems presently imprisoned in some secret or other that threatens to destabilize things even further. Lady cora's secret is not that she indulges the ridiculous art historian who is flirting with her, which her husband can clearly see, but her underlying unhappiness, of which Lord Grantham appears completely clueless!

But the secret that dominates our attention is, of course, Mary's secret week with Tony. The society Mary and Tony inhabited in 1924 was not quite today's casual hook-up culture. Tony rightly expects Mary to act according to the seriousness of what she has done - as does the Dowager Countess, the only other person who knows their secret. So mesmerized has the series made us to Mary's holding out for whatever she feels totally entitled to that it is almost a refreshing surprise to see Tony talk back when she finally tries to dump him. Of course, I've always wanted Charles to win this competition, and perhaps now he still has a chance!

Then there is the perpetually tragic Edith and her sad secret. It was obvious from the first, when she entrusted he daughter to Mr. Drew, that this subterfuge was not likely to last. Clearly, her aunt, Lady Rosamund, is on the verge of figuring out what is going on, which means the Dowager cannot be far behind. Of course, the ideal solution would be for Michael somehow to return from Germany safe and sound and for his wife meanwhile to have died, so that he and Edith can marry and somehow "adopt" Marigold. For that, too many incredibly good things would have to happen in a narrative that has clearly been going in the other direction and that seems determined on a life-long punishment for Edith for not being the favored daughter.

Downstairs has its secrets too. Thomas Barrow's new secret is not his sexual orientation, which everyone obviously knows about, but whatever self-administered therapy he is trying, which so far only the repentant, recently forgiven, and now forgiving in turn Baxter has so far even a hint of. 

And, of course, there is Anna's secret - the strange sword of Damocles that has hung over her and her husband and that continues to threaten whatever shred of happiness they might otherwise have been able to snatch from life. 

All these secrets cannot possibly stay secret. So we can expect even more turbulence to come - given the show' underlying ideology that the world downton represents is doomed by its own internal contradictions which cannot face the light of the modern day. 

Saint Paul, our Patron

On July 7, 1858, Servant of God Isaac Hecker together with 3 others – Augustine Hewit, George Deshon, and Francis Baker – founded the Society of Missionary Priests of Saint Paul the Apostle, known ever since as “The Paulist Fathers.” For more than 150 years, the Paulist Fathers’ life as a religious community in the Church and their wider missionary outreach have been blessed by the patronage of St. Paul the Apostle, the feast of whose Conversion we celebrate today - during this special Year of Consecrated Life, which Pope Francis has called upon all priests, brothers, and sisters in religious communities to observe.

Most saints are celebrated on the anniversary of their death. If the saint was a martyr, that itself is often his or her principal claim on our attention. Along with the Apostle Peter, Paul was martyred in Rome, and the two are celebrated together every year on June 29. But then, every January 25, there is this additional celebration of St. Paul – focused on the event in his life that we commonly call his “conversion.” That great event transformed Paul into a disciple of Jesus and put him on an equal footing with the others to whom the Risen Christ had appeared, highlighting what it means to be converted to Christ, to become a disciple of Jesus, his witness in the world, and an apostle sent with mission to evangelize, to make disciples of all peoples.  No wonder Hecker and his friends chose Paul as their patron! No wonder the Paulists celebrate this day every year as our patronal feast day!

Paul was, first and foremost, a devout Jew, well educated in the Law, a Pharisee, that is, a member of the group most zealous about religious observance. But he was also a Greek-speaking Jew, from what we call the Diaspora. (There was nothing unusual about that. More Jews lived outside of Israel than in it at that time.) He grew up in what is today Turkey, in a Greek city, and enjoyed Roman citizenship.

All of this was very important, because one of the great issues which confronted the 1st century Church was figuring out how Jews and Gentiles were connected in God’s plan for the salvation of the world through Jesus Christ – and how they should relate to one another within the one community of the Church. The way this issue was eventually resolved (thanks in no small part to Paul) helped transform what would otherwise have been a small Jewish sect into the biggest and longest-lasting multi-cultural institution in the world - the Roman Catholic Church.

What Paul experienced when he met the Risen Lord on the way to Damascus was a revelation of God’s plan to include all people in the promises originally made to Abraham and his descendents and now being finally fulfilled in Jesus. The God who revealed himself to Paul in the person of Jesus was the same God whom Paul had always served so enthusiastically as a Jew. What changed was that now Paul recognized Jesus as the One, though whom all people are included in God’s plan of salvation.

And because the converted Paul now understood that it was Jesus that ultimately mattered, he also recognized no conflict between Gentile culture and faith in Christ. For the pagan peoples of the Roman Empire, that was good news indeed. It’s easy to see why Paul’s mission was so successful among different types of people and why he appealed to Hecker as a model – Hecker who was so convinced that the Catholic Church was just what American culture needed. The world has changed a lot since Paul’s time (and Hecker’s time), but the Church’s mission - and our mission  - remain the same.

Paul had what Hecker so much wanted his Paulist Fathers to have, what Hecker called “zeal for souls.” Paul was not one of the original 12. He wasn’t there when Jesus said to his disciples: “go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.”  But he absorbed those words as surely as if they had been initially addressed to him – as we also must do.

As Pope Saint John Paul II famously said: “Those who have come into genuine contact with Christ cannot keep him for themselves, they must proclaim him.”

Along with preaching and teaching and organizing local churches and recruiting leaders for them, another important part of Paul’s apostolic activity was raising money. According to the Acts of the Apostles, Paul and his mission partner, Barnabas, brought financial aid for the struggling community in Jerusalem from the Church in Antioch when they went to Jerusalem around the year 46 [Acts 11:29-30]. Paul recounted this visit in his letter to the Galatians where he recalled how the Apostles hoped he and his Gentile converts would keep this up, something Paul expressed his eagerness to do [Galatians 2:10]. Over the next decade, a very busy and productive period for Paul, he continued to raise money from his Gentile converts in order to assist the struggling Church in Jerusalem and wrote about this in some detail in his two letters to the Corinthians [1 Corinthians 16:1-4; 2 Corinthians 8–9] and in his letter to the Romans [Romans 15:25-33].

Paul’s "Financial Appeal" was a charitable response to the real needs and struggles of the Jerusalem community and the special responsibilities the Jerusalem Church had in relation to other Christian communities. It was also an expression of - and a lesson in - the unity and interdependence of individuals and local communities in the wider Church. Paul took this responsibility very seriously, as an essential expression of what it means to be a Church community, what it means to be diverse and different people all united in one Church, one Body of Christ. That is the same spirit in which we need to approach our annual Bishop’s Appeal, which is our annual opportunity, as individuals and as parishes, to unite our efforts as one local Church here in East Tennessee to meet the multiple needs of the diocese for mission, education, charity, and service to so many people with so many needs.

The Paulist Fathers have served the Church in Tennessee for over a century, starting with 50+ years of mission outreach in Middle Tennessee.  For another 50+ years, the Paulist Fathers maintained a major mission parish in Memphis. And, since 1973, we have been busy here in Knoxville, sharing the good news of Christ and the life of his Church in this city’s downtown and at its university.

As Paulists, we are committed not just to our own religious community’s life and mission, which so many of you have so generously supported over the years (and as recently as last week) through our annual Paulist Appeal, but also - and just as essentially - to the life and mission of the Church here in East Tennessee in the Diocese of Knoxville. So I invite you to be attentive and generous in your response when our Bishop, carrying on the same tradition started by Saint Paul, makes his annual appeal to you next week.

Homily for the Feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul, Patronal Solemnity of the Paulist Fathers, and the Announcement of the Annual Bishop's Appeal, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, January 25, 2015