Rome's Christian Founders

 

Pope Leo XIV's return to the pre-Francis papal practice on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul of personally conferring the pallium on the 54 newly appointed metropolitan archbishops - among them, this year, eight from the United States - is a very welcome one, signaling not only the revival of authentic papal traditions but also highlighting the unique importance of today's celebration in. honor of the founders of Christian Rome.

The 20th-century liturgical scholar Pius Parsch (1884-1954)  wrote of today’s great festival of Saints Peter and Paul: "it was the birthday of Christian Rome and marked the triumph of Christ's victory over paganism. Rome's provincial bishops came to the Eternal City to celebrate the feast together with the Pope. As at Christmas three services were held, at the graves of the two apostles and at their temporary depository in times of persecution. The two apostles were never separated; they were the two eyes of the Church's virgin-face."

Such splendor seems so lost by us now, when this great annual festival seems barely noticed by many! Falling on a Sunday, however, means that - this year at least - the feast will get more widely noticed and hopefully more solemnly celebrated. 

Back when I was a pastor, on this feast I used to like to preach on ancient theme of  Peter and Paul as the second founders of Rome - brothers in faith rather than by blood, who founded the new Christian Rome, that replaced the pagan power of ancient imperial Rome. That ancient theme may be acquiring a new salience in this troubled time when a right relationship between the Church and the pursuit of political power is again at issue.

 

According to tradition, the city of Rome was founded on April 21, 753 BC, by twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, whose father was Mars, the god of war. Like many of the biblical brothers, Romulus and Remus quarreled. The two fought about which of their future city’s hills to build on. According to the story, when Romulus began building on his preferred Palatine hill, Remus ridiculed his work by jumping over his brother’s wall, in order dramatically to belittle his brother’s project. Romulus responded by killing Remus - thus determining which brother the city would be named after! In due time, Rome, the city built on fratricide, became the greatest city in the ancient world, the capital of the greatest empire the world had ever yet known.

 

To that same city, some eight centuries later, came Peter and Paul - brothers not by blood, but by their common faith in Jesus Christ, who had called them to be disciples and commissioned them to be apostles. The small, marginal Christian community they found in Rome was socially and politically insignificant - an easy target when the Emperor Nero needed scapegoats to blame for a destructive fire that had occurred on July 18 in A.D. 64. What followed was the first of several state-sponsored persecutions of the Church. Among those eventually martyred in that first Roman persecution were the apostles Peter and Paul - Peter, crucified on the Vatican Hill, and Paul, beheaded on the Ostian Way.

 

One version of the story recounts how Peter started to flee from the city but then returned to Rome and embraced his martyrdom after meeting Jesus on the road. “Lord, where are you going,” Peter asked. “I am going to Rome to be crucified again,” Jesus responded. The Roman church of Domine Quo Vadis marks the site on the Via Appia, where this encounter occurred.

 

If the persecuted Christians of Rome required encouragement and confidence to persevere in their new faith, what more powerful reinforcement could they have had than the witness offered by the martyrdom of those two illustrious apostles, who were the Church’s link back to the Risen Lord himself? For some 20 centuries since, pilgrims from all over the world have flocked to the two great basilicas that rise above the apostles’ tombs - Saint Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican and the Basilica of Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls - as well as to Rome's cathedral Basilica of Saint John Lateran wheere reliquaries containing the skulls of the Apostles Peter and Paul are venerated.

 

Which brings us back to where we started. The old Rome of Romulus – proud, powerful, pagan Rome, based on the murder of one brother by another – was, for all its real accomplishments and authentic grandeur, a human state like any other, a warring conqueror empire, eventually conquered in turn by other warring conquerors. The new Christian Rome of Peter and Paul conquered that old Rome, but in a new way. Proud, powerful, pagan Rome, founded on the murder of one brother by another, was itself in turn conquered by the faith that empowered Peter and Paul as brothers-in-Christ to evangelize an empire and die together as witnesses to a new way of life and a very different kind of kingdom.

 

Just as there was an incomparable difference between the behavior of the two pagan brothers and the two Christian apostles, there is also an incomparable difference in their relationships to temporal power. The martyrdom of the apostles Peter and Paul – indeed all martyrdom – highlights how the establishment of God's kingdom comes about apart from (if not in outright opposition to) all earthly empires of political power and calls into question that perennially popular strategy of identifying religion with the pursuit of such political power.

 

As we celebrate this great feast recalling the mission and martyrdom of the Apostles Peter and Paul, let us too – as the great Saint Augustine once recommended on this feast – “embrace what they believed, their life, their labors, their sufferings, their preaching, and their confession of faith” [Sermon 295, 8].

Photo: The Papal altar at the Basilica of Saint John Lateran, the cathedral of Rome, with the reliquaries containing the skulls of the Apostles Peter and Paul.

Sacred Heart

In 1786, the infamous, Jansenist-inspired Synod of Pistoia, among its many mischiefs, sought to suppress devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Jansenists’ enemy, the Jesuits, suppressed in 1773 and thus at their lowest point in their complicated history, had been – and have remained - the great proponents of devotion to the Sacred Heart, although the devotion itself has ancient roots. Saint Augustine, for example, saw in Christ’s wounded side “not only the source of grace and the sacraments, but also the symbol of our intimate union with Christ” [Dilexit Nos (2024), 103].

Jansenism was the religious and theological expression of the 18th-century European Enlightenment’s disdain for popular religion and popular devotions. In his great 20th-century encyclical on the Sacred Heart [Haurietis Aquas (1956), 344], Pope Pius XII described as “false mysticism” such elitist disdain for affective expressions of popular piety. In contrast, the Jesuits became the great proponents of devotion to the Sacred Heart, declaring in 1883, that they accepted and received “with an overflowing spirit of joy and gratitude the most agreeable duty … to practice, promote, and propagate devotion to [Christ’s] divine heart.” his final encyclical, The Jesuit Pope Francis devoted his final encyclical [Dilexit Nos] to “the human and divine love of the Heart of Jesus Christ.” He wrote: “Our devotion must ascend to the infinite love of the Person of the Son of God, yet we keep in mind that his divine love is inseparable from his human love. The image of his heart of flesh helps us to do precisely this” [DN, 60].

The imagery employed by the text of today’s liturgy invite us to appreciate the tremendous transformation which it is now possible for us to experience because of the simultaneously divine and human love of Christ for us. “Amid the devastation wrought by evil,” Pope Francis wrote in his encyclical on the Sacred Heart, “the heart of Christ desires that we cooperate with him in restoring good ness and beauty to our world” [DN, 182].

Homily for the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, June 27, 2025.

New York's Mayoral Contest

New York City held its party primary elections for citywide offices yesterday, preliminary to the November election. (Actually, of course, "early voting" had begun ten days earlier, and many - like me - had by then already voted by mail.) Thanks to the Ranked-Choice voting system, the official final result will not be known for a week However, the high turnout produced an unambiguous outcome in terms of what New Yorkers seem to want. What they want is a new style of Democratic politics focused on affordability. Whom they want seems to be Zohran Mamdani.

 

I grew up in New York City in the latter years of what was the city's golden age. By the time the city's fortunes had completely cratered in the 1970s, I was living elsewhere. I was back for the latter years of Ed Koch and the disaster years of Rudy Giuliani, then back again for the Bloomberg plutocracy era. New York has been through a lot, and its residents are rightly skeptical of any existing political solution - at least any politics-as-usual political solution. New York is a wonderfully vibrant city, but not without serious problems for most people who can barely afford to live here.

Affordability became the key issue that carried the young, Muslim, immigrant, Democratic-Socialist State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, who started out as an almost unknown wild card in the race.

Perhaps, in a "normal" year, Mandami's lack of accumulated experience to run a city like New York might have effectively disqualified him. As might his morally dubious foreign policy views. (In a sensible society, foreign conflicts would not also be local conflicts and issues in local elections.) Alternatively, what seems to have happened is that Mamdani's radicalism and his charisma  as a campaigner - the kind of young charismatic campaigner the Democrats really need right now - may have propelled him forward as worth the risk against the dead-end of politics-as-usual. This is obviously not a "normal" year. Nationally, the Democrats are in disarray, and New York Democrats are reflecting the widespread disdain for politics-as-usual.

Former Governor Andrew Cuomo had a plausible, if somewhat problematic and controversial record as Governor, and he appeared at first to be a somewhat flawed, but still very plausible candidate for mayor. (If politics-as-usual is problematic, however, how much more problematic are dynasties-as-usual, whether Cuomos, or Kennedys, or whoever?) Two factors - name recognition and an initial default assumption, even among those not enamored of him, that Cuomo would be the strongest advocate for the city vis-a-vis the Trump Administration in Washington - made him the initial front-runner. He had the requisite endorsements, which, of course, further reinforced his image as the poitics-as-usual candididate. Unlike Mamdani, however, his campaign lacked the energetic outreach to dissatisfied younger voters. Also, whereas Mamdani emphasized the widespread preoccupation with affordability, Cuomo's campaign seemed stuck in the kinds of safety and security issues that dominated the previous mayoral election in 2021 - the election that produced our problematic incumbent, Eric Adams, who is still on the November ballot as an independent, and who still retains elements of his base, but whose apparent ties to Trump will likely work against him.

Had Cuomo not been on the race, however, perhaps other thoroughly conventional candidates, like Scott Stringer, Brad Lander, and Adrienne Adams might have emerged as major contenders, with the result that the campaign might have seemed less fraught - less a two-person race - than it has turned out to be. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that any of those conventional candidates could have eliminated Cuomo, given his support among wealthy donors and labor unions. Something/someone new was needed to do that.

New York City wakes up today to a newly realigned politics. And the national Democratic Party awakes to a new challenge to its gerontocratic politics-as-usual.

High School Memories

This coming Wednesday, June 25, will mark the 60th anniversary of my high school graduation.

On the same date four years earlier, June 25, 1961, I had graduated from eighth grade in our parish elementary school. Both schools were connected with my home parish in the Bronx. Both were within walking distance of home and in the dominating shadows of our parish church's great gothic towers. Both schools aimed to replicate the seeming solidity of post-war American society and the seemingly stable and super-successful mid-century American Catholic Church.

Since I went to the parish high school, the transition from grade school was much less abrupt and challenging than it might otherwise have been. School was a little more than a block away, and the Augustinian priests who formed much of the faculty were already familiar figures from the parish, for whom I had been serving Mass for years. 

As academic "tracking" was common then, the freshman class was divided into three sections. I was in the so-called "scholarship section, which meant we studied Latin instead of tying and French instead of Spanish! We were 30 in my section, about half of whom were guys from other parishes, one of whom eventually became my best friend for life.

Our principal liked to say that one should learn as much in four years of high school as in eight years of elementary school. I certainly found high school more academically demanding at first, although I quickly adapted and did adequately enough. (I ended up graduating sixth in my class of 56.)

The principal was also the math teacher, highly devoted to the "new math," as it was then called. It was so "new" in fact that for the first month or so we had no textbook and had to use mimeographed copies of the first few chapters until the books finally arrived! I never liked arithmetic much (a residue of the trauma of my abrupt immersion in long division in the fourth grade), but I did well in algebra and really liked geometry.

In support of our principal's somewhat illusory aspiration to heighten the academic standard of what was, after all, just a small parochial high school, we also took lots of standardized tests - the National Educational Development Test, the Iowa Test of Educational Development, the National Merit Scholarship Test. I always scored well, often in the highest percentile, and so earned several plaques to celebrate this otherwise irrelevant accomplishment.

Unlike the many exclusively Catholic boys' or girls' schools, ours was what was then called "co-institutional." That meant both boys and girls shared the same building, but in separate "Departments," which were for most purposes separate schools, each with its own separate faculty and administration, its own separate entrance (photo) and stairway, separate lunch periods, and, of course, completely separate classes. The system had its obvious advantages and its obvious disadvantages, as any system does. For many, attending classes uncomplicated by too much adolescent sexual tension may have been beneficial. For introverts like me, however, I wonder whether a more normal environment might have helped better develop much needed social skills. 

Other than the weekly school Masses and the annual retreat, one of the very few school activities both boys and girls participated in together was the annual school musical. For each of my first three years, the school put on a variety show, directed by a guy who annually went from school to school putting on such programs. These we light-hearted musical reviews, with corny titles like Just for Kicks (JFK) and Mad About Manhattan. Being in the "chorus" for those shows every year was one of the highlights of the spring term. To be sure, I didn't discover and latent talent, and I studiously avoided having to stand out on stage, but I genuinely enjoyed being part of the whole collaborative project, as well as the "cast party" at the end, at which one of my favorite teachers would sing The Chattanooga Choo-Choo.

Sometime in sophomore year, I had some tentative conversations with my English teacher (the same priest who sang at the annual "cast party") about possibly becoming a priest myself. In the end, my post high school years and experiences took me in a different direction and I ended up a priest by a much more roundabout route. I have often wondered what would have. happened had I entered the Augustinian novitiate in 1965. Would I have been ordained a priest at a more "normal" age, or would my vocation been one of the casualties of the social and religious turmoil of the 1960s - and of my own emotional immaturity at that time? (One interesting thought: had I entered and persevered after high school, then at some point I would likely have met and maybe gotten to know the current Pope!)

In reality, I experienced those high school years - conventional as everything seemed to be in so  many ways - as a mixture of good and bad, but also as a time of increasing inner personal turmoil. 

Coincidentally, the outside world was itself also becoming more turbulent after the more peaceful-seeming 1950s. My high school years coincided with the Civil Rights movement - the sit-ins, the freedom riders, and the whole very public, long delayed challenge to a long-standing unjust state of affairs. (My high school had exactly one black student.) It was a time also when high school students were beginning to align themselves politically.  My class had its share of Goldwaterites. My own alignment was closer to a pro-civil rights, moderate-to-liberal Democrat. Internationally too it was a scary time. The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in October of my sophomore year. And, of course, the defining trauma of my high school years came in November of my junior year, with the assassination of President Kennedy. More happily, I was still in high school in February 1964 when the Beatles came to America for the first time and appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show. Watching that famous broadcast, I could not, of course, have anticipated the cascade of social change that was waiting in the wings, but there was a sense that new and exciting things might be possible.

The Church was changing too. My freshman year, the high school yearbook was dedicated to Pope John XXIII and the imminent ecumenical council. It included this curious prayer for the council: "grant that they may be vigilant, united among themselves, not seeking the triumph of some idea which is dear to a group of men, a nation, a Religious Order, but only to follow with docility the inspiration of your grace." Like so many things we parochial high schoolers expected our future to be like, the future was not quite what we predicted or thought we were praying for. 

Soon enough, we were all to be affected by wider social forces and political, cultural, and religious transformations that brought an end to our placid, narrowly insular, parochial world. Meanwhile, as all those external changes were taking place in the wider world, an inner turbulence was taking over my own life, as my decidedly mixed experience of high school celebrated its tepid end 60 years ago this week.

Summer

 

The summer solstice occured last night at 10:41 p.m. This means that the sun is now at its highest point in the sky in the northern hemisphere, and that these are the longest days of the year - a full 15 hours and 5 minutes of daylight here in New York. 

Of course, “the longest day of the year” makes much less difference to us de-natured people in our modern urban, electricity-determined lifestyle than it did to our ancestors, for whom this occasion was existentially meaningful and observed accordingly. Indeed, it is one of the many ironies of our crazy contemporary culture that summer and places with longer summers have become increasingly popular, precisely as a consequence of air-conditioning, the whole point of which is to make it not feel like summer! (That is at best bizarre, but more importantly is itself another contributor to our changing climate.)

Of summer's two most characteristic markers - heat and daylight - while the former is just beginning to set in and dominate our daily lives, the advent of the summer solstice also means that we will shortly begin to notice progressively less light as the days start to shorten and the nights start to lengthen once again according to their annual routine. That other dimension of the solstice - decreasing daylight following soon after the year's longest day - invites us to a whole other level of symbolism, a symbolism especially associated with the commemoration of the Birth of Saint John the Baptist on June 24, six months before Christmas (in keeping with the chronology established in Luke's gospel). Celebrating John the Baptist's birth at the time of the solstice inevitably invited a seasonal symbolism of its own, especially in light of John the Baptist's own famous words with regard to Jesus: He must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:30).

Meanwhile, however, it is now summer, with all that entails - unbearable heat, wildfires, droughts, melting glaciers, etc. - in this unfortunate era of climate change. Indeed, a dangerous heat advisory is set to go into effect tomorrow, and the temperature is set to reach 100 here in New York on Tuesday. 

Of course, summer also has its fun side. Growing up in a more innocent world before climate change, I remember playing long hours in the park, frequent trips to the beach, weekend picnics, holiday cookouts, occasional family vacations (the first in 1958 to Lake George, NY, after my father bought his first car). Those are good memories, and to the extent that people are still able to enjoy those seasonal pleasures, may they continue to experience summer as that special time. George Gershwin's wonderful song from Porgy and Bess still resonates: Summertime and the livin' is easy.

Sadly, however, global warming and climate change are everywhere making living much less easy!

Thanks to the widespread political polarization that has increasingly infected our entire society society, "caring for our common home" (so passionately advocated by the previous Pope in his encyclical Laudato Si') seems an increasingly unattainable aspiration. Many things have gone wrong in America in the last decade, but surely one of the most consequential has been the widespread loss of faith in expertise and objective knowledge, leading to an increasing denial of the climate realities we are actually experiencing. This has been accompanied by an uncitizen-like political passivity, a loss of confidence in our capacity for collective, concerted political action, in other words, shared action for the common good. On that latter point, I am reminded of something the late Tony Judt said in an exchange with his son, which appeared in The New York Times in June 2010: "I don't think the challenge is to convince Americans about pollution or even climate change. Nor is it just a matter of getting them to make sacrifices for the future. The challenge is to convince them once again of how much they could do if they came together."

(Photo: June from the famous Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, an early 15th-century prayer book, which is widely considered perhaps the best surviving example of medieval French Gothic manuscript illumination. The illustration depicts summer fieldwork against the background of  the Palais de la Cité and the Sainte Chapelle.)