Peter and Cornelius

Every day during the Easter season, the 1^st reading at Mass is taken from the Acts of the Apostles – the 2^nd volume, so to speak, of the Gospel according to Luke – the story of what happened next, the sequel to Jesus’ resurrection and ascension.  It’s the wonderful story of how a mere 120 disciples were transformed by the Risen Christ’s parting gift of the Holy Spirit into a missionary movement that spread from Jerusalem to Rome and in the process was transformed from a small Jewish sect into a world-wide Church with a universal mission.

To us, who already know the story, that all seems to have been so obvious and inevitable. For the first Christians, however, it must have seemed like one new learning experience after another. Today’s 1^st reading [Acts 10: 25-26, 34-35, 44-48] recounts one pivotal point in that process. The story actually began earlier with Peter, the leader of the Christian community, making what we today might call a “pastoral visit” to the disciples in a town called Joppa (near today’s Tel Aviv). While there, Peter had a dream, in which he saw various animals, not all of them kosher, and heard a heavenly voice tell him to kill and eat them. When Peter responded that he had never eaten non-kosher meat, he was told, What God has made clean, you are not to call profane. That’s a good example of something the meaning of which, to us in retrospect, seems so obvious, but which at the time, in its actual context, must have seemed so perplexing. While Peter pondered this perplexing dream, however, emissaries from a Roman centurion, named Cornelius, came calling and asked Peter to accompany them back to Caesarea, which Peter promptly did. And that is where today’s reading picks up the story.

Cornelius was a Roman, a foreigner, a pagan.  He was in fact a rather pious pagan, and was somewhat sympathetic to Judaism; but he was still a pagan, an uncircumcised Gentile! No observant Jew would normally have entered his house, but these were not normal circumstances. Already “prepped” by his perplexing dream, Peter crossed that boundary. He listened to Cornelius, then replied: “I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him.” He then did what no one had yet thought of doing. He proclaimed the Good News of Jesus to a house full of Gentiles. Suddenly what had happened to the original 120 disciples on Pentecost now happened to Cornelius and his household – a “Pentecost for pagans,” as it has been called.  And so, Peter asked, “Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit even as we have?”

Thus began the momentous change that enabled Christianity to spread and take root throughout the world, becoming eventually the largest religion in the world and the largest growing religion in the world today. I say “began,” because, of course, the full implications of something so unexpected took time to sink in. There were many Gentiles sympathetic to Judaism at the time.  Some even went all the way and converted. Had Cornelius converted and become a Jew and then acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, he would not have been all that different from the other early Christians, who were, of course, also Jews who acknowledged Jesus as the promised Messiah. Cornelius, however, had not become a Jew. He had “jumped the line,” so to speak, directly into Christianity. Soon the Church would have to debate whether Gentiles needed to become Jews first in order to become Christians, and Peter would cite this transformational event as the key to understanding God’s will for this Church – that it be the vehicle for conversion and repentance for all, without exception and without restriction.

This was not like some modern or post-modern dismissal of parts of the Bible that the apostles suddenly found inconvenient, but rather a recognition of how God’s covenant with Israel was being fulfilled in Christ. It was God who took the initiative in all this – directing Cornelius to invite Peter, prepping Peter with his dream, and then dramatically demonstrating God’s plan to include the Gentiles by giving them the Holy Spirit. For his part, Peter, as leader of the Church, recognized God’s action and accepted its implications, baptizing the first Gentile Christians and incorporating them into the community.

This story speaks volumes about the very nature of the Church – not just the 1^st century apostolic Church, but the Church of the 21^st century, which is, if anything, even more global and more universal than ever before. The Church is not a club, a fraternal association, a social networking group, or even a prayer group, though it may have elements of all those things. As Pope Pius XI put it, almost a century ago: “The Church has no other reason for its existence than to extend over the earth the kingdom of Christ and so to render people sharers of his saving redemption.”

As a practical matter, of course, we experience the Church largely as part of a locally defined parish community. The parish nourishes and supports us in our faith. It brings us together to hear the Good News that makes our lives so different from what they would otherwise have been. It brings us together to respond to that Good News with worship and prayer, support for one another, and service to others in the day-in, day-out dying and rising that defines a disciple’s life. But it doesn’t stop there. The parish is never just about itself. In union with Peter’s successor, the Pope, and the apostles’ successors, the Bishops of the entire world, the Church unites us across time back to the faith and witness of the apostles their first converts - pagans like Cornelius - and across space to take in the entire world, today’s world.

Precisely as Christ’s Church, we are challenged at every level to expand our horizon, just as the apostolic Church had its horizon expanded, to understand our own local experience of Church as one with that of the young, emerging Church in Africa, the aging Church in Europe, and the even more ancient Churches in India and the Middle East, to understand how our own middle-aged American Church is being rejuvenated and revitalized by many new immigrants, to understand our own local experience of Church in the wider terms of God’s great plan for the salvation of the world – God who sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him [1 John 4:9].

Homily for the 6th Sunday of Easter, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, May 13, 2012.

High School

Just when it seemd as if American politics could hardly get more pathetic, along comes the latest story about something Mitt Romney allegedly did - almost 50 years ago! in High School!
Now I have no interest in defending Mitt Romney from anything. Given the absurd stuff he and his supporters have been peddling about the President, perhaps his campaign deserves to be on the defensive about more than just how he has treated the family dog! Even so, with all that whoever is sworn in as President of the United States at noon on January 20 will have to deal with, is this really what we need to be talking about?
The narrative being promoted by this story is, of course, that Romney is a privileged snob and a bully. It's a fair enough accusation - assuming it is based on his adult actions. And there exists a record of his adult actions - in business, at Bain Capital, for example, and in politics, as Massachusetts Governor and as a political candidate off and on since he ran against Ted Kennedy back in 1994. There is plenty there to judge the man on. No one should need to dredge up teenage behavior (or misbehavior) to confirm - or contradict - a candidate's public record as an adult.
I didn't attend a fancy prep school myself, but I did endure High School in the early 1960s.  I survived, obviously. But it is not an experience I would want to repeat - or recommend to anyone else. Not that my particular High School was all that particularly bad. It had its really horrible moments. But, on balance, the overall experience was tolerable and even had its occasional happy moments. Best of all, I formed one good High School friendship that has lasted to this day. Given who we were at the time and what the world was like then, it was probably as good as it was going to be. That said, High School is something basically to be endured until one can move on with one's life. I'm too far from the contemporary High School experience to compare, but my guess is that, on balance, being a High School students may be even more stressful today than it was then. In any cae, those who survive High School and succeed in life (however one defines success), do just that. They move on. They become adults. And it is as adults that they should be judged. (In 2005, I attended my 40th High School reunion - the only such reunion my class has ever had. I went in part to see people most of whom I had not seen in 40 years, expecting to meet not 1960s teenagers but the adults they had become - and trusting that they would accept me in turn as the adult I had become).
When I was in High School, bullying was just taken for granted as normal part of adolescent life. Those of us who were not privileged may have wished it were otherwise, but but that was the way it was. One could say something similar about homophobia, except for the critical fact that homophobia hadn't yet been invented as an issue. The psychologist George Weinberg is generally thought to have invented the word in 1969, and he certainly employed the term in his subsequent book Society and the Healthy Homosexual (1972). As I recall, the word really became common only in the 1980s. In any case, the concept - and certainly any significant social disapproval of the attitudes and behaviors it describes - none of that was part of the picture in the early 1960s, when the word "gay" could still be used (and routinely was) in its orginal, non-sexual meaning. As for homosexuality, it was  generally thought of (when people thought about it at all) as a sin - or, in more enlightened and liberal circles, as a sickness for which some psychiatric therapy might be helpful. To expect Mitt Romeny as a 1960s teenager to have been able to see into the future and understand that decades later as an adult he would be expected to adopt a different views on the subject of homosexuality is as ridiculous as to fault Barak Obama, as a boy in Indonesia, for having eaten dogmeat because decades later some might make an issue of it!
Who these two men have become, the way they have opted to live their adult lives, the personal and political choices they have made, and the policies they advocate - that is what this election ought to be about.

Saint Hildegard

Among the anomalies we had occasion to learn about in my Roman Studium at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints this past winter was the curious case of the influential German medieval mystic and moastic foundress Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179). Her reputation for sanctity was already widely noted during her life, and after her death a number of miracles were attributed to her intercession. Accordingly, in 1228, responding to the request of Hildegard's Rupertsberg convent, a local process was initiated in Germany, the acts of which were duly sent under seal to Rome in 1233.
This was right at the period when the canonization process was becoming centeralized in Rome. In 1179 Pope Alexander III had written a pastoral letter to the King of Sweden, towards the end of which he reprimanded the Swedes for venerating as a martyr a man who had been killed while intoxicated. Even if there were miracles attributed to the person, the Pope insisted, it was not permissable to venerate someone as a saint without Roman authorization. This paragraph, known forever after by its opening word Audivimus ("We have heard"), was inserted by the Dominican canonist St. Raymond of Penyafort (1175-1275) into the Decretals promulgated by Pope Gregory IX in 1234.
Gregory IX was supportive of Hildegard's cause, but the local proces had been - to put it politely -poorly performed. Egregiously, the names of the witnesses were missing from the documentation sent to Rome, and so the depositions were deemed insufficient. The Pope sought unsuccessfully for the necessary information. So did Innocent IV in 1243 and John XXII in 1317. By then, however, the lack of any first-hand witnesses had rendered the whole process much more problematic. The curious result was that Hildegard - although widely thought of and even referred to as a "saint" (especially in her native Germany) - was never in fact formally canonized. Apparently unaware of this, the Bishops of her native Germany in 1978 petitioned the Holy See to declare her a Doctor of the Church! (She did make it into Outer Space, however, where an asteroid is named after her - asteroid898Hildegard).
Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI, who has already devoted two of his General Audience talks to her, finally fixed this unfortunate state of affairs and formally inscribed her name in the Church's roster of canonized saints. May this long-delayed honor to St. Hildegard be a blessing to the Church - as well as a timely reminder of the importance of keeping accurate paper work and doing one's job seriously and well!

Forward, Europe

I haven't the slightest idea whether as President of France M. Hollande will actually be an improvement over the somewhat idiosyncratic (by French standards) M. Sarkozy. Only time will tell - both for France itself and for France's neighbors, yoked together in their dubious European Union.

When given the chance, Europe's voters have often evidenced prudent skepticism about the EU project that in recent decades has been foisted upon them by their elites - the same elites whose economic ideology voters are also apparently rejecting.  Such is the dominant cultural elite's difficulty with deomocracy that this has been the subject of some general hand-wringing. I even read somewhere the worry that France's soon-to-be President may genuinely believe in "a fairer society." That may be an unattainable goal under the circumstances, and he may perhaps emply unsuitable means to try to get there, but surely there must be worse things for a putative politicla leader to be accused of!

Talking to a European acquaintance earlier int he Greek crisis, I repeated the common (and self-evident) observation that the Euro common currency had made a bad situation significantly worse, since Greece could no longer devalue its own currency. My friend more or less agreed that the Eu had created a mess, but then added the non sequitur that the EU had been "the moral thing to do." Being long acquainted with elite ideologies, I was not as flabbergasted (as one perhaps should be) by such a complete non sequitur, but that resposne remains surely highly problematic in any event.
How does one answer the defense of something like the Eu - defended not for any real good it may have accomplished - but for being more "moral"? Morality in this case seems to be a thoroughly rational abstrtaction from real life - as if the negative consequences of a policy were irrelevant to its "morality"!
Oh, well, let's hope the election of a new President in France, the recent collapse of the coalition government in the Netherlands, and the latest government collapse in Greece spur Europe's leaders to adopt some sensible policies - even at the risk of their being "fairer" - even if that puts the Euro (or indeed the whole EU project) at risk.

The Law of Work

Although thoroughly rooted in ancient, pre-Christian paganism, "May Day" acquired a whole new identity in the 19th century as various labor movements (and eventually the Communist Party) made May 1 a day of socialist solidarity. In an attempt to co-opt this communist and socialist celebration, Pope Pius XII in 1955 proclaimed May 1 as the feast of St. Joseph the Worker, belatedly giving May Day a Christian, Catholic character. Barely 14 years later, however, the 1969 calendar reform downgraded the one-time 1st class feast to a merely optional memorial! Even so, I celebrated St. Joseph the Worker with suitable solemnity this morning at our local St. Joseph School. (With the subsequent collapse of communism, followed by globalization's disastrous impact on organized labor, the modern May Day of workers’ solidarity is itself likely much diminished - even if, like our American Labor Day in September, it still remains a holiday in many countries).

Celebrating St, Joseph the Worker at Mass this morning, I was quite taken by how the Collect of the Mass addresses God as the Creator "who laid down for the human race the law of work." After two millennia of Christianity, it may be easy for us  to forget how new was the view of work, which Christianity introduced into the classical world. In Book VII of his Politics, Aristotle famously insisted that citizens could not be mechanics or shopkeepers, lives he considered ignoble and inimical to goodness; nor could they be farmers. For Aristotle (and the classical world his philosophy summarized) leisure was necessary for both goodness and political activity (Politics, VII, ix, 1328b-1329a). The ancient democratic polis presupposed a population of free non-citizens (and un-free slaves) whose work would produce the surplus necessary to make possible the higher culture and political activity of the citizens. Obviously work was necessary and important, but it was leisure which was valued. Contrast that with the completely different environment one finds, for example, in St. Benedict's Rule, according to which true monks (the monastic equivalent of citizens) live by manual labor - like the apostles before them. Again, while work was necessary, it was not the point or purpose of monastic life, which was prayer and contemplation. Unlike the polis, however, the monaastary expected its citizens to do the necessary work themselves and accorded a moral value to labor which the classical pre-Christian world never did or could.

In the modern world, the labor movement, besides advancing the material interests and economic well-being of workers also restored moral and social value to the world of work retrieving what had seemingly been lost in the alienating experience of industrialization. In the United States and in Western Europe, one result was the rise of the most propserous  working class in human history - a new "middle class" anchor for civil society and democratic nation-states.

Now, all that is imperilled again, as once again those who live by work seem squeezed by economic forces and their way of life appears to be losing that "middle class" character. The increasing inequality in our society separates the economic elite from the laboring classes not just economically but (as in antiquity) culturally. A half-century ago, my father's boss was certainly richer than my father and accordingly had greater access to a greater amount of luxury. But the gap between their incomes was nothing like what we see today. And, just as important, neither was there the cultural gulf that now exists. My guess is that my fatrher's boss and the "blue-collar" employees his company hired had more in common culturally and morally than separated them. Their values, their overall outlook on what life was about and what mattered most were much more similar than is experienced today. And, in that, lies one of our greatest challenges and one of the greatest obstacles to reparing our fractured society.