Lumen Fidei

Pope Francis has issued his first encyclical, Lumen Fidei (“The Light of Faith”). Released today, it official date is June 29, Saints Peter and Paul. Its context, of course, is the current “Year of Faith,” initially proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI in order to mark the 50^th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council. Pope Benedict had apparently intended to end this Year of Faith with such an encyclical, and it certainly seems evident that much of the current encyclical’s actual content comes from him. The Pope himself says as much in the encyclical itself: 

“These considerations on faith — in continuity with all that the Church’s magisterium has pronounced on this theological virtue — are meant to supplement what Benedict XVI had written in his encyclical letters on charity and hope. He himself had almost completed a first draft of an encyclical on faith. For this I am deeply grateful to him, and as his brother in Christ I have taken up his fine work and added a few contributions of my own. The Successor of Peter, yesterday, today and tomorrow, is always called to strengthen his brothers and sisters in the priceless treasure of that faith which God has given as a light for humanity’s path” (Lumen Fidei, 7).

In an Vatican press conference today for the official release of the encyclical, Archbishop Rino Fisichella elaborated further, explaining the Pope Benedict had decided to write the encyclical for the end of the Year of Faith, but that Pope Francis is now offering it “as a ‘programme’ for how to continue to live this Year of Faith which has seen the Church involved in many highly formative experiences.”

One likely consequence of this will be an effort to attribute "authorship" to particular passages, to identify which parts and even which themes stem From Benedict and which from Francis. This will appeal especially to the media, whose interest in the substance of anything tends to be minmal and which cares much more about the pope as celebrity personality than about the papacy as magisterium. (I already heard one radio commentator speculate that 3 chapters were from Benedict and the fourth from Francis. That's perfectly plausible, but ultimately beside the point - if one understands an encyclical as an expression of the Church's ordinary magisterium and takes it seriously for precisely that reason!)

That said, a quick first reading of the text does certainly suggest a familiar "Benedictine" theme. It sets faith against the contemporary background of the modern rationalist association of faith not with light but with darkness and the post-modern appreciation of the limits of autonomous reason’s light, resulting in a “shadowy” future “fraught with fear of the unknown” (LF, 3). Against this, the encyclical proposes faith as a powerful light able to illuminate all aspects of human existence, “born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals his love, a love which precedes us and upon which we can lean for security and for building our lives” (LG, 4).

As encyclicals go, this one is relatively short and easy to read, which also means it can easily be read more than once in order to appreciate it more fully. (That I hope to do and return to this topic again soon!)

The Golden Door

Tonight, just before the fireworks start, I will be flying home to Knoxville to get back to work, rested and renewed these past 10 days by friends and family and familiar places. This morning, as Independence Day dawns here in New York, I think especially of my paternal grandparents (whom I never met), who more than a century ago courageously left behind the dead-end, pointless poverty of southern Italy for a better, more hopeful life across an ocean in a new world. I try to imagine what it would have been like for them to arrive in New York Harbor and there for the very first time to see the Statue of Liberty, her lamp lifted to light the way for them and others like them ever since. And so I honor their memory on this holiday with the hope that this country may continue to be - for generations of immigrants to come - the haven and hope that it was for them.

Peter and Paul

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. But the two argued about which hill to build on; and, when Romulus began building his city wall, Remus ridiculed his work by jumping over the wall. Romulus responded by killing him - thus determining which one Rome would be named after! In time, Rome would become the greatest city in the world, the capital of the greatest empire the world had ever yet known.

To that same city, some 8 centuries later, came two men, Peter and Paul, brothers not by blood, but by their common faith in Jesus Christ, who had called them to be apostles. The Christian community they found in Rome was small, socially and politically insignificant - an easy target when the Emperor needed scapegoats to blame for a destructive fire. Among those martyred in that 1^st Roman persecution of the Church were the apostles Peter and Paul.

One story recounts how Peter started to flee but 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. 

If the 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!  - Peter, crucified on the Vatican Hill, and Paul, beheaded on the Ostian Way.

At the west end of the south aisle, over the simple but impressive altar dedicated to St. Paul, is Robert Reid’s evocative painting depicting St. Paul kneeling calmly and confidently awaiting his imminent martyrdom. Above and below the picture are the famous words we just heard from St. Paul’s 2nd Letter to Timothy: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course. I have kept the faith!” [2 Timothy 4:7]

Inspired by Saint Paul’s evangelical energy and apostolic zeal, on July 7, 1858, Father Isaac Hecker and three other priests founded  the “Society of Missionary Priests of St. Paul the Apostle,” known ever since as “The Paulist Fathers.” Three days later, the Archbishop of New York assigned them the care of a new parish on Manhattan’s west side – placed, like the Paulists themselves, under the patronage of St. Paul the Apostle. For over 150 years, the Paulist Fathers have ministered here in this parish, the life and mission of both Paulists and parish intimately tied together. And for most of these years the spiritual center of both Paulists and parish has been this big beautiful church, opened in 1885.

Nowadays, worshippers entering through the main door of this great church, leave the modern secular city and its empire behind by passing under a monumental modern portrayal of what we commonly call Paul’s conversion. That great event transformed Paul from an enemy into a disciple of Jesus and an apostle on equal footing with the others to whom the Risen Lord had earlier appeared. From then on Paul would exemplify – as all of us who pass through that door are being challenged to exemplify - what it means to be truly converted to Christ, his witness in the world, an apostle sent to make disciples of all without exception. That mission is also the theme of the beautiful early 20^th-century floor mosaic at the church’s entrance, recalling Paul’s preaching outreach to pagan society and culture in 1^st-century Athens.

Isaac Hecker wanted the architecture of this church to focus attention on the high altar – as indeed everything in the life and mission of the Church must be focused on leading us and the world we live in to Christ.

Above the high altar within Stanford White’ golden dome is a verse from the Divine Office for the feast of Saint Paul’s Conversion: “You are a vessel of election, holy apostle Paul,” the response to which, “Preacher of Truth in the whole world,” is in turn inscribed in another mosaic on the church floor at the foot of the sanctuary steps.

Communicants coming to the altar rail used to see that mosaic, designed to highlight the symbols of Saint Paul’s apostleship – the book open to Saint Paul’s words, To me, the very least of all the holy ones, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the inscrutable riches of Christ [Ephesians 3:8] and the sword, the symbol of Paul’s martyrdom.

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 accomplishments and authentic grandeur, a human state like any other, a warring conqueror 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 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.

As we celebrate this great feast recalling the mission and martyrdom of the Apostles Peter and Paul, here in this Paulist “Mother Church,” let us in turn – as 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].

Homily for the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Church of Saint Paul the Apostle, New York, June 30, 2013.

Some Immigration Sanity

Six years after the last failure, a new Immigration Bill - the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act - finally passed the Senate yesterday, hopefully launching some 11 million undocumented persons, presently living and working at society’s margins, on a path to legal residency and eventually U.S. citizenship. The bill passed the Senate 68 to 32. All 54 Democrats and 14 Republicans voted in favor of the Bill that had been carefully crafted and then ably shepherded through the Senate by the so-called "gang of eight" -- Senators John McCain (R-Arizona), Marco Rubio (R-Florida., Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Jeff Flake (R-Arizona), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Michael Bennet (D-Colorado). The gang of eight’s four Republicans were joined in voting "yes" by 10 other Republican Senators – including, I am happy to report, Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker.

As a grandson of immigrants myself, I can only applaud and give thanks that this first step has been taken to restoring some sanity to our immigration system. Admittedly, such is the degree of chronic dysfunction in Washington that in order to move forward with such a sensible solution to this long festering national problem some other, notably less sensible provisions had to be incorporated – for example, throwing lots of unnecessary money at “border security,” in order to please people who ordinarily claim that they want to cut government spending and not increase it! But even that would be well worth the price to make progress toward restoring America’s authentic character as a land of immigrants.

It’s rare nowadays good to get such good news out of the Senate. The big challenge, of course, will be whether it will be possible to get good news even out of the House!  But for the moment good news is good news – hope for millions of our undocumented neighbors and hope for a severely challenged political system that it might again rediscover the proper purposes of politics.

The Roberts Court

From the enhanced enfranchisement of corporate wealth and power in Citizens United to the potential disenfranchisement of many minority voters as a result of Shelby County v. Holder, the trajectory of the Supreme Court’s current majority is increasingly clear. With that latter decision this week, the Court gutted the single greatest legislative achievement of the Civil Rights era - the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which finally made the 15^th Amendment a living reality even in those parts of the country which had resisted it for so long. 

Of course, if the Congress had done its job all along and enforced the 15^th Amendment (as the Amendment itself prescribed), African-Americans would not have lost the vote with the end of Reconstruction, and politics in the century between the 1860s and 1960s would have been very different indeed!

American politics did finally change radically for the better following the 1965 law. The continued relevance of that law was evident as recently as last year when old strategies of voter suppression appeared in new forms – with “Voter ID” requirements replacing long abolished poll taxes and literacy tests. The demographic direction of the country being by now obvious, voter suppression may be one highly effective way to help preserve a regime of privilege and power based on wealth. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was undoubtedly the strongest weapon in society’s arsenal to move the country in a more egalitarian and democratic direction.

Of course, judicial usurpation of power properly vested in the people’s democratically elected representatives is nothing new. It began, after all, with Marbury v. Madison. But given the explicit language of the 15^th Amendment empowering Congress to legislate the enforcement of the right to vote, the Supreme Court’s arrogant substitution of its judgment for that of Congress is truly monumental!