Pope Benedict XVI

I remember well waking up as usual on February 11, 2013, to the sound of NPR's "Morning Edition," set to come on automatically at 6:00 a.m., only to be suddenly startled by the most unexpected and initially most unbelievable of announcements, that Pope Benedict XVI had announced his resignation. In that announcement, he had said that "in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the barque of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me."

Almost eight years had passed since his unsurprising election as Pope in April 2005. At the time, what had excited me was his chosen name. The previous day, in a conversation about potential papal names, I had suggested that, if I were to be elected Pope, I would take the name Benedict XVI in memory of the under-appreciated Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922). So imagine how happy I was to hear Cardinal Ratzinger's choice of that papal name the next day!

I never met Pope Benedict, but I was present four times for Masses he celebrated - at World Youth Day in Germany in August 2005, at Saint Patrick's Cathedral in New York in 2008, at the Consistory Mass at Saint Peter's in February 2012 (when I assisted in distributing Holy Communion), and in Saint Peter's Square on October 7, 2012, when he named Hildegard of Bingen and John of Avila Doctors of the Church. After his predecessor's personality-focused papacy, I appreciated his reserved personal style, his emphasis on the office rather than its occupant, and on the liturgy rather than the celebrant.

To me, the combination of Benedict's reserved personality and his theological strength (shared with the world in an especially wonderful way in his three great encyclicals, Deus caritas est, Spe salvi, and Caritas in veritate) seemed at first to be just what the Church needed at that moment in her history. As her fellow-German theological star, Cardinal Walter Kasper, noted, he "left a great heritage to the church as a pope-theologian." Benedict, in Kasper's words, "deepened the doctrine of the [Second Vatican] Council," and "has deepened our faith, our spirituality." 

Born in Bavaria in 1927, Benedict was the last pope to have experienced World War II up close. An influential theologian before, during, and after Vatican II, he was the last pope to have participated personally in that world-historical event. As such, he continued moving the church on the path the Council had begun in addressing some of the lingering challenges from the Church's past, for example, the troubled history of the Church's relationship with the Jewish people. As World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said, commenting on Benedict's death, "No pope before him visited as many synagogues, and he made a point of meeting with local Jewish community representatives whenever he visited foreign nations."

Meanwhile, however, those two great defining events of the 20th century - the wars and the council - have faded into ancient history for most Catholics living today.

That said, preparing for Christmas each year, I often reread his 2012 volume Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives. Likewise, preparing for Easter, I regularly reread his 2011 Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection. He was, as New York's Archbishop, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, described him, an "erudite, wise, and holy man, who spoke the truth with love."

Great as those qualities were, however, they apparently proved in the end less than fully sufficient for the moment. His intellectual brilliance and his deeply prayerful traditional faith seemed somehow unable to overcome the organizational and personnel nightmares which plagued his pontificate and which still continue to afflict the Church. Rightly or wrongly, I have always suspected that that was what wore him down so as to lead to his unprecedented abdication. To me at the time it seemed an act of incredible humility to acknowledge one's "incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry" to which one had been called. In retrospect, it also suggests how humanly intractable may be the persistent problems which keep threatening to overwhelm the Church.

Hopefully, history will remember Pope Benedict XVI for more than his resignation and will credit him for his calm, humble, prayerful and supremely serious effort to lead the Church through a period of unprecedented challenges and turmoil.

O God, immortal shepherd of souls, look on your people's prayers and grant that your servant Pope Benedict XVI, who presided over your Church in charity, may with the flock entrusted to his care, receive from your mercy the reward of a faithful steward. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever, Amen.

Happy New Year!

 

 

The ancient Roman practice of beginning the civil year on the Kalends of January (January 1) predated and had no connection whatever with Christianity. Consuls assumed office in Rome on that date and gave their names to the year, even as now in New York State our recently re-elected Governor will begin her first full term of office today. Throughout the ancient Roman empire, gifts were exchanged and celebratory feasts got the new year off on a right footing. (Despite our current custom of Christmas presents, gift giving at New Year is still practiced in many parts of Europe, including France, Switzerland, Russia and Greece.) While the Church resisted incorporating the New Year festival into its calendar, the feast itself persisted - as such observances tend to do - in all its exuberance as an integral aspect of urban Roman life. 

In medieval Europe, alternative more specifically Christian dates were sometimes used to mark the new year - especially March 25, which celebrates the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (and thus the Incarnation of Christ). In promulgating what we now call the Gregorian Calendar in 1582, however, Pope Gregory XIII standardized January 1 as the date for the beginning of the calendar year, although without any liturgical commemoration of that fact, an anomaly that continues to the present day (apart from the not very widely kept customs of reciting the Te Deum on New Year's Eve and the Veni Crestor on New Year's Day).

Protestant Great Britain delayed adopting the Gregorian calendar, however, and kept March 25 as the beginning of the new year until 1752. Hence, George Washington was born on February 11, 1731, in the British Empire, while it was already February 22, 1732 in much of the rest of the world.

In any case, long before and after the world came to agree on January 1 as the secular New Year, different people in different parts of the world would have observed different New Year timings. Yet some broad areas of convergence in their diverging customs have persisted. And gift-giving on this occasion is among them, as are feasting and community revelry. The idea behind all this has been, so it is widely thought, to greet each other with something auspicious on the wake of the new year.

Thus, the New Year gift exchange persisted among the ordinary English people until the Victorian era. Gloves were a common gift. Also popular were oranges stuck with clove, used to preserve and flavor wine. Those English settlers in colonial America who were not holiday-averse apparently also continued to exchange gifts and presents at the New Year. As did the French. So still in France and French Canada even today gifts and greeting cards are presented on New Year's Day.

 

Having a common date to begin the civil year is a valuable convenience. Of greater importance, however, is how the years are counted. The Romans counted the years from the purported founding of the City (ab urbe condita). Some Roman imperial provinces counted their years from when they had been incorporated into the empire as a province. Rulers, of course, had (and still have) their regnal years. Eventually, however, Christian Europe settled on dating years from the presumed date of the birth of Christ. Thus, we continue to date our years Anno Domini ("in the year of our Lord"). In this era, when the origin of our calendar is sadly often obscured by the neologism CE instead of AD, it was edifying at the accession of Britain's new King Charles III last September, to hear the official Proclamation dated "this tenth day of September in the year of our Lord 2022."

 

So today, with great joy and gratitude to God, we begin the new Year of our Lord 2023!

As Servant of God Isaac Hecker said in his Sermon for the New Year on this date in 1863 (in the middle of our Civil War):

“It is the common custom in meeting of friends at this season, to greet each other with a Happy New Year! This is a praiseworthy and pleasant custom, and in accordance with it, I greet you all, my dear brethren, with a Happy New Year! Happy New Year to all our friends and the inhabitants of this city, and to all our fellow countrymen, whether dwelling north or south, east or west, in this our native land. Happy New Year to all men of whatever race or clime; for God is our common Creator, and in Christ we are all sons of God, and therefore brethren.”

Goodbye 2022!

To paraphrase one of Queen Elizabeth II's most famous speeches: 2022 "is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure." 

Covid continues to batter our world and even my local community, where several of my colleagues have been sick this Christmas week. Yet our country increasingly behaves as if the danger were over, thereby making things even worse. Personally spared the worst thus far, I have nonetheless this year increasingly experienced the fragility, frailty, and infirmities of old age - among them, a chronically bad back and knees, an episode of gout, a fall, and a quickly growing cataract that has definitely made an impact on my vision and needs to be attended to in the new year. Meanwhile, I still haven't been back in Starbuck's in almost three years now and have only been to the movies or out to dinner a handful of times, things I really used to enjoy very much and frankly miss. Looking beyond my narrow little world, Britain's Queen Elizabeth died, an expected but nonetheless significant loss for her country, for the Commonwealth, and for public Christianity. Her grandson Harry and his wife Meghan seem to be enacting an updated version of the sad saga of Edward and Wallis, which inevitably reminds one of Karl Marx's famous observation about history repeating itself, "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." Here in the U.S., however modest their majority, the Republicans regained control of the House, with all the potentially problematic consequences that portends, and Donald Trump is still running for president. On top of all of that, back in February Russia launched a terrifying war of aggression against Ukraine, which continues 10 months later to create massive civilian suffering throughout that heroic country.

On the other hand, the Ukrainians, for all they have endured, have been holding their own and may yet succeed in repelling the Russian aggressor. Their President, Volodymyr Zelensky, famous for saying (when offered aid to escape) "I need ammunition, not a ride," has provided a much appreciated (and recently largely lacking) model of heroic political leadership, and has unexpectedly come to symbolize a reinvigorated Western Alliance. Meanwhile here at home, the Democratic Congress and President Biden managed to pass some significant legislation (including on infrastructure and climate change), the January 6 Committee did a better-than-expected job highlighting the full horror of what happened on (and in the run-up to) January 6, 2021, and the much feared "red wave" never materialized on Election Day. In my personal life, I got my fifth covid shot, my senior-strength flu shot, and new windows in my room. Happily, I also was able to visit my beloved former parish at Easter, something which I hope to get to do again in 2023.  I got to see some of my NY-area cousins back in March, and I visited my sister and her family in California at Thanksgiving. Finally, I reconnected with an old friend from Princeton days, whom I hadn't seen in over 25 years. So not such a bad year in at least some important ways, after all!

Good or bad (and what year isn't ultimately some mixture of both?), 2022 is quickly coming to an end. Honestly, I am really ready to say good-bye to it.

"The house of God may not be defended like a fortress."

 

On this the Fifth Day of Christmas, the Church commemorates Saint Thomas Becket (1118-1170), Archbishop of Canterbury and medieval martyr.  According to the famous account of Becket's martyrdom in Canterbury's cathedral, when the priests tried to protect their Archbishop by barring the cathedral's door, Thomas opened it himself, saying, "The house of God may not be defended like a fortress. I gladly face death for the Church of God." Exactly 30 years ago today, I was at Canterbury for this feast, where, after Evensong, the Archbishop of Canterbury led us in procession to the site of Becket's death, where an original account of the saint's martyrdom was read. 

Of course, that Archbishop was Becket's successor but in a Church and state totally transformed less than four centuries after Becket's death by Henry VIII's Reformation. No wonder the Reformation removed Becket's feast from the calendar and destroyed his sumptuous shrine! Becket represented a pre-Reformation Catholic approach that envisaged a certain sort of partnership between Church and State. The Reformation successfully replaced that with the State in a clear position of dominance over the Church "by law established."

Nowadays, Becket is seen as a great defender of religious freedom. But 12th-century Europe and 21st-century America are very different in how they understand the relationships between religion and society and between Church and State. Our contemporary American context requires us to understand religious freedom as one constitutional guarantee among others and one occasionally in competition with other constitutional rights and social values.

For this reason, defenders of religious liberty need to sensitive their actual motives when making religious liberty claims, for example, when religious liberty is invoked opposition to the state's legitimate interest in protecting public health.

Becket's challenge to today's Church is not primarily to carve out privileged statuses for religious entities, a strategy suitable for his era but obviously less so for ours. Today's challenge rather is to convince our culture of religious liberty's centrality for authentic human dignity and how it can be harmonized with strong and effective government and the recognized rights of others in our constitutional system.

And, whatever else we do, let Becket's own words never be forgotten, "The house of God may not be defended like a fortress."

 

Homily for the Commemoration of Saint Thomas Becket, Saint Paul the Apostle Church, NY, December 29, 2022.

 

(Photo: Freedom of Worship, one of the series of four 1943 oil paintings by Norman Rockwell, reproduced that year in The Saturday Evening Post, depicting "the Four Freedoms," identified by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his January 1941 State of the Union Address.)

The Making of Ex-Christian America

 

Everybody has heard of the "nones," a word which likely gets a lot of its appeal and its staying power from being a homonym. An acquaintance of mine used to like to talk about the "dones," that is, those who were now "nones" but had once been something else. His "dones" would definitely count among Stephen Bullivant's "nonverts."

Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America (Oxford University Press, 2022) is about those now "nones" who were once religious and who therefore view their non-affiliation differently from those who were raised without any religion or with at most nominal affiliation. "Nonvert" is obviously a play on the word "convert," a word with considerable resonance in American religious experience, in order to highlight what the author sees as particularly distinctive about the recent past in which suddenly so many adults seem to have been leaving religion behind.

The author builds his case around chapters based on interviews with formerly religious "nonverts," alternating with more theoretical chapters. His fundamental argument is that "nonverts are the key to understanding much of the so-called rise of the nones, how and why it happened, who they are exactly, and what it all means for the present and future of America." His aim is to show that "there are a whole lot of nones, and a whole lot of those nones were once religious. And they are in the process of fundamentally and decisively changing the face of American society." (In particular, he notes that there are "roughly 16 million nonverts who say they were brought up Catholic.")

In contrast with the demographic patters which have characterized religious growth over the course of American history, he argues that the rise of the "nones" is not due to immigration or non-religious parents producing a multitude of non-religiously raised children, "Instead, it’s primarily due to a vast, wholly unprecedented “mass nonversion” of millions upon millions of Americans who were raised religious." His "single, summarizable argument it is that the USA is in the midst of a social, cultural, and religious watershed—one that today’s Americans are not merely living through, but millions have actively lived out in their own stories. This shift, while in many (not all) cases a very gradual one from the perspective of an individual lifetime, has manifested itself at the national level very swiftly indeed."

This state of affairs is perhaps complicated by, but not contradicted by the fact that "a good chunk of people who say they were raised nonreligiously who might, on a different day, tick one of the religious options. Obviously, there are different degrees of being raised religiously: where a weak, nominal, or culturally Christian upbringing ends, and a nonreligious one begins, is not always clear-cut.)"

Bullivant's treatment is especially helpful in the way he looks at different groups of "nonverts" based on their previous affiliations. Thus, he has separate chapters on ex-Mormons, ex-Mainliners, and ex-Evangelicals. He fully recognizes as what he calls a "key Catholic distinctive" the "broad church" character of Catholicism,  "the sheer diversity it encompasses, not just ethnically and racially (though certainly that), but socially, culturally, and ideologically too." And, while, on the one hand, he recognizes "the ongoing salience of a Catholic upbringing, even long after one has fundamentally rejected it," he also notes how among "all US cradle Catholics born since 1970, a 'Catholic upbringing' has produced twice as many nones as it has weekly Mass-going Catholics."

The author acknowledges that the U.S. is "still a much more religious country than most of its Western, developed, democratic peers." That said, The Making of Ex-Christian America tells what are in effect two simultaneous but interrelated stories, the making of many Americans who were once Christians into ex-Christians and also the making of a once Christian nation into an ex-Christian one, which is what makes this such "a decisive moment in American religious and cultural history."