Our First US Hispanic Saint

Ad honórem Sanctǽ et Indivíduǽ Trinitátis, ad exaltatiónem fídei cathólicæ et vitæ christiánæ increméntum, auctoritáte Dómini nostri Iesu Christi, beatórum Apostolórum Petri et Páuli ac Nostra, matúra deliberatióne præhábita et divína ope sǽpius imploráta, ac de plurimórum Fratrum Nostrórum consílio, Beátum Iuníperum Serra Sanctum esse decérnimus et definímus, ac Sanctórum Catálogo adscríbimus, statuéntes eum in univérsa Ecclésia inter Sanctos pia devotióne récoli debére. In nómine Patris et Fílii et Spíritus Sancti.

(For the honor of the Blessed Trinity, the exaltation of the Catholic faith and the increase of the Christian life, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and our own, after due deliberation and frequent prayer for divine assistance, and having sought the counsel of many of our brother Bishops, we declare and define Blessed Junípero Serra to be a Saint and we enroll him among the Saints, decreeing that he is to be venerated as such by the whole Church. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.)

That's what infallibility sounds like!

And what a glorious day it has been for the Catholic Church in America, as Pope Francis definitively defined that the great California missionary Junípero Serra, who represents that state in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary hall (photo) is - and henceforth shall be venerated as - a Saint. Saint Junípero (1713-1784) founded 21 missions in California between 1769 and 1782, from which would develop some of that state's major cities, such as San Francisco, Santa Clara, Santa Barbara, and San Diego. As the Prophet Isaiah said, in the reading proclaimed at this afternoon's canonization Mass: How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings, announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation, and saying to Zion, Your God is King!

Saints are our brothers and sisters in Christ, made exemplars and intercessors through the power of God's grace working in and through them for the building up of God's kingdom. In his homily at this afternoon's Mass of canonization, Pope Francis warned against apathy. "What can we do," he asked, "to keep our heart from growing numb, becoming anesthetized? How do we make the joy of the Gospel increase and take deeper root in our lives? His answer: mission. "A Christian finds joy in mission: Go out to people of every nation! A Christian experiences joy in following a command: Go forth and proclaim the good news!"

In Saint Junípero Serra, we have an exemplar of such a life. Saint Junípero "was the embodiment of 'a Church which goes forth', a Church which sets out to bring everywhere the reconciling tenderness of God. Junípero Serra left his native land and its way of life. He was excited about blazing trails, going forth to meet many people, learning and valuing their particular customs and ways of life. He learned how to bring to birth and nurture God’s life in the faces of everyone he met; he made them his brothers and sisters."

The Pope concluded his homily by invoking the new saint's motto: siempre adelante ("Keep moving forward!) amd proposing it for the church today.

"For him, this was the way to continue experiencing the joy of the Gospel, to keep his heart from growing numb, from being anesthetized. He kept moving forward, because the Lord was waiting. He kept going, because his brothers and sisters were waiting. He kept going forward to the end of his life. Today, like him, may we be able to say: Forward! Let’s keep moving forward!"

The Pope and the President

Unlike the official ceremonial state welcome this morning, the Pope's arrival at Andrews yesterday afternoon was simple - almost informal. The President brought his daughters and mother-in-law to meet the Pope - and the Vice President brought his two granddaughters - a fittingly familial welcome for a Pope whose primary purpose in visiting is to address the World Meeting of Families later this week. And the Pope's last public talk in Cuba was also a plea to value family. It is in the family, he said in Cuba, that "we learn fraternity, that we learn solidarity, that we learn not to be overbearing ... that we learn to receive, to appreciate life as a blessing and to realize that we need one another to move forward. ... that we experience forgiveness, that we are continually asked to forgive and to grow."

In contemporary post-monarchies like the United States, a state visit is one of the few occasions when what Walter Bagehot famously called the "dignified" dimension of politics is on display. And on display it was with the traditional, formal state ceremony of official welcome of the Pope by our Head of State.

President Obama is fond of making reference to his favorable experience of the Catholic Church while working as a community organizer in Chicago. Obviously, it really did have some impact. On occasions such as this (and earlier, for example, his 2009 Notre Dame speech), it enables him to speak easily and eloquently in ways which his more normal posture as spokesperson for america's post-modern, secularist, elite culture does not typically allow.

Thus, in his official address of welcome, the President praised the world-wide work of Catholic organizations that  "serve the poor, minister to prisoners, build schools and homes, and operate orphanages and hospitals." He praised the Pope personally for reminding "us that in the eyes of God our measure as individuals, and as societies, is not determined by wealth or power or station or celebrity. but by how well we hew to Scripture's call to lift up the poor and the marginalized, to stand up for justice and against inequality, and to ensure that every human being is able to live in dignity - because we are all made int he image of God."

In particular, he noted the Pope's contribution to "our new beginning with the Cuban people" and his message of "welcoming the stranger with empathy and a truly open heart." The President spoke strongly of the universal value of religious liberty and specifically mentioned how "at this very moment" Christians "are targeted and even killed because of their faith." Finally, he expressed support for the Pope's "call to all world leaders to support the communities most vulnerable to a changing climate and to come together to preserve our precious world for future generations."

In his response, Pope Francis immediately - literally in his second sentence - mentioned his own background as a son of immigrants and how America "was largely built by such families." For someone who has never before been to the US, the Pope obviously appreciates a fundamental feature of American identity - despite the xenophobia which presently threatens that identity in certain circles. The Pope also spoke of the centrality of religious liberty - and related that concern to a commitment "to building a society which is truly tolerant and inclusive, to safeguarding the rights of individuals and communities, and to rejecting every form of unjust discrimination."

Unsurprisingly, the Pope pressed the urgency of responding to climate change.as "a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation." Again,showing a sensitivity to American history and to his immediate audience, he quoted Martin Luther King's famous reference to having "defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it."

It was exceptionally edifying  hear both Pope and President singing from the same hymnal, so to speak. It was a most promising beginning to this visit.  

And it reminded me of Servant of God's promise to Blessed Pope Pius IX, on December 22, 1857, that "Catholic truth" would "act like oil on troubled waters ... to sustain our institutions and enable our young country to realize its great destiny."

Coming to America

That would be the Pope, of course, who is coming to America later today. And, unlike most Heads of State, who have to wait to meet the President at the formal White House welcoming ceremony, Pope Francis (who will still get the full ceremonial pageantry at the White House tomorrow) will be met by the President himself at the airport - a sure sign of how powerfully this visit resonates politically as well as religiously. Of course, the distinction between political and religious is itself somewhat artificial, and almost everything about the Pope's trip first to Cuba and then to the United States will hopefully help to undermine that historically and philosophically artificial distinction.

In any case, the Pope is coming, and there is excitement and anticipation in the air. Also, opposition to the Pope's presence and message has begun to get vocal. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the so-called "Freedom from Religion Foundation" is objecting to New York city's awarding of some 80,000 tickets to see the Pope's procession pass through Central park. Malice of that sort, from that sort of group, is a perennial expectation. Much more interesting - and more relevant to the currently fractured state of American society are the challenges from the right wing of American politics. After all, as JFK is alleged to have said, "we get our religion from Rome, but our politics from home." 

There is, for example, the case of Arizona Republican Congressman Paul Gosar, who calls himself a "proud Catholic," but plans to boycott the Pope's Address to Congress on the grounds that the Pope has "adopted all of the socialist talking points." Then there is something called the Heartland Institute, an outfit whose Marketing Director has equated "environmentalism" with "nature worship" and who worries that, "if we have a pope who doesn't view things in an orthodox manner, we're going to have forms returning to religion that are not orthodox." And one Philadelphia talk-show host has supposedly said, "The pope does seem to be enamored with solutions that are not pro-American in the slightest."

One obvious response to such strange statements is, of course, to note that the Pope represents a multi-cultural, multi-lingual, world-wide institution, only some 6% of whose members are in the United States. So even in purely secular terms, why should anyone expect him to reflect a particularly American perspective - let alone a right-wing American perspective that is so self-consciously at odds with moral, social, and scientific thinking in most of the rest of the world? Then add to that the even more important fact that what the Pope represents is a religious alternative to humanity's dominant ways of thinking and acting. Should anyone be surprised that who the Pope is and what he stands for represent such a total challenge to the US moneyed elite's talking points?

One of the attacks that has received the most attention was one from conservative intellectual George Will, whose column in Saturday's Washington Post had the provocative title, "Pope Francis' fact-free flamboyance." (See https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/pope-franciss-fact-free-flamboyance/2015/09/18/7d711750-5d6a-11e5-8e9e-dce8a2a2a679_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_opinions.)

Actually it is Will's rhetoric that is somewhat excessive, or should i say "flamboyant"? Still Will is certainly a serious thinker. And so (despite his ideology-driven rhetoric) he manages to raise certain points which actually ought to be taken seriously at a certain practical level. There is, for example, the undeniable historical reality that it is only modern economic growth that has made it possible for many more people than ever before to escape poverty, which prior to that was widely seen as just the natural lot of almost the entire population. It is also the case, as Will notes, that this history of economic growth that has facilitated this incredible improvement in the living standards of such a significant part of the world's population has been made possible largely by fossil fuels.

Of course, none of that addresses the physical damage done to the world by the use of fossil fuels - nor the moral damage done to humanity by capitalism and consumerism. Hence the importance of a religious alternative to humanity's dominant ways of thinking and acting, which is what the Pope will hopefully provide.

That said, the practical problem of discerning politically possible, economically effective, and sociologically sensible policies to address current material problems remains a real one, which no policy-maker or statesman or citizen can simply dismiss. In contrast to George Will's Washington Post column, a more balanced (certainly less polemical) attempt to address such concerns is the more measured essay by William D. Nordhaus, "The Pope and the Market,' in the October 8 issue of The New York Review of Books. (See http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/oct/08/pope-and-market/.) Nordhaus applauds the Pope's commitment to the environment and hopes that "his endorsement of climate science and the reality of warming and environmental damage will be effective in turning the tide toward strong actions." But, at the practical (or as is sometimes said in church-speak, prudential) level, he fears that Pope Francis "has missed a unique opportunity to endorse one of the two crucial elements of an effective strategy for slowing climate change." Nordhaus considers it "unfortunate" that the Pope "does not endorse a market-based solution, particularly carbon-pricing, as the only practical policy tool we have to bend down the dangerous curves of climate change and the damages they cause."

It is to be hoped that at the very least one consequence of the Pope's challenging call to conversion of heart will be a greater openness by policy-makers, statesmen, and citizens in making their prudential policy judgments to evaluate the practical policy tools that are already available (which in terms of the US situation would itself already be an almost utopian transformation from the present policy impasse).

The Pope in Cuba

Pope Saint John Paul II's historic January 1998 trip to Cuba may be best remembered in the US for how the media quickly packed up and came home when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke - an event of transparently greater world-historical significance to the scandal-obsessed parochial American media. As for Pope Benedict XVI's 2012 visit to Cuba, the American media little noted nor long remembered it. But, with Pope Francis' current trip to what JFK famously called "that imprisoned island," the coverage is likely to be different. Partly that is due to the media's greater interest, indeed fascination, with the personality of Pope Francis (filtered for the most part through its own narrow lens of religious and historical ignorance and ideological preconceptions). Partly that is due to the evolving relationship between Cuba and the US (with the recent restoration of diplomatic relations itself having been facilitated by the Holy See). And largely that is due to the Pope's deliberate linking of his trip to Cuba with his visit to the US later this week.

If nothing else, that linkage ought to remind Americans that (despite how we understandably see ourselves) the US is not the center of the Pope's world. Indeed, if the World Meeting of Families' triennial meeting weren't happening here this year, it is quit likely that the Pope might not be coming to America at all. Unlike his three most recent predecessors (Blessed Paul VI, Saint John Paul II, and Benedict XVI), this Pope has never ever visited the US and seems to have shown no interest in ever doing so before. And it is actually possible that - as a Latin American - he may even consider his visit to Cuba to be as important or maybe even more important than the US part of his trip (especially if we subtract from the US visit the not specifically American, more international events of his trip - i.e., the Meeting of Families and the Address to the UN).

Actually, even the specifically Cuban component of the Pope's visit got relativized within the larger context of Latin American concerns at yesterday's Sunday morning Mass in Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion, when the Pope addressed the ongoing negotiations going on in the Cuban capital between Colombia and the FARC rebels. "We do not have the right to allow ourselves yet another failure on this path of peace and reconciliation,” the Pope said in regard to those negotiations.

There was a time - prior to the collapse of Soviet communism - when Cuba, as the Soviet Union's expensively subsidized colony in the Western Hemisphere, was a political threat to the rest of Latin America. But, since the end of the Soviet Empire left Cuba as an isolated outpost of nothing, it has become instead a very visible example of economic failure - a model obviously not to be followed. As with the restoration of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the US, so too with the Pope's visit, every development in the Cuban story is certainly seen as an opportunity for hope - hope for some real and much needed change in Cuba's sad situation. Along with the Cuban people, most of whom must be getting more and more tired of Castroism's failed promises, we can only hope that the Pope's presence will be more than symbolic but will be a real harbinger of needed change. Even more so for the long-suffering Cuban Church, which struggles for the freedom it needs to begin the re-evangelization of that once-Catholic country, which first received the Gospel over 500 years ago.

Church

We’re all familiar with that famous photograph.  It is on display here today. There is another copy downstairs in the parish hall, with a chart that attempts to identify many of those in the picture. It appears in books about the city of Knoxville and the history of the Church in Tennessee. There is even one hanging in the Chop House restaurant in Fountain City.

The photo was taken on September 26, 1886, one week after the dedication of this church. The pastor, Fr. Francis T. Marron, and a group of parishioners – very serious-looking as 19th-century people always were when they posed for a picture – stood, facing Walnut Street, in front of the original Immaculate Conception Church, soon to be torn down so that the apse and altar area of the new church could be completed.

Three years ago, inspired by that old photo, we gathered as many of us as we could in front of the present parish church, facing Vine Avenue, for another picture. There are more people in the second picture, and they look less formal.  They’re even smiling! But, for all the superficial differences, both pictures complement each other very nicely.

Both photos express the essential dimension of our parish’s life. We are a diverse community who together embody the Church on this particular site in downtown Knoxville. We come from various backgrounds and go about our daily lives in differing professions and other activities. But we all come together here in our church, to which we bring our joys and hopes, our experiences and our challenges, where we hear God’s saving and redeeming word and are nourished from his altar by his sacraments - so as to be sent forth from this church refreshed, fulfilled, and empowered to continue Christ’s life and work in the world through the mission of the Church here in this city.

Saint John Paul II once called the parish “the Church living in the midst of the homes of her sons and daughters.” Elaborating further on this theme, Pope Francis has called the parish “the presence of the Church in a given territory, an environment for hearing God’s word, for growth in the Christian life, for dialogue, proclamation, charitable outreach, worship and celebration … It is a community of communities, a sanctuary where the thirsty come to drink in the midst of their journey, and a center of constant missionary outreach” [Evangelii Gaudium, 28].

Can it indeed be, asked Solomon when the Temple was being dedicated in Jerusalem, Can it indeed be that God dwells on earth? [1 Kings 8:22-23, 27-30]. Certainly, Solomon’s wonder and amazement must have found an echo in the heart of the tax-collector Zacchaeus, when Jesus looked up and said m, Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at our house.” And what did Zacchaeus do? He came down quickly and received Jesus with joy.

My guess is that the reason this Gospel passage [Luke 19:1-10] was proclaimed for so many centuries at the Mass of the Dedication of a Church was because of Jesus’ wonderful words near the end: “Today salvation has come to this house.”  Zacchaeus certainly needed salvation. Certainly he needed something. Otherwise why would he have been willing to risk ridicule by running ahead and climbing a tree. (If you go to Jericho today, they’ll show you the tree.) Certainly Zacchaeus needed something. Otherwise why would he have been willing to risk the grumbling of his somewhat self-righteous neighbors, who just didn’t quite get it, who just didn’t quite get what Jesus was all about, what Jesus is all about, and what his Church therefore is all about.

Zacchaeus received Jesus with joy.  A church is a place set apart for that to happen, over and over again. A parish is a community, centered on a church, that exists to help that happen, over and over again.

This is what Immaculate Conception Church in downtown Knoxville (“The Church on Summit Hill”) has consistently been all about ever since those very first families founded the parish and opened the first Catholic Church in Knoxville on this site 160 years ago, in the fall of 1855.

When we celebrate a church, we first of all celebrate a place, a very special and sacred place set apart unlike any other. We also celebrate the people the place represents. That is why the anniversary of a church’s dedication is celebrated liturgically as a feast for all those whose church it is.

It is no accident that one and the same name, “Church,” is used for both the people who continue Christ’s presence in the world and the place where they assemble to experience his presence most directly, by proclaiming his word and celebrating his sacraments.

But, when we celebrate this our mother church of East Tennessee, we also celebrate the relationship that binds us all together over time and space.

And so, in gratitude for these past 160 years of fruitful parish life and ministry on this hill and in downtown Knoxville, we remember those who have gone before us, who lived lives filled with faith, hope, and love, and now rest in the peace of Christ. And we especially welcome to our church this Sunday all former Immaculate Conception parishioners and all descendants of the founding families of parishioners who are attending this special “Parish Homecoming Mass” today. Brought together as one parish community from many places and backgrounds, we pray that we may continue to share the blessings of our Catholic faith and life with all who live or work or visit within sight of this church, within the sound of its bells, and within the reach of its members.

Homily for the Parish "Homecoming Mass" in Celebration of the 160th Anniversary of Immaculate Conception Parish, Knoxville, TN, and  the Anniversary of the Dedication of the Present Church (1886), September 20, 2015.