Les Innocentes

The Innocents (Les Innocentes) is a French-language film based on a true account from a tragic period in Polish history. Set in December 1945, it reminds us vividly of the Polish saying that it was Poland's lot to lose World War II twice - the first time to the Germans, the second to the Russians.

Most of the film's action takes place in a Benedictine convent, somewhere in the Polish countryside. It opens beautifully with the nuns in choir chanting the ancient Advent hymn Conditor Alme Siderum, when all of a sudden we hear a scream, which turns out to be one of the sisters in labor.

One of the young novices takes it upon herself to walk through the snowy countryside to town in search of a doctor who is neither Polish nor Russian. (This is not a movie about scenery, but the snowy wintry scenes are both beautiful and very effective in highlighting the sense of both isolation and danger that pervades the film throughout.) The young nun finds a young French doctor, Matilde, part of a Red Cross mission caring for French soldiers, who somewhat reluctantly drives to the convent. There she discovers not one but many pregnant nuns. The even more reluctant Mother Abbess finally tells Matilde the truth, how the nuns were repeatedly raped by a group of Russian soldiers - a fate Matilde herself only narrowly escapes on one of her nocturnal trips to and from the convent.

Matilde comes from a working-class communist background, and this could easily be set up as a stereotypical conflict between religion and science, between repressive authoritarianism and modern freedom. Those themes are there, but are subsumed in the much more interesting portrayal of the nuns themselves and the varied ways they respond to their tragic circumstances. Matilde, though a central character, is herself more of a sub-plot. She has a romantic, if only temporary, relationship with one of her co-workers, a French Jewish doctor who also has no concern or love for the Church. (At one point he will even team up with her in delivering the babies that just seem to keep coming.)

Different nuns respond to the crisis in different ways. Most persevere in their vocation, but not all. The most tragic figure is the Mother Abbess, whose obsession with avoiding scandal leads her to commit an even worse sin. (How often has our obsessive fear of scandal led us astray and ended up doing even greater harm than the original source of scandal!)

The future for the nuns is bleak - not only because of their "scandal and disorder," but also because of the problematic situation which Poland (and particularly the Polish Church) now find themselves in, thanks to the Soviet occupation. That darkness is alleviated by the film's semi-happy ending, a "solution" to the "scandal and disorder" that almost borders on an artificial Deus ex machina. 

Not unlike another Polish film with a convent theme, Ida, which I posted about back in June 2014 (cf. http://rfrancocsp.blogspot.com/2014/06/ida.html), The Innocents fearlessly but sympathetically examines the dilemma of faith in a world which presents other options, which also purport, but with no greater success, to answer the challenges posed by the unsatisfying reality of life in our modern world.

Post-Cultural Catholicism

The Democrats made history this week with the nomination of the first woman candidate of a major party for president. Eight years ago, the Democrats made history by nominating the first non-white candidate for president. And 56 years ago, the Democrats nominated John F. Kennedy who went on to make history as our first Roman Catholic president. His election, the NY Daily News said at the time, dropped a hydrogen bomb on the tradition that no Roman Catholic could ever be elected president. Now no Catholic has been elected president since. But, for the past 8 years, we have had a Catholic vice president, and this year the Democrats have once again nominated a Catholic for vice president.

Interestingly, while the Democrats were preparing to nominate another Catholic for vice president, the Republicans this year nominated an ex-Catholic. Indiana Governor Mike Pence was raised in a strong Irish-Catholic family, was an altar boy, and supposedly toyed with the idea of becoming a priest. But then he did what far too many other Catholics in this country have done and became an Evangelical Protestant. In fact, like Pence, some 6 million ex-Catholics (13% of those raised as Catholics) now consider themselves Evangelicals, according to a 2014 Pew survey.

The point is not candidate Pence particularly, but the larger trend represented by those 6 million ex-Catholics. As Sherry Weddell, author of Forming intentional Disciples: The Path of Knowing and Following Jesus, recently wrote in the National Catholic Register, "God has no grandchildren" in the 21st century. "Faith is not simply inherited, but personally chosen." Hence, "cultural Catholicism by itself is dead as a retention strategy."

Inadvertently, therefore, the two vice-presidential candidates highlight this significant dilemma that is confronting contemporary Catholicism. In its time, "cultural Catholicism" had a lot going for it. In fact, I think one of the long-term earthly goals of faith is to form and transform culture, and our contemporary failure to do that has been a genuine loss for the world - the world God loves enough to have become a part of it himself.

But, as Sherry Weddell says, nowadays in our culture, "God has no grandchildren." What used to be passed down from generation to generation and absorbed from one's family and the surrounding community is no longer. Hence, the fundamental challenge facing the Church today to create committed, "intentional" disciples.

Here again the vice-presidential contest is illustrative. Would Senator Tim Kaine speak so comfortably about his Catholic faith and about fe, familia, y trabajo, without the formational experiences he had under the auspices of the Jesuits, especially his missionary service in Honduras? Obviously, not everyone can go to Honduras. Not everyone is called to be a Jesuit Volunteer. But unless our ordinary local Church communities can incorporate comparably powerful formational experiences, it is hard to see how subsequent generations will be successfully drawn to the intentional commitments that seem to be the necessary successor to our lost cultural Catholicism.

Clinton's Convention

To compare the Republican party's convention in Cleveland last week and the Democratic party's convention in Philadelphia this week is almost like the proverbial comparison "between apples and oranges." Other than the fact that they were both party events, both designed to nominate candidates for the presidency, they might just as well have taken place in different countries. And in a certain sense they did. 

Despite some ostentatious opposition from the immature extreme left, the Democrats are way more united than the Republicans were. And it has really shown in the quality of the speakers and their consistent messaging, as well as in the audience in the hall, that has seemed for the most part to be actually happy to be there. There have been powerfully moving testimonies about important social issues such as the gun violence that continues to plague our society and powerful witness testimonials to the character of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Religious faith also has been much more on display - and much more naturally and convincingly - at this convention. And, unlike last week when so many political heavies stayed out of sight (or, in the case of Ted Cruz, tried to throw a monkey wrench into the process), the Democratic party's luminaries were largely all there and all spoke eloquently - most especially the President himself and his First Lady. And Bernie Sanders did what he needed to do - and in the process reminded everyone to pay attention to the issues that matter most and not to the inside-the-Beltway stuff that the media likes to focus on so much. And there was some serious effort to reach out to Independents and disaffected Republicans. Michael Bloomberg (a New Yorker who says he knows a con job when he sees one) made the pitch for the Independent vote. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower appealed to those he called "discerning Democrats." Now it was Mayor Bloomberg's turn to make the case for what might be called "discerning Republicans." Meanwhile, for the Democrats themselves, last night's final scene with the President hugging the woman nominated to succeed him spoke volumes about the party's unity and sense of its long-term purpose. 

After last week's strategy of running America down, the Democrats had the much more attractive task of highlighting the greatness of this country, why, for all its real problems and challenges, America remains in so many ways the envy of the world and that famous shining "city on a hill" Ronald Reagan used to like to invoke. It is now up to Hillary Clinton herself to tie it all together tonight, and to make the Democrats' case for how fundamentally transformative this election is going to be.

Martyr

The white-robed army of martyrs praises you! (Te martyrum candidatus laudat exercitus). So we pray in the great matutinal hymn Te Deum laudamus. Undoubtedly, Father Jacques Hamel, an 85 year-old French priest still serving a parish in the diocese of Rouen, Normandy, recited those words just yesterday on the feast of Saint James, the first of the apostles to be martyred. He prayed that hymn not knowing that the next day he would be murdered by a radicalized Muslim while celebrating Mass, and so might now already have joined that glorious white robed army of martyrs in their eternal hymn of praise. When encouraged by some to retire, he is supposed to have said, "I'll work until my last breath." And so he did - in a way he may never have anticipated!.

Of course, the formal determination that someone has been killed out of hatred for the faith is made only by the Highest Authority in the Church as part of the formal process of beatification and canonization. For now, we may speak of Father Hamel as  a martyr only analogously, in a non-technical sense. We may - must - speak of him as someone who has given his life as a witness (which is what the word "martyr" means literally) for Christ, killed as a consequence of that witness out of hatred for Christ and his holy Church. His act of witness was, of course, his public exercise of his priestly ministry, proclaiming the sanctifying mission of the Church to the world for the sake of the world As with the more famous historical cases of Blessed Oscar Romero (1917-1980) and Saint Thomas Becket (1118-1170), therefore, the very fact of being killed in Church while in the very act of celebrating Mass (or, in Becket's case, Vespers) cannot be ignored in assessing his killer's motivation. It creates a presumption of a religiously - as well as politically - motivated hatred on the part of the killers. Thus, the Postulator for Romero's Cause, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, himself highlighted the special significance of Romero's having been "killed on the altar."

Let us pray, therefore, for Father Hamel's soul, entrusting him as we entrust all the departed to the mercy of God, praying also that through Father Hamel's intercession the Lord may graciously hear and answer our prayers for deliverance from our enemies and for peace and security for the Church and for our troubled world - and that in due time, if God so wills, we may invoke and venerate Father Hamel as a martyr for the faith and a protector and patron against terrorism.

Imitating Abraham

The passage we just heard [Genesis 18:20-32] from the Old Testament saga of Abraham takes us back some 4000 years to the heights overlooking the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Those cities now no longer exist, because (so the story tells us) of the outcry against them – so different were their citizens from Abraham. Though a recent immigrant himself, Abraham cared enough for the original native population that he was willing to plead with God to save them from destruction.

For some, what stands out most strongly in this story is the picturesque image of Abraham bargaining with God, as if he were some tourist in some stereotypical middle-eastern market. So strongly ingrained in the typical tourist mindset is that market stereotype that, having read their guidebooks, some feel a need to bargain about everything. I saw that myself in Israel some 2 decades ago. A group of us had walked to Bethlehem for Mass at the Basilica of the Nativity, but to save time we decided to take a taxi back. When the drivers stated their fares, some in our group immediately started bargaining, trying to lower the amount. Meanwhile, I did a quick currency calculation in my head and said to a priest in the group, who like me was also from New York, “This taxi costs less than a subway ride back home. Let’s just get in the cab and go!”

Foreigner though he was, Abraham was certainly no tourist – a pilgrim perhaps in a land not yet his, but certainly no tourist. And his relationship with God was anything but commercial or transitory. Just before today’s account, God who (as we heard last Sunday) has just experienced Abraham’s generous hospitality, suddenly says he cannot hide from Abraham what he is about to do, because Abraham is destined to become a great nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him [Genesis 18:17-18]. In this serious debate in which the fate of civilizations literally hung in the balance, we witness Abraham already at work anticipating that promised blessing for all the peoples of the earth.

Abraham is sometimes compared to Noah, who (at least from what little we know) showed no apparent interest in his neighbors’ fate. Abraham, in contrast, cared not only for his nephew Lot and Lot’s family, who were then living in Sodom, but for the whole population of the doomed cities. For far too many of us, far too often, Noah’s narrow concern may seem normal. Expanding the boundaries that limit those we care about, whether those boundaries be national or racial or ethnic or religious or whatever – expanding them to include others who don’t necessarily look or talk or act like us – doesn’t happen automatically. It takes effort. Abraham, however, got it right – right from the beginning. In this he anticipated his greatest descendant, Jesus, who would intercede with his Father for the entire world.

Sadly, in Sodom’s case, only three were saved from destruction. Whether Lot deserved to be saved is another question. He seems to have liked his settled and comfortable life in the prosperous city and lingered when the time came to leave. But, for Abraham’s sake, God got him out in time. We often don’t get what we deserve, and thanks be to God for that!

The fate of those cities has never been forgotten. The prophet Ezekiel said they were proud, sated with food, complacent in their prosperity, and they gave no help to the poor and needy [Ezekiel 16:49]. How familiar does that sound? Jesus also used Sodom’s story as a warning. Whoever will not receive you or listen to your words – he said to his disciples – it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town [Matthew 10:14-15].

In a sense, those corrupt cities stand for human civilization in its most advanced and successful state of development, complacently prosperous and comfortable and deserving of judgment – a salutary warning perhaps for other advanced and successful societies, like our own, and for us modern Lots who would likewise like to linger complacently in prosperity and comfort.

But at the same time the story also suggests that for the sake of just a few innocent people God would have been willing to spare the cities. Unfortunately there were none to be found there. If we, undeserving though we are, hope for God’s mercy, that hope rests entirely in Abraham’s descendant Jesus, through whom all the peoples of the world have finally been blessed once and for all, and through whom all of us have been given a lesson in how to imitate Abraham in caring about even those who neither look nor talk nor act like us.

The way Abraham insistently interceded for the citizens of Sodom says a lot about the seriousness of his relationship with God. After all, the way I ask for a favor always says something significant about my relationship with the one I’m asking the favor from!

Today’s Gospel [Luke 11:1-13] challenges to ask ourselves about our relationship with God. Is he a Father who can be counted on to give us that fish or that egg he knows we need even better that we may know it? A Father, who will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

In inviting us to call his Father our Father, Jesus enables us to enter into a special relationship with God similar to his own – sufficiently similar that we can confidently pray to God as frankly and freely as Abraham did and as Jesus still does. In the process, we may become more like Abraham and ultimately more like Jesus, who by becoming a blessing for us enables us to join our prayer to his and so become a blessing for all the peoples and nations of the world.

Homily for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Church of Saint Anne, Walnut Creel, CA, July 24, 2016.