Today is a snow day. It is also Mozart's birthday. I am not a Catholic.
All of these are reasons perhaps I should not be writing about Tussling over Jesus, this morning's column by Nicholas Kristof.
I am also pro-choice, which some may interpret as tilting my response to the column.
Against all of this let me offer also the following.
I have a Master's from a Catholic Seminary (although I was never a Catholic), which while I was learning I was taught that the most important measure of the individual Catholic's faith was the tested Christian conscience, that one should follow that tested conscience even if it meant one was excommunicated from the visible church. That is relevant to Kristof's column.
I have wandered through several religions in my 6+ decades, and studied others. The issue of conflict between what is officially taught and how individuals act and why is not limited to Catholics.
Of greater importance, writing this as I am on a political blog, the same conflicts exist within partisan politics.
As I write this, I am exploring my own thinking at the same time as I am exploring Kristof's column and the specific issue he addresses.
I invite you to keep reading.
Kristof begins like this:
The National Catholic Reporter newspaper put it best: "Just days before Christians celebrated Christmas, Jesus got evicted."
It is the story of St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix, which at the time was officially a Catholic Hospital, which was stripped of that designation by the local bishop, Thomas Olmstead. Why?
It had terminated a pregnancy to save the life of the mother. The hospital says the 27-year-old woman, a mother of four children, would almost certainly have died otherwise.
One of those on the board of the hospital that made the decision was a nun, Sister Margaret McBride, who had been on the hospital’s ethics committee and had approved of the decision. The Bishop started by excommunicating her. When that failed to intimidate the Board into promising it would never again do any abortion, the Bishop removed the Catholic designation from the institution. That means that Mass can no longer be said in the chapel, even, as Kristof notes, Mass can still be said in the chapel of the local airport.
This is not the first such instance. Kristof offers other recent examples. He then writes
The National Women’s Law Center has just issued a report quoting doctors at Catholic-affiliated hospitals as saying that sometimes they are forced by church doctrine to provide substandard care to women with miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies in ways that can leave the women infertile or even endanger their lives. More clashes are likely as the church hierarchy grows more conservative, and as hospitals and laity grow more impatient with bishops who seem increasingly out of touch.
I am not going to directly address the question of whether the hierarchy is getting more conservative. On matters of church doctrine that pattern seems clear for the two most recent Popes, but that is less my concern over the conflict between the laity and the bishops.
Bishops have a teaching office. They have responsibility for ensuring the purity of the faith. Catholic Bishops are not the only ones we find who sometimes take a position of fiercely defending doctrine as they have received it. One can find the same in the Orthodox Church. One can see similar patterns among some Imams in Islam, especially but not exclusively among Ayatollahs in Shi'a Islam. Certain rabbis exercise great authority over their congregants, especially among certain sects of Hasids, but also in the role of chief rabbis in various communities among regular Orthodox. Even in religions which are not officially hierarchical one finds charismatic leaders who will dictate on matters of behavior to those who follow them.
Against this is posed the reality of the world those followers and adherents encounter in their every day lives.
While I am no longer a Christian, I remember something that was a key part of the teaching of the Orthodox Church when i was a member thereof. That Church makes great use of icons, holy images. In contrast to the Hebrew Bible and Islam, it does not fear human representation in religious art precisely because of the doctrine of the Incarnation, the idea that in Jesus assuming human form he redeemed the created world. And flowing from that idea is the notion that the truest icon - image - of God is the human being before one. This notion finds biblical support in a variety of places, notably in the Epistles of John with the argument that one cannot say one loves God if one hates his brother. When combined with the ideas in Matthew 25 of whatever one does to the least of the brethren one does also to Jesus - who is according to the creeds fully God as well as fully man - and with the the challenge of Matthew 7 about the father who would give a child asking for bread a stone, leads many who are devout Christians of many denominations to believe they must act with compassion to address the immediate need of the person before them. And thus, like the Nun on the ethics committee and the rest of the hospital's board, they responded to what they perceived as the immediate human need of the patient at hand.
Before we condemn the Bishop - which will be tempting for many who are pro-choice, I want to expand our purview of this kind of conflict.
Most here consider themeselves Progressives or Liberals (I personally prefer the latter term for myself). The vast majority identify as Democrats, although at times they get angry at official Democrats of various stripes. It might be against Bart Stupak for his political maneuverings on health care. It could be against the President because he has not yet closed Gitmo, or his administration continues to defend in Court DOMA and other things we find repugnant. Perhaps it is a local official who breaks with the party on one or more issue. Sometimes we want someone kicked out of a Congressional Caucus because they take a different position on one or more issues, or even endorse someone of another party.
I am not saying those reactions are wrong, any more than I am going to tell Bishop Olmstead that his interpretation of Catholic teaching seems to ignore something very basic contained within that teaching. I will say that we need to stop and consider this: if we support the Nun for acting on her conscience against the official teaching of the Church on the matter of abortion, should we not also be somewhat more generous when Bart Stupak acts on what is a matter of conscience for him? Or does our support for acts of Conscience only extend to those who agree with us?
This is a troubling issue, I know. Some will respond that one's conscience does not give one the right to use force to impose upon someone of a different view. On that I would agree. Blowing up an abortion clinic is wrong. So is blowing up the offices of a timber company that clear cuts. When we begin to rationalize violence we have clearly gone too far, even though there will be points that require us - perhaps reluctantly - to resort to force to prevent others from imposing upon us.
Returning to Kristof, he writes that the conflict over St. Joseph's illustrates a tension that not only exist in Catholicism, but in many traditions:
One approach focuses upon dogma, sanctity, rules and the punishment of sinners. The other exalts compassion for the needy and mercy for sinners — and, perhaps, above all, inclusiveness.
He argues that the Sister is the more Christ-like figure than the Bishop, even going so far as to offer these words:
Then along comes Bishop Olmsted to excommunicate the Christ-like figure in our story. If Jesus were around today, he might sue the bishop for defamation.
Except that the cleverness of that phrase misses a point about the very Jesus that inspires those like Sister Margaret. They do the work regardless of the cost to themselves. Why? Jesus told Peter to put down his sword. He went freely to his death, a wrongful death, as some would argue.
Churches proclaim as saints those who die for the purity of their faith. But there are also those who are definitely saintly because they live the reality of their faith.
In politics, should we condemn the person who perhaps leaves the doctrine of the party somewhat in order to achieve what s/he can on behalf of the those that doctrine is supposed to help? I wonder. Yes, we can and should discuss whether the course taken is the only one possible.
Those of us who criticize should not necessarily mute ourselves if the response is that at least they are doing some good. We have our role as well, to challenge, to ask if their might not be a better way, to inquire if the one acting has considered all of the consequences of the action being taken.
So does the Bishop, as he understands his role. But Bishops are not infallible. Popes may claim that when they speak ex cathedra they are infallible. Of course, such is a relatively new doctrine within the Catholic Church, arriving officially only in the mid-19th Century. It is a doctrine to which I offer two responses. The first was by a Russian nobleman who was a lay theologian who opined that if speaking ex cathedra the Pope could not err than the Holy Father was less free than the basest of the nobleman's serfs, for human freedom consisted precisely of the ability to make errors. The other is the response of the Pope who should be recognized as a Saint, born Angelo Roncalli, known as John XXIII, who when asked about the doctrine simply responded with humility and said it would not be an issue because he did not intend to ever speak ex cathedra.
Kristof begins his column by quoting from a Catholic paper, but one not subject to censorship by the hierarchy.
I want to offer his final paragraph, that is, final except for one word that appears afterward by itself, Hallelujah:
With the Vatican seemingly as deaf and remote as it was in 1517, some Catholics at the grass roots are pushing to recover their faith. Jamie L. Manson, the same columnist for National Catholic Reporter who proclaimed that Jesus had been "evicted," also argued powerfully that many ordinary Catholics have reached a breaking point and that St. Joseph’s heralds a new vision of Catholicism: "Though they will be denied the opportunity to celebrate the Eucharist, the Eucharist will rise out of St. Joseph’s every time the sick are healed, the frightened are comforted, the lonely are visited, the weak are fed, and vigil is kept over the dying."
Churches argue they are of divine origin. Perhaps. But they are also very much human institutions, shaped by the people who run them. Some are generous and more open, as was Angelo Roncalli, which is perhaps why he was so beloved both within and without the bounds of the Catholic Church. Similarly with the late Joseph Bernadin in Chicago, for whose funeral procession the entire city shut down.
We look for inspiration among our leaders, be they religious or political. Sometimes instead we should look for inspiration among ourselves, among the ordinary people who do the work that makes a difference.
Howard Dean told us in the last decade that we had the power. That is true of people in political parties. We are periodically reminded that even in totalitarian regimes others can demonstrate the truth of that statement, as we may be seeing across North Africa even as I write this.
It is certainly true of many religious organizations, including the Catholic Church, as Sister Margaret and the Board of St. Joseph's are demonstrating.
Dogma - it does not have to be rigid. We can and should respect how at times it has been something positive, a received understanding of wisdom and truth.
But if against that is conscience, we have a conflict. I have no right to suppress your conscience. But in a diverse society you have no right to impose by force - and that should also mean by force of law - your beliefs.
A church is a private organization under the law, even if we choose to give it tax benefits. It may impose whatever discipline it believes its rules require it to, including excommunication by Catholic Bishops of those who violate its rules. It should remember that if it fails to listen to its faithful, its leadership may find itself with ever diminishing numbers of followers, it may be subject to splits over issues of rigid application of dogma. Or it may find itself undermined from within by the quiet determination of those determined to live by the spirit of the teaching rather than the letter.
The last is often how significant change comes about. People take the risk of opposing those in authority, who argue for received tradition, on the grounds that the rigidity of the letter of that tradition is in opposition to the spirit of that tradition. We have seen it in American history. We may ultimately have needed a war and a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery, but we have moved to an ever broader understanding of who is included in America not merely by statute or constitutional interpretation - Justice Scalia notwithstanding - but by how the American people have chosen to live out their interpretation of the principles of our founding documents, or if you will, by the spirit of those documents.
It is a snow day off from school. Soon I will go out and shovel the public sidewalks on both sides of my corner lot. I will have a little shoveling of the driveway as well, although I did some of that last night in order to pick up my spouse at the Metro stop.
I have little replanning to do. Tomorrow may be a full day, it may be a 2 hour delay, it is even possible given the massive power failures that we will be closed again - why go to the trouble of clearing massive amounts of snow from buses, walks and parking lots for one day when a good deal of it will melt and evaporate over the weekend. I will not know that for sure until tomorrow morning.
I slept in, knowing that school was closed. I got up to feed the cats, then returned to slumber. When I finally arose, a full 2 hours later than normal, I read Kristof. It got me thinking.
This rambling reflection is the result.
Thanks for your patience and tolerance in reading what I have written.
Peace.