The Elephant In The Church

Dear Friends, The following reflection is not meant to be a judgment about anyone receiving communion. I am simply wondering what is lacking in our evangelization efforts, and how we can better communicate the love of Christ to Catholics. I would love to hear your views.

Blessings and Grace!

Judy

We need to be humble and realistic, acknowledging that the way we present our Christian faith and treat other people has contributed to today’s problematic situation. We need a healthy dose of self-criticism.    Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitiae, par. 36

The entire time the discussion has ensued over divorced and remarried Catholics being admitted to Holy Communion, there have been two burning questions in my head that I’ve longed for someone to ask out loud: What percentage of all Catholics who present themselves for Communion are, objectively, in a state of grave sin? And why isn’t the Church’s leadership talking about this enormous problem, which is surely much more massive numerically than the amount of divorced and remarried people receiving Communion?

 Stated otherwise, how many Catholics who receive Communion are actively watching porn, practicing contraception, sleeping with and/or living with their boyfriends/girlfriends, having affairs, having abortions and living in a manner that is incompatible with the moral teachings of the Church? And why has so much attention been focused on the issue of divorced and remarried Catholics while the enormous elephant in the Church—the fact that statistics demonstrate that most Catholics do not follow the Church’s moral teachings—has been largely ignored? Furthermore, what’s at the root of this important problem?

I grew up Catholic in the 60’s and 70’s and was educated in Catholic schools from kindergarten through college. Like so many others of my generation, I learned little to nothing about Catholic teaching and ultimately graduated college as an agnostic—which, in retrospect, was slang for “a practicing pagan.” I had adopted the beliefs and lifestyle of the prevailing culture, much like we are seeing in the lives of so many Catholics today.

Indeed, there was a serious problem with catechesis, a problem that has undergone a major course correction thanks to the pontificates of St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. But the deeper issue was not that I’d failed to learn the teachings and rules of the Catholic Church. The real problem was that I had not met Jesus Christ and had no relationship with him. Personally encountering Christ was and is the crux of the Christian faith, and I believe this insight is what drives Pope Francis in his tireless summons for people to encounter the tender mercy and love of God.

It sounds sloganish, but how many Catholics have failed to embrace a personal relationship with Jesus Christ? How many Catholics have been sacramentalized without being evangelized, leaving them in a state of “cultural Catholicism” wherein they take comfort in the rituals and holidays of the Church without surrendering to the life-changing, soul-transforming power of the living God?

That was certainly my story, and it took being invited to an evangelical Christian church by an ex-Catholic for that to change. How grateful I remain for that blessed day when I was clearly challenged to welcome Jesus into my heart as the Lord of my life! My life has never been the same.

I wish my experience was unique, but I’ve seen this scenario play out in the lives of numerous baptized Catholics I’ve known, with a few, like me, eventually making our way back to the Catholic Church (usually due to a hunger for the Eucharist.) Many evangelical churches are filled with ex-Catholics who will tell you that they left the Catholic faith because they got “religion without relationship,” in other words, because they never came to an intimate, personal relationship with God as Catholics. This is nothing short of tragic.

I received a call not long ago from the head of the theology department at the Catholic college where I taught moral theology for seven years. “I asked some of the students which course they took at this school that changed their lives,” he shared. “A number of them said yours.” The reason? I introduced my students to the God of Jesus Christ; the God who loves us personally and passionately, the God reaches out to us with his great mercy, the God wants to have an intimate love relationship with each of us—the Lord who wishes to transform our very hearts and lives with his infinite, inestimable power.

In teaching the students about the moral life, I conveyed the message of St. John Paul II:

Following Christ is thus the essential and primordial foundation of Christian morality…this is not a matter only of disposing oneself to hear a teaching and obediently accepting a commandment. More radically, it involves holding fast to the very person of Jesus, partaking of his life and his destiny, sharing in his free and loving obedience to the will of the Father.     Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, par. 19.

Holding fast to the very person of Jesus.  This is the essence of the Christian faith, the foundational truth that must be communicated to Catholics today if we are to see the Church healed of the many moral issues it faces--the tip of the iceberg which is divorced and remarried Catholics receiving Communion.

Note: This article was previously published on Aleteia.

The Day I Kissed The Pope

We rose at the crack of dawn on a beautiful Rome morning to don our wedding attire and arrive early at St. Peter’s Square, just as we were instructed. To our surprise and delight, my husband, Mark, and I had been granted permission to have our marriage blessed by Pope Francis on the second attempt—after our first request for the “sposi novelli” blessing was turned down because we’d been “married too long.”

As the Vatican normally requires newlyweds to appear for the papal blessing within the first two months of marriage, an exception was made after we explained that Hurricane Isaac had swamped the interior of our Louisiana home with six inches of water, prompting the gutting of the house along with a yearlong delay in our honeymoon. That was only part of the crazy story of the miracle of our marriage, and the crazy miracle of having it blessed by the pope.

Never married before, Mark had lived abroad as a Catholic missionary for 27 years, with 23 of those spent headquartered in a community in Rome. After 25 years of marriage I’d been widowed for two years and, frankly, expected to remain single for the rest of my life. All of that changed when our paths converged in my parish adoration chapel, to which providence had led Mark upon his recent return to America.   We married a year and a half later, then traveled to Rome in 2013 for our first anniversary to tour Mark’s former stomping-grounds and see the newly elected pope--the man who would soon become, according to Gallup polls, “the most popular leader in the world.”  Needless to say, we were elated.

Mark and I had no idea what to expect that day, as the “sposi novelli” blessing is somewhat shrouded in mystery, lending to the intrigue and excitement of the event. Virtually no information is given to participants about what will take place, other than the instructions to arrive at 7:00 a.m. to gain entrance to a special section of seating for the noon Wednesday audience. That, plus the advice to bring snacks and water for a long day of waiting.

We sat for five hours in front of St. Peter’s Basilica in what, by noontime, was piping hot sun. Trying our best to stay fresh (and not drip sweat on our wedding attire), we sipped water and dabbed Kleenex on our damp faces as we gleefully shared wedding stories with the other newlyweds around us.

At long last, Pope Francis appeared in the popemobile and rode through the large crowd assembled in St. Peter’s Square before taking his place on the stage directly in front of us. After delivering an address in Italian about the Church being our Mother, which Mark kindly translated into my ear, the pope gave a general blessing to the thousands of attendees before making his way through the crowd, shaking hands with hundreds of the faithful over the next hour. It was now 1:30 p.m. and we still weren’t sure if we were going to meet the pope.When Vatican guards finally told us to line up in order, our hearts soared. Pope Francis came to the newlywed section and began greeting each of the hundred or so newly married couples in attendance, personally handing each person a blessed Rosary as a gift.

When our turn came, the pope extended his hand to shake mine as we walked up, and quite spontaneously, I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. A wave of panic came over me as I immediately thought: I don’t think I was supposed to do that! But the pope was quite at ease, smiling warmly as he held my hands and looked me directly in the eyes. He then turned to Mark to carry on a ten-minute conversation with him in his native Spanish. (The pope does not speak English and it was quite a stretch for him to deliver so many addresses in English during his visit to America.)

Mark and I were amazed that Pope Francis was completely present to us the entire time we spoke, as though we were the only other people with him on the planet, as though he had nothing else in the world to do but stand in the hot sun in one of the busiest public squares on earth and ask about our lives.

“He is a pope who has introduced us to a new style. He has abandoned the rituals, the courtly formalities … and so, somehow, he is very striking. No? Some boys and girls say: ‘He seems like one of our relatives.’ What do they mean by this? That there is a closeness, a proximity. I feel welcomed exactly as one of my family welcomes me,” Msgr. Dario Edoardo Viganò, Prefect of the Holy See’s Secretariat for Communications, said in an interview about his new book about Pope Francis entitled “Fidelity Is Change.”

I can tell you first hand that this is true. I kissed the pope, and it felt like I had kissed a beloved father. Moreover, the successor of St. Peter gazed into my eyes—looked into me, looked through me, looked at me with the penetrating eyes of Jesus Christ. I felt seen as I’ve rarely felt seen by another human being in my entire life, and I will never forget the experience. Surely it was that same look that drew people to Jesus.

“Please pray for me,” the pope said sincerely as he closed our conversation in broken English.

And I have, without fail, every day since. Just like I pray for my own father.

Note: This article was previously published on Aleteia.

The Hidden Glory of the Cross: What the Blessing Looks Li

Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

Luke 1:42

“What does it take to get the blessing?” I asked my spiritual director, Sandy, two years ago as I walked through the front door of her home in a huff.

“The question is not what it takes to get the blessing,” Sandy replied pointedly. “It’s what you perceive the blessing to be.”

Her comment came after I’d shared the news that my then-25-year-old son-in-law, had just been diagnosed with cancer—the same week Sandy had directed me to beg for the grace to truly know and experience God’s tender love for me.

“My son-in-law has cancer,” I spit out as I entered her home for our weekly meeting, where she was leading me through the 19th Annotation of St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. “Is that how God demonstrates his tender love for me? By sending more suffering?” I scoffed. “I can’t seem to get the freaking blessing.”

“You keep thinking that the blessing means that everything goes well in your life,” Sandy countered. “A Catholic understanding of the blessing is that we know that God is with us and we trust his love for us no matter what circumstances life delivers. You’ve bought in to the prosperity gospel,” she pushed further, “and I want you to spend the next week renouncing that false belief from the core of your being.”

Bam! Sandy had hit the nail right on the head. Needless to say, it was a painful week of renunciation.

Before Sandy confronted the problem directly, it wasn’t so clear to me that I was a card-carrying member of the “Secret Prosperity Gospel Club.” But somewhere, I had definitely bought into a specific idea of what the “blessing” looks like: a happy marriage, successful kids, good health, financial stability, etc.—in other words, a life where all goes well. With that paradigm tucked deep into my mind, I’d spent much time and energy over the years not only comparing myself to others who appeared to have the “blessing,” but also wrestling with God about why his “blessing” had eluded me, especially as multiple tragedies visited our lives. The fact that Sandy pegged the problem so precisely prompted me, at long last, to nail to the cross the insidious lie that a blessed life equals a prosperous life, and that my life was therefore cursed.

Now let’s be clear: I do not attend a church that teaches the prosperity gospel; nor do I follow a single mega-church TV minister who preaches this popular, culture-friendly message. I am Catholic—one of more than a billion people in the world who attend a church where the crucified Christ is the focal point of our worship. In spite of that, a virulent strain of the prosperity gospel somehow seeped into my heart and brain; a “gospel” that essentially looks like this: I believe that my will should be done on earth. And when it’s not—for example, when people get sick, when they die young, when children have serious life crises, when finances crash—I conclude that God’s “blessing” is not on my life.

This false and frankly, un-Christian, belief wreaked havoc in my soul as I grasped for my way, my will to be done in the face of tremendous suffering, which included the deaths of a stepson, two brothers and my husband, Bernie—all in a few short years. It was after our lives imploded with loss—with this new diagnosis of cancer being the last straw—that I finally discovered the paradox that only a surrendered life is a blessed life, with the most blessed life of all being a life that is fully surrendered to God. Those are the terms of God’s kingdom.

I have learned that Christianity is not for wimps or for those who want the soft, easy way. No. It’s strong medicine for those who desire to be Christ-like, which means taking up one’s cross, dying to oneself and uttering the often gut-wrenching prayer: Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.

Christians are called to live in a land where swords that pierce hearts are willingly embraced, where glory is revealed through open wounds, and where the fragrant aroma of holiness pours forth from souls who have been tried and tested—and found to be true. This is the hallowed ground of our Savior, and his Mother. And as their lives clearly tell us, it’s territory that’s accessed only by way of surrendered acceptance of the cross.

“The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God,” St. Paul tells us in his First Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 1:18).

Truly, I am finally being saved. Through the cross and from my own twisted notion of what the “blessing” looks like.   Better late than never.

Note: This article was previously published on Aleteia.

At the Crux of the Culture of Death

On this holiest of days, I carry each and every one of you and your intentions in my heart as I walk through the streets of New Orleans making a pilgrimage of prayer to nine churches. Please enjoy today's guest blog by my daughter, Kara Klein.   May you and yours rejoice in the fruit of the Redemption and soon experience the victory and hope of Christ's Resurrection.      Blessings and grace,    Judy

iMac.  iPhone.  iPad.  iPod.  These machines with “I” rule our society.  And it’s interesting that they are all marked with an apple bitten into them, because the deadliest fruit of all is the inordinate focus on self.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love Mac products and use them all the time.  But I think it symbolically says a great deal about where our culture is.

We have never been so consumed with ourselves (particularly this younger generation).  And simultaneously, we are living in an unprecedented culture of death.  Many of us don’t see it, we are blind to it on a daily basis, but we are surrounded by abortion, gang violence, drugs, suicide, and now ever increasing sex trafficking.

What has come over our society?

When I go and speak to young people, the main thing I talk to them about is joy.  Where do we find our joy?  How do we become happy in our lives?  We don’t even know the answer anymore.

We are so bombarded with unceasing noise from the media that sex, power, money and fame are going to make us happy; that happiness is being able to do whatever feels good at any moment, despite what it may cost our future, our wellbeing, and especially others around us.  We are constantly told to put ourselves first, first, first.  And it is death, death, death to our joy.

I think that generations before us—perhaps even merely fifty years ago!—knew a very basic truth that our society seems to have forgotten:

It is in losing our lives that we find them.

It is only in giving of ourselves, forgetting ourselves, losing ourselves in service, learning to love today—wherever we are in our lives—that we find authentic joy.

When I speak this fundamental truth to young people today, it’s the most exciting news for them!  I tell them:

You don’t have to wait to live a life of love!  You don’t have to wait until you’re married, or until you’re in religious life. You are called to love today!  You are called to be a saint today!  You are called to give your life in service to your friends and your family, your community, to those around you today!  To live a love that is free, faithful, total and fruitful today, where you are, even at 13, or 17, or 27 years old.  And whatever you live today is what you will bring into your future tomorrow.  But it is only in loving—truly living a life of love as Christ did—that we discover the joy we are looking for.

Authentic love gives us life; selfishness brings death.  Is it really surprising then that the more we turn in on ourselves, and isolate from our families, friends, communities, and most of all from God, that we have a generation that has lost the joy of living?  That does not even want to live their own lives?

I saw an acronym for JOY the other day written outside of an old church.  It may be a little cheesy, but I think it is the truth, and I think it’s a message that our society is desperately needs. It simply said:

Jesus

Others

You.

Reading Sinners the Riot Act In the Year of Mercy

Rembrandt: Moses Breaks the Tablets of the Law

We want to live this Jubilee Year in light of the Lord’s words: Merciful like the Father.     Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, par. 13

Maybe what the Catholic faithful need to hear isn't more platitudes about mercy but rather, a call to repentance, atonement for sin, and obedience? Maybe we need a stern warning to clean up our acts or face the consequences?...They do not need to be reminded how merciful God is - they are already taking him for a fool - an indulgent father who never imposes any consequences.  That's precisely the problem…we need to be read the riot act, not to be patted on the head.

From a reader’s comment on my blog: Why Mercy Makes Us Uncomfortable  

Believe me. I get it. There a few people in my own life to whom I’d like to read the riot act right now. And frankly, had I not tried that trick in the past and watched it go over like a dirty bomb, I might be less inclined to hold myself back.

Besides that, it’s the Year of Mercy. Not the Year of Reprimands. Not the Year of Dressing People Down. Not the Year of Slapping Others Over the Head to Tell Them What Screw-ups They Are. Tempting as those might be, it’s the Year of Mercy.   We are called, as we’ve been hearing at the close of every Mass, to “be merciful as the Father is merciful.”

Which begs the question: What does the Father’s mercy look like?

We get a glimpse of that reality in Pope Benedict XVI’s Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love), as well as in Pope Francis’ Misericordiae Vultus (The Face of Mercy), which seems to contain a very intentional echo of Benedict on the themes of love, justice and mercy. Just take a look. (While I offer a lengthy quote from each document, please treat yourself to reading both in their entirety.)

Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, par. 10, 12:

Israel has committed “adultery” and has broken the covenant; God should judge and repudiate her. It is precisely at this point that God is revealed to be God and not man: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel!...my heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst” (Hos 11:8-9). God’s passionate love for his people—for humanity—is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice. Here Christians can see a dim prefigurement of the mystery of the Cross: so great is God’s love for man that by becoming man he follows him even into death, and so reconciles justice with love…(Jesus’) death on the Cross is the culmination of God turning against himself in which he gives himself in order to raise man up and save him. This is love in its most radical form.”

Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, par. 21:

The experience of the prophet Hosea can help us see the way in which mercy surpasses justice. The era in which the prophet lived was one of the most dramatic in the history of the Jewish people. The kingdom was tottering on the edge of destruction; the people had not remained faithful to the covenant; they had wandered from God and lost the faith of their forefathers. According to human logic, it seems reasonable for God to think of rejecting an unfaithful people; they had not observed their pact with God and therefore deserved just punishment: in other words, exile. The prophet’s words attest to this: “They shall not return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me” (Hos 11:5). And yet, after this invocation of justice, the prophet radically changes his speech and reveals the true face of God: “How can I give you up, O Ephraim! How can I hand you over, O Israel!...My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come to destroy” (Hos 11:8-9)….God does not deny justice. He rather envelopes it and surpasses it with an even greater event in which we experience love as the foundation of true justice…God’s justice is his mercy given to everyone as a grace that flows from the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus the Cross of Christ is God’s judgement on all of us and on the whole world, because through it he offers us the certitude of love and new life.

Do you hear what our popes are saying? God has already exacted his justice upon mankind, and it came in the form of the God-man dying on the Cross out of love for every one of us. The crucifixion of the innocent Lamb of God is God’s verdict against sinful mankind; God himself has already paid the price for sin. God’s infinite mercy is thus offered in love, given as gift and received through faith in Christ. This teaching is called the Good News.

So instead of reading people the riot act, why don’t we follow the lead of our popes and tell them that God loves them passionately and personally, and that he longs for his wild, gratuitous love to fulfill their deepest desires and completely transform their lives. All they need do is surrender. Now that a truth worth rioting—and dying for.

Giving What Is Holy To Dogs

The Spouse of Christ must pattern her behaviour after the Son of God who went out to everyone without exception.              Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, par. 12

Sitting in our gloriously sunny, tranquil parish adoration chapel, I had just finished underlining a very beautiful section of Deus Caritas Est (God Is Love) by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI:

Seeing with the eyes of Christ, I can give to others much more than their own outward necessities; I can give them the look of love which they crave. Here we see the necessary interplay between love of God and love of neighbor which the First Letter of John speaks of with such insistence. If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of God…Only my readiness to encounter my neighbor and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well.

I was reading the Encyclical as a personal penance for my habitual sin of judging others, which I had confessed to a priest only four days earlier.  Before I knew it, my pernicious habit took over and I began thinking about a particular political candidate whom I consider to be perfectly godless. He clearly has no contact with God, I thought, reflecting on the words of the Encyclical. “That’s pretty obvious by the way he assumes that all immigrants are enemies with malicious intentions, instead of seeing them as God’s children who are genuinely in need of mercy. Jesus, teach me to love my neighbor,” I prayed, “and to see you in those in need.”

While I pondered these thoughts a man knocked on the chapel door, indicating that he was not a regular since he didn’t know the code to let himself in. Leaning over in my chair to open the glass door, my eyes met those of a disheveled, tattooed twenty-something looking person with long, dirty hair. He came in and took a seat in the leather chair across the aisle from mine, then began to stare into space looking quite disturbed. My first instinct was to thank God that there was another woman in the chapel with me, because the man was suspicious looking, at best. I then began to wonder if he was a drug addict in need of money, and thanked God that my purse was locked in my car. After about ten minutes of his aimless staring, I started to feel frightened, as I sensed he was up to something sinister. Just then, he stood up to leave.

“Can you open the door for me again when I come back?” the stranger asked. “I forgot something in my car.”

“Sure,” I smiled stiffly, thinking: Oh, dear God, what could he be going to get from his car? My heart began to race as my mind ran off on a tangent, and within 60 seconds of the stranger’s departure I had concluded that he was going to get a gun from his vehicle, and I was facing imminent death as a martyr right in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

“Excuse me,” I impulsively whispered to the woman seated in front of the chapel, who was completely oblivious to the stranger until now. “I think the man who just came in is unstable, and he went to get something from his car. I’m scared of what he’s going to do. Do you think we should call for help?” I asked, motioning to the phone on the wall.

Before she had a chance to answer, the stranger knocked on the door again, and I squinted through the glass to see if he was carrying a weapon. Seeing nothing, I bent over again to let him in, this time quite haltingly.

“I forgot this in my car,” he said as he reached into his pocket. I held my breath. Out came an empty holy water bottle, which he simply wanted to fill. “My dog is dying and I figured I’d try blessing him as a last resort,” he smiled, suddenly looking innocent as a lamb.

I pulled the drawer next to me open to retrieve the holy water bottle, then watched shame-faced as he filled his little container with the blessed sacramental.

“Take the wooden beam out of my eye, Lord,” I prayed after the poor man left, embarrassed over my judgment of both him and the political candidate.

I had definitely gotten the point. And I could almost hear God giggling in the silence.

Note: This article was previously published on Aleteia.

Why Mercy Makes Us Uncomfortable

In his second Encyclical, Dives in Misericordia…Saint John Paul II highlighted the fact that we had forgotten the theme of mercy in today’s cultural milieu: “The present day mentality, more perhaps than that of people in the past, seems opposed to a God of mercy, and in fact tends to exclude from life and to remove from the human heart the very idea of mercy. The word and the concept of ‘mercy’ seem to cause uneasiness in man, who, thanks to the enormous development of science and technology, never before known in history, has become the master of the earth and has subdued and dominated it.”

Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, para. 11

Something very strange happened on Tuesday. Thousands of people in Louisiana, including my sixteen-year-old son, Benjamin, and myself, were sequestered to closets and bathrooms under the immediate threat of a tornado in our area. Hurricanes we’re used to. Tornadoes no.

I sat on the ground in our small powder room with Benjamin’s lacrosse helmet on my head, clutching my rosary and praying for God’s mercy for all in the storm’s path. Our phone alarms had sounded moments earlier alerting us to an imminent threat in our vicinity, and multiple texts had arrived from family members telling us to take cover as they watched minute-by-minute news coverage of a twister aiming right at us.

From the bathroom floor, I pulled up the news on my laptop so I could see how close the tornado was to us. Suddenly, it occurred to me how unnervingly strange it is that the technology exists to give us a blow-by-blow report on a tornado that might be headed directly for our neighborhood—but that nothing could actually be done to protect us from its wrath. It reminded me that a direct confrontation with the power of nature serves up a sobering wake up call of just how vulnerable we human beings really are, as many of us have learned in recent years in the face of natural disasters.

Interestingly, I had been chewing on Pope Francis’ abovementioned quote by Saint John Paul II all day, trying to figure out why and how mercy makes us uneasy. But the answer didn’t hit me until I was huddled in the bathroom praying for mercy!

Mercy makes us uncomfortable because it necessitates the admission of our powerlessness, and the acknowledgement that we are not, in fact, God. Mercy crashes our illusions that we are masters of the earth because of our technological prowess, calling us to confront the reality that we are not in control. Mercy demands that we have the humility to concede that we are creatures who are utterly dependent on God—creatures that would cease to exist if he turned his omnipotent glance away from us for one millisecond.

To seek the mercy of God is to experience what Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI) referred to as a personal “Copernican revolution,” wherein we come to see that we are not the center of the universe, and that God is. As such, we must begin “to accept quite seriously that we are one of many among God’s creatures, all of which turn around God as their center.” (Joseph Ratzinger, What It Means to Be a Christian, 70-71)

Looking at the world around us, it is apparent that we don’t like to admit our own poverty and frailty, nor do we tolerate well the poverty and frailty of others. Asking for and extending mercy requires that we do both: recognize our human fragility and our profound need for help, while “return(ing) to the basics…to bear the weaknesses and struggles of our brothers and sisters.” (Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, para. 10)

 Frankly, we’d rather not. And it shows in the way we live, the values we embrace and the leaders we elect. Which is precisely why Pope Francis, following the lead of St. John Paul II, unceasingly pushes for what he insists is an “urgent” need for the proclamation and witness of mercy in the world.

Note: This article was previously published on Aleteia.

Being Pro-Life In A Pro-Choice Political Dynasty

The whole clan (almost) at Grandma's.

We must admit that the practice of mercy is waning in the wider culture. In some cases the word seems to have dropped out of use. However, without a witness to mercy, life becomes fruitless and sterile, as if sequestered to a barren desert. Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, para. 10

The poignant, personal statement by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about the death of Antonin Scalia, and the ensuing details of their warm friendship, has brought to mind the close relationship I enjoy with my some of my own family members who serve in the political arena—loved ones with whom I have deep differences over the issue of abortion.

My teeth were cut on the campaign trail, as I grew up in a highly political family of Louisiana Democrats, wherein one or more of my immediate relatives have held public office almost continuously since I was born in 1960. Memories of my childhood are replete with door-to-door canvassing, rallies and working long hours alongside my siblings and cousins in various campaign headquarters in New Orleans. There we answered phones, ran endless copies of flyers on Xerox machines and addressed, stamped, and sealed envelopes until our fingers were raw. At rallies, we handed out yard signs and bumper stickers, blew up hundreds of colored balloons with helium and sang homespun songs for our candidates. Politics, and its inherent idealism of making the world a better place, was at the center of our lives.

Our boisterous Catholic clan was extremely family oriented, with two lone brothers spawning nineteen children in less than a dozen years—my parents’ 10 and Uncle Moon and Aunt Verna’s nine. (We won the race because we got a set of twins:)  Sundays included shared lunches at Grandma’s house after church, where we lingered to play jacks, card games and jump rope over the dueling smells of Paw Paw’s sweet pipe and Uncle Moon’s strong cigar. I adore the smell of pipes and cigars to this day, as both instantly transport me back to memories of family gatherings over Grandma’s rump roast and gravy.

Summers brought us all together at the rustic camp that Grandma bought on Lake Pontchartrain in 1963, where swimming, fishing, boating, skiing and crabbing kept us, and many of our friends, entertained from dawn until dark in the scorching Southern heat. The pinnacle of summer was our Fourth of July celebration, when we raised the family flag that rested on Paw Paw’s coffin when he died in 1967, then recited the Pledge of Allegiance and read aloud the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution. Uncle Moon’s short speech about appreciating the gifts of freedom and democracy that we enjoy in our great nation preceded the singing of “America the Beautiful.” We were proud to be Americans and Landrieus.

Sadly, the winds of change crept in during those precious years, bringing with them drugs, rebellion, a confused post-Vatican II church, contraception, radical feminism, and the new law of the land, abortion on demand. I was swept up into much of the Cultural Revolution, but somehow, by God’s grace, I always knew with certainty that abortion was wrong. Whether it was the Natural Law or the sensus fidei at work, no one ever had to tell me that killing an unborn child in its mother’s womb was a grievous offense. Furthermore, no one had to convince me that a pregnant woman was carrying an actual child, given the fact that I had nine siblings and numerous cousins, with almost half of them younger than I.

Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973, the year I became a teenager.   I didn’t think much about the issue of abortion until senior year in high school, when a close friend of mine became pregnant and had an abortion. Suddenly, what had previously been clearly wrong was now a “necessary choice.” Freedom became associated with the ability to choose for oneself, and even the ability to define reality according to one’s own perceptions. Thus began the slippery slope that slid our nation headlong into 60,000,000 aborted babies, with some of my family members ultimately leading the national charge for abortion rights by way of their political power.

I’ve prayed, fasted, and grieved hard about my family’s pro-choice stance over the years—the very issue that eventually pushed me into the Republican Party by default. When possible, I’ve tried to persuade those I love to see the light. Some conversations have gone well, others not so much.

I imagine that Justice Scalia must have felt real grief over what he saw unfold before his eyes during his long tenure on the Supreme Court—not only because he was a jurist who believed that the Constitution nowhere permitted a woman the right to abort her child, but also because he was a devout Catholic who firmly believed in the sanctity of human life. Even so, he worked side by side and apparently enjoyed intimate friendship with people who assumed a completely different stance than he did on abortion (as well as on marriage and other moral issues). I was genuinely surprised to learn this fact about him but am heartened by his example, especially during this Year of Mercy when Pope Francis is challenging us to re-think the way we go about relationships, especially at a time in history where mercilessness and rancor seem to rule the day.

There is a time and a place to stand strong for what we believe, particularly when standing firm for what is right and true affects the direction our future takes, both individually and corporately. But there is also a time and a place to put painful, divisive things aside for the sake of strengthening relationships, for the sake of growing in understanding of one another, for the sake of cultivating friendship.

Humility and charity demand that we don’t have to engage the fight every chance we get, don’t have to win every argument or prove we are right all of the time (or even most of the time for that matter). In fact, sometimes we win more through listening, through kindness, through love. That’s one thing that Nino Scalia’s towering legacy is saying to me, and I am taking note.

This article was previously published on Aleteia.

Birthing Grace

I wish I could have captured that moment in time. Forever. It was silent, sacred, sacramental.

I stood at the bedside of my daughter, Gaby, on Holy Saturday morning as she prepared to give birth. The room was cool and dimly lit, filled to the brim with the anticipation of new life. As I closed my eyes to pray for a safe delivery between Gaby’s instructed pushes, I entered into the sacrosanct silence of the room; the quiet hush of awe and reverence that comes in waiting for a child to be born.

Only one sound pierced the stillness—the steady beat of the baby’s heartbeat registering on the monitor rhythmically: thump, thump, thump.

Standing with my eyes shut tight, listening attentively to the baby’s heartbeat, I sensed the heart of Jesus pulsating with love for the world. Thump, thump, thump, I heard the God-man’s heart ringing out. I thought about the meaning of Holy Saturday—a day of anticipation, a time of looming rebirth, a period of waiting for the full bloom of love to burst forth from God’s heart, the same heart that had been silenced on Good Friday. It was a fitting day for Rose Grayson to be born.

Rose’s annunciation came the week before her father learned he had cancer, ushering in what would become a “Triduum” kind of year. A young family discovering they were pregnant and facing the reality of human mortality in one sweeping breath, moving from happy excitement to fear and grief, embracing the mysteries of life and death all at once. The hopeful expectation of a new baby, made present alongside the agony of not knowing the outcome of a cancer diagnosis. Baby readying, and the accompanying labor of cancer testing, surgeries, and waiting for results. The paradox of the cross, presented with penetrating clarity.

Then came the final prognosis: cancer free! And the ultrasound news: a girl, the first to join three brothers! I watched the little family move out of Good Friday as healing rays came and life resumed its course with renewed vigor and purpose. And now it was Holy Saturday, the day of Rose Grayson’s birth.

The womb is not unlike Jesus’ tomb, I pondered, waiting to see Rose’s tiny face. In a place of dark silence, an enclosed border establishes a clear boundary with the world, and life secretly does its bidding until the darkness is overcome with a burst of brilliant light. Suffering offered and labor pains become cries of joy: He is Risen! It’s a girl!

In the silent enclosure of a birthing room, I gave thanks to God. Grace has ushered in a resurrection. God has given us “Rosie Grace.”

Your death, Lord Jesus, is our life . Your grave the womb of radiant light.

Hymn for Holy Saturday Evening, The Vigil of The Resurrection

Catching the Faith

Please enjoy this re-post of my last Easter blog.  This Easter, I was busy welcoming my new granddaughter, Rose Grayson, to our family.   She is blessed to have three big brothers and her parents, Gaby and Grayson, to pass the faith to her. Happy Easter!

“Christos Anesti ek nekron, thanato thanaton patisas, kai tis en tis mnimasi zoin harisamenos,” my little grandsons chanted in unison as I watched happily in surprised silence. “Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs, granting life,” the boys rang out in Greek, singing the ancient paschal troparion taught to them by my son-in-law, Grayson. Five-year-old James looked entranced, while two-year-old John-Henry danced around the room, slapping his hips and throwing his hands into the air to provide dramatic effect at just the right moments. Even baby Joseph, who just turned one, chimed in.

“Catholicism is caught, not taught,” I thought as I observed the children singing, remembering the familiar adage from Catholic theology that I’ve quoted numerous times to my students. “We don’t sit a one-week-old infant down and tell him everything he’ll ever need to know about the Catholic faith,” I’ve explained repeatedly when teaching how the truths of our faith are passed down in tact from one generation to the next.   Instead, we start with songs, pictures and simple blessings. We take the kids to Mass, point out statues and stained glass windows, and maybe light a candle for those we love. We read Bible stories, whisper prayers in the dark when bad dreams invade the night, and sing—in Greek if we so desire—the deep mysteries of our faith, learned on an I-phone while riding in the van. That’s how our children catch the faith, and it’s how we, in turn, catch it back from them.

Catholicism has been “caught” for two thousand years the very same way; that is, through the habits of a living Church that hands on its living faith via time-honored practices that grow organically and culturally throughout history. We call these practices “traditions,” and they are meant to embody and express Sacred Tradition--which is the Truth that Jesus deposited into the Church through His life, death and resurrection, and through the relationships and institutions He established.

The concept of living faith comes down to us from our Jewish ancestors, and was embraced by the Christian Church:

“Take to heart these words which I command you today. Keep repeating them to your children. Recite them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them on your arm as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your houses and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).

In other words, we are to let our faith in God permeate everything we think and say and do. Which doesn’t mean that we’re on our knees 24/7, or that we escape our broken human condition. It does mean, however, that we invite God into all things, and that we remember that He is with us at all times.

Part of the crisis we are facing in our Christian culture is the direct result of the dichotomy that exists between faith and life, due in large part to a modern world that compartmentalizes and hyper-specializes every aspect of life. Our lives have become neatly divided into measurable functions and categories, reducing the expression of Christian faith to a perfunctory Sunday visit. But it is not meant to be so. Our fathers in faith reminded us that the “split between the faith which many profess and (our) daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age.”* Further,  they teach us that harmony should exist between our faith in Christ and all of our earthly activities.

I heard that harmony Monday night in the voices of little children, as they chanted, “Christ is risen from the dead” during a family vacation. Yes indeed, they are catching the faith. And they’re throwing it back to me.

*Par. 43, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Second Vatican Council