Mois : mai 2023

When I was pregnant, I lost count of the number of times I would lumber through a parking lot or out of a store, only to be cut off by someone rushing to pass me or whizz by me in their car, pregnant belly be damned. (The Venn diagram of « cars who almost hit a pregnant lady » and « cars with an overly political pro-life bumper sticker » was almost a circle.) It even happened at Mass at various parishes, where I almost got bowled over in the post-Mass rush out.

It’s true to say that there is a lack of pro-life culture in our society, but not in the polarized way you might think: I have simply found that few people think about what it means to be pro-life beyond the issue of abortion, and what it looks like to welcome life in all of its forms. 

What do we do to ensure that pregnant women and families are celebrated and accommodated for? How do we avoid the deification of procreation, knowing that other women might be suffering in silence, and honor the woman herself not just as a vessel for childbearing? These questions resonated in my heart throughout my pregnancy and thereafter, but I know it is not as simple as a list of action items: It is a choice of culture. 

I worried that our daughter’s experiences of Mass would be a horror story in the same vein. Too many times in my personal and professional life, I had heard or experienced the ways the church — which we had both served for our entire careers — turns people away in the most significant gateway moments.

All of our fears were put to rest by a parish committed to being truly and holistically pro-life and pro-family. When we reached out to our pastor, a good friend of ours, to say we would be bringing Rosie to Mass on Palm Sunday (one of the craziest days of the liturgical year!), he offered the use of his residence to arrive early and feed the baby in a comfortable and quiet setting away from prying eyes and distractions. He encouraged us to make ourselves comfortable and take our time acclimating her. The four clergy who reside there welcomed us with open arms and cries of delight to meet the baby, taking turns holding her so we could get settled. 

All around our pew during Mass, people waved at Rosie or approached us to compliment her. I admit that I often found myself bracing for a conflict, because of how common it is to have (perhaps well-meaning, perhaps not) parishioners, often much older than me, make snide comments about noisy children or about young people showing up to Mass. Thanks be to God, we were spared this! 

This is not just a love letter to my parish or a celebration of our friend who is a priest, tempting though that is. What is the most disconcerting part of what should be a happy testimony is the reality that this experience is all too rare.

It made me reflect about how many parishes trot out their « pro-life » materials in October, and around the March for Life, but do not truly express a celebration for life in its daily, messy, lived-in form? How many anecdotes have we heard of priests making comments about children’s sounds, or relegating families to a cry room, where ancient dirty toys and flimsy folding chairs hardly create a prayerful atmosphere for a family with children to worship? I fully believe parents should not abdicate responsibility for their children at Mass, but even the best soothing and discipline can fail in the face of a child still learning to moderate their feelings and volume. 

How often are young adults who slide into a pew greeted with tone-deaf comments about the lack of young people in church, but no space is made for them at the proverbial table to engage and lead? Can’t be surprised, then, when they don’t come back for Mass, let alone to be married or to baptize their children. 

I would challenge a pastor or parish staff claiming hospitality as their parish’s cardinal virtue to invite someone they trust to attend Mass anonymously at the parish as a case study: What is the lived experience, and is it truly hospitable? 

A few weeks after Rosie’s attendance at Mass for Palm Sunday and Easter, my husband and I returned to our parish (sans baby, who spent a fun night with her grandparents) to celebrate our pastor’s elevation to monsignor. Settling into the pew without a diaper bag, car seat, and dozens of burp cloths, I was able to look closely at the readings, music and paraphernalia in the pew advertising the happenings of the parish. In every pew, a card from Loyola Press had been added, entitled « All Are Welcome: How to Be A Church of Open Doors. » It identified that newcomers and people with various needs and abilities might join your parish, with some suggestions of how to be more inclusive and accommodating so that all could participate in worship together.

I found myself choking up, thinking about the value of feeling welcome. Whether your child has special needs and you wish to bring them to worship, or whether you have fallen on hard times and need to feel the closeness of community, your parish should be the first place that opens its arms to you. This is what it means to be truly pro-life and pro-family, not some billboard hawking a political stance, but a way of being that transcends the polarized.  

While our good experience is due in no small part to our professional and personal relationships, and discerning spirits in choosing the « right » parish for the job, all Catholic families of every makeup deserve the same. We need, and deserve, a church where there are fewer horror stories of the experiences of pregnant women and young families, and more celebrations of moments that express that all are truly welcome.

The statistics are numbing. The United States suffered 202 mass shootings — four or more persons killed or injured by firearms — during the first six months of 2023. Texas has had 17 mass shootings and 214 gun violence deaths so far this year. Most estimates count more weapons than people throughout the country.

Some folks blame mental health issues for every shooting. But what mental health condition? Paranoid psychosis? Sociopathic behavior? Depression? Bipolar disorder?

Perhaps the crucial ingredient is anger. Anger, at whom or at what, is for the psychiatrists to determine. But anger is clearly at the root of it all.

Anger-plus-gun equals tragedy.

So, what causes anger?

Yes, some people, with or without drugs, are detached from reality. Their anger erupts without warning.

More people, it seems, are infected with anger by an imagined reality that threatens their understanding of safety. While not every gun owner is paranoid, not every gun owner is not paranoid.

Selling anger and fear is big business. We saw what happened when QAnon exploded on the internet. Add Truth Social, Fox News and Newsmax to smaller outlets, like The Tennessee Star and NewBostonPost, and you have an electronic cauldron ready to boil over. Who, after all, can forget Jan. 6?

Anger-plus-fear-plus-guns destroys too many lives. Whether for random shootings or the horror of war, individuals or entire nations are picking up guns to solve their real or imagined disputes.

Pope Francis seems to be the only stable voice in the discussion. The normalization of guns, he told The Associated Press after a gunman killed 11 people in Monterey Park, California, in January, has led to a « habit » of resorting to guns for every difficulty. « Instead of making the effort to help us live, » said the pontiff, « we make the effort to help us kill. »

That habit is ruining civilized society and societies everywhere in the world. Normal conversation, let alone international negotiation, is virtually impossible.

In the United States, people have a particular fondness for guns, born of distortions of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. These distortions are proposed principally by the National Rifle Association and echoed by the politicians the organization supports financially.

The problem stretches far beyond rifles and pistols for sport. The AR-15 semiautomatic rifle is the mass shooter’s weapon of choice. Want one? Today, you can find some 250 AR-15-style rifles for sale on the internet by an online retailer based in Texas. Prices range from $449 to $1,749; financing available.

The NRA calls the AR-15 « America’s Rifle. » The name of the NRA’s official journal is « American Rifleman. »

Granted, some people in some states have reasons for guns — say, to shoot the menacing moose in the garden or as a real means of protection on a frozen tundra or a rural farm.

But many, if not most, states and certainly most cities should not suffer individuals wandering around with guns in their belts, and certainly not with AR-15s.

New York’s historical relationship with the NRA is perhaps instructive. In the late 19th century, the state’s Legislature and the NRA joined to acquire some 70 acres of farmland along a rail line in Queens to create a firing range. The property, the old Creed farm, was the site of international competitions until 1891. Neighbors complained so much, the NRA relocated to New Jersey, and the property eventually reverted to the state of New York.

The train stop for the property had cemented the name of the place: Creed’s moor, or Creedmoor. Soon a state hospital took over the property.

The irony is unmistakable. Today, that former NRA firing range is the campus of the largest hospital in New York, the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center.

In the opening lines of the Acts of the Apostles, the second volume of his Gospel, Luke describes the disciples’ 50-day period of learning the meaning of the Resurrection. For 40 of those days, the risen Jesus made himself known to them, revealing that he had passed through death and teaching them again what he had always taught: « The reign of God is among you » (Luke 17:21).

Luke is the only evangelist to describe Jesus’ ascension, and he ties the two volumes of his Gospel together by describing it at the end of the first and the beginning of the second (Luke 24:50-51; Acts 1:9). In Luke’s presentation, just before ascending to the Father, Jesus sent the disciples into a retreat, a 10-day time of reconstituting themselves in preparation for the experience of Pentecost (Acts 1:11-26).

Matthew, taking a very different and subtle approach to Jesus’ departure, starts this story when the myrrh-bearing women met an angel who sent them to announce that Jesus was risen and would meet his disciples in Galilee. As they obeyed those instructions, the risen Lord appeared to them, and he, too, commissioned them to announce the news and send the disciples back to where they had started. 

Matthew says nothing about what happened as the disciples retraced their steps for the 60 miles separating Jerusalem from Galilee. What did they do and say to one another along the way? What happened as they returned to where they had first fallen in love with Jesus? 

What a hard homecoming it must have been! What could they say to their friends and relatives? They had journeyed so far following a master who inspired them to leave everything behind. Now, when the news of Jesus’ execution had surely arrived before they got there, how did they face those back home whose words or gazes asked, « What now? » 

Matthew, exquisitely in tune with the symbolism of the Hebrew Scriptures, simply tells us that they went to Galilee, going like their ancestors to a mountain of encounter with God. (Remember, among others, the mountains where Noah’s ark landed, where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac, where Moses encountered the burning bush, where God gave the 10 commandments and where Jesus sat as he spoke the Sermon on the Mount.) 

There, like those who had gone before them, the disciples found themselves on that threshold of faith where amazement left them both worshiping and doubting. 

Matthew tells us so little, yet enough. There on the mountain, when the disciples saw Jesus, they truly came home. In doubt and confusion, joy and wonder, they encountered the one who knew and loved them like no other. And Jesus, knowing that mission offered them the only path to comprehending his mystery, sent them to take his message to the ends of the earth.

Jesus, who had come to understand his mission by putting it into practice, knew that no theory, no law, no dogma, no commandment can elicit genuine faith. The only path to deep belief is to step out and walk on the water of faith in the one who sends you into mission.

Inviting them to this living faith, the risen Lord told the disciples that his message of unfailing love was the only genuine power in the world. As they practiced and preached that, bringing others into communion with God, they would recognize his presence among them until the end of ages. 

The letter to the Ephesians gives us another iteration of this message. The author makes an astounding claim in these few words: « God has put all things beneath [Christ’s] feet and gave him as head … to the church which is his body, the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way » (emphasis added). 

This explains what Jesus, the promised Emmanuel/God-with-us of Matthew 1:23, meant when he promised, « I am with you until the end of the age. » Christ remains present in and through his disciples. 

As we hear in Acts, faith is an experience of knowing the presence of God and waiting/yearning for more. The narratives of the women at the tomb, of the disciples waiting in Jerusalem, and of those who returned to Galilee, all reveal Christ present in the community that strives to grow in faith. Ephesians tells us that faith in Jesus is not a belief about him, but a belief in and through the community that is his body. 

As we celebrate the feast of the Ascension of the Lord, the Scriptures teach us that genuine faith is a way of life in community. The feast of the Ascension reminds us that our vocation is to continue being and seeking God with us, « until the end of the age. »

The phrase « inside the Beltway » is not really a geographic designation. It designates a type of parochialism; specifically, it is a charge of insularity made against those who work in Washington, D.C., with a strong suspicion of elitism. And, « inside the Beltway » thinking is stalking the Democratic Party at the moment.

Two articles at Politico demonstrate the phenomenon. The first, « Biden dives into debt ceiling talks, causing mini panics among his base, » shares the concerns of mostly progressive Democrats that President Joe Biden will agree to a compromise with House Republicans on the debt ceiling fight, and that some of the items the GOP gets into the compromise will be unacceptable to the base.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, whom I greatly admire and usually agree with on economic issues, told Politico she was « very concerned » that Biden might agree to work requirements for some federal assistance programs like Medicaid, which she described as « efforts to just tangle aid recipients in red tape in the hope that they will be choked to death rather than get the help they need. »

Warren also warned that budget caps « are not cost free. They keep the economy hobbled and that means fewer people with jobs, fewer mamas with access to child care, fewer sick people who can get well and get back to work. »

Warren is right about everything but the politics. The Democrats need to do a much better job showing they are fiscally responsible with taxpayers’ dollars. At a time when many people have trouble balancing their checkbooks at the end of the month due to inflation, people want to know that the government is being careful with its money, too. As a rule, Republicans are just as willing to spend money in the form of tax cuts as Democrats are in the form of social programs, and only the latter have any socially redeeming value.

But that is not how the issue plays outside the Beltway. Republicans make it sound like the middle class are getting tax breaks when it is the wealthy who garner the vast majority of them. Democrats win on social programs that are universal like Social Security and Medicare, but need to find a better way of explaining the value of social programs that aim to give a hand up to those struggling at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. On its face, a work requirement doesn’t sound morally offensive. Opposing it is not self-explanatory. 

And, in the event, Sr. Mary Haddad of the Catholic Health Association, just delivered a fine explanation about why work requirements are « misguided and ineffective. » 

The larger messaging problem here is that so little in our contemporary, consumer society elevates solidarity as a virtue. Relatedly, liberal strategies have placed race and gender ahead of class in their calculations of how to reach voters. The combined result: Democrats have failed to articulate a political vision that is both aspirational and inclusive. 

The party leaders talk about inclusivity, but they never seem to include white working-class voters in that picture. Those voters are told they have white privilege, and privileged is not how many working-class voters feel, not since the jobs were exported, the unions were broken and opioids became the only growth industry. Then Democrats wonder why they struggle to win states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 

The other Politico story was « Democrats may only have themselves to blame for Biden’s grim approval ratings. » The article shows that Republicans spent millions on ads in the midterms that attacked Joe Biden while the Democrats tended not to mention Biden in their ads. « I don’t think people really know how much Biden was just personally pummeled throughout the entire midterms to a bunch of voters in key states and congressional districts, » according to Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, of Way to Win, the group that studied ad spending.

This article attests to a problem that is both organizational and rhetorical. The two parties are no longer cohesive party structures. Their campaigns and even their national conventions are governed by marketing strategies. Formerly, conventions hammered out platforms and platforms mattered. At some point in the 1970s and ’80s, presidential candidates realized they could satisfy activists by including particular language in the party platform but feel no obligation to act upon it once elected. This turned out to be more than a recipe for cynicism. Parties lost sight of their role in shaping public opinion, not simply catering to it. Special interest groups became vehicles for campaign funds and ideas, compounding the centrifugal forces at work.  

We saw this play out in the 2010 midterms when Republicans ran on their opposition to the Affordable Care Act, but Democrats tended to ignore the issue entirely. According to an article at the time, Democratic « party officials in Washington can’t identify a single House member who’s running an ad boasting of a ‘yes’ vote — despite the fact that 219 House Democrats voted in favor of final passage in March. » 

Guess what? The ACA remained unpopular until it became obvious to all that the GOP’s dire predictions about the law were not coming true.

The problems with messaging and organization identified by these two Politico articles are compounded by the Democrats’ problem with young people who staff campaigns. David Shor, a campaign strategist and data guru, has been most outspoken in raising the concern: Wealthy, highly educated young people are those most likely to staff Democratic campaigns, and « they tend to hold views that are both more liberal and more ideologically motivated than the views of the coveted median voter, and yet they yield a significant amount of influence over the party’s messaging and policy decisions. » This exacerbates what Doug Sosnik, writing in The New York Times, deemed « the diploma divide » in American politics, with college graduates voting overwhelmingly for Democrats and non-college voters voting overwhelmingly for Republicans.

A Democratic Party that takes its moral bearings from highly educated elites and loses the ability to speak to America’s working class is a Democratic Party that may or may not be able to win elections. But it will no longer be a party that commands the loyalty of Catholics concerned about increasing social solidarity. And the alternative, a Republican Party increasingly committed to authoritarian means and reactionary goals, is even worse! If the Democrats do not get out of the Beltway and the faculty lounge, and start talking to workers, the future is too horrible to contemplate.

Two U.S. Catholic archbishops have joined with the Japanese bishops of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to call on leaders of seven major industrialized nations, meeting in Japan May 19-21, to « undertake concrete steps toward global, verifiable nuclear disarmament. »

In an unusual shared statement released publicly on May 17, the four Catholic leaders — representing two U.S. archdioceses involved in nuclear weapons production or deployment and, in Japan, representing the only two dioceses ever destroyed by atomic bombing — urge the G-7 summit not to view expected discussions on Russia’s war in Ukraine as a barrier to conversations about disarmament.

Instead, Nagasaki Archbishop Peter Michiaki Nakamura, Hiroshima Bishop Alexis Mitsuru Shirahama, Seattle Archbishop Paul Etienne and Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico, say the Ukrainian war is « a clear demonstration of the absolute need » to discuss nuclear disarmament.

The four bishops also praise Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for choosing to host the summit in Hiroshima, which was destroyed by a U.S. atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945.

« That alone is a powerful message, » say the bishops. They also cheer the scheduled meeting between G-7 leaders and members of the hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivors.

Beyond the history of the Japanese bishops’ dioceses as sites of nuclear devastation, the bishops noted the significance of the U.S. archdioceses in ongoing nuclear armament. The Santa Fe area is home to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which helped develop the first atomic bombs and continues in nuclear weapons research. The Seattle area is home to about one-third of the nation’s deployed nuclear weapons force.

Wester has addressed nuclear issues previously. In 2022, he released a pastoral letter calling for nuclear disarmament, titled: « Living in the Light of Christ’s Peace: A Conversation Toward Nuclear Disarmament. »

The four bishops outlined a list of recommendations for G-7 leaders. The G-7 countries include the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Canada and Italy.

The bishops press the leaders to engage seriously with the site of the summit, encouraging them to « acknowledge the tremendous, long-lasting human suffering the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings inflicted upon the hibakusha, » as well as to « acknowledge the tremendous, long-lasting human suffering that production and nuclear weapons testing caused to downwinders around the world. »

The bishops also encourage the leaders to reaffirm their earlier commitments, including the statement that « a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, » and the goal « of a future world free of nuclear weapons. » 

The bishops also said G-7 leaders should « emphasize that, as the G-20 agreed to in November 2022, the use and the threat of use of nuclear weapons are ‘inadmissible.’ « 

Beyond reckoning with history and reaffirming commitments, the bishops also recommended specific policy goals.

They urged G-7 leaders to « announce and commit to concrete steps to prevent a new arms race, guard against nuclear weapons use, and advance nuclear disarmament. »

Also on May 17, more than 200 former world leaders and defense ministers, nuclear experts and diplomats released a joint statement on the occasion of the G-7 meeting to call for increased nuclear arms control and for Russia and the U.S. to « compartmentalize » nuclear arms control.

« United States-Russia strategic stability talks are in limbo and the New START treaty, which has played an indispensable role in ensuring reciprocal security, is now in question, » they wrote.

In February, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his country would stop participating in New START, a nuclear arms control treaty with the U.S. that limits both countries’ number of strategic nuclear missile launchers.

The former world leaders and experts said the U.S. and Russia should confirm « that they will not exceed the New START limits on deployed nuclear forces » and commit « to pursuing good faith negotiations on a successor framework for New START before its expiration in 2026. »

The U.S. and Japanese bishops’ statement made similar recommendations, saying the G-7 should « reiterate that serious talks should be restored between the United States and Russia to renew full implementation of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty and to negotiate a follow-on treaty. »

In their closing recommendation, the bishops urged the G-7 to take seriously their historic commitments and « honor the international mandate to enter into serious multilateral negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament, pledged more than a half-century ago in the 1970 NonProliferation Treaty. »

Signing off, « Yours in the hopes of humanity for lasting peace on earth, » the bishops wrote, « We strongly urge world leaders at the G-7 Summit to show by example how international leadership is ready, willing, and able to work with nuclear weapons and non-nuclear weapons states to ensure no country or city ever suffers the horrors of nuclear war again. »