Chevalier de la charité

Thaddeus O’Sullivan’s new Sony Pictures Classics film « The Miracle Club » makes miracles palatable to the secular viewer. 

The film purports that miracles aren’t lightning strikes from God, but rather moments in which ordinary men and women summon supernatural amounts of grace and courage. In short, « The Miracle Club » forgoes the salt of Christianity for the sugar of humanism. While this may lack flavor for some Catholic viewers, it’s a worthwhile appetizer for just about anyone else. 

What is the sweet spot between ideological accessibility and doctrinal adherence? Should we create more films for the Christianity-curious but pew-shy? Is there merit in Catholic-adjacent films that you can watch and discuss with your agnostic and atheist friends? Is Lourdes for everyone? Are miracles for everyone, even nonbelievers?

« The Miracle Club » is set in 1967 Dublin and opens to a sweet and funny sequence of Lily (Maggie Smith), Eileen (Kathy Bates) and Dolly (Agnes O’Casey) competing in a church talent show for the chance to visit the baths at Lourdes, the holy site in France. They hope the visit will give Dolly’s son, who does not speak, his voice. The women win the tickets, and then harangue, threaten and trick their husbands into taking on the housework in their absence. 

But a wrench is thrown in their plans right as they’re about to leave for Lourdes. Chrissie (Laura Linney) returns to their small town, unannounced and unexpected after 40 years in America. Slowly, the film reveals that Chrissie isn’t just an estranged neighbor: She was Eileen’s best friend and Lily’s deceased son’s teenage love. At the encouragement of the local priest and to the dismay of the other women, Chrissie joins the Lourdes pilgrimage at the last minute.

The group goes to Lourdes, and while I won’t ruin the story, I will say that Linney personifies mercy and grace in her portrayal of Chrissie. I had the chance to speak with the actress (« Ozark, » « The Big C, » « Love Actually ») and asked where she encounters mercy, as her tender performance suggests an intimate acquaintance with the virtue. 

Linney told me:

Most of the really important lessons and qualities in my life, I have learned from the theater and from being in the theater. And being in service to the theater … Some people learn them in church, some people learn them in various [other] places but me, it’s the arts. I see mercy in the arts, everywhere.

For someone like me, who considers the theater its own kind of sacred, Laura’s words rang true  and returned me to my original line of thought: Who should tell Catholic stories — and how should they tell them?  

Linney found something big and important in creating this character. And while church and Scripture have always been, and will continue to be, my fount of mercy and justice, I’d be lying if I said secular theater, film, music and art have not also served as paradigms to deepen my understanding of virtue. Perhaps that’s the wrong word. Perhaps films like « The Miracle Club » act more like prisms through which I can examine my own moral absolutism in challenging and important ways.

This film does a commendable job of explaining that the majority of modern-day miracles are, in fact, simply the ways we choose to love and forgive each other — even if the film fails to credit the source of that love and forgiveness.

Some may consider that omission the great weakness of « The Miracle Club. » But maybe it’s  also the film’s great strength. You can take your non-Christian friends to this film and share your faith in a way they will be able to receive. You can find common ground on forgiveness, mercy and grace — words that many people sadly find antithetical to Catholicism, either from personal experience or media-fed perception.

You can use this film as an opportunity, not to talk at your secular friends, but instead, to listen. Where do they believe mercy comes from? Do they believe in miracles? Are they looking for one and, if so, how can you help?

Some Catholic viewers may find it hard to watch a film about Lourdes that references the miracles of St. Bernadette and Our Lady as dubious rumors rather than church-approved apparition. But if you’re looking for films that celebrate Lourdes in its totality, they already exist.

Perhaps it was time for a film that told the story from a new perspective to new audiences. And if Bernadette’s faith could reach even one person from this film, wouldn’t that be a miracle? 

You gotta love it. Jesus, the son of a tekton (Greek for a woodworker, stone mason or builder/architect), invited fishermen to follow him, and then went around telling stories about farmers, baker women, shepherds and rich landowners — not a carpenter in the collection.

Jesus’ forays into the realm of other professions reminds us of 19th-century Catholic sisters who did the work most needed at any given time and place. They turned schools into hospitals and their homes into orphanages. One even befriended Billy the Kid. They did it all, certain that with God’s help, they were capable of serving their neighbor, no matter their preparation or preferences. These sisters exemplified the promise we hear from Isaiah: Like the rain, the word/work of God will never be in vain. If God calls you to do something, it will work out somehow — with or without your understanding.

Not only did Jesus talk about a wide variety of occupations, but he did it with parables — stories designed to leave people wondering. That was the key to his teaching technique. No pat answers, but examples that could be understood in a number of ways, all of them designed to knock people off their high horses. We know that if a parable doesn’t upset or challenge us, we haven’t heard it right.  

That’s part of what we learn from today’s selection from Isaiah. Isaiah assures us that no matter what we think is going on, as surely as rain waters earth, God is working deep inside evolution. Although it may be subtle and slow, as frustratingly invisible as irrigation from snow melt, God’s word is never without effect: It gradually draws all things toward their fulfillment. That is Paul’s proclamation in today’s selection from Romans; he paints the image of all of creation groaning in giving birth to God’s unimaginable future — the glorious freedom of the children of God.  

Paul’s image of giving birth is very much like Jesus’ parable of the seeds: we plant something, believing that what will come of it will be much greater, newer and full of life than what we began with. In the interpretation the evangelists have given Jesus’ parable of the farmer sowing seed, the focus is on the soil – on how God’s word is received. But what if we looked for a minute at the sower?  

Dom Hélder Camara, the late archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Brazil, wrote one of his poem-prayers, « King’s son, » in The Desert is Fertile, about God and the seed. He began by asking God why creation is so wasteful, why fruits never equal the seedlings’ abundance, why springs scatter water and why we can never take advantage of all the energy the sun sends out. Instead of waiting for an answer, he prays, « May your bounty teach me greatness of heart. … Seeing you a prodigal and open-handed giver, let me give unstintingly, like a king’s son, like God’s own. »

We can think about our failures, the times we’ve been like seeds on the path and not paid reverent attention to someone. We can lament our lack of hope or courage to be faithful, the times when we’ve let stuff, popularity or status override our value systems. We can spend a lifetime bewailing what we have done and focusing on ourselves.

Suppose that instead we look to God’s bounteousness? Suppose that we concentrate on that crazy sower who thinks he has enough seed to scatter it all over, figuring that what sprouts but doesn’t flourish will provide nourishment to the soil and that the birds will carry seed to far off places that he could never reach on foot? Suppose we thought of God as giving us chance after chance, not worrying much about what withers but rejoicing in the thirty, sixty and hundredfold — or maybe even just ten? 

What will make us more God-like, focusing on our failures or exulting in those moments when we know God has worked through us to bring about something wonderful? That could be the birth of a child, the moment when the right word came to us to console someone or more unusual things like a friendship with Billy the Kid. What if we took Isaiah seriously, believing that God’s work keeps on keeping on, whether we notice it or not?

Jesus recognized and rejoiced in God’s fruitful work in the world. He saw it in plants and animals, fishers, bakers, rich and poor. Today he sees it in parents, teachers, garbage collectors and all sorts of others — including, of course, carpenters. Blessed are our eyes when we can see others as he did; for that’s how the power of his word gets into us, making us and our communities fertile and fruitful, fulfilling the will of the God who gives us life.

The Sobrato Organization is a multigenerational, family-owned firm based in California’s Silicon Valley. For more than 65 years, the Sobrato family has been developing commercial real estate for high-growth companies, building multifamily communities and investing in entrepreneurial enterprises.

The Sobrato family is now trying to help with one of the region’s most enduring challenges: creating more affordable housing. In May, the Sobrato Family Foundation paid $26.1 million for a 68-unit apartment building in Santa Clara, California. The purchase is part of a pilot project to test solutions for solving the housing crisis.

John Sobrato, the chairman of the organization, told NCR in a recent interview that he and his family hoped the purchase of the building will keep rents affordable for middle- and low-income individuals and families. « Our goal is to offer current and future residents safe and stable affordable housing, » he said.

Following is the interview with Sobrato, edited for length and clarity. 

NCR: What led you and the Sobrato Organization to decide to tackle one of the most challenging problems of our time — affordable housing — especially here in the middle of Silicon Valley?

Sobrato: My two sons and their cousins have been really pressing my generation (the ones running the business) to think a little more holistically, which is not easy. The objective now is to add mission, where it makes sense to, in what we’re doing.

There are three components to what we’d like to do: preservation, production and policy.

I think we can actually make the most difference in preservation and policy. We certainly need to produce more housing, but it’s difficult because for 50 years there’s been a lack of political will to build enough housing to meet demand.  

The cost to build housing in Silicon Valley today is $750,000 to $800,000 per unit. The only way to make that affordable is by buying the project down through grants and low-income housing tax credits. We have been a bridge for Catholic Charities as they layer up all their financing to build affordable housing, providing some grants to help get projects over the finish line. We can help a little bit there, but I didn’t see that as an area where we could make a big difference over what was already being done. Therefore, we have focused on preservation because nobody else is doing that. 

We are executing this preservation strategy by purchasing what is known as « naturally occurring affordable housing » or NOAH. This refers to the tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of units that were built in the ’60s and in the ’70s that are at affordable levels today. 

We just bought our first one in Santa Clara called Vista Pointe Apartments. Because it was built in 1969, the current rents are relatively affordable. Although it is older, the bones are very good and the basic requirements of an apartment unit in the ’60s are no different than what we build today.

When these types of units come on the market, they’re never marketed to just leave it as is and continue to keep the rents affordable. They’re always marketed as a value-add opportunity and the value-add aspect comes from redoing the kitchens, the bathrooms and adding fancy gyms. 

The buyers force the current residents to relocate as they shut the place down to make these extensive renovations. The upgrades then trigger rent increases that run 30 or 40% higher. The apartments go from the affordable level to or above the middle-income level. That’s what happens when you don’t build enough housing. There’s huge pressure to upgrade everything because there’s demand and if somebody can’t go buy a new unit because it doesn’t exist, they’ll go down a step. The whole thing trickles down to the bottom and those people that are in the affordable category of apartment communities get priced out because it gets upgraded.

Our goal is to offer current and future residents safe and stable affordable housing. If you operate the project voluntarily at 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI) or less, you can record a regulatory agreement that forces you to do it for some period of time and then once you have that regulatory agreement you just voluntarily agree to continue it. With the regulatory agreement we get a property tax exemption from the county because it’s affordable housing and it’s required now to be affordable housing even though we entered into it voluntarily. We’ve now forced ourselves to do it. 

We can keep the rents very flat and still cover expense increases and the median income of tenants should grow at least a few percent a year. 

From a developer’s perspective, what changes might you suggest in policies and/or regulations that would make affordable housing more possible without compromising unacceptable harms to people or the environment?

On the policy side we need to advocate for more low-income tax credits. Typically, low-income tax credits provide 60% of the funding of the project cost. That is significant because without it you can’t make the project affordable. Another policy area would be less control at the municipal level so that the entitlement process is more streamlined for new housing construction.

The Sobrato Organization website declares: « The Sobrato Organization’s mission is to build a more equitable and sustainable world through business and philanthropic leadership. »

You also have a commitment to social justice mentioned on the Family Foundation website. What is it about the growth of the Sobrato family over time that led to this statement of mission and values?

We have been blessed with tremendous success and it is an absolute fallacy to think as some do, that it’s just a matter of hard work and grit. It’s just not true. Yes, that is one of the ingredients. However, in our family’s case the wealth was built partly because my father is a white male who came into his career in 1960 and happened to live in Silicon Valley. Had he been born in Detroit, had he been born a person of color, had he been born a woman, we would not be in the position we are: end of story. 

Our commitment to justice comes from the recognition that our success in large part was a function of what Warren Buffett would say: winning the genetic lottery: being very lucky as to when we were born, where we were born, and what color we were born and therefore having a moral obligation to right some of these structural inequities of the past that continue to this day. 

Why is the capital gains tax lower than the ordinary income rate? Why is the tax on money earning money — where you’re not really putting your daily sweat into the « work » — less than someone working a job, whether it’s a doctor at a very high salary level or whether it’s somebody working at McDonald’s? Why is there a home mortgage deduction that benefits homeowners? We have a tax system that is not progressive at all in that context. 

One of the greatest experiences a human being engaged in the life of the mind can have is when reading an article — or in this case, two articles — a light bulb goes off and something is clarified, a distinction is highlighted, or a connection is made, or an insight that had been latent becomes manifest. 

A recent episode of NPR’s « All Things Considered » featured an interview with Sarah Hurwitz, who served as a speechwriter in the Obama administration, becoming first lady Michelle Obama’s principal speechwriter. [Full disclosure: I worked with Hurwitz on Gen. Wesley Clark’s presidential campaign in 2004.] The interview, conducted by Rachel Martin, focused on Hurwitz’s new book, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life — in Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There). 

I was delighted by much of what Hurwitz said. The warmth with which she spoke about connecting with her childhood faith again, and finding in that faith some of the things she had been looking for in adulthood, really touched a chord. 

One observation jumped out especially. Hurwitz was asked about her criticism of the « spiritual buffet » approach to religious life. Here is the exchange:

But I think what makes me nervous about the spiritual buffet is that what you’re saying is, « I’m going to take this thing from Buddhism that’s so me and this thing from Judaism that’s so me and this from Catholicism. »

Martin: One-hundred percent. That’s what I’m doing.

Hurwitz: This is what so many of us do, and at the end of the day you’re reinforcing yourself. You’re kind of deifying yourself.

Martin: Wow.

Hurwitz: You’re saying, « What reinforces my preexisting beliefs? » This is how we consume social media, right? But it’s not the purpose of these great spiritual traditions. The purpose is to learn that you are infinitely worthy and also you sometimes do things that are unkind or that are cruel or insensitive or impatient and you need to be lovingly and gently invited to do better.

Martin: So you think you don’t get that accountability mechanism if you self-select into parts of the faith?

Hurwitz: Exactly. You’re picking and choosing the parts that move you and make you feel good. The purpose is to challenge yourself and push yourself to see where you’re falling short, lovingly and kindly.

This is a profoundly important critique of a kind of contemporary subjectivism in religion — « let me tell you about my truth » — colliding with the attitudes bred in us by the ambient consumer culture. We see it when people talk about « my conscience » and put the emphasis on the « my, » forgetting that conscience is God’s voice speaking to us about what to do, or to avoid, in a particular situation. It is mine because I am in that situation, but it is not mine insofar as it has its origin in the supreme lawgiver. 

The second article, which had nothing to do with the NPR story, was Fr. Lou Cameli’s splendid essay about bringing the voices of the saints into the synodal dialogue published here at NCR on Monday. « In the process of synodality, we can and should be sharing our experiences and aspirations, » Cameli writes. « At the same time, we must also be in dialogue with our historical tradition. That tradition is no mere abstraction. It is embodied in the saints and all the women and men of faith who have gone before us and still walk with us. If these partners are missing, we will have flattened out our experience of church and reduced it to our current state of soul on the planet Earth. » 

Cameli is making a point very similar to that made by Hurwitz: The focus on our own experiences and desires has a flattening effect on our spiritual life and our ecclesial self-understanding if it is not constantly receiving the tradition that went before. Vatican II did not embrace liberal Protestant theology. As University of Edinburgh theologian David Grumett explained in The Oxford Handbook of Vatican II, which I reviewed here and here, the ressourcement theologians who shaped the council « wanted to contest liberal theological methodologies that bypassed historical sources altogether » as well as to debunk the ahistorical Neo-Scholasticism that had been dominant in Catholic theology in the pre-conciliar era.

Put differently, as Laval University theologian Gilles Routhier argues in that same Oxford Handbook, Vatican II was itself an act of reception of the Catholic tradition: « reception of Scripture, reception of the creed, reception of the teachings of previous councils, reception of magisterial teachings, reception of the customs and traditions that make up the heritage of the different churches within their cultural context, and so on. »

The post-conciliar yearning for some sense of constancy, the desire to be informed by « the church of the ages, » for a faith and moral teachings that are above history, cannot ignore the fact that the church lives in history, acts in history, as did her founder, Jesus Christ. This fact does not mean, however, that the church is merely an historical reality, a social organization like any other, albeit with a strange ritual at its center and some fancy outfits and songs. 

Transcendence is not complete otherness. It is otherness breaking into history. We should think of transcendence as a verb not as a noun: God and his church transcend history by entering into it. Dialogue with the tradition is what allows the church to remain true to its founding and to itself while responding to the changing experiences and circumstances of each generation and culture. 

The entire time I was reading The Oxford Handbook, I understood this tension between a faith lived in history and a faith that is outside of history to be present in virtually every chapter. It was reading an interview with a Jewish speechwriter and a column by a Chicago priest, however, that made it click in a way it hadn’t before. Dialogue with our tradition does not hold us back. It is what propels us forward as Catholics.

Few people have done more to prevent a nuclear catastrophe in Ukraine than a Catholic father of eight, Rafael Mariano Grossi. For more than a year, the energetic director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, has worked tirelessly to protect Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. Pre-war, it provided one-fifth of Ukraine’s energy needs and was a source of local pride. 

But the asset became a hazardous liability after Russia seized the power plant in March of 2022. In recent days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian troops have placed « objects resembling explosives » on roofs at the plant, raising concerns about an attack.

Located on the southern bank of the Dnipro River in the Zaporizhzhia oblast, the plant today sits on the war’s front lines. It has six nuclear reactors and 37 years of nuclear waste stored in unprotected cooling pools. A military strike at the facility could render a large swath of Ukraine uninhabitable for decades and disperse radioactive material into Russia as well as into western Europe. 

After a spate of shelling at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant last August — each side blaming the other — Grossi tried valiantly to establish a safety zone around the plant, meeting with Zelenskyy, then with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

« Obviously it is not an easy negotiation, » because the area is a zone of intense military activity, Grossi said during a January visit with Pope Francis. « My challenge is to get to a point where there is a ‘sanctuary-ization’ … of the plant that is seen, not as a problem, but as a solution to any more serious consequences. » 

Since last September, Grossi has deployed rotating teams of International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to monitor the plant. Their weekly public reports have kept international focus on a place of generational and borderless hazards. On May 30, he appeared before the U.N. Security Council to report on the plant, the fourth such meeting since Russia’s invasion last year. 

Unable to achieve his desired safety zone, Grossi came with a list of more modest yet concrete asks, his five principles: 

• No attacks of any kind targeting the plant, its reactors, spent fuel storage, other critical infrastructure or personnel. 
• No using the plant as a storage site for heavy weapons or base for military personnel who could attack from the plant. 
• No putting the plant’s offsite power sources at risk. 
• Protect all structures, systems and components essential to the safe and secure operation of the plant from attacks or acts of sabotage. 
• Take no action that undermines the preceding principles. 

In mid-June, Grossi visited the plant for the third time. The disastrous destruction of the Kakhovka Dam, located downstream, had just happened, jeopardizing the water supply for the plant’s cooling system. Recent military action in the area damaged the road leading to the Zaporizhzhia compound so Grossi and his team walked the final stretch. 

Videos on his Twitter feed show him standing at the war’s front line and striding up an embankment to report on the water level of the plant’s cooling pond. After the inspection, shelling in the area briefly halted IAEA vehicles returning to Ukrainian-controlled territory. That did not deter Grossi who went to Kaliningrad, Russia, the following week to review his five principles with authorities there.

Grossi’s courageous persistence and that of the IAEA inspectors captured the imagination of Dr. John Reuwer, a retired emergency room physician and board member of the international organization World Beyond War. An experienced veteran of international and domestic peace teams, Reuwer was particularly impressed with the inspectors’ non-partisan mission. 

Here were unarmed monitors entering an occupied war zone to protect a nuclear power plant for the sake of the common good. And they were doing so without any formal training in unarmed civilian protection. Could teams of internationals skilled in this nonviolent strategy amplify the International Atomic Energy Agency’s efforts?

For months, Reuwer and others affiliated with a small international movement known as the Zaporizhzhia Protection Project have been training people for this purpose. The project envisions at least a symbolic presence of a few dozen unarmed civilian protectors at the plant to accompany the IAEA monitors, or better yet, hundreds to patrol the facility to help enforce Grossi’s five principles. After all, why should preventing nuclear catastrophe fall on the director general’s shoulders alone?   

As its name implies, unarmed civilian protection entails deploying unarmed people to protect civilians caught in violent conflict. The nonviolent strategy has been in use for decades. During the wars in Central America, unarmed internationals, providing round-the-clock accompaniment, successfully protected human rights defenders targeted for assassination. More recently, it has been effectively applied in diverse places such as inner-city Chicago, South Sudan and Iraq to mitigate the spread of gang violence, or protect displaced peoples living in camps or returning to contested areas.

The Zaporizhzhia Protection Project represents a far more ambitious application for the geopolitical fight fueling the Russia-Ukraine war is much bigger, and more lethal, than Chicago gang duels or intercommunal conflicts in Iraq or Sudan.

In April, the project sent an exploratory team to Ukraine to probe the waters. The Ukrainians interviewed invariably expressed skepticism when asked about non-military means for protecting the power plant. The Russians were liars and could never be trusted, they said. 

But as conversations focused on the hazards of the military option, some, like the young deputy mayor of a town located near the plant, became curious. « Do you have some kind of step-by-step plan, » he asked. « What exactly do you propose? » (The mayor’s name has been withheld for security reasons.)

« Approximately 50 tons of plutonium have been accumulated at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, » said Russian engineer-physicist and environmentalist Oleg Bodrov during a December presentation for Massachusetts Peace Action. By comparison, the atomic bomb dropped over Nagasaki contained 14 pounds). What this means is that the possible consequences of bombing the plant are too enormous to predict. Everyone knows this. 

Some threats are so vast they impose agreement even among the fiercest of enemies. For all the denunciations and finger-wagging at the May 30 session of the Security Council, the members agreed on one point: The power plant must be protected. Right now, Grossi and his small agency bear the burden of implementing that impossibly difficult task. The Zaporizhzhia Protection Project wants to help.