The Question: What can Pope Benedict XVI say and do to repair the growing rifts between the Vatican, the clergy and the laity in America?

I hope and believe that Pope Benedict will acknowledge and express contrition for the church’s moral failings regarding the sexual abuse tragedy in the American church—a tragedy that has scarred victims, damaged the reputation of the priesthood, and cast doubt on the hierarchy’s leadership. Recognition of the gravity of the scandal and sincere contrition, at a minimum, are an important step towards repairing the damage done, knowing that for victims no acknowledgement or apology will fully restore their lives.

Continue »

The Question: How should Barack Obama have responded to inflammatory remarks made by his former pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright? Are you responsible for what your spiritual leader says from the pulpit?

Certainly Barack Obama, or anyone else, is not “responsible” for what one’s spiritual leader says from the pulpit. However, as the forthcoming book by Gregory Smith, "Politics in the Parish: The Political Influence of Catholic Priests" (April 15, 2008 Georgetown University Press) indicates, people in the pews are influenced in their political thinking by what is said from the pulpit. In Senator Obama’s case, it is hard to believe that he did not know what was being preached, even if he did not agree with the views expressed. How could he not know when the pastor has been preaching for thirty-six years in the church Obama has attended for twenty years? As a public servant Obama should have distanced himself long ago from views of his pastor that he clearly does not share, but likely never anticipated the current uproar.

Continue »

Americans are seekers and shoppers. When it pertains to religion, they are no different. You may hear someone say, “I was baptized Catholic, married a Lutheran and became one, divorced, and now am unaffiliated.” This describes a growing number of Americans. The Pew Forum survey tells the story of religious identity in America. We are a mobile society not only in where we live, work, and travel our travel; we are also religiously mobile.

Continue »

As much as I respect the Archbishop of Canterbury, I do not favor U.S. law making room for sharia or the laws of any other religion. U.S. law should be based upon constitutional principles and maintain separation of church and state.

Muslims themselves apply sharia to their own community and do not impose it on non-Muslims, though the law has some stipulations for non-Muslims who live in countries where sharia is normative.

Continue »

How do we arrive at God’s standards? By relying upon the Hebrew scriptures, the New Testament, the Qur’an, the Upanishads, the Dhammapada? Candidate Huckabee seems to have some implicit standard in mind, likely the Christian scriptures. However, all Americans do not subscribe to Christianity, and even for those who do, differences of interpretation complicate attempts to know “Gods standards.”

If one relies upon a deductive method of determining God’s standards for moral behavior, a static view of human nature emerges. All one has to do is know what God wants and apply it to the human situation. However, competing theories, derived mostly from the social sciences and social philosophy, do not view humans as static. Thus, [moral] standards evolve with the development of society and the individual, that is, “some contemporary view” in Huckabee’s words.

Continue »

When I got to the cashier after standing in the line at the grocery store on Wednesday, November 21, the clerk wished me a “happy holiday.” I was buying a turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, peas, cheese and crackers, and deserts—pretty obviously a Thanksgiving meal. So I wondered, “Why not just wish me a “happy Thanksgiving”? Did she think she might offend me? What generic holiday did she think I was celebrating?

In recent years, greetings on New Year’s, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas have all been covered by the generic phrase “happy holiday.” Does that imply simply a day off from work or a commemoration of an event or a tradition?

The grocery store employee and I might both be working, but the day would still be a holiday—and, presumably that means something. The woman behind the register in the grocery store may not have known that I am an American citizen, but she surely knew that I live in America. The only national celebration that week was Thanksgiving. Perhaps not all Americans celebrate the traditional turkey dinner and with family (though judging by the lines at the grocery store, it seems everyone does). But all Americans know that it is Thanksgiving, and most know something of its origins with Pilgrims and Indians. So why not say “Happy Thanksgiving?” Who would she offend?

Continue »

Love Your Enemies

In the gospel, Jesus commands his followers not only to forgive enemies, but also to love them: "But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44) When asked, should we forgive even those who have committed atrocities, the Christian answer is yes. How can we do so is a more complex question for atrocities evoke justifiable anger and condemnation. However, Christianity calls for the forgiveness even by those who suffer at the hands of unjust aggressors. Forgiving an enemy who acts immorally (even horrifically so) means neither condoning the evil nor permitting it to continue, if there are reasonable means (a concept subject to much debate) to stop it. It does not mean no condemnation and no attempts to prevent it.

Clearly international policy makers do not use the gospel as a blueprint. Understandably, since this is a hard command, even for devout believers. It asks that followers of Jesus go beyond what emotion and a sense of justice suggest. It asks them to forgive even the most egregious sinner, even as God forgives. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission established after apartheid in South Africa asked wronged citizens to forgive those who persecuted them—not a small request—in order to rebuild a nation and a people. And, by and large, it succeeded. Harboring hatred and thoughts of revenge take a psychological toll. Moving beyond anger gives the possibility of moving on, even while not forgetting and resolving to prevent atrocities in the future.

The gospel calls on Christians to act in ways that the world may not understand and that seem contrary to our nature and interests. While its message is often comforting, it is also challenging asking us to live in ways that contradict self-interest. The prophetic side of Jesus message is not for the faint of heart.

Governments, families, communities, and individuals can be similarly accused.

Like any other institution, religion can be, and has been, misused for ill purposes. For example, a close examination of the history of Christianity exposes erroneous teachings, immoral behavior, intolerance, imperialism, and corruption among its leaders.

However, the same examination reveals charity, compassion, self-sacrifice, generosity, courage, identification with, and help for, the poor and disadvantaged, forgiveness, a call to righteousness and justice, and hope.

Continue »

Those of you who take innocent lives in the name of religion neither do justice nor represent a merciful God. Your words and actions misrepresent and dishonor your religion. If you intend to do violence, do not wrap it in the cloak of religion. You only betray that which you say motivates you. God does not bless your actions; God despises them. Your rhetoric, hatred, and destruction do not serve your religion; they make people fear it. You may gain infamy, but you do not gain God’s favor. You are not martyrs; you are criminals.

Cease your terrorist activity; join the constructive dialogue of religions, cultures, and civilizations. Stop perpetrating violence falsely in the name of religion. Follow religious leaders who seek dialogue and peace, not violence and murder.

I doubt that there has ever been a saint or theologian who did not have doubts about faith. The list of doubters includes the Apostle Peter, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Julian of Norwich, Martin Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Mother Teresa—not bad company for those who sometimes struggle with belief. After all, the claims that faith makes are rather grand: God created us; we have souls; God watches over us; God will judge us; there is an existence after this one; our actions in this world, at least in part, may determine our fate in the next; God has been revealed to us in texts, persons, and events.

It would be hard not to doubt some (or all) of these claims at some time during our lives. Those of us who take faith seriously and are critical thinkers in other aspects of our lives—for example, asking, Is the President lying to us? How do analysts predict the behavior of the stock market? Is it safe to trust technology?—naturally raise questions. Religious faith is not immune from such scrutiny. In fact, a little skepticism is a healthy thing. Those who think through their commitment to faith by raising critical questions can offer more than emotion, more than opinion, and more than personal history or indoctrination to explain their beliefs.

Given the choice between an uncritical and naïve appropriation of faith and Mother Teresa’s admitted struggles with her faith, I join the diminutive woman with wrinkles on her face and light in her eyes who, when asked by a journalist why, given her resources of a band of Sisters who owned only as much as the poor they served, she continued to struggle against poverty with virtually no chance of success, responded: “God, did not call me to be successful. God called me to be faithful.” Being faithful does not mean being uncritical, or mindless, or unwilling to question even our most deeply held convictions of faith. Mother Teresa persevered in faith despite her doubts. We, too, may doubt but have faith without fear that we are being untrue to our faith or to ourselves.

Having a Hindu chaplain recite the opening prayer in the U.S. Senate does not violate the principle of the Pledge, since Hindus share belief in God, expressed through the multiple gods and goddesses they believe to represent Brahman, the ultimate transcendent. Over one million Hindus live in America. As American citizens, they enjoy the same freedoms and privileges as Catholics, Presbyterians, Orthodox Jews, Sunni Muslims, and Mormons, to name but a few religious groups.

Those who object that such prayers violate the separation of church and state likely would also object when any other chaplain offers prayers at the Senate. For them, offering prayers in the chambers of our secular government is a category mistake.

Granted that the vast majority of Americans believe in God, we have only officially been “One Nation under God” since June 14, 1954, when President Eisenhower signed the law adding these words to the Pledge of Allegiance (which itself was written in 1892), so the notion of a nation of believers is relatively recent in our history. If we are going to give religion a place in public life, then it should not just be one religion. We are a nation of many religions. Just as the military employs chaplains from a variety of religions, so, too, representatives of these religions should have equal opportunities to offer public prayer.

Those Americans who say “give me that old time religion” simply need to recall that Hinduism—truly an old time religion—predates Judaism and Christianity.

It seems to me that the Vatican comments are aimed principally at Catholic theologians who may express an ecclesiology different from the one articulated by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Introduction to the document reads:

Continue »

I often wonder about Catholics who prefer the Latin Mass. I cannot help but think that they are saying, “Give me that old time religion.”

The problem is that Latin, while old, is not religion. It is neither sacred nor better than the current vernacular language. In fact, it was the vernacular language of the Roman Empire. While it continues to be read and profitably studied by classics scholars and taught in high schools and colleges, it is a dead language that is only spoken by a very small, and shrinking, number of people today.

It remains the official language of the Vatican, but try to find a bishop who speaks it. When official meetings at the Vatican are conducted in Latin, bishops scramble for their headsets for simultaneous translations. Vatican documents are issued in several languages so that Catholics can actually read them. The closest thing to a lingua franca today—like Latin in the Roman Empire—is English, so American Catholics should be grateful to be native speakers of the world language.

One of the ironies of the recent movement of a minority of Catholics to bring back the Latin Mass is that they pine for a liturgy (and an era) that the younger ones among these (and not a few) never knew. They must be listening to the stories of their parents’ or grandparents’ liturgical experience and wanting the same. The curious part of this is that most parents and grandparents do not want to return to the “good old days” of Latin Masses.

Continue »

I do not know if heaven and hell exist, but I believe they do. I would not presume to know who is, or is not, going to either fate. The Roman Catholic Church authenticates a saint as having qualified for heaven because of an exemplary faith and life. Of course, the Church has erred in a few instances (Christopher and Veronica, for example) but generally reserves such an honor for exemplary persons who have exhibited holiness (for example, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and likely-to-be saint, Mother Theresa of Calcutta). I leave it to God to determine an individual’s fate.

Why would I believe that there is a heaven? In addition to scriptural assurances, the nature and complexity of my experience of life, and experiences in life, lead me to believe that this is not all “sound and fury signifying nothing.”

Is it likely that some of the most morally corrupt individuals in history are in hell? If there is a hell, it is likely. However, if God is infinitely compassionate, it is also possible that God has afforded even the most grievous sinners the opportunity to repent. So I am not about to trump God and declare who might be banished from God for all eternity.

I prefer to think of “hell” as separation from God—whether that separation is a permanent state seems to me uncertain. After all, would it not thwart even God for some of God’s own never to come to fulfillment in the eternal presence of God? Why would God bring them into existence? Human free will can resist God’s invitation, but not forever.

Questioning tenets or traditions should neither invalidate nor lessen faith.

The medieval theologian Anselm used the Latin term fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) to underscore the importance of questioning faith. While some may consider “blind faith” a virtue, I think that it can be dangerous in that it may lead one to accept uncritically all manner of religious claims.

Continue »