The Risk of Being Vulnerable

So I have presented in two parts the text of Young JJ's "State of the World Address" from September 1990. I have reflected a bit on how Old JJ might talk about the "State of Now" September 2015. It seems a bit overwhelming at this point in my life to issue manifestos like this.

The theme of power, however, is one that I return to often enough in my own reflections. "Power and responsibility" is perhaps one of the defining challenges of the emerging epoch. There is much to say about it, but let me see if I can make a start:

"How can we shape the use of our vast technological power so that it serves the good of the human person, families, communities, society, the environment entrusted to us? I see this question everywhere. Of course we need Jesus, but He will not give us cheap answers. He deepens the question in us, because in Him human persons and all of creation become more dear to us, and we become more "vulnerable" to their suffering. He calls us to live in that vulnerability -- to take the risks of loving those entrusted to us in our lives, those whose needs and anguish cry out to us. He even calls us to seek them out, accompany them, suffer with them, while placing all our hope in Him."

. . . . 

Wait. Stop. Hold it!

That sounds good in words. But honestly, I don't understand what I'm talking about. Or perhaps there is a very small, very fragile place inside me that has begun to understand a little bit. A really, really tiny little bit.

But who am I kidding? I don't really "live love." I live an aesthetic appreciation of the idea of love. Okay, maybe there is a little love in me, but it's nearly always mixed together with self-admiration and fakery. Ah yes, "the ambivalence" of human beings. "Man is an insoluble dilemma to himself," says Young JJ.

Twenty five years later, Old JJ says, "I am ambivalent. I am an insoluble dilemma to myself!"

Am I willing to become more vulnerable, more tender toward others, more honest (really), more willing to "take the risks of loving...?" Risks? Seriously, me take risks? RUN! HIDE!

Dear friends, I am terrified of taking risks. I am afraid to love.

Yes, friends, I am afraid of you.

And so I'm always hiding from you: hiding behind my intelligence, hiding behind humor, hiding behind my illnesses, hiding behind a thousand fibs, hiding behind sentimentality, hiding behind my reputation, hiding behind my writing, hiding and protecting places in myself even as I try to have real empathy and share my life with you.

I'm so sorry. I wish so much to be more, to be courageous, to be honest. I wish with an aching desire but I remain in this bottle of fear. I'm so sorry, friends. I'm struggling and trying, I think, but sometimes it comes out so awkwardly. Forgive me.

Eileen, kids, Mom, Dad, Walter... I'm afraid.... I'm sorry. Forgive me. I'm a poor human being. Poor in love.

So what, then, is this "very small, very fragile place," this "really, really tiny little bit" of understanding and desire in me?

Theologian JJ would like to intervene here and say, "That is God's work in you; the work of His grace. That is the hope that is beginning to transform you, the place from which you pray, the light of His love that leads you and in which you see the faces of others."

But Old JJ replies, "Why, then, is it so small?" Why, O God, is it so small?

And no one has any more words. There are already far too many words.

What I have is silence. And solitude. Sometimes it feels like loneliness, but underneath all of that there is the solitude. And there is the wanting that burns and burns and burns, and bursts through beyond all that I know.

This Strange Loneliness: How am I Called to Respond?

The world can look dim and dark and fading. Why?

We live in a world of unimaginable suffering of body, mind, and soul. So much suffering and desperation.

We are all united, all called to a common destiny, all objects of His ineffable but utterly faithful love and mercy. God is faithful, even though so many know only a darkness. So many are broken and shattered and alone, lost, confused, unaware of their own dignity as persons created by God and for God.

So many are weakened and wounded by sicknesses of all kinds.

Affliction spreads by the crushing weight of material poverty. It also spreads by the relentless, unforgiving, monstrous lust for power that drives our "rich" society, that pressures people to "succeed" by manipulating instruments of power and casts aside those who can't hang on.

Cast aside.

If you live in this culture and have a genetic predisposition for depression or some other mental illness, it's probably going to be triggered.

Because ours is a society of trauma and interior wounds that fester and weaken and cripple human beings.

I know these people are suffering. I hear their cries inside of my own suffering. I hear their desperation and their sense of being lost and worthless. Of being alone.

I know that I'm not alone. How blessed I am!

Sometimes I am wounded by loneliness nevertheless. It's part of the disease. It's pain. But that is not all, because I am still a person.

Do I not still have freedom in front of this pain? How am I called to respond? I know that in this strange loneliness I am linked, somehow, to the loneliness of all these other human beings, my brothers and sisters.

I hear their overwhelming cries. So much loneliness!

I can't bear that any person should be alone in this way.

But I'm afraid of my brothers and sisters in anguish. I am a weak human being. Weak because of affliction, yes, but also weak in freedom, weak in love. I'm a selfish man. Selfish! But this pain, our pain, keeps cutting my heart.

I don't know what to do. I offer, I pray, I believe and trust and hope for them and for myself.

They suffer in darkness.

I don't know how to reach them in this darkness, to help us all to find healing for our wounds.

More than thirty years of studying theology. It has given me many things. I don't regret it. It has enabled me to help people, and to teach and write about certain things. It has humbled me, because after all of it I know so little....

I do not know how I, myself, here and now, can reach out to the brokenhearted and accompany them in their search for healing. Their experiences will teach me more about myself, and I am afraid of what I might learn.

How are we all to discover that we are loved by God? Not in a sentimental way, not as a comforting phrase, not as just theology or a pastoral program... but really.

How are we to know that we are really loved by God? Now! In a way that is greater than our pains and that carries a promise....

Dear God, we need this. I need this. Jesus.

Break down the walls of fear.

Death, Taxes, God, and Caesar

And so, it's April 15th. Happy American Tax Day. Blah! Boooo! Help!!!

Of course, not everyone waits until the last minute. Maybe you filed weeks ago. Maybe you're getting a refund.

Still, today is a day that we all must remember the fragility of our lives at the hands of the powers of this world. Even those who benefit from the system know that it is a ponderous, ambivalent, and sometimes capricious patron.

They say that there are two things that cannot be avoided in this life: Death and Taxes. It seems to me not insignificant that the One who embraced death for us all began His life by being enrolled in the census.

The Savior of the world was born in Bethlehem with the help of the Roman imperial bureaucracy and its tax system.

Joseph the Builder paid taxes. Jesus paid them too, in the many years of His quiet labor. When God took human nature, He became one of the multitude in the empire of Caesar. He Himself bid us to pay lawful taxes, to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (Mark 12:17).

So today, even as we recognize Caesar's authority to tax our money, we remember also that we must render to God what belongs to God, our consciences. Yet God seems so far away when the forces of the world loom over us. It would seem like nothing for worldly power to crush the human conscience if it runs out of ideas for how to corrupt it.

And if there were nothing but worldly power and then death, what hope would we have? Where would we, who sin for the sake of convenience, find the strength to adhere to truth at all costs?

Only Jesus has defeated death, and in so doing has affirmed that the relationship of the human person to God is greater than every earthly power.

Our strength is in Him.

Use Well the Time We Have

"Repeatedly and in many different contexts, we have warned that courts must not presume to determine … the plausibility of a religious claim" (Supreme Court Majority Opinion, Burwell vs. Conestoga Wood Specialties / vs. Hobby Lobby Stores, et. al.).

We thank God for this exercise of restraint by the Supreme Court, given that the courts and the society as a whole regard us as eccentrics, at best. No one understands why we cannot simply join the twenty first century's march toward the triumph of Science, Reason, and Progress (see previous post).

But we cannot. We cannot abandon the dignity of the human person, created by God, created in the image and likeness of God. New kinds of power are being gathered today by those who want to engineer the future of humanity. The catastrophe that awaits us all beyond the horizon of this hubris remains as yet unknown. Those who are not already numb, however, can feel the chill of its monstrous shadow.

Still, we thank God. Today's decision means that (at least for now) government power cannot coerce Christians who own businesses to violate their consciences. It cannot coerce them into facilitating or provisioning activities which they know to be destructive to human love, human persons and relationships, human life.

We have, still, a little space and a little time.

Let us use this time well, to witness to God's love for every person, to continue to build up and bring healing and strengthen what is good, wherever we are free, for as long as we remain free.

Letting Himself Become Small

What? A Pope resigns?

This hasn't happened in 600 years!!!

Why is Pope Benedict XVI taking this rare and peculiar step?

Sure, its happened a few times in history. But Benedict hasn't been imprisoned during a persecution like the early popes who resigned. And this is hardly like the wacky and chaotic period of the Council of Constance, 600 years ago, when there were three guys claiming to be the real pope. Add to the mix one of those always helpful (?) devout Catholic monarchs (the Emperor Sigismund), who decided to get involved, and....

Its a long story, but to get to the point, Pope Gregory XII (who was the legitimate pope) agreed to resign and gave the Council authority to choose his successor. Then the two antipopes were deposed. The Council appointed Gregory bishop of Frascati and Dean of the college of cardinals. But it took Constance two years to elect his successor, Martin V...which means that for two years the papacy was vacant, but the ex-pope was alive and well and cardinal bishop of a prestigious diocese right outside of Rome!

There have been some confusing times in the history of the Church. Most of the times of the Church have been confusing times. But she's still here.

Actually, Benedict's situation resembles more that of Pope St. Celestine V, who resigned at the end of the 13th century. In fact, he was a Benedictine monk who was plucked from his austere solitude and made bishop of Rome. He was incapable of the task, however, and resigned because he wanted to return to his life of prayer. (Note, the "St." in front of Celestine's name stands for Saint -- thus it would appear that resigning the papacy doesn't mean you're a bad person.)

Pope Benedict's reasons for resigning, whatever they may be, are born from his desire to follow Christ and serve the Church. He knows that the Church endures through the work of the Holy Spirit, and that this is a work of "reform in continuity." It is a work that remains vital at this unprecedented moment in the history of the human race.

The world is indeed in transition to a new epoch, fraught with unimaginable possibilities and unimaginable dangers. Benedict XVI has always known this. He has left an enduring legacy of wisdom for this emerging epoch. The great pain of his labors is not less for the fact that he has only now revealed it to us.

Still, his work is not finished. He is going forth to pray, to continue to seek the face of God. In this too, he teaches us.

In this new gigantic world of power, he is letting himself become small. He is embracing the poverty through which God works.

"In the World...." Remembering Michael Schwartz

Mike Schwartz was a remarkable man, and it was with surprise that I learned of his recent death on February 3, at only 63 years old, after struggling for a year and a half with ALS. I didn't even know he was sick.

Its probably been more than twenty years since I last spoke with Mike. I knew him from my student days, and then from my brief stint as a policy analyst on Capitol Hill (yeah, I did some time on "the Hill," back in the '80s...days of my youth, almost forgotten).

I have many happy memories of those days. I remember lectures he gave on political philosophy at our college. The man was brilliant. He was a philosophical and theological man in the best sense, in that he was always seeking to understand the most important things even as he kept both feet on the ground. I want to say, "He could have been a scholar" but in fact he was a scholar. He was a rare bird in America (or anywhere else): a well-read, deep-thinking, truth-seeking political activist.

He also knew how to connect with people, from homeless people to mothers and their unborn children to sexual abuse victims to media personalities to the big men who drove the engines of power. And he knew how to connect with and motivate young people. He cared about all of us newly winged butterflies: interns, aspiring journalists, idealistic office workers, coffee-brewing Hill staffers, think-tank hacks. He was prematurely gray and he dressed like "the older people," but he was upbeat, encouraging, enthusiastic, and always full of schemes.

Once he got asked to be part of a panel for a local daytime television show discussing the Catholic Church's teachings on sexuality. Then he found out that there were three other panelists who ranged from "not helpful" to red-hot hostile. Mike rounded up a few of us, explained the situation and told us he couldn't do it "alone." So he asked us to get on the phones to our friends and pack the audience with bright, hip young Catholics (yes, there were some of us around, even way back in the 80s).

And we did it! We got a big bunch of people together for that show. He inspired us, somehow, and we made it happen.

Mike had a hard time with the panel, but he did very well. Then they asked for audience "participation." It was amazing. For once the Church didn't get plastered. On the contrary, we made all the comments. Whoever watched that show must have been shocked to see normal young people (even some very pretty girls) intelligently defending the Catholic Church's teaching on sex and marriage. But it was live television; there was no way to stop us!

[Someone reading this was in the audience that day, I'll bet. Do you remember?]

Mike Schwartz gladly gave the limelight to a bunch of kids, so that truth might have a witness on a daytime TV talk show. That's the kind of man he was.

The obits have been pouring out on the internet, rightly extolling his unique combination of political savvy, ardor, kindness, humility, dedication to principles and willingness to fight for them, and also his real love for all people, even those who opposed him. He was a central figure in America's pro-life movement from the very beginning. He worked on social issues with conservative groups, while also being a member of the Democratic party for a good part of his life.

Mike was beyond stereotypes. He was one of those great Catholic activists who appeared in the second half of twentieth century America: courageous, good, and impossible to dismiss with any of the categories of our common political discourse. He was a man who was immersed in political work, but always at the service of others, and never interested in drawing attention to himself. He was dedicated and energetic, but he wasn't sucked into an ideological program; he was not fooled by the glitter of Washington power. He valued politics for what it was, and he knew that politics couldn't solve all our problems; he knew that there were greater things....

It was because of his Catholic faith. His faith really did penetrate his whole life. I was blessed to know several people like him in the days when I was growing up, people whose understanding was totally outside the box...because their focus was on Christ. For me it put flesh and bones on the saying that "Christians must be in the world, but not of the world."

How are we supposed to know what that saying means? By paying attention to people like Mike Schwartz.

Here are a few words from his last public appearance in November 2012. Mike knew that the way to respond to the violence of the abortion plague was to recognize a call to a greater love, a greater prayer and a greater service, a greater affirmation of the true dignity of women, a concern and an attentiveness to the needs of that most fundamental and most vulnerable of human relationships--the relationship between mother and child.

"The service and support network for mothers...is the best and most important part of our movement, but we should realize that pregnancy services are not a stopgap measure until some political victory is achieved. We will always need such services, and perhaps the reason why God allowed the evil of abortion to fall upon us was to awaken us to the need to stop trying to affix scarlet letters to women with untimely pregnancies and begin helping our sisters when they need us most."

May God reward you greatly, Mike. Thanks for everything.

...I have a video of that TV show somewhere. I've got to dig it up and watch it again. :)

A New Kind of Hope

Yesterday was the great feast day of St. Agnes of Rome, a twelve year old girl of noble family at the beginning of the fourth century. She openly professed her Christianity and died a martyr, which is certainly extraordinary in itself for a young girl. But there is another reason why Agnes is regarded as one of the great saints of the Church.

Carved statue of St. Agnes from the shrine at St. Agnes Catholic church in Arlington, Virginia.
Agnese Janaro was baptized in this church over 14 years ago. Was it really that long ago?!

The earliest accounts praise St. Agnes's heroism and her purity. Clearly she made an astonishing impression on those who witnessed her martyrdom and communicated her story. The traditions that come down from various sources, and that are reflected in the ancient liturgical texts for her feast, indicate that even before her martyrdom this young girl had already given over her life to Jesus in a total dedication--one that would inspire and shape the personal identity of countless women over the next 1700 years.

Agnes had consecrated her virginity to Christ, not for a term of service like the vestals of pagan Rome, but forever. She sacrificed her natural vocation to be a wife and mother in this world and embraced a life of virginity as a witness that God alone was the love of her heart. Christ would be her true husband, and as His bride she would begin to reflect the glory of the life of the resurrection by remaining a virgin, by being entirely for God and God alone, offering Him her entire identity as a woman.

But this was not her idea. It was He Himself who had called her. In the liturgy, Agnes says, "My Lord Jesus Christ has espoused me with his ring; he has crowned me like a bride."

There is no disparagement of earthly marriage here. Marriage itself serves as a sign of what she found, and finds its own fulfillment in being this sign.

Rather, something happened to this twelve year old girl, Someone revealed to her a new kind of life, an eternal life that was already dawning in that moment of her heart, a life and a love worthy of all she had and all she was, worthy of following exclusively, a life greater than any human hope even as it fulfilled the promise hidden in all hopes, a life that could not be broken by all the power of the most powerful Empire the world had ever known, a life greater than the whole universe: eternal life in communion with the God who is Love.

"I am espoused to him whom the angels serve; sun and moon stand in wonder at his beauty."

It was this Beauty that made her utterly fearless. It was a Beauty that so filled this child that all the connivance and energetic cruelty of the powers of this earth could not prevail against her freedom, even when they dedicated all their deception and all there brute force to crushing that freedom.

They did not prevail.

Now, Agnes of Rome sings in glory, in the company of a multitude of women who followed as she did, into martyrdom, into the prayer and silence that seeks Him alone and in so doing lifts up the cry of the whole world, into an exclusive devotion to Christ wherever He is found, seeking to bring comfort to His heart, seeking Him as missionaries, teachers, care-givers, companions and servants of the poor, workers of mercy. St. Agnes leads the song that brings sweet breezes of consolation to the weary, and the strength of a new kind of hope for all of us in the face of every danger and every kind of violence:

"What I longed for, I now see; what I hoped for, I now possess; in heaven I am espoused to him whom on earth I loved with all my heart."

The Poverty of a Child

Teresa, age one, as baby Jesus in Nativity Play, 2003

The glory of God is not manifested in the triumph and power of a king, it does not shine in a famous city, in a sumptuous palace, but dwells in the womb of a virgin, it reveals itself in the poverty of a child.


The omnipotence of God, also in our lives, acts with the force, often silent, of the truth and of love.


Faith tells us, then, that the defenseless power of that Child in the end overcomes the noise of the powers of the world.

                                            Benedict XVI