Joseph Stoutzenberger

Thank God for the Blessed Mother

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

The beginning of the Nicene Creed, recited by Catholics at Mass, refers to God as “the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” The creed was composed by bishops called together in 325 by the non-Christian Roman emperor of the time, Constantine. He wanted Christians who were fighting among themselves to resolve their differences for the good order of the empire. It’s easy to imagine that when the bishops called God the Father almighty that they had the emperor in mind. By contrast, practically every chapter of the Islamic scripture, the Quran, is preceded by referring to God as al Rahman, al Rahim, the all-merciful, the all-compassionate. The creed does say that Jesus was born and died for us and our salvation, truly an act of compassion. However, in the context of the infighting of the time, a Father almighty might conjure up an image of the proverbial warning used by exasperated mothers to settle down her children who are fighting each other: “Wait till your father gets home!”

Thank God for the Blessed Mother. There’s no hint of judgment or wrath in her, only pure love and nurturing. She is mentioned once in the creed, as the one through whom Jesus is born; but she has played a much more prominent role in Christianity, especially in the Orthodox and Catholic traditions. Miryam, as Muslims and Jews call her, is mother of Jesus but indirectly is mother of us all. Her image is a far cry from “Father almighty.” Granted, some mothers are not motherly; they are incapable of being loving and nurturing or might even require their children to take care of them. There have been and continue to be mothers who are judgmental and even malicious toward their children. (In fairy tales, these examples of churlish mothers are typically not real mothers.)

Real mothers, regardless of their biological relationship to children and little ones, are caring and loving, often unconditionally so. In one of the few stories about Mary in the gospels, she is attending a wedding with her son and realizes that wine is running out and the party isn’t close to being over. She exhibits compassion even in this mundane situation, saying to her son simply, “They have no wine.” In Luke’s gospel, Mary identifies herself in song as one of the lowly ones. If you feel depressed, deprived, or left out, Mary is the one to go to; she’s been there and knows what it is like. In recent centuries there have been accounts of her appearing to children or people who are downtrodden. She appeared in 1591 to an indigenous Mexican peasant named Juan Diego on a hill outside of Mexico City. He wonders who she is at first, and eventually she tells him: “Am I not here? Am I not your mother?”

My own mother was a great baker. When she baked pies, she baked enough to fill the many pans she had of assorted shapes and sizes. She had one pan that was less than four inches in diameter. When I sat at the kitchen table and watched her prepare her pies, she would whisper to me, “This one is just for you,” as she kneaded and filled the little individual-sized pan. No doubt she said the same thing to her other five children when they were with her; but it made me feel special; it made me feel her love. As was customary in those days, my mother never said “I love you” in words. She said it in pies and cakes and other expressions of love. One evening when I was grown up and had moved away from home, she called me unexpectedly and said, “I love you.” I responded, “I love you too, mom.” She said that she was watching Leo Buscaglia on PBS, and that he said if you love someone, you should tell them. Thank you, Leo Buscagila.

For some time now, a more loving, less distant and judgmental image of God has become dominant in Catholicism. However, Mother Mary has not gone away in the Catholic imagination. An image of the Blessed Mother that modern Catholics are familiar with is that of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, popularized in France in the early nineteenth century. She is depicted with her heart held in front of her chest, pierced with a sword. The image exudes compassion and offers solace to those who are suffering. In 2022, Pope Francis dedicated the people of Ukraine and Russia to the care of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, praying for her intercession to bring peace to the war-torn land. Mary is a mother with a heart. Doesn’t she represent what we want to see in our God?

Is the Church Worth Saving?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

I have many friends who grew up in religious households who no longer involve themselves in any religion. Some even say that the world would be better off without religion. I have found that former Catholics in particular are quick to point out the church’s flaws. At times I tend to agree with them. And then I think about all the good that people who were inspired by their Catholic faith have done and continue to do. Catholicism has its share of heroes.

A good example is the eighteenth-century French priest Abbe de l’Epee. He was already drawn by his faith to do charitable work in Paris when one day he came across two young girls sitting on a bench. The two sisters were gesturing to each other with animated hand movements. De l’Epee realized that the girls were deaf and communicating through their hands rather than sounds. He discovered that other deaf people in Paris were also using basic sign language, and he set out to learn from them.

Photo by RDNE Stock project on Pexels.com

When he tried to establish a ministry to deaf people, he encountered resistance from leaders in the church. (Perhaps that’s what my disgruntled former Catholics would focus on.) There was a question at the time as to whether deaf people could be saved because scripture says that only those who “hear” the word of God can be saved. Children who were deaf were commonly denied reception of the sacraments because of this. De l’Epee brought his young deaf friends before a gathering of leaders to demonstrate how they were, in fact, speaking to and hearing from each other in the language unique to them. In 1855, he established the first free school for deaf people and devised a system of sign language. Some elements of his signing are still in use in various sign languages today. A stained-glass window depicting Abbe de l’Epee meeting the two young deaf girls sitting on a bench can be found in the chapel of the National Catholic Office for the Deaf outside of Washington, DC.

Church history is filled with heroes such as de l’Epee, who often make invaluable changes simply by going where their faith leads them. In the Middle Ages, a great change swept across Europe. A young man named Francis of Assisi, wearing rags and renouncing all possessions, visited the pope with his twelve companions. The pope, dressed in finery and living in a palace, found no grounds upon which to dismiss the sincerity of Francis and the lifestyle he was espousing. He couldn’t deny that it was gospel-based. Thousands of people across Europe adopted the way of Francis in one form or another. Part of his message is found in his song “The Canticle of the Creatures”: “Be praised, my Lord, in those who pardon out of love for you.” A dramatic decrease in conflicts happened in many places where constant warfare had been commonplace because Francis-inspired people refused to fight.

In the early nineteenth century, France was becoming more and more a secular society. Universities were hotbeds of anti-religious sentiment. One student of literature, Frederic Ozanam, who later became a professor and an expert in the writings of Dante, began a study group while in college where discussion of the ancient faith was welcome. Some of his secular friends chided him: If you think so highly of your faith, why don’t you put it into practice? Ozanam realized that they were right. He enlisted fellow Catholic students to go in pairs into the slums of Paris, delivering food and helping people in need however they could. He named his group after St. Vincent de Paul, who earlier had himself inspired many wealthy French men and women to serve those who were poor. Frederic continued his charity work even after he was married and had a daughter. Today, the St. Vincent de Paul society continues to serve the needs of poor people throughout the world.

For a long time, and still today in some places, educating women was frowned upon if not outright forbidden. In the United States, Catholic women religious, nuns, took on the work of educating children on the margins of society. During the Civil War, Catholic nuns, such as the Daughters of Charity, served as nurses for wounded soldiers right on the battlefield. They also were tireless in helping people during the flu epidemic a century ago. Catholic sisters established 150 colleges for women in the United States at a time when women were denied access to the majority of schools of higher education. They faced many hurdles. One nun who pursued doctoral studies at the Catholic University of America had to sit in the hall by the door to hear lectures as only men were permitted in the classrooms themselves. She and other women religious gained doctorates in various fields so that they could provide quality education for women. Even though their numbers have dwindled considerably, Catholic nuns continue to play a prominent role in serving their communities.

What is the common denominator motivating the heroes of Catholicism who do such great work? They would all agree that their faith spurs them on, inspires them, and guides them in what they do. Would the world really be better off without them?

St. Francis of Assisi and Nature

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

A few years ago, a publisher approached me about writing a book about Francis of Assisi and nature. I knew Francis is associated with love of creation and is the patron saint of the environment. His statues with birds on his shoulder and other animals at his feet in gardens everywhere attest to his popularity as the one saint most in tune with nonhuman creatures. Did he deserve this reputation, or could other saints have just as easily been chosen for this honor? I decided to look into recent Catholic teaching about nature and Francis’s contribution to it.

Before the late nineteen-sixties, Catholic leaders and theologians said little about nature as we know it. “Nature” was not the wonderful world of birds and bees, oceans and trees. Nature was an abstraction, such as “human nature” or “the natural order.” Something changed in the late sixties. A catalyst for that change was a 1966 lecture delivered by a medieval historian at an academic conference, later published in an academic journal. Lynn White decried the disregard for and exploitation of nature that he saw around him. (This was four years after Rachel Carson published her groundbreaking Silent Spring and alerted the world about the dangers of pollution and our mistreatment of nature.) White declared that the Judeo-Christian tradition was largely to blame. Its anthropocentrism, centering on humanity, provided a justification for treating the rest of nature with no regard for any impact on water, air, soil, and species teetering on the verge of extinction. He pointed out that in the bible itself God gave humanity (Adam) a mandate to “have dominion over all creatures.” Christians typically interpreted that to mean that they were separate from and above the rest of creation; they were in charge. White suggested that Francis of Assisi stood out as someone who held a different perspective on nature.

Around this time, theologians of all traditions began to look into their teachings to see if there was anything in them that would counter the degradation of nature they were hearing about and seeing around them. Bible scholars looked at the Hebrew word used in Genesis for “dominion over.” They discovered that the same word is used in the next story told in the bible, about the two sons of Adam and Eve. Cain is jealous of his brother Abel and kills him. God seeks out Cain and asks him about the whereabouts of Abel. Cain replies, “How should I know? Am I my brother’s keeper?” The word for “keeper” here is the same as the word used for “dominion over.” Scholars realized that God was really telling Adam that he was responsible for the rest of creation; he was to be a caretaker of other creatures, just as Cain was indeed responsible for his brother’s welfare. This realization gave rise to the concept “stewardship” in Catholic teaching. Nature did not belong to human beings to do with as they wished. Instead, they were to be good stewards of what belonged to God. Care for creation was a biblical mandate.

What about Francis of Assisi? Two stories written about Francis early on paint a different picture of how he viewed the rest of nature. In one story, Francis is trying to preach to a crowd that had gathered. He can’t be heard because a flock of birds nearby is chirping away loudly. Francis says to the birds, “You have been praising God in your way. Would you be quiet for a bit so that I can also praise God in my way?” The birds become silent, and Francis sings God’s praises to the crowd just as the birds had been doing. In another story, Francis is staying at an abandoned monastery with some of his brothers. It’s time for night prayer, but Francis hears crickets outside his window. Instead of going to chapel for night prayer, he instead joins the crickets in singing the praises of God.

These two stories do not describe Francis as lording it over other creatures, not even to be a caretaker of them. Instead, he recognizes that he and they are fellow creatures under God. He and the sun, the moon, water, and fire are sisters and brothers. This democracy of nature, human and nonhuman together, is a radical vision of the relationship between humans and the rest of creation. All creation is one family.
When Jorge Bergoglio took the name Francis as pope, it signaled that he intended to serve in the spirit of Francis of Assisi. He demonstrated concern for people who were poor and struggling, such as immigrants to Europe from Africa. He soon showed that concern for those in need extended to nonhuman creatures as well. An early encyclical of his begins with the opening line of Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures, Laudato Si. Pope Francis alerted the people of the world that we need to recognize we share one home with the rest of nature. As brothers and sisters, we live together in harmony or perish in isolation from insensitivity, a misguided vision of invulnerability, and misuse. He found inspiration for that message in the simple life story of his namesake, Francis of Assisi.

Know Thyself

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

A professor of mine at Temple University, David Harrington Watt, insisted that it is important in scholarship to let readers know who we are and what has influenced the positions that we are expressing. In my writing, I have always stayed away from talking about myself. If I wrote about, for instance, Catholic morality, I wanted what I wrote to be about Catholic morality and not about me and my understanding of it. I was never interested in blogs, either in writing one or reading those of other people. I tended to stay away from books in which people talked about themselves too much.

Then I was asked by iPub Global Connection publishers to write a series of blogs in conjunction with a book of mine they were publishing. The editor said that a blog should be personal and related to themes in the book. I decided to give it a try. It provided me an opportunity to look back on my life and appreciate how certain experiences shaped my point of view. For instance, my mother raised her six children Catholic. My father, on the other hand, never attended church in his life except for a couple of his children’s weddings. I heard in school that only baptized Catholics went to heaven. I knew my father to be a good man; except for not going to church, I couldn’t imagine any sin he might have committed. The thought of my dad going to hell was totally preposterous to me. When I heard that heaven was reserved for Catholics, it registered as some kind of abstraction that had nothing to do with real life. When Vatican Council II later affirmed that “all people of good will” were members of the people of God, my dad included, I thought, “Of course. Welcome to the real world.”

A few years ago, Bishop John Dolan co-edited a book about Catholicism and suicide. In it, he writes about his own brother’s death by suicide. This personal experience surely influenced his sensitivity to this painful topic. Church teaching declares suicide to be wrong, but Dolan and the other contributors to the book make it clear that it is essential to pay attention to the persons involved. A reality such as a person taking his or her life does not fit neatly into a simple moral pronouncement. Suicide is not an abstract concept but a desperate act by a hurting flesh and blood person.

A woman friend of mine took seriously Catholic teaching on artificial birth control. She followed the natural family planning deemed acceptable by the church to avoid pregnancy. Due to her irregular menstrual cycle, she discovered that only during a few days a month would sexual intercourse be “safe” from possible pregnancy, and even that was not failsafe. Following the NFP method had two results for her and her husband. For one, she became pregnant anyway with a fourth child whom she and her husband welcomed and loved dearly; but it strained the family’s finances and caused her to go to work in the evenings soon after giving birth to supplement the family income. The other children had little time with either parent, and spent a good deal of time on their own, often getting into trouble. A second result of following the method was that there developed tension between husband and wife. She was the one who took her temperature daily, kept tabs of the calendar, and resisted any expression of physical intimacy for fear that it would lead to another pregnancy.

The son of a Catholic friend of mine went away to college. Three months later, the son told his father that he discovered that he is gay and that he has become close friends with another male student. Initially his father disowned his son and told him not to come home for Thanksgiving. By Christmas, the father relented and invited his son home and even said he could bring his friend with him. He stepped back from all the notions of homosexuality that he had harbored and came to see the reality of who his son is, which transformed his perspective on sexual identity.

In all of these situations, people’s perspectives were influenced by their experiences and circumstances. David Watt is right; it’s important to realize that our experiences color our perspective. Whether we admit it or not, truth claims are filtered through the prism of real-life experiences, our own and those of others. Abstractions have their place, but they are not meant to be straightjackets. Real life is complicated. We called another Temple professor a “bread and baloney man.” The joke was, give him a sandwich, and he was happy spending his days and nights pouring over ancient texts. He was brilliant, but we wondered if he might not also learn something by going out in the light of day and mingling with real people. An essential step in the search for truth is probing who we are and what has shaped our point of view and hearing from others about theirs. Hold abstract principles up to the light of reality; balance the objective with the subjective. Real life is meeting. The medieval Sufi poet Rumi offers an invitation to celebrate the richness that comes from openness to diversity and the uniqueness that is always part of real-life experiences: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

What Peaches and What Penumbras!

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

Many years ago, I sat in on a class on sacraments at LaSalle College, now a university. During a lunch break, I sat at a table next to an old professor. I’m not sure what his subject area was, but he asked me what I was studying. I told him I was coming from a class about baptism and the Eucharist. He said, “Ah, procreating and eating. Without those, the human species would cease to exist.” I felt as though what he said contained great wisdom, but I wasn’t sure what that was. Eventually, it came to me. Religious practices, such as baptism and the Eucharist, are not an add-on to life. They are a recognition of the sacredness of all aspects of human existence, especially of its essentials.

Try not eating for a couple days and see what happens. The foods we eat are a great gift. The weekly Jewish Sabbath meal and the annual spring-time Passover seder are a recognition of that. During the seder, the youngest person interrupts the meal at different times to ask the oldest person a variation of the question: How is this night different from every other night? The answer is: Because on this night, we were slaves, and now we are free. Each meal is a gift, gives life, and sets us free. Without food, we would wither and die. The Catholic Eucharist is a meal as well, a giving thanks for the bread of life. This spirit of thanksgiving carries over when Catholics pause before eating to say grace before meals. We are blessed by God for the food we are about to eat.

Procreating is essential to human existence as well. I recall a movie not long ago about one young woman who was the last person on earth who might become pregnant because of environmental changes. Keeping her safe was the challenge faced by the movie’s characters. Thankfully, we are not there yet; but it would be perilous if we ever became nonchalant about the birth of another of our species. Baptism is a celebration of life—one particular life as well as life itself. It represents a commitment on the part of family and community to nurture this life into adulthood so that the cycle of life continues.

A secular mindset can miss the sense of wonder that would come from pondering the splendor of the grand interwoven story of existence. Although secularists cringe at the notion of

God, partially because of the misrepresentations of that concept held by many so-called believers, it strikes me that acknowledging “God” is shorthand for recognizing the sacredness of our interconnected world, the ground of our being, as Paul Tillich would say. On the other hand, religions do not bring people to an appreciation of an all-pervasive sacred if they separate what is “religious” from everything else. The Eucharist is not just food for the soul, but a celebration of gratitude for all that nourishes us, body and soul. Baptism is a moment when a gathering recognizes life for what it is, a great gift that needs love, care, and support.

When Nikita Khrushchev, one of the last leaders of the Soviet Union, visited the United States, one thing, in particular, he marveled at was the well-stocked grocery stores that we are used to. Except for when there’s a noticeable shortage of eggs or milk, we take supermarkets for granted. Holy water fonts are placed at the entrances to Catholic churches to remind people that they are entering sacred space. Perhaps we should have visible reminders at the entranceways to grocery stores that we are entering a grand cathedral of food choices. Or we need more reminders of the sacredness of all forms of life around us, perhaps Walt Whitmanesque chants singing the body electric.

Allen Ginsberg has a poem about entering a supermarket in California that brings Walt Whitman to mind for him. He captures something of the wonder of the place in these words:

What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of
husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!

We would do well to bring such a sense of wonder to our own commonplace experiences as well as the church services we attend. Birthing, nurturing, lending a helping hand, sharing, gardens and growers, farmworkers, feasts, and simple meals with friends. There is so much to be thankful for and so much to spark wonder if we take the time to look a little closer. Babies in the tomatoes…What a delight to see!

Review of Mystery & Tradition: Thank You!

Review of Mystery & Tradition: Catholicism for Today’s Spiritual Seekers

What about Brokenness?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

Have you ever come across a term that you had never heard before, and then it keeps showing up multiple times afterward? That happened to me with the term “gaslighting.” I heard it on a talk show, then I read an article that used the term, and not long after that, the movie with that title was playing on TCM. It appears to mean, say an untruth often enough, and people start to believe it.

That experience happened for me with the term kintsugi. It refers to the Japanese art of repairing (tsugi) broken pottery with lacquer and gold (kin) so that the repaired pottery has new-found beauty, sometimes beyond what it originally had. Once I heard about the practice, I subsequently ran across references to it a few other times. It’s wonderful to hear about something ancient that offers new insight into the human condition.

That pottery repair practice certainly provides material for meditation applied to human life, similar perhaps to the well-known quote from Margery Williams’s The Velveteen Rabbit about becoming “real.”

It doesn’t happen all at once…You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.

Years ago, I visited the family of friends of mine in Taiwan. The host honored us by serving tea in a teapot that had been in her family for generations. The tea itself was also very old and rare. My first thought was, shouldn’t this pot be in a museum or kept untouched in a locked cabinet? Imagine if it broke while serving tea to a clumsy American such as myself! Then I realized that life doesn’t happen in museums and never-opened cabinets. Living, becoming real, always brings with it the danger of being broken. Kintsugi and The Velveteen Rabbit remind us that there is beauty in brokenness. The cracks and aching joints that come from giving ourselves to others, carrying around that helpless child all those years, and stepping out of our comfort zone to get involved when we would prefer to keep our distance, results in beauty beyond the pristine beauty of locked-away artifacts.

Traditional Christian theology says that “suffering is redemptive.” Jesus redeemed us through his suffering. I suggest a more accurate understanding is that Jesus gave himself out of love for others. That’s what was redemptive. Granted, his active care for others led to suffering; that’s the nature of life in the pursuit of becoming real. The central message of Christianity is that the love of God becomes real when it is poured out and broken. Those times when Jesus would have wanted to stay out of trouble, go off on his own, and mind his own business became redemptive because he put his life on the line instead. His giving of himself, which admittedly brought on suffering, gave a golden hue to his existence and to the brokenness of the world itself. Imagining God as a broken pot is not one that comes naturally. The cracks filled with gold are the tears, the emptying, the vulnerability, and the compassionate reaching out that results from getting involved and loving. That’s the “real” Christian God described in the bible and embodied most especially in the person of Jesus himself. We wouldn’t see the golden radiant beauty of God except for Christ on the cross.

Sanctuary or Supermarket: Where Is the Church?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

When I was deciding to undertake writing a book exploring the basics of Catholic faith, I looked at other books that claimed to be doing the same thing. I was struck by two omissions that I found in many of them. For one, “the church” essentially means the institution—the Catholic Church and its leaders, past and present. For another, many such books avoid the topic of morality or, at best, mention it briefly. The problem with these omissions is that they overlook where, how, and among whom Catholicism is largely lived out in the world today.

A little over a decade ago, Father Robert Barron, now a bishop, wrote a popular and engagingly written book to accompany a video series called Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith. The book and video series are filled with images of churches and religious art. Early in his book (page 3), he talks about the central teaching of Catholicism, the Incarnation, which he calls the enfleshment of God. God continues to be enfleshed in the Church. He lists how, for him, that enfleshment is present through the Church today: in the sacraments, in the Liturgy, in the work of theologians, in the governance of popes and bishops, in the saints, and in Catholic art. What’s missing? How about the everyday, commonplace expressions of love happening in families, in friendships, in schools, in businesses, in supermarkets, in the simple exchanges Catholics make throughout their lives?

The everyday, commonplace expressions of love happening in families, in friendships, in schools, in businesses, in supermarkets, in the simple exchanges Catholics make throughout their lives.

I recently had the honor of serving as a Confirmation sponsor for my grandson. After the ceremony, many of the boys headed off to their CYO (in Philadelphia, Catholic Youth Organization) basketball game. Confirmation was quickly forgotten, but before the game, players and coaches gathered at center court to recite the Hail Mary, followed by asking the blessing of the patron saints of the two parishes facing off against each other. This little ritual may seem mindless and pro forma for Catholic activities but think about it. The coaches, who volunteer their time three or four evenings a week, spoke words of praise and encouragement as players shuffled in and out and made sure that sportsmanlike conduct prevailed despite the hard-fought game. Their passion was basketball and the young boys they coached, but if pushed and explained, they would hesitantly admit that Christ was present through them and in the gym as much as in the church next door. Across the river, in Camden, New Jersey, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital publishes a monthly calendar displayed throughout the hospital. It contains thoughtful reflections for each day and is called “God-Spotting: Finding God in the Everyday.” It serves as one more reminder that those who work at the hospital in whatever capacity are the enfleshment of God.

Those who work at the hospital in whatever capacity are the enfleshment of God.

Surely, Barron would agree that Catholicism and the Incarnation extend beyond church walls. However, by not making that case more explicit in concrete situations, he runs the risk of reinforcing the popular perception that “the Catholic Church” exists in popes and bishops and theologians, and sacraments that are not connected to the lives most Catholics live. Church buildings and sacramental practices are meant to remind us of the holiness that surrounds us. Barron does write about Peter Maurin, Dorothy Day, and the Catholic Worker Movement in his discussion of the last judgment scene in Matthew, chapter 25. (It seems that Dorothy Day is the one layperson who must always be included in any discussion of modern Catholicism. What is seldom mentioned is that she found her greatest joy in spending time with her granddaughter, as many older Catholics do.) However, in his treatment of saints, Barron discusses only four women, all of them religious sisters, two of whom were actually cloistered Carmelite nuns. Here in Philadelphia, unfortunately, the monastery of the Carmelite nuns on North Broad Street was recently shuttered, while CYO basketball continues to thrive. And there are many Catholic women and men, married and unmarried, inspired by their faith, who serve as teachers, healthcare workers, and volunteers in service organizations. The Church Barron writes about is antique and inconsequential unless connected to where the great majority of Catholics are.

In the Index to Barron’s book, there are no entries for the words morality, conscience, or natural law. There are multiple references to sin but in a general, symbolic, or abstract way, such as in his lengthy discussion of Dante’s depiction of hell and purgatory in his Divine Comedy. He does not speak to the concerns of the young couple wanting to have a family but who are struggling getting pregnant, or the teen trying to navigate the epidemic of anxiety and depression plaguing our society today. At least not directly. Barron’s enthusiasm for all things Catholic is certainly commendable and comes through vividly and powerfully in his books and videos. While I am sure that Barron would say that, indeed, Catholicism speaks to everyday concerns, not to do so explicitly runs the risk of reducing Catholicism to what Gerald O’Collins calls in Catholicism: A Very Short Introduction, “at best merely cosmetic decoration” and misses the heart of the faith, lived out today in gyms and supermarkets as well as in our churches.

What Does It Mean to be Anti-Racist?

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

When Ibram X. Kendi, a fellow Temple University Ph. D., published How to Be an Anti-Racist a few years ago, I immediately got the point. Someone can say, “I am not racist,” or “I harbor no animosity toward members of other races.” Given conditions in the world today, that is not enough. If you truly claim to be not racist, it is necessary to look for ways that people are hurting because of their race and seek ways to change policies and practices that are discriminatory and hurtful.

I had a student at Holy Family University who had graduated from the Baltimore, Maryland, school system. He was clearly bright and spoke well about the material discussed in class, but he seemed to lack sufficient reading skills and writing skills to do well in coursework. I asked him, “Didn’t you have to read textbooks when you were in high school?” He told me that the textbooks at his school were hand-me-down, outdated textbooks donated by suburban school districts that students were not allowed to take home for fear that they would never be returned. He said that his school was not sufficiently staffed to offer extra tutoring in reading and writing, so most students struggled to get through on their own.

I had another student, also black and on the basketball team, who graduated from the Louisiana school system. He said that in his state, public schools had an overwhelmingly black student population. White families who could afford it sent their children to “Christian” schools, whose population was overwhelmingly white.

In Philadelphia, the majority of public school students are black. For a long time, Catholic schools offered a safe haven for most Catholic white children to attend predominantly white Catholic schools so as to avoid the inferior public schools. Poorer black children were left to attend the public schools, where extra services were needed but seldom available. A system of charter schools now also offers a way to avoid the general public schools and attend schools that are de facto predominantly white. No schools say that they discriminate against anyone because of their race. However, Catholic schools are predominantly Catholic and white. Recently, thanks to the generosity of some wealthy Catholic business leaders, Catholic entities have taken steps to offer free or inexpensive quality education to children living in poor neighborhoods, and they have met with a great deal of success.

The U.S. Catholic bishops identified racism as a sin as far back as the 1970s. They had in mind not just the prejudices of individual people but the systemic racism that results in members of certain races suffering hardships and lacking opportunities simply because of their race. Systemic or institutional racism is measured in statistics such as infant mortality rates, accessibility to grocery stores where affordable healthy food choices are available, average wages, and school supplies. No one wants to be a statistic, but real people are hurting or lack power and privileges represented by statistics. Problems are intertwined. What’s to prevent poor black people from moving out of crime-ridden, drug-infested, run-down neighborhoods to safer suburban ones, often just a few miles away? Many poor Irish and Italian people did. Maureen O’Connell addresses this issue in her book Undoing the Knots: Five Generations of American Catholic Anti-Blackness. In it, she gives expression to one of Ibram X. Kendi’s principles for being anti-racist: embrace being uncomfortable.

I recently saw the reality O’Connell describes firsthand. I went to a swim meet at a beautiful private country club. As I heard the names of the children participating, I noticed that most of them had Irish names. The young staff serving food and drinks were mostly black. I couldn’t help but think that the Irish members of the club would have been the servers and servants just two generations ago. Would the black workers have the same opportunities available to them?

Hearing the stories of my two students who received an inferior quality education was discomforting. What might I do in response if I aspire to being anti-racist? How might it affect my teaching, and what might Holy Family do to address this reality of American society? Unless discomfort leads to action, we remain awash in guilt and shame or denial—never healthy places to be. Hearing stories helps. Sharing stories helps. Having a goal helps—to create an equitable society where no one is left out.

Woke Catholicism

by Joseph Stoutzenberger

For a few years now, I have been working on writing an overview of Catholicism. While reading and researching Catholic perspectives on the bible, church, sacraments, and morality, I was also reading news reports about priests’ sexual abuse of minors and bishops who covered up abuses without reporting them to proper authorities. In a report about priest abuse in Pennsylvania, I discovered that the principal and chaplain at the high school I attended were on the list of committing “credible offenses.” Three priests who taught at one time at the university where I taught had also been dismissed from active ministry because of abuse accusations. I felt as though the book I was writing was about Catholicism as an ideal, while there existed a separate and different Catholicism that was real. It is hard to reconcile the church as the unsullied bride of Christ with the reality that the church was being represented at times by very flawed and, indeed, sinful people. With each damning headline, the church looks more and more like the prophet Hosea’s unfaithful wife, Gomer. Like Hosea’s, our faith is being tested every time church leaders misrepresent the severity of the problem.

I realized that I could not write about “Catholicism” without recognizing the reality of sexual abuse that has taken place in the church in the recent past and today. I looked at other books that described themselves as offering an introduction to or an overview of Catholicism. None that I found addressed this dark side of Catholicism. They spoke of the role priests and bishops are to serve in the church, without acknowledging that ministering to the faithful was at times being distorted into abusing the faithful and scarring them for life.

The response to clergy sex abuse that was commonplace for years reminded me of the conversation going on in the United States about “woke” and “anti-woke” movements. In the 1990s, some African-American commentators talked about the need to be informed, educated, and conscious of societal injustices—being “woke.” An essential element of wokeness was to look for injustices that may be ingrained in society and its institutions. The movement advocating wokeness led to a backlash. Some politicians proposed that seeing systemic injustices in society was anti-American, a denunciation of the wonderful structures that exist in American society that should not be questioned. Talking about injustices, even such clear-cut examples as the enslavement of Africans before the Civil War, was upsetting to white children who would feel bad about it but were not responsible for it. Wokeness also came to be seen as advocating for some groups on the fringes of American society whose identity and lifestyle ran counter to what many believed were traditional Christian values. School children should be shielded from learning about non-heterosexual persons; it could lead to third graders, for instance, questioning their own sexual identity. Should students in the lower grades be asked whether they wanted to be called he, she, or they?

Anyone familiar with how psychological therapy works knows that not addressing a problem is never a path to healing. There has been sickness in the church when it comes to priestly sexuality and abuse, just as there have been injustices in American society. Even children can’t help but wonder why so many black people live in poorer sections of our cities and not so many in wealthy suburbs. When all of a sudden, Father Jim no longer shows up for Mass anymore, parishioners naturally begin to imagine the worst. Saying “Let’s not talk about it” isn’t helpful to anyone’s psychological health, children or adults. In the same way, bishops seeking to avoid scandal by not addressing the real scandal of men abusing children while hiding behind the mask of their priestly garb was not healthy or helpful for anyone.

Catholicism needs a “woke” campaign, calling for everyone in the church to be educated, informed, and conscious of problems such as abuse. Part of that campaign is to look for possible systemic causes for problems and systemic solutions. Perhaps it’s time to consider not restricting priesthood to celibate men, for instance. Surely, given the extent of the problem of abuse by church workers, we are well beyond blaming “a few bad apples.” And the coverup approach has only led to more people getting hurt. Church leaders have taken some steps to employ a woke approach to matters of sexuality, clerical identity, and healthy interaction among the diversity of people who populate our world. Unfortunately, the non-wokeness about these matters for so long has muted their voice when speaking out against societal problems that sorely need to be addressed, such as racism, sexism, and heterosexism. God knows we need a church and a country that is “woke.”