Matthew 1 [for reference]
Matthew’s Infancy narrative begins with a genealogy of Jesus, “the Son of David, the Son of Abraham.” [Matthew 1:1] In his Coming Christ in Advent [1988] Father Raymond Brown writes that “I have been conducting a somewhat solitary campaign to make this Matthean genealogy a major Advent topic” and in a footnote he reminds us that “It is also assigned to the afternoon Mass on December 24—a Mass that seems not to be frequently celebrated in the U.S.A.” [p. 17] Personally I can only recall this opening text of the Gospel read once at a public Mass, and I must admit I never read the full list of Jesus’ ancestors at a public Mass as a pastor. In popular church lingo, the two genealogies of Jesus [from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke] are sometimes referred to as the “begets” or the “begats,” as in “Azor begot Zadok, Zadok begot the father of Achim, Achim begot Eliud,” etc. The Paulist Biblical Commentary [2018] explains that genealogies enforce the nature and importance of their subject; in the Matthean text Jesus is clearly defined as the offspring of David and Abraham. Identified with this heritage, Jesus will go on in this Gospel to fulfill the promises of Abraham and David. Abraham, of course, was esteemed as the father of the Jewish people; by the time of Jesus many of the twelve tribes had died out, and it is no accident that Matthew will describe Jesus’ selection of “the twelve” [disciples] as a statement that the integrity of Israel’s being has been restored. Likewise, the inclusion of David at the opening of the genealogy symbolizes that Jesus has fulfilled the expectations of a new David, though the Gospel bears witness to much confusion surrounding the way in which Jesus will define the promise of David. In Matthew’s later depiction of Holy Week, the crowds on Palm Sunday will salute Jesus with “Hosanna to the Son of David” but less than a week later will call for his death, agitated by the leadership of the Temple. The Hebrew language assigns a numerical value to its letters, and the name “David” equates to the sum of fourteen. Matthew, to enhance the Davidic relationship to Jesus, divides the genealogy into three clusters of fourteen descendants. Given the times and sources available, stretching back over two millennia, the literal accuracy of Jesus’ heritage cannot be assumed, but Matthew does include some “family skeletons.” The PBC commentator observes that there are several women in the family line with “histories;” some sexual, as was the case of Bathsheba, and some with a strong Gentile connection. The inclusion of women and sexual misconduct in the family line may have been Matthew’s way of inoculating the reader for the very peculiar conclusion of the genealogy. Matthew 1:15 reads “Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus, who is called the Messiah.” Last night at Mass as I professed the Creed I was struck again by the mystery and complexity of that phrase where we bow our heads and affirm: “For us men and our salvation, He came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.” Familiarity need not breed contempt, but it can dull our minds to the literal impact of these words and how the Incarnation event was experienced by the actual persons involved. Matthew’s text gives us a window into those events. He concludes the family line [1: 16] by defining Joseph as the husband of Mary, and Mary as the mother of Jesus. But Matthew is quick to point out that there is more to this story than meets the eye, and his narrative [1;18-25] outlines this complexity in his depiction of the conception and birth of Jesus. Matthew explains that Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but “before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit.” [1: 18] Matthew makes it clear that Joseph is not the natural father of Mary’s child. Joseph is described as a “righteous man,” i.e., a devout observer of the Jewish Law, who is greatly distressed that his future bride is carrying a child that is not his. Matthew’s account differs significantly from Luke’s in that the Matthean account provides no indication that Mary understood her pregnancy. Joseph, faithful observer of the Law, would have been within his rights to present his apparently unfaithful future bride to Jewish authorities for censure; Deuteronomy 22: 22-23 states that the penalty for infidelity in betrothal was stoning, though by Joseph’s day the penalty was mitigated to public disgrace and banning of the unfaithful woman [and her partner]. That Joseph, given his noted fidelity to the Law, would nonetheless seek to shield his bride-to-be from public wrath is an indication of an extraordinary moral sensitivity that goes beyond the Law and would foreshadow the mercy of Jesus later in this Gospel. Continuing the narrative, a divine intervention spared both Joseph and Mary the consequences of their dilemma. Joseph is visited by an angel in a dream, who counsels him to have no fear in taking Mary as his bride and Jesus as his legal son. Joseph learns from the angel that the child has been conceived by the Holy Spirit, a son who will “save the people from their sins.” Joseph then took Mary into his home in Bethlehem, with the evangelist explaining that “he had no relations with her until she bore a son, and he [Joseph] named him Jesus.” Matthew’s Christmas narrative illustrates the central role of Joseph in the unfolding of events, given that the genealogy has progressed from Abraham and David all the way to Joseph. Matthew’s narrative intends to reinforce the role of Jesus as Israel’s savior by emphasis upon the divine and legal fathers of Jesus. Given that Matthew’s Infancy Narrative is less well known than Luke’s, it may come as a surprise to hear that Joseph and Mary lived in Bethlehem, and that Jesus was, so to speak, born at home. How he would come to be known as “the Nazorean” is explained in Matthew 2, the next portion of the full narrative. Matthew’s statement that Joseph had no relations with Mary until she had borne Jesus has led some to wonder if Jesus had younger brothers and sisters. The scholars I have read indicate that this is unlikely. In the first instance, Matthew’s intention is to establish that Jesus is truly the offspring of the Holy Spirit, that there is no possibility Joseph himself sired the one we worship today as “Son of God.” Second, the evidence from Scripture and secondary sources that Jesus had siblings is just about nonexistent. And finally, for Catholics, the doctrine of the Virgin Birth appears to have roots from earliest Christian days. In his classic A Marginal Jew I [1991] Father John Meier presents third century evidence that enemies of Christianity in the third century attacked the Church by attacking Jesus’ legitimacy. The Christian writer Origen, around 250 A.D., reports hearing a tale from his enemy Celsus that Jesus fabricated the virgin birth scenario to conceal his illegitimate birth at the hands of a Roman soldier. Meier suggests that Celsus or someone created this slur by reworking the actual Gospel of Matthew, which was already widely available and read throughout the Mediterranean world. [pp. 222-229]. He adds that if enemies were attacking this doctrine so early in history, then belief in the virgin birth was already well-established in the Christian world.
1 Comment
The four Gospels are a remarkable literary accomplishment, collectively and individually. Forget for a moment that Christian cherish these works as God’s truth, shared by the Holy Spirit in the inspiration of the writers, there are few if any parallels to these narrative biographies in their literary magnificence, and their compelling beauty is indeed no small aspect of God’s revelation here. The evangelists may or may not have been familiar with the fathers of written history, Herodotus and Thucydides, the Greek originators of the modern art who, five centuries before Jesus, crafted the “doing” of history into a narration of events with interpretive meaning.
For many centuries St. Matthew’s Gospel was called “the Gospel of the Church.” Through the medieval era this title seemed logical and appropriate. At the time, the Matthean Gospel was considered the first of the four to be composed; it is the longest of the four, and there survives many a stained-glass window with the evangelist, pen in hand, listening to the whisperings of an angel. St. Matthew’s Passion account, for example, was read annually on Palm Sunday. By 1800 scholars of the bible had begun critical studies of the four Gospels and gradually came to an understanding of both inspiration and biblical dating. By the twenty-first century the prevailing wisdom holds that St. Mark composed the first Gospel, that St. Matthew composed his Gospel at least a decade, and possibly more, after St. Mark’s and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. The Matthean text rests upon the Markan text, an independent “Q Source,” and the evangelist’s own inspiration—an inspiration which producing a “Christmas Narrative.” We know next to nothing about the identity of St. Matthew. For several reasons, scholars are doubtful that the Apostle Matthew—the former tax collector—is the same person who composed the Gospel under that name. We are on safer footing in drawing from the internal clues of the Gospel itself. The Matthean text indicates an author who is deeply influence by the Hebrew Scripture. The term “according to the Scriptures” appears in St. Matthew more than in any other New Testament work. [The term “Scripture” in the early Church applied exclusively to the Hebrew canon of books, the “Old Testament.”] The author depicts Jesus as doing the works of Moses, such as delivering God’s law from on high, i.e., Sermon on the Mount, and feeding the people in the wilderness, i.e., the distributive miracle of the loaves and fishes. St. Matthew’s Gospel is believed to have originated in the city of Antioch [near modern Antakya, Turkey] at least a decade after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Relations between Christians and Jews who lived side by side were tense. Christians were wont to see the fall of Jerusalem as God’s judgment on Israel for rejecting the messiahship of Christ. Many Jews regarded Christians, particularly converts from Judaism, as traitors and blasphemers, outraged by the Christian contention that the crucified Jesus was one and the same as God [Yahweh]. Considering that Roman authorities generally tolerated the Jews for their ethic and long history while periodically persecuting Christians as subversives, it is easy to understand how Jewish Christians were tempted “to return home,” so to speak. It is in this context that the Gospel of Matthew developed, a text written to establish for all time that Jesus is the Messiah, the true son of Abraham, the new Moses, who has come to deliver the fullness of the Law and the fulfillment of Old Testament prophesies. In its unfolding biography the Gospel of St. Mathew will describe a Jesus who delivers a new moral code [the Eight Beatitudes], who battles with scribes and Pharisees over their legalism, and who takes a dim view of the mediocrity of Temple worship to the point that its leaders wanted him dead and were instrumental in making that happen. Only St. Matthew records the infamous line, “Let his blood be upon us and upon our children.” Using the text of St. Mark and the Q source, St. Matthew adds his original material under the influence of divine inspiration. Like his contemporary St. Luke, St. Matthew wished to lay out his theological position before delving into the adult ministry of Jesus, and he sculpted an infancy narrative as his signal statement of both the identity of Jesus and his meaning to the world. The infancy narrative, the first two chapters of his Gospel, is inspired in both a human and divine sense. Unfortunately, it is a narrative of which most Catholics are unaware, as the Gospel of St. Luke, with its Bethlehem portrayal, is the usual Gospel of choice for the Masses of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I would point out, though, the Matthean Christmas text is the recommended one for the Christmas Eve vigil Masses, though pastors have the option to use St. Luke and even the introduction to St. John’s Gospel. I might add here that the Christmas creche display is inspired primarily by St. Luke’s account, but the displays themselves were first erected in 1223 by St. Francis of Assisi. In the next post on this sequence, I will walk through St. Matthew’s Chapters 1 and 2 for a closer look at the faith realities expressed in each section, beginning with the genealogy of Jesus. I might recommend that you read St. Matthew’s Christmas texts as if you had never heard of St. Luke’s and were approaching this material for the first time. I recommend this particularly to catechists, preachers, and parents of young children who educate their offspring as “the first teachers of the faith.” In my previous Advent post I talked about the second century church writer Tatian, who attempted to morph together all four Gospels in his Diatessaron, an error that inhibits a fuller understanding of the divine inspiration behind each Gospel. It is an easy shortcut to fall into, and the multiple Christmas narratives are as good a place as any to teach foundation understanding of biblical reading and scholarship. The Advent-Christmas cycle of feasts brings to us some of our most colorful and cherished Biblical narratives from both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. From the prophesies of Isaiah to the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, the biblical/liturgical texts of the Church observances are probably the ones most easily retrieved by most of us. As a past teacher of catechists, I find the Advent-Christmas texts very useful in introducing Bible studies in general, for we rarely have a season when so many distinctive traits of Scriptural literary forms bump up against images so vivid in our seasonal art, hymns, story-telling, and catechetics.
Of course, our pastoral memories of the birth of Jesus are based on a part of the whole. There is a bit of cherry picking in the way we teach or narrate the “Christmas story.” There are some inconvenient truths in both the Hebrew and Christian texts that intrude upon our nostalgia, and woe to the preacher, teacher or parent who breaks this news for the first time. The dedicated student of the Bible can be quite puzzled at Scripture’s full presentation of Christmas and all that leads up to it during Advent. As Father Raymond Brown put it in his masterful An Adult Christ at Christmas [1978] “That is why I claim that for many people the narratives of Jesus’ birth and infancy ‘constitute “the last frontier” to be crossed in gaining an appreciation of the implications of a modern scientific [critical] approach to the New Testament.’” [p. 3] For starters, the Infancy Narratives or Gospel Christmas stories of Christ’s birth are plural, not singular, specifically written by two different evangelists in two different settings. Surprisingly only Matthew and Luke contain material related to what we know as “Christmas.” Mark [the first evangelist] and John [the last] begin their gospels with an adult Jesus, indicating that the exact details of Christ’s birth as history were not major preoccupations with first century Christians. By contrast, the Baptism of the adult Jesus—the final feast of the Advent-Christmas cycle and the beginning of Ordinary Time, is reported across the board in all four Gospels, passing what scripture scholars call “the law of multiple attestation test,” or “the more an event is reported across the board of New Testament writing, the greater likelihood of its historical grounding.” More surprising, the two narratives of Matthew and Luke do not agree with each other on significant points in the Christmas narrative. Why is this so, and do such discrepancies discredit the Bible as a whole? One need not worry that the Bible is not inspired by God, or that it does not constitute everything that we need to know and believe to be saved. The recently published The Paulist Biblical Commentary [2018] includes a summary of official Church teaching on Biblical interpretation and scholarship over the past century [pp. 1615-1621]. While too much detail to produce here, the Church recognizes that while the inspiring wisdom of God is perfect, it is narrated and revealed by humans with the limitations of personality, time, and culture. Thus, biblical scholars attempt to know much about the identities and characteristics of the authors, specifically their intentions in writing what they understood, and how their communities or first hearers formed and received the preaching and/or writing. The Gospels, for example are the products of actual events in the ministry of the adult Jesus which were preserved by a believing community and then put in writing by the four evangelists, each inspired by a necessary and unique understanding of the Christ. It is not an exaggeration to say, for example, that the Holy Spirit inspired the Christian Church to accept the New Testament and verify its veracity. Scholars have long recognized that the words attributed to St. Peter in Acts 2: 22-24 may be our closest connection to what the earliest apostolic church communities held to be a faith biography or creed about Jesus: “Jesus the Nazorean was a man commended to you by God with mighty deeds, wonders, and signs, which God worked through him in your midst, as you yourselves know. This man, delivered up by the set plan and foreknowledge of God, you killed, using lawless men to crucify him. But God raised him up, releasing him from the throes of death, because it was impossible for him to be held by it.” The 1964 Pontifical Biblical Commission, writing on the historicity of the Gospels, said this about the four evangelists: “This primitive instruction [of the Apostles] was passed on orally at first, and later written down. Indeed, it was not long before many attempted "to draw up a narrative” of the events connected with the Lord Jesus. The sacred authors [Evangelists], each using all approaches suited to his specific purpose, recorded this primitive teaching in the four Gospels for the benefit of the churches. Of the many elements at hand they reported some, summarized others, and developed still others in accordance with the needs of the various churches. They used every possible means to ensure that their readers would come to know the validity of the things they had been taught. From the material available to them the Evangelists selected those items most suited to their specific purpose and to the condition of a particular audience. And they narrated these events in the manner most suited to satisfy their purpose and their audience's condition.” The Gospel writers thus had considerable leeway in the ways they conveyed the meaning of Jesus’ life. The 1964 Pontifical Decree, along with several others to follow in the twenty and twenty-first centuries, acknowledge that the four evangelists, working from a primitive historical oral base, have enlarged the meaning of Christ into unique narratives. One may ask why the Church does not synthesize these four Gospel narratives to smooth out notable differences. In fact, such a project was completed between 150 and 200 A.D. by one Tatian, at a time before the Church had formally defined the canon or books of the New Testament. Tatian believed that a harmonization of the four Gospels would be useful, and he blended the books together into one, known as the Diatessaron. Scholars estimate that about 25% of the Gospel material was eliminated from surviving copies. Tatian’s work is today considered counterproductive to the Church because it assumes two critical factors that modern scholarship rejects: [1] that the Gospels were intended to be read as raw history, not theological history, and [2] that narrative differences and disagreements were problems, not clues. Today there is general agreement that the Gospels are faith statements generated from preaching and belief of a Jesus whose detailed history is unavailable to us. The “differences” among the four evangelists enable us to understand the unique theological vision of each inspired writer on the meaning of the Christ. The Christmas narratives illustrate in a striking fashion. The “Christmas stories” were not part of the earliest apostolic preaching, for the simple reason that no apostle—or anyone else, for that matter—witnessed the event. From a purely historical point of view, the few details outlined in the Christmas texts of Matthew and Luke cannot be verified, either. King Herod’s “Slaughter of the Holy Innocents” is nowhere recorded in secular history, not even by a reliable historian of the time, Josephus, who does record a brief sketch of the adult Jesus and his crucifixion. Rather, the Christmas narratives of Matthew and Luke are twin theological statements. Matthew describes Jesus’ birth as the fulfillment of Jewish destiny and Jesus himself as the new Moses. Luke’s Christmas narrative emphasizes the Holy Spirit as the life of the Church and Jesus as savior of the world. These writers’ theological emphases account for two depictions of Jesus’ origins in a way that would help the Church shape its identity. We will look at those different Christologies in the next post. We are now into that seven week observance of the mystery of the Incarnation, God becoming man: the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany-Baptism of the Lord pageant of feasts, fasts, and observances with the potential to awaken any soul with Christian leanings. I am a little late getting off the block with an introductory post, as I continue to care for my wife, who is recovering nicely from surgery after a biking accident in late October. With a new rod placed in her upper arm, she has been something of a “one-armed bandit”, but her spirits are good. We spent the Thanksgiving weekend decorating our home for Christmas and we are one trip to The Dollar Store away from getting the job finished [The last string of Christmas tree lights did not survive the year! What else?]
So, what is Advent and what are we supposed to do with it? Advent, from the Latin for “coming” or “arrival,” is a period of fasting and prayer in preparation for the First and Second Comings of Christ, the events that we sum up in our creeds and catechisms as the “Incarnation,” from the Latin caro, flesh. As the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. decreed, drawing from such Gospel sources as John 1:14, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” The reality of the Incarnation sets humanity in a new and exalted state, capable of hearing divine revelation, morally acting in imitation of God-on-earth and destined for an eternal reward. The doctrine of the Incarnation was further clarified in the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which defined Jesus Christ as equally God and man in one functional being, which is about as far as the unaided human mind can carry a definition of divine manhood. As the doctrine developed, so did the liturgy which celebrated it. Historically speaking, a feast of the Incarnation was established early in Church life, but there was no knowledge of the precise date and circumstances of Jesus’ birth. The Feast of Christmas was established probably in the 330’s A.D., the date falling on or near the winter solstice. The two Gospels that lay out a birth scenario for Jesus do not attempt to date the event; they were more concerned with the implications of Jesus’ birth as we will see in future posts this month. Moreover, the early Christians did not celebrate birthdays of saints, particularly martyrs. Rather, feasts of saints, and even Jesus, were observed on the day of their deaths, most often martyrdom. Why the Feast of Christmas was eventually established on December 25 may be explained by the fact that many cultures and religions celebrated a major feast around the winter solstice or shortly thereafter, a kind of “victory of the sun” celebration as the days become longer after December 21. Christians may have set the date of Christmas as a countercultural sign. A historical tidbit: when the date of December 25 was ultimately chosen, the day was already occupied by another feast, the martyrdom of the virgin Anastasia, whose biography of charity and courage was a major source of inspiration in the early Church. St. Anastasia is one of seven women martyrs remembered in today’s Eucharistic Prayer I in the Mass missal, and she is still remembered in the dawn Mass of Christmas Day. As Christmas Day took on greater importance in the development of Church worship, the practice of a solemn preparation began, first in the monasteries of both the Western and Eastern branches of Christianity. In the Roman West, the Council of Tours in 587 A.D. instructed monks to fast every day in December until Christmas, and gradually a liturgical season of penance developed in preparation for the Christmas feast throughout the entire Church. Vatican II reforms emphasized the difference between the Advent spirit of watchfulness and fasting for Christ’s twofold comings and Lent’s 40-day penitential fast in preparation for the Easter Triduum. Some churches use blue vestments instead of violet/purple, a minor violation of Church law. Advent is somewhat shorter than Lent. The First Sunday of Advent is always dated as the fourth Sunday before Christmas, putting it near November 30 every year and, here in the United States, on Thanksgiving weekend. To the naked eye, the change in color from the green of Ordinary Time to the violet of penance is evident, as is an Advent wreath—the four candle symbol of the Advent observance usually lit and blessed in church. Many families create or purchase Advent wreaths for their homes; most parishes provide accompanying resources for prayer at the daily lighting in homes. In the twenty-some days of the Advent season, the Church focuses upon the coming of the person of Jesus as the fulfillment of the Hebrew Scripture promises and the Second Coming of Christ at the end of time. It can be a bit confusing that the First Sunday of Advent places emphasis upon the second coming and not the first; in fact, the weekday Gospels of Advent through December 16 feature the futuristic preaching of the adult Jesus, a mood of caution to prepare for future judgment while at the same time looking forward to an ultimate deliverance and eternal life. From December 17 the weekday and Sunday Gospels draw from the two narratives leading up to the birth of Jesus, from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke exclusively. In the next several posts we will look at the Advent-Christmas cycle more closely. For example, what can history tell us about the expectations of a savior and the content of the two Christmas narratives of Matthew and Luke? How do scripture scholars go about their work in unpacking the nature of Christ [Christology] from the Biblical texts? Who is John the Baptist, and what is his relation to Jesus? Similarly, how is Mary portrayed in the Advent-Christmas cycle of feasts? It is difficult, I know, to focus our meditation on such things in the hyperactive civil observances around us, but perhaps the Christians faced the same issues in the pagan atmosphere of fourth century Rome…and made December 25 their rebuttal with things real. When I was young the liturgical season of Advent played a big role in my formative liturgical consciousness. It was, after all, the countdown to Christmas and the arrival of Santa down the chimney, that time when reasonably good behavior at home held promise to a glorious Christmas morning. Advent was the season of judgment in Santa’s allotment of toys. [Perhaps therefore the Church identifies Advent as a penitential season.] Later, as I matured out of such childhood musings, I learned to appreciate Advent as a season that begins on Thanksgiving weekend with the annual Ohio State-Michigan college football finale. Wherever you stand on the Advent consciousness meter, be reminded that the season starts next week. Covid or not, the Church calendar remains the same. The First Sunday of Advent marks the beginning of the Church calendar every year. The vestments next weekend will be purple.
I am writing this on November 23, the day after the celebration of “The Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe,” the final Sunday of this liturgical worship year. For much of my adult life this observance had the simpler title of “Christ the King.” All three annual cycles of Sunday readings end with a description of the last times, the Second Coming of Christ, and focus upon the eternal destiny of every human. In the 1970 revision of the missal, the feast of Christ the King was transferred from late October to the end of the liturgical year in late November, and paired with the year’s final Sunday, popularly called “Last Judgment Sunday” in the old days. Sunday’s scripture readings were all apocalyptic or future oriented, as are the readings for this feast in Cycle B [St. Mark] and Cycle C [St. Luke] years. For years I have heard preachers deliver essentially the same sermon on Christ the King: Jesus is not like other kings. My pastor put it this way when he said that “Jesus was not the warrior people were hoping for.” That interpretation is as old as the days the first editions of the Gospels were passed along to the early Christian assemblies around the Mediterranean. It is easy to take away from this interpretation that Jesus was a weaker king here on earth than the evil kings and princes of this world, but that at some distant point in the future Jesus would return from a spiritual world and have the last laugh. Yesterday’s Gospel from Matthew depicts the coming of the Son of Man at the end of time, but this figure—whether intended to represent Jesus himself or his alter ego, the Son of Man—is not laughing. As Matthew puts it, "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.” If anything, the judge described here at the end of time will do precisely what kings and princes have always done, exercise power by the measure of loyalty to what the king holds dear in his wisdom and vision. In our case here, the king holds the alleviation of hunger, the welcoming of isolated foreign immigrants, the clothing and housing of the poorest, and the fair, humane treatment of the sick and prisoners as the hallmarks of his kingdom, and we will be judged on this parameter of attitude and behavior. Citizens of this kingdom who do not share the intentions of the king will hear: “Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” This scenario sounds very much like the exercise of power earthly kings, which might be what St. Matthew has been trying to tell us over these many centuries. Christianity, from its earliest Jewish roots, has been a religion for grown-ups. The famous German Lutheran minister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed by the Nazis for an assassination attempt on Hitler, famously coined the expression “cheap grace” to describe the staid mediocrity of the mainstream churches. He wrote: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.” As we begin the observance of the Advent and Christmas seasons next weekend, it is critical to remember that these seasons are not the trail to Bethlehem but the road to Calvary. In 1978 the American biblical scholar Father Raymond Brown composed An Adult Christ at Christmas, a brief but informative collection of essays for adults that explains the Christmas narratives as predictive narratives of Christ’s passion. I will be describing Father Brown’s text in future posts, but for the moment let it suffice to say that he explains in his writing the methodology of unpacking the “Infancy Narratives” or the Advent-Christmas Gospel texts. From a “purely historical” perspective we know nothing of Christ’s birth, but thanks to Father Brown and the work of biblical scholars dating to the 1700’s we have a better understanding of what God intended in the revelation of these texts. The danger of Advent is our tendency to recast it for children, both in catechetical style and preaching emphasis. As grown-ups, we should be awaiting a powerful appearance from God who comes to define and transform us. Our tendency, of course, is to join the children in awaiting a St. Nick figure who, at the end of the day, tears up our debit sheet and showers us with undeserved presents. In St. Mark’s Gospel, the text for Year B, Jesus preaches that the true disciple is one who takes up a cross and follows him. Our observance of Advent must reflect the One we await. Tonight [Tuesday] the 116th World Series begins, pitting our local Tampa Bay Rays against the Los Angeles Dodgers, all four to seven games to be played in isolation in Texas. I started watching the Series with devotion in 1957, viewing the New York Yankees-Milwaukee [now Atlanta] Braves play the full seven game limit and Lew Burdette pitch three victories in seven games. Had I started a year earlier, 1956, I could have seen Yankee Don Larsen’s perfect game, where he retired all 27 Brooklyn Dodger batters in a row. In my twenties I did see [and gnashed my teeth at] the worst bad luck any first baseman could experience--Bill Buckner’s error that cost the Red Sox the 1986 World Series.
I have read my share of baseball books over the years. I discovered that before the late 1960’s baseball was not player friendly. Players could not negotiate with other teams under a Major League arrangement called “the reserve clause,” which meant that if you started your career with the St. Louis Browns, you had to stay with them till they traded you or you died. You had little leverage in salary negotiations. Perhaps best known to most Americans is the systematic exclusion of persons of color from major league rosters; not until 1959 did every team in the majors carry at least one person of color on its active roster. Moreover, a fair number of baseball players themselves over the past 115 years have not been “gentlemen” either. Pete Rose and the Chicago Black Sox, the antisocial behaviors of stars like Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, alcohol abuse which eventually killed Mickey Mantle and Billy Martin, not to mention so many lesser-known players. Sexual mayhem on road trips. But we still love the game, or at least care enough to put some World Series money down with our bookies. One reason, to be sure, is historical continuity. There are six current major league teams which have never won a World Series—and one of them [Tampa] is playing tonight. There is at least a 50-50 chance that the Rays will win their first World Series. It is no lie to say that in baseball you may always see something that has never happened before. Just last week, in the National League Pennant Series, the Braves ran themselves into a head-scratching double play. On the other hand, some of the greatest plays in history have occurred under the glare of international attention. My personal favorite was Derek Jeter’s amazing flip to home plate some years ago. Perhaps this is a stretch, but organized baseball is a key to understanding the Church, or at least to our participation in the Church. All of the polling in recent times tells us that Catholics are not exactly rabid about going to Church every Sunday; there is similarity with baseball fans who also tend to shun portions of the season in attendance or on local TV, particularly in April. I am thinking back to a 2007 game in Camden Yards [Baltimore] during an NCEA convention there. I had wanted to see a young pitcher with Detroit, Justin Verlander. Young Justin had the good sense to come in out of the sleet in the seventh inning…and the game went on and on into extra inning. We lasted till the eleventh inning…and there sure were not many cars in the parking lot. But when the pennant chases and the weather heat up, the seats fill up, just as they do in Catholic Churches during Lent and Easter. Church and Major League Baseball both have solemn code books. MLB has its frequently revised Rule Book, while Catholics depend upon the Code of Canon Law, which was revised only twice in the twentieth century [1917 and 1983]. But both institutions also have “local codes.” In baseball this would be the ballpark itself. At the beginning of a major league game the umpires go over the “ground rules” with each team captain. No two baseball parks are exactly alike. The most famous local twist to a park may be Boston’s Fenway Park, with its infamous “Green Monster” wall in left field. Teams have been known to bring fences closer to the batter to help the hitter, or further out to help the pitcher, though not during a game. Along the same lines, Catholic bishops, the proprietors of their dioceses, can set laws and standards as they see fit and within universal Canon Law. For example, in 2001 Margaret and I never got to attend the Mass of the Feast of the Ascension. In Orlando, the bishops have transferred it to the Seventh Sunday of Easter, which Church law permits. But we flew to Boston and discovered that there the Mass of Obligation for the Ascension was never changed from its dating of forty days after the Resurrection. Fortunately, we had dinner with a distinguished Boston College theologian who assured us that our souls were safe for the moment, anyway. Catholics and baseball fans both celebrate their histories, though Catholics have been doing it longer. A few years ago, I hiked through a muddy meadow to come upon St. Brendan’s Well, on Valencia Island on the West Coast of Ireland. Legend has it that St. Brendan traveled to this site to baptize a dying pagan. The “well” is a small hole with a stone marker—no chapel or structure anywhere—and yet there were dozens of flowers and religious items left at the site by devout Catholic tourists. Catholics, particularly those troubled by our chaotic times, take a special comfort from the words of Jesus that he would always be with us, till the end of the world, and we mark the world today with sacred sites where people of like spirit can come together to celebrate a graced humanity. I grew up attending baseball games in Buffalo in the International League, and it always seemed that the folks seated around you were “your friends” at least for nine innings. A church and a ballpark are not so different in that sense. Just be nice in the parking lot! Covid-19 new cases are spiking in about half of the United States. Here in “hot-spot Florida” there is anger and discouragement over the fact we may have “opened” too soon. China is experiencing local flare-ups in several of its markets in large cities. Unemployment in the United States sits at Depression era levels. Another government stimulus for American workers appears to be some ways off, according to this discussion of possibilities from Forbes on June 13. Depending upon which think tank you subscribe to, the consensus seems to be that of those across the country who are currently unemployed, 50% of them will discover that their jobs have been permanently eliminated.
How does this upheaval impact the many Catholic parishes across the United States? The best word at this juncture may be “unevenly,” since there was significant imbalance of resources among parishes and dioceses before the Covid-19 reached the American shore not to mention various spiritualities and priorities. One of our readers offered the thought that we might see the end of the “parish structure” during this time. I am not quite that pessimistic; but my gut tells me there may be an exodus toward smallness. I have seen small churches in economically challenged circumstances function and even thrive, as in the small shark-hunting coastal village of Saliverry, Peru in 2014. In Saliverry we unexpectedly attended a family memorial Mass and the folks came over to thank us for coming! Meanwhile, outside the same church, the CYO or teen group, which identified themselves as young missionaries, was packing food to take to poor parishioners. [Later, when we were surrounded by a “tough” group of older teens near the waterfront, I whispered to Margaret in English, “Maybe it’s more teen missionaries.”] The most urgent question across the board—aside from sacramental practice-- is survival of diocesan and parish structure in the sense of protecting long-time competent employees and continuing the essentials of the Catholic mission. Naturally, our thoughts turn immediately to cash flow since our Church employees have families to feed and there are thousands upon thousands of citizens who would literally starve without parish food outreach and the works of Catholic Charities. This was true long before the virus. I counsel on Fridays from a church site which is feeding hundreds of families every other week. If we have learned anything from Covid-19, it is that bull markets on Wall Street do not translate into the everyday life of modest and low-income Americans. As I posted a few days ago, there is not much journalistic reporting on the current fiscal condition of the U.S. Church. With the Orlando, FL, region Covid-19 cases spiking dramatically, most media coverage here is devoted to public safety, and to the “I can’t breathe” memorials and protests. In truth, current Church financial condition are hard to gauge, in part because we have no idea how long the virus will last. Josephine Everly of the [Catholic] Leadership Conference believes that “it will be 18 to 24 months before parishes, schools and other Catholic institutions see a return to normal levels of giving.” The assumption here is that there will be a return to normal. I told my friends some months ago that some semblance of a return to modest church attendance will not be determined by either the Church or the State: it will happen when mothers feel safe bringing their children into enclosed populated spaces, and it won’t happen one day sooner. In other words, no routine till a safe virus is developed and the country is vaccinated. I caught an article in the colorful Patheos journal that questioned whether most Catholics would come back at all, and another along the same lines in The Catholic Thing. Another factor of the post-Corona Church is the resolution of outstanding abuse claims and diocesan bankruptcies, which of course dates back prior to Covid-19 in most cases. Since I last posted five days ago, the dioceses of St. Cloud, Minnesota, and Rockville Center, Long Island, have declared bankruptcy. [A curious point: five of the six dioceses in Minnesota have declared bankruptcy; three of eight in New York State.] There are now about 25 [of 185] dioceses in bankruptcy across the country. If I were a member of a diocese in financial limbo, and especially an employee or a parent with children in the parish school, I would want at least some indication from the chancery and the parishes about the outlook for the immediate future. Like most businesses in trouble, churches tend to lead with good news, tenuous as it may be. Several diocesan websites are posting letters to the effect that everything will be done to bring all school children on campus. [If I can brag on my own diocese, our parents will have the choice of classroom or on-line. This is an inspired judgment call; would you lay down bets for a major sports team scheduled to play in August?] I learned from a former student this week that his parish’s director of adult faith formation was dismissed. My mind jumps to several conclusions: that the parish in question is in financial hot water, that the ministry of adult formation is sitting dormant, and quite likely the parish did not file for federal salary protection, unlike 13,000 parishes across the country. I might be stone cold wrong, but if I belonged to that parish, I would inquire about whether everything is being done to retain good lay ministers and teachers. I have read plenty of on-line church bulletins from around the country that encourage the faithful to use EFT for Offertory giving. But I have yet to see any pastor admit that parish finances may make it necessary to eliminate the following positions [fill in the blanks]. I am going to move to different streams for an educational entry or two and pick up this stream late next week. I hope to have a book review and a few other entries before returning to Covid-19. I am afraid that is not going away any time fast. I wrote at some length in the first installment about the pressure of keeping Catholic churches and schools operating during and after the Corona virus and its financial pressures. I was prompted to research this when a Catholic school in my own diocese was closed on May 20, a rare occurrence [see previous post below.] I am grateful for several friends who filled me in some details, which not surprisingly center around financial problems and several years of confusion among parishioners and school parents how acute the problems were. I will return to this below.
However, since the last post, another closure was brought to my attention by a regular reader and longtime friend from seminary days; this closing occurred in the Paterson, NJ, Diocese. This particular parish is staffed by the Franciscan Friars of the East Coast Province to which I belonged for twenty years. I have two links to the North Jersey news site, story 1 and story 2. The second link is intriguing because after the closing, the Franciscan pastor came under significant fire, with the parents demanding a full audit of the parish and school financial records for the past several years. This audit is currently in process; I did not get the impression that the audit would save the school, but rather it may serve as a useful lesson to this and other parishes about recognizing danger signals in monetary and enrollment matters. It also struck me that regular such audits would probably be more useful on a periodic basis for parishes planning long range viability, particularly parishes with schools. Typically, an outside audit is undertaken, and its results made public before capital campaigns, for example, where soliciting large gifts is indispensable. There are several things in common between the Paterson, New Jersey, closing and the Lakeland, Florida school closing I described in the last post. In both cases [1] parents described themselves in social media and local news outlets as being shocked and uninformed; [2] student enrollment was modest at best, perhaps around 200 and falling; [3] well-meaning parishioners did not have a gut sense of how expensive a school is; [4] the local communities seemed disengaged from the national challenges to Catholic education across the country, too parochial, if you will: and [5] there was an expectation of emergency financial assistance from their respective dioceses. I posted a few days ago that Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburg was leading his diocese in a review of diocesan school operations with an eye toward insuring that all Catholic schools were solvent and self-supporting. Apparently, the impact of Covid-19 accelerated the urgency of his task force, and yesterday, between my last post and this one, Bishop Zubik closed two schools and consolidated two others. The diocese’s website also addresses long range planning to avoid crisis closings in the future: “The diocese is also announcing that as of July 1, 2020, South Regional Catholic Elementary School, Inc. will be formally established, with a governing board of clergy and lay leaders representing each of the parishes and parish groupings in the region. The governing board will be responsible for strategic planning and ensuring that diocesan Catholic schools are properly resourced and sustainable for generations to come. The schools will be supported by a regional office headed by a regional administrator responsible for overseeing the school programs.” There is no mention of fiscal support from the Pittsburgh diocese, but rather, something akin to an “early warning system.” It is possible that such a board could recommend capital campaigns for endowments for tuition relief assistance, though by Canon Law a diocese is a corporation sole, i.e., it is owned and managed by one person, the bishop, who can change plans and arrangements put in place by his predecessors. Are Dioceses insensitive to the needs of local churches, something I hear far too often? Dioceses are expensive to operate. My home diocese was nationally recognized last year for its detailed audit reports and transparency to its members. If you dare, you can review Orlando’s 2019 audit report. It is easily accessible on the diocese’s webpage. I have read it several times, including this morning, and I finally decided to eventually walk it over to a true professional soon to understand the terms and categories. As complicated as an audit is, to make it publicly available is an excellent step in the right direction for all dioceses in the United States, where trust has been eroded by the child abuse scandal and its fiscal costs, as well as the closings of schools and parishes around the country. If you have never seen a diocesan spreadsheet, the size of the numbers is misleading. The trick is understanding that so much of the money is spoken for. Under previous bishops this diocese extended money in various ways for building projects, caught up in the wave before the Great Recession. For example, Orlando has about $70 million in bond obligations extending into 2034, as well as extensive loans outstanding to various parishes and institutions. The diocese is self-insured and carries a portion of that cost with its employees. The audit shows that about half of the $50 million in bequests [from wills and independent gifts] on the books is restricted to specific institutions, and in theory at least, cannot be transferred to general operations. The report shows proceeds from investments, so to some degree any diocese is subject to the market, depending upon exposure. The important thing to take away from any diocesan report is that most expenses are not the sort that become “instantly liquid” in a crisis for local bailouts. Hence there is very little that can be done when the churches and schools are closed and collections and tuitions dip, as many continue to be with Covid-19 threat. The day to day office operations of the diocesan mission are funded in part by the annual diocesan appeal, called by different names. Our Bishop’s Appeal here was conducted just before the lockdown; it remains to be seen how the virus impacted the campaign. This annual campaign is conducted in a more straightforward fashion than years ago when it was called the “Catholic Charities Appeal” and donors assumed their gifts went to direct services. The annual appeal pays for administrative support for the most part. I joke with my wife every year that the media advertising for the campaign features a child in a Catholic school uniform every ten seconds when in fact the campaign does not fund tuition assistance. The staff of Catholic Charities of Orlando would be funded, for example, but the medical providers in its clinics—including myself in two locations—are working pro bono. In the final analysis, most paid employees in the diocese do not draw their regular paychecks from the chancery, but rather, from the parishes and schools where they work. The future for many of them is not consoling. Covid-19 cases are spiking at a record level here in Florida and elsewhere. Word comes this week from the Federal Reserve Board that high unemployment across the country will be with us for a long time, well into next year, and that large infusions of cash from Congress and the Federal Bank will be necessary to keep us from spiraling deeper into recession. Can we protect the jobs in the Church? See the next post in this series in a few days. I am used to seeing parish schools close. Back in the 1970’s, as a college chaplain, I worked in the confines of the Albany, N.Y. diocese which, like many cities in the Rust Belt, was beginning to shed parochial schools. For the post-World War II American Church, closing a Catholic school still carried a good deal of shock value, and this was true in Albany. After several waves of closing angst, the bishop at that time supposedly said to his advisors, “I’m not going to die with every death.” I suspect that is the private mantra of many northern bishops about school and parish closings even to this day.
The closing of a school, when I hear about it in Catholic social media, always saddens me. However, the closing of a Catholic school in the “growing Sunbelt” gets my attention. The closing of a Catholic school in my own diocese is a shocker. It did happen about two weeks ago, in Lakeland, Florida. I remember doing catechetical workshops for the diocese in that facility around 1990, and I have been friends with the present pastor for over thirty years. As he is the church officer who had to make the public announcement to the parish-school community and to the media, he has become [unfairly] the target of some social media trashing, although on the whole the transitioning of students to three other local Catholic schools seems to be progressing as well as can be expected. The immediate cause of the closing as reported by the Diocese of Orlando Office of Schools is a $500,000 projected shortfall for the coming school year, the result of a decline of 40 student enrollments, coupled with Covid-19 factors and an outstanding mortgage of at least $3 million. That constellation of factors sounds compelling enough to warrant the closing, social media critics notwithstanding. There are bigger takeaways from my local experience, though, that bear significantly upon all Catholics, and particularly those who work for the Church today or did so in the past. I knew that two schools had closed earlier this spring in the Fall River, Massachusetts, diocese, so this week I checked to see what the national picture might look like. No major publication has catalogued the question nationally, i.e., tallied schools that were pushed over the brink by the financial complications of the Covid-19 pandemic, so the research here is piecemeal and incomplete. But in a truncated search I found the following number of school closings in specific dioceses: Newark, NJ [10], Diocese of Camden, NJ [5], Harrisburg, PA [2], Boston, MA [4], Wilmington, DE [1], Hartford, CN ( [1], Patterson, NJ [1] and Oklahoma City, specifically Lawton, OK [1]. The Pittsburgh and Buffalo Dioceses, among others, are undertaking massive reorganization plans in which all schools will be required to demonstrate fiscal solvency. [A reader notified me of a closing in the Rockville Center, NY, Diocese; it had been slated to close before the virus and this was its last year, but thank you for the information.] The Lawton, OK closing is a primer on how things can go bad. The school did have an endowment, the returns from which were providing tuition assistance to students whose family economies were seriously depleted by the virus. But the stock market tumble with the arrival of Covid evidently wiped out much of the endowment. While I did not see evidence that parishes are closing in great numbers, I did find evidence of significant parish staff layoffs even in the few affluent dioceses such as Los Angeles, and even here the vice was growing tighter. The LA Archdiocese advised parishes that loans at interest from the diocese were available to parishes to keep parish personnel but added that this aid could not be extended indefinitely. About 13,000 of this country’s 17,000 parishes applied for the federal Covid 19 employee salary assistance, but this, too, is a stop gap measure of limited direction. Anecdotally from social media I know of many furloughs and outright releases of Catholic lay employees, and closer to home, the director of the Catholic Charities clinic where I work was released. Covid-19 did not of its own accord cause the wheels of the U.S. Catholic economy to fall off in many places; what it did was give us a clue of how shaky many of our enterprises and business methods truly are. The closing of a school—or a parish, for that matter—usually raises the same battery of questions from members that demonstrate significant gaps in understanding, and as a former pastor I heard these questions over forty years ago. These gaps of understanding can be clustered into two groups: [1] Why doesn’t the diocese save us, and [2] why didn’t we hear about our crisis earlier? The first question assumes that the typical diocese is wealthy, i.e., flush in liquid reserves to dole out to parishes in regular support or emergency situations. This model of episcopal assistance was common in large urban dioceses, notably New York. Cardinal Spellman [r. 1939-1967]. The Wheeling, WV diocese receives income, for example, from an oil field deeded to the diocese many years ago, a secret revealed to the laity only last year when its bishop fell into disgrace for abusing individuals and diocesan resources. By the time I arrived in Florida in 1978, the practice for new construction of parishes and churches involved assigning a priest to a newly outlined parish territory, along with a tract of land and the mortgage for the land. Some few dioceses have stout reserves to draw from, but the odds are you do not live in one of them, few as they are. If I had to guess, you have a better chance of living in a diocese that is close to or already in formal bankruptcy. At least 20 of this country’s 185 dioceses have declared bankruptcy, before the virus. Dioceses may show reserves on their books in some shape or form, but there are many asterisks to note, perhaps the most prominent being the unknown future costs of clergy abuse settlements. That the intensity and the unpredictability of the Corona virus caught so many institutions off guard suggests that there may be an absence of “emergency—break the grass” planning where determining how much reserve is sufficient. [Florida, where our signature theme parks are currently reopening, is currently averaging 1300 new Covid victims per day. Per Newsweek, 50% of states are seeing increases in daily case reports.] The Archdiocese of New York is losing $1 million per week due to closed churches and emergency Catholic Charities services. One more point I learned from the closings in my home diocese of Buffalo is the cost of a church or school no longer in use. A structure no longer used for ministry must still be insured, secured, and meet local safety ordinances until the diocese can be sold or demolished. The real estate value would still show up as an asset. This last point is a good counter to those who argue that the Church should sell the “priceless” property of Vatican City and the great churches of Rome to save the world. They are assets, to be sure, but priceless and worthless mean about the same—they are not liquid assets for food banks or even paying the electric bill. In every major church I visited in Rome I received an appeal for financial assistance for urgent structural repair and upkeep. On a lighter note, selling expensive bishops’ mansions where they still exist may be marginally helpful, though the sale would be one-time infusion of cash. My wife and I have eaten with our bishops twice in their home, modest residences without a hint of bling. Selling our bishop's home would not move the needle very much. Part 2 will follow in a day or two. When I began the segment on “the Unexpected Sabbatical,” I did not grasp its intensity or expanse of time. More is known now about the virus and its impact than we knew six weeks ago, and most of our new information is not of the encouraging kind. Covid-19 is transmitted to others before the carrier experiences symptoms. The statistics show that what was once thought of as a disease of the ill and the aged can strike down young adults in their prime. Forensic examinations show that Corona damages not just the lungs—perhaps permanently—but many other body organs, from the ears to the liver.
Nor did I understand the full implications to the country’s economic and security well-being. The United States is currently processing several trillion dollars in checks to most households. This money was not budgeted, so it is either being printed or borrowed. For households, I believe the allotment is $2400 dollars or thereabouts, apparently to help strapped Americans survive for a month. What happens next month? At the current moment, including today’s jobs report, the unemployment rate is between 15% and 20%, approaching the levels of the Great Depression, which began in 1929 and did not end until the United States started militarizing after Pearl Harbor in 1941. Even good news is bad news: The State of New Jersey is hiring anyone who knows anything about COBAL, to repair its state computers. COBAL is an old computer operating system built for large frame computers 60 years ago, which the Garden State still depends upon for significant portions of its state operations. [I suppose that makes the NJ system immune to sophisticated cyber-attacks.] I have been following the reactions to Covid-19 of church workers and catechists on websites devoted to ministry, and there continues to be considerable stress about the traditional springtime sacraments [more appropriately, their indefinite postponement], start-up dates for summer and fall programs, and getting teaching aids to parents at home. Some have reported that they have been furloughed, others have had salaries slashed. Nearly all are working from home and most report owning a responsibility to hold the parish—and their ministries—together. I have seen three major national news outlets address the issue of whether most dioceses can fiscally survive throughout 2020, but I am not seeing the issue raised in the Catholic press--except for the reminders after streamed Masses to use the EFT to support the parish. I know I have run a little far afield from the original purpose of the stream, the idea of our “down time” to enrich our understanding of our faith and our church, a time to question what we honestly believe and what we labor over where “religion” is in our plane of existence. The Corona virus is a normal manifestation in the microscopic word of germs and viruses. What is abnormal is not the microbe but the reactions, non-reactions, and opportunism of the world to which it was carried. One microscopic species has laid bare so many personal and societal sins, ranging from today’s terrible discovery in a New Jersey nursing home to customers grousing and cursing grocery clerks attempting to maintain CDC recommendations to prevent contagion. We are learning about grave insufficiencies in our health care delivery system, the dangerous workplaces in meat processing plants, the desperate needs of safety nets in times of national emergency. We have learned something about our local Catholic communities. Many pastors have gone to extraordinary lengths to provide streaming services and maintain personal outreach. Catholic Charities and individual parishes, which already carry sizeable caseloads, labor overtime when an amazing number of Americans are going hungry. On the other hand, the USCCB has remained mute on governmental, business, and even personal decisions which ought to make educated Catholics very queasy. Nothing has been said about the salaries, work environments, and precarious tenures of employed parish employees, whose treatment across the board has varied considerably from place to place. For our purposes here, how will the Church survive, and what will it look like in a post-Corona world? These are the thoughts to bring into your sabbatical. If the country—or significant parts of it—fall into a depression anywhere near 1929, and we are drifting perilously close particularly if another Corona wave arrives in September of October, the Church and its members will take on a profoundly new relationship with each other. For starters, many parishes would collapse due to inadequate funds and income. 25% of church members would be unemployed, and the other 75% would be supporting family members. About 20 dioceses in the U.S. have filed for bankruptcy before the virus reached American shores. With fewer places to meet [if social gatherings are still permitted as they have been] and a decimated pool of professional religious educators and directors, it may be that the Church here reverts to its first three centuries, to “the domestic church” model where the heads of households take stronger leadership of the daily life of Catholics. One criticism of the “streaming” has been an optic that Catholics cannot pray, learn, and teach without a priest on the set. I do not quite agree, but it does seem to me that a lot of Catholic homes have no Catholic regimen such as times for family prayer, religious resources for on-going Bible and Church study, and one-on-one guidance. It has been a mystery to me for 50 years why CCD teachers, mostly parents, are teaching other parents’ children. If nothing else, the Corona virus might point our sabbaticals to the wisdom of the Catholic tradition for study and reflection. Catholicism functioned—often in secret--during times of persecution and exile. It has ministered through the dozens of plagues it has encountered. 150 years ago, Pope Leo XII spelled out the basis for working folks to organize and negotiate for a living wage. In more recent times the Church has developed a strong body of medical ethics. Four years ago, Pope Francis’ first encyclical, Laudato Si, addressed the inner workings of nature, justice, business, and human dignity. [Summary of encyclical here.] At the time of Laudato Si’s public release, the religious right condemned it as “green” or “socialist” or “papal meddling.” The response of Christ himself calls us to be more than meddlers: “You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth.” |
Professional Development...
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