During the last few weeks, the Archbishop of Indianapolis told a Jesuit prep school not to renew the contract of one of its teachers, because the teacher had entered into a same-sex marriage. The school refused, and the archbishop then told the school it could no longer call itself a "Catholic" school.
In this week's newsletter to the parish, my pastor says that telling a Jesuit school it could not call itself "Catholic" was like telling a salmon that it could not call itself a "fish."
I avoid religious topics in this blog, because they tend to be very divisive among a few readers, and meaningless and uninteresting to the great majority. But I think the pastor's letter touches on a broader issue -- what's Christianity all about? -- than whether a school should hire a given teacher. It's interesting enough to me, at least, that I'll violate my own rule.
After a short introduction, the pastor reprinted a letter to the parish he had written in 2014 when a similar issue arose in the Seattle area. Our own archbishop had ordered a school to get rid of a teacher, and for the same reason. The school had complied and the students revolted. They were joined by demonstrations in Catholic high schools throughout the Seattle area.
The pastor reminded us, in his reprinted 2014 letter, of the serious conflict within the early church on the issue of whether a convert to Christianity must become a Jew and follow Jewish law before being baptized. The answer was arrived at not by scholarly analysis or by an exercise of power by one of the superior apostles, but by consideration of the shared experiences of the disciples. The pastor's application of this fact to the issue at hand was eloquent, and worth quoting at some length.
I have thought often of this scene in Acts, over the last year, and especially as I have listened to Pope Francis speak of the need for “uproar” by religious, or call young people to make “a mess” in their dioceses. Like many, I have been refreshed and renewed not by some great doctrinal changes, but by the absence of fear expressed in the words of the Holy Father; by his trust in the workings of the Holy Spirit and his passion for courageous acts of faith—even acts that risk error or end in failure. For Francis, it seems, the timidity of tightly held borders, the safe-harbor of accepted opinion and doctrinal purity risks a greater sin—a greater loss to the Church—than the dangerous paths of love and welcome. Ships may be safe within the harbor, but that is not what ships are for. Like the Church of Acts, Francis calls today’s Church to a fearless proclamation of Christ and the Gospel, even though trying to understand such a proclamation may lead us to conflict and disruption.
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[W]e in the broader Church should be grateful for the mess these young people bring, and should listen with compassion and openness to the Spirit that moves within them. Their love, their gentleness, their quest to make of the Church “the home of all, not a small chapel that can hold only a small group of selected people,” demands more than the silence of authority; it demands communion and engagement with the Church—i.e., education, direction, dialogue—since their spirit is a sign of the Church and is life-blood for the Church. May we engage, with fearless love, at the side of our younger sisters and brothers; and may we trust in the God whose Church we are all becoming.
While I myself have a certain abhorrence for "messes," sometimes messes can be valuable, especially in the religious context , where believers sense that God has often made his views known ultimately through a Hegelian synthesis (whoo boy, skating on thin ice!) of the conflicting views of his followers.
Fresh winds are always refreshing, and often valuable. I like the pastor's welcoming of fresh thinking. As he suggests, ships are built for courageous sailing, not for hiding from the ocean's storms in drydock.
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