When I first came in (to see him) I thought 'God is the owner of my life,' and I went to him and he threw his feces on me and called me all types of names and said, 'You can't be a priest because I've never seen a you-know-what as a priest,'"Father Smith said Aug. 5. But the priest persevered, and McVeigh gradually softened.
He did a lot of things, but in the end we had confession, reconciliation. In the end he asked me a question a lot of people ask me. He asked, "'Father Charles, can I still get to heaven?'" The priest said he responded, "I am not your judge," but reminded McVeigh that he had told him, "You must submit your will and ask God for true forgiveness. ... You knew there were a lot of innocent people and children in that building."RTWT.
The Pope continued his catechesis on the apostles at the Audience today ( here's the text --you have to scroll to the bottom). It's about St. John and Revelation,which, as he explains, is not about the end times.
Four items on Christians in the Mid-East. In his recent interview with German tv (unofficial transcript here), B-16 digressed from an answer about Christianity in Europe to make a plea for the West to help Christians stay in their communities as witnesses:
I think it’s important to remind ourselves about the Eastern Christians because there’s the present danger of them emigrating, these Christians who have always been an important minority living in a fruitful relationship with the surrounding reality. There’s a great danger that these places where Christianity had its origins will be left without Christians. I think we need to help them a lot so that they can stay.Along those lines, here's the Maronite Archbishop of Lebanon doing all he can to help his people to stay. There's an impressive muscularity about his faith, isn't there? No litany of complaints about how tough things are, but assurance that the Lord will provide. (I'm sure in another context --with Western aid workers-- he wouldn't scruple to say what his people need.)
"Wherever you are — in Hajji or Tyre or Marjayoun — if you're patient and believe, you'll make it through this," Hage told a standing-room congregation at St. George's Church in this southern Lebanese village. "The most important thing is to stay on this land."
It's not just words he's offering them. He's been travelling all over visiting his flock:
Hage has worked for years to keep the villages populated. He said Maronites act as a peaceful buffer between two warring entities. When shelling began last month, he dashed from town to town as bombs rained down, delivering food and medicine and urging followers to stay put.
A firm sense of mission and pastoral accompaniment of his people. That's a bishop! Plus if you RTWT, you'll learn that journalists can indeed be good for something.
And here's a story about a slow resurgence of Assyrian Christianity in Turkey (they're the folks who didn't need subtitles to watch the Passion because they still speak Aramaic).
Oh --and if people's dress at mass has got you down (see some people's efforts to restore a sense of modesty and decorum during flip-flop weather here --scroll down a little), at least you don't have this problem to contend with. (Curtsy: Zadok).
The Near East Christians are putting their lives on the line to preserve their heritage. We, on the other hand, are striving desperately to forget ours. Amy Welborn writes of California's refusal to restore the old missions of its founding, "It's only historical if it has nothing to do with God."
Finally, another clip from B-16s German interview. In the life in which I have a name, I lecture pretty widely on the role of women in the Church. My stump speech is little more than an overview of JP the G's 1988 encyclical on the topic with lots of anecdotes and examples tossed in to make it accessible. The pope's effort is not to define women's work in the sense of what jobs they may do, but to enlighten about what role they play in whatever milieu they find themselves --their mission in other words. I get a little frustrated with the discussions that take place after my talks, frankly, because the women who attend tend to hear only the part of what I say that confirms them in the lives they're already living. They come only to know whether the Church values women without children, or to hear once again the value of motherhood in an age that disparages it so.
Well, I'm glad if what I say makes them know Jesus loves them and makes them feel valued again, but they utterly miss (judging by their questions and comments) the challenge in what JPII says: namely, that no one yet knows precisely what concretely women can do in this age --because they haven't yet done it --and Christian fidelity is more than a matter of doing what's always been done (work-wise). The Church can show us our mission, but it is our work to discover in prayer what concretely we're suposed to do --and no one else's job to simply tell us. We talk a lot about freedom in this country, but my experience is that most people at some level do wish to be told what to do --to have a checklist for life, so to speak. But the Christian mission is tougher than that. So lately I've started closing with a riff on something Regina Domain says at the close of Women in the Days of the Cathedrals:
Copying is a good school exercise. It has never produced a masterpiece. Why do we women not invent solutions adapted to our own time, just as other women did in their time? Have we nothing original to propose to the world, for example, when we face the grave deficiencies that torment it?
I urge women to do what they find they're called to do, trusting that if they are faithful to prayer and the sacraments, God himself will show them step by step whether they're on the right path, and then they won't be so enslaved to whether other people --whether Grandma, Gloria Steinem, or Miss Perfect Nutritionist Homeschooler-- approve. Of course what I think isn't important, but it's always nice to find you're on the right track, so I was encouraged by B-16's comments about the role of women in the Church following a discussion of why Holy Orders are closed to them and a summation of the role of women in Church history:
I believe that women themselves, with their energy and strength, with their superiority, with what I’d call their "spiritual power", will know how to make their own space. And we will have to try and listen to God so as not to stand in their way but, on the contrary, to rejoice when the female element achieves the fully effective place in the Church best suited to her, starting with the Mother of God and with Mary Magdalen.
The elephant in the room that I'm not discussing here is the Pope's comments about war, which have touched off a minor furor in the Catholic blogosphere. I'll tackle that in another post, however --too long for here.
