An Old Man's Advent Dream for Christmas

Advent.

A time of waiting for "the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ" is the way the new translation of the Roman Missal puts it.  Sounds great, but what does this really mean?  "Blessed hope" for what, exactly?  And what will the coming of Christ mean THIS year?  If these words are to have any meaning beyond being part of a new liturgical ritual, it seems to me we have to make them truly incarnate, to "flesh them out" a bit.

Advent.

I've been doing a lot of praying and reflecting about life this Advent, trying to figure some things out.  The older I get the more comfort I find in the words of St. Peter on Pentecost.  The people of Jerusalem, hearing the apostles speaking in tongues under the influence of the Holy Spirit, think that they are instead under the influence of new wine.  "But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them:  'Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say.  Indeed, these men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning.  No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:

"In the last days it will be, God declares,

that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,

and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

and your young men shall see visions,

and your old men shall dream dreams."

So, this reflection is nothing more than an old man dreaming a dream.

When I was a young man, I was strongly influenced -- as I've written about before -- by the visions and dreams of the bishops of the Second Vatican Council.  Some of those men were young and were seeing visions; others were old and dreaming dreams. Now I'm an old man, and I've seen some of those early visions become reality, but so much more still remains a dream.

What do I see in my dream?

It begins with a nightmare.  There are people living on the streets, under overpasses,  in dark alleys.  They are dirty, smelly, with runny noses and open sores.  Many of them are drunk on booze or drugs, and this is a violent nightmare, with people attacking each other for money or food, people selling themselves to earn money.  They are in a downward spiral, without hope, joy or reason for either.

The nightmare continues.  There are people who have been ostracized, cut off from family and friends because of things they've done in the past, or because of relationships they're in, or because they're "different" or hard to handle in "acceptable" circles of society.  There are young people who feel isolated and abandoned because they have realized that they are homosexual and they are pushed into suicide out of overwhelming depression and a sense of permanent and total exclusion.

The nightmare grows.  Old people, people who were once vital and ran through life with creativity, passion and generosity, now shunted aside because they are no longer able to contribute anything to anyone.  They are dried up, used up, and kicked to the curb of life.  Sick and dying people, whose fear of death is often faced with courage and strength, are also forgotten or relegated to the sidelines as if association with them might lead a healthy person to fear their own vulnerability.

The nightmare includes the treatment of the stranger, or people who speak different languages or who look at life and the world through eyes different from others.  The nightmare recalls an incident at a "Catholic" parish in the Midwest in which a bilingual program on pastoral planning was being held.  As signs in English and Spanish were being placed around the room, several Catholic gentlemen came forward and told the presenter to "put the American signs on this side of the room."  When the presenter said, "You mean, you want the English signs on this side of the room?" the men -- those good "Catholic" men -- repeated, "You heard what we said, you put the AMERICAN signs on this side of the room."

The nightmare?  So many people, all cut off, isolated and alone.  Where can they find hope, joy and a reason for living?

The dream?  The catholic -- truly universal -- people of God!  Every person who is cut off from everything and everyone else, is WELCOMED by the catholic people of God.  In a very real sense, the catholic people of God is the home for the homeless, the family for those who have been disowned and rejected by others, are the ones for whom this church is designed.  In the ancient catholic people of God, they were often the ones cut off and persecuted by society and those in charge, often to their deaths.  But the ancient catholic people of God rejoiced that they were a people called by God (an "ekklesia theou"), a people without church buildings or temples.  What united them and gave them hope and joy was their common faith that God had called them to be a people for each other, PRECISELY because they were cut off from everyone else.

The dream?  At Midnight Mass this year, that the doors will open and everyone -- absolutely everyone -- will walk in to applause, laughter and joy-filled welcome.  Those dirty, smelly children of God who are living under the overpass, those depressed and lonely gay teenagers who are walking on the brink of despair, those people who look and sound different from others, and even those who find themselves here without legal status -- all of them will pour through those doors and into the welcoming arms of this catholic people of God and find a true home and the love that has so often been denied them by society.  "If society has rejected you, we welcome you" is the mission statement of the catholic people of God.  And to the bishop who once remarked that the song "All are Welcome" was incorrect, and that all people are NOT welcome at Catholic Mass, I say,  "Sorry, bishop, but you are wrong.  In the Catholic Church, in the authentic catholic people of God, all are indeed welcome in this place."

I know.  Right now we have many Catholics who don't even like to reach out and take someone else's hand at the greeting of peace before communion.  Those folks are really not going to like my dream, since not only do I hope that they will shake someone else's hand, but actually, beginning at Midnight Mass this Christmas, I'm hoping that they will open their arms and embrace tightly that dirty, smelly homeless man who's been living in a cardboard box down the street from the church.  In fact, it is precisely to those who have been excluded by everyone else that Christ is coming into the world.

My dream is really quite simple.  Christ willingly emptied himself completely into human nature.  We either believe that or we don't.  Human nature is the common denominator here.  If Christ is to be found there, then we are to be found there.  The "Church" isn't a place for those who have successfully navigated life.  It's a haven for all those who admit their sinfulness, their brokenness, their need for others and for God.

And then I wake up.

What do I have to do to make the dream a reality?

"Who are you? What have you got to say for yourself?"

I have a confession to make.  Oh, not a sacramental confession as in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but a confession nonetheless.  My specializations in Theology deal with ecclesiology, the theological study of the nature of Church, but my motivations for going into this field were not based on some grand academic quest.  Rather, I found at a very early age (13 to be exact), that ecclesiology was the most fascinating part of theology, since that was what the Second Vatican Council was all about.  Since the Council was just going into its second session (1963) as I was entering high school seminary, this was an understandable focus for a young seminarian.

As the Council progressed, then ended, and the Church moved into the implementation phase following the Council, so much about how we were Church evolved.  No longer was ministry something that only priests and sisters did, for example.  We had recovered a sense of baptism as the primal sacrament of ministry, and the Council has described the Church as a pilgrim in the world and servant to the world.  All members of the Church, we read in the Council's documents, were called to be evangelists, and the Church herself was to be "a leaven and a kind of soul" within the world.  However, all of this came at a cost.

Vatican II was convened because many bishops, including Pope John XXIII, believed that the Church was out of touch with the demands of the modern world.  Churchmen of the first half of the 20th Century were deeply concerned over the Church's failure to be a more effective witness of Christ during that time, and worried that the Church had been ineffectual at confronting the issues that led to two world wars and the rise of three totalitarian regimes.  The Council was an attempt to give a renewed missionary drive to the Church, to empower all of the members of the Church to be "co-responsible" as evangelists to the world, with all believers being called to perfect holiness, despite our state in life.  The Council was, as Pope Paul VI put it, "the great Catechism of our time."  My generation of seminarians found ourselves inspired to be at the forefront of these renewed efforts in the Church and the world, and enthusiastically responded to the Council's call.

Nonetheless, following the Council, we watched as public institutions, including institutional Churches, continued to lose credibility in the contemporary world.  Despite our best efforts in the 1960's and 1970's to find creative ways to be a prophetic witness of Christ to the world, efforts which are now routinely mocked by certain reactionary elements even within our own Church, people continued to find, as they had even before the Council, that certain aspects of the Church -- usually described as the "institutional" dimension of the Church -- to be irrelevant at best and harmful at worst.  Increasingly people began to say that they were spiritual, and maybe even go so far as to say that they were spiritual Catholics, but not in the sense of being churchgoing religionists.  As a friend once said to me, "The Catholic Church is great once the institution gets out of the way."  Perhaps the most troubling thing to watch, for me personally, was how members of my own family were treated by certain priests and other "good church-going Catholics," who very successfully drove these family members from the Church through their stupidity, narrowness and arrogance.  I watched as repeatedly, my loved ones would try and try again to reconnect, only to encounter the same kind of things all over again until they felt they had no choice but to leave.

And here's the real point of all this: my family's situation is not an isolated case.  Recently, on an international list-server for deacons, a brother deacon asked the group how many family members in our own extended families still "practiced" Catholicism.  I won't depress you with the final answers.

Author Eric Weiner, writing an op-ed piece in the New York Times recently, asks "Americans: Undecided about God?" Read the whole article here.  It's a most thought-provoking piece, and many folks have been blogging about it.  At first I was going to pass this one by, but as I was preparing homilies for this Third Sunday of Advent, I came back to Weiner's piece.  The questions asked of John the Baptizer remain the questions asked of us today: "Who are you?  What have you got to say about yourself? 

Weiner concludes his column with his own take on an answer:

What is the solution? The answer, I think, lies in the sort of entrepreneurial spirit that has long defined America, including religious America.

We need a Steve Jobs of religion. Someone (or ones) who can invent not a new religion but, rather, a new way of being religious. Like Mr. Jobs’s creations, this new way would be straightforward and unencumbered and absolutely intuitive. Most important, it would be highly interactive. I imagine a religious space that celebrates doubt, encourages experimentation and allows one to utter the word God without embarrassment. A religious operating system for the Nones among us. And for all of us.

While I'll leave the comparison to Steve Jobs alone, I do rather like his observation that what he's looking for is "not a new religion but a new way of being religious."  That, in my opinion, was PRECISELY was the Second Vatican Council was calling us to do.  Sure, those bishops used the Latin term novus mentis habitus (a "new way of thinking"), but there it is, in contemporary terms.  How can we, followers of Christ, find a new way of being religious, a new way of being Catholic, in the contemporary world?  A new way of being Catholic that proclaims Christ in ways that are -- like Christ Himself -- always inviting and open to all.  We shouldn't be excluding ANYONE from our assembly, precisely because we proclaim ourselves to be a people called by God ("ekklesia"), not by "the Church".  And this people called by God has always, throughout the Tradition, called itself to be catholikos -- catholic -- open to all and universal.  If we were truly finding a new way of thinking, a new way of being religious, people who now feel excluded from our communion would instead be welcomed!  No matter how else society might be treating them, they would find a warm, welcoming home with us!  "These Christians!  See how they love one another!"

"Who are you?  What have you got to say for yourself?"

Indeed.

"When I grow up I want to be a Deacon!" Thanks, Elizabeth!

Some time ago, a prolific author named Elizabeth Ficocelli contacted me about a manuscript she had written for children on the diaconate.  She asked if I would take a look at the manuscript, and it was joy to do so!  That book, which Deacon Greg Kandra has already announced, has now been published and is available.  Elizabeth was recently interviewed about her work, and you may read more about that here and here.  It's called Where Do Deacons Come From? and it's published by Bezalel Books.

In the interview, she remarks that "Deacon Greg Kandra recently blogged that his friend, Deacon William Ditewig, had made the following statement: 'The diaconate will only become fully accepted as a vocation when young people say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a deacon.’  Well, Deacon Ditewig, I hope my book Where Do Deacons Come From? will help make that a reality."  Thanks, Elizabeth, I agree with you!

The reason I believe this to be so important is this: For nearly a millennium, when someone "imagined" ordained ministry, the "image" that came to mind was "priest".  In Scholastic theology, even the bishop was not considered part of the sacrament of Holy Order: he was thought to be sacramentally simply a priest who had been given additional jurisdiction.  This had NOT been the case in the ancient church, and since 1967 it is not the case any more.  It's just that while church law and official practice has shifted, how people "image" ordained ministry has not.  At least not completely.  Such a cultural shift is going to take time. 

We can see this shift taking place in different ways around the world.  In those areas where the diaconate has been around since the 1970s, we've had some four decades to become part of fabric of contemporary church life.  In those areas where the diaconate is still relatively new, of course, the process has barely begun.  What I find so fascinating and significant about Ms. Ficocelli's contribution on the diaconate is that she has captured the presence of deacons as ministers with whom the children are familiar and would like to know more about. 

So, many, many thanks, Elizabeth!  God bless you!






 

Watching a Classmate Become a Bishop

I haven't seen Dave Kagan since 1967, when we graduated from Salvatorian Seminary in St. Nazianz, Wisconsin, and went our separate ways into different college-level seminaries.  Dave was a seminarian for the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois, and I was a seminarian for the Diocese of Peoria.  For those of you not in the know about such things, Rockford and Peoria have always competed for the title of the second largest city of Illinois.  Dave and I were members of a 27-student senior class, so we all knew each other quite well by the time we graduated.  Dave and the rest of the Rockford men went to Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa and the Peoria men were sent to Saint Ambrose College in Davenport, Iowa.

Most Rev. David D. Kagan

I left the seminary after eight years, following graduation from St. Ambrose in 1971, and a few months later, found myself in the Navy.  Dave continued in the seminary, and was ordained a priest for the Rockford Diocese in 1975.  He became a canon lawyer and eventually served in a variety of pastoral and administrative posts until yesterday.  Yesterday, Monsignor David Kagan, Vicar General of Rockford, became Bishop David Kagan and was installed as the seventh bishop of Bismarck, North Dakota.  Here's where you can find the video of the whole event, complete with Native American drums, the new papal nuncio to the United States, and a Cathedral full of the People of God.

It was quite a moment, watching a man whom I had known as a fellow teenager, now in the process of becoming a bishop and taking on the pastoral responsibilities of a diocesan church.  What came through loud and clear is just how important it is for all of us to pray for all of our diocesan churches and their bishops.  Each of those bishops has friends who "knew them when" and I hope that each of those bishops will continue to permit themselves to stay connected to those people who knew them "before the purple."  During my days at the USCCB, more than a few bishops shared that it's often very, very difficult for a bishop to receive information he needs to have, while there are many, many people who are willing to tell him what they think he wants to hear.  Then again, there are some bishops (fortunately, very, very few) who think that they already know everything they need to know!  Still it seems important to me for bishops to retain significant connections with family and friends who will still love them for who they are as human beings (and not simply because of the office they now hold) and who will continue to be honest with them.

So, my old friend, ad multos annos on your ordination and installation as bishop!  May God continue to bless you abundantly in your family, friends and new collaborators in the vineyard.  I'm sure I speak for all of the surviving members of the Salvatorian Seminary Class of 1967 when I say that we're all proud of you and will pray ardently for you and the Church of Bismarck.

Your old classmate,
Deacon Bill

Being Catholic: What Difference Does It Make, Really?

My friend and brother deacon, Greg Kandra, and others have been opining about Mike Hayes' recent blog post which asks whether we have become the Pharisees of our day.  Here's the original blog post over at Googling God, and here's Deacon Greg's post on the matter, along with considerable commentary. Not only do I think Mike's post is right on target, I think it has particular relevance for those of us who serve as the Church's deacons.  Let me offer two observations: one based on an historical look at the diaconate in the ancient and early medieval church, and another based on more recent history and theology related to the diaconate.

First we should look at the biblical and patristic roots of the Order of Deacons in the church.  Consider that whenever we read of deacons in scripture, they are always described in relationship to the bishop-overseer of the community, and the deacons are clearly responsible for much of the administration and outreach of the community.  The various patristic sources on the diaconate describe deacons as legates, ambassadors to other communities, catechists and religious educators.  Yes, of course, they have a liturgical role, and it's an important one!  However, their "day job" is all about helping people make connections: connecting their bishop with other communities when they served as his legates, connecting people with needs with the resources to meet those needs, and even helping their bishops in administering the goods and other "temporalities" of the church.  Deacons are, as I have said often, ministers of "connect-the-dots."

As the diaconate gradually became transitional to the presbyterate, some of this connective tissue was lost, and I don't believe it's coincidental that we see the emergence of a variety of religious orders (of both women and men) who take as their primary charism the service of others.  There is a direct, tangible connection between the decline of the diaconate as a permanent order of ministry and the rise of religious congregations devoted to the Church's diakonia.

Second, as I've written extensively here and elsewhere, the reasons for renewing a permanent diaconate in the 19th and 20th Centuries were also driven by a need to increase the outreach of the Christian family to those in need (charity) and also to work for institutional, structural, and systemic change so that the conditions which led to those needs could be eliminated (justice).  In short, the Church increasingly recovered her identity as a servant-Church.  This was the principle theme of Pope Paul VI as he closed the Second Vatican Council in 1965: he announced that the central theme of the entire Council had been to identify the Church as servant to the world.  The diaconate was restored, largely and most influentially, because of the horrors of the Dachau Concentration Camp and the experiences of the large numbers of German and Polish priests incarcerated there.  It would due to the efforts of several of those priest-survivors who would push for the renewal of a contemporary permanent diaconate precisely to help the Church recover her servant-identity, and this was what the world's bishops would also recover at the Council.  Pope Paul VI didn't end his reflection with that final speech, either.  In the years following the Council, as he took the necessary steps to renew the diaconate, he frequently observed that the very reason for the deacon's existence is to "sacramentalize the Church's own service."  He also reminded these new deacons that we are to be the "animators" of the Church's own service, by stirring up the conscience of the Christian community.

Here's where I think Mike's blog post really hits home.  He asks us to inquire of ourselves and our parishioners what they believe the Church's priorities are.  What has the bishop stated as his own pastoral priorities?  Here in the diocese in which I'm serving, for example, our bishop has made it clear that one of his chief pastoral priorities -- and something that he wants all of us to tackle in some way -- is that countering gang violence.  Bishops in the Midwest, where family farms are giving way to huge corporate conglomerates, often take on the plight of the family farmers and their families.  Unfortunately, Mike found that very often, many Catholics didn't even know who there bishop was, much less what his pastoral concerns were.

Many of us, myself included, find ourselves playing "insider baseball".  We often get so wrapped up in internal parochial matters (which are sometimes quite important, don't get me wrong!), that we forget that the very mission of the Church herself -- as Paul VI and John Paul II said so frequently -- is evangelization itself.  As Cardinal Mahoney once wrote, "It's not that the Church has mission, but that the mission has a Church" and that mission, is evangelization.

So, my friends, I think this is a good opportunity for us to reflect on all of this.  As a community of faith, what is your parish doing?  Get specific!  What are the top three priorities of your bishop?  Of your pastor?  Of your parish pastoral council?  Of your finance council?  Follow the money, follow the time, follow the energy expended.  What do you find?

Let me end with a true story.  I was serving on a diocesan staff in the Midwest.  The bishop asked me to come to a meeting with some parish leaders from a small rural parish who were concerned about their ability to survive as a parish.  They came to the bishop and enthusiastically told him that they had "found the solution to the priest shortage."  Their answer was to sponsor a priest from Nigeria to come to the diocese, attend a local University, and also serve in their parish, which was nearby.  And the good news, they said, was that they only needed Father to say a Mass on Sunday; the rest of the week, he would be available to do any other jobs the bishop had for him.  When the bishop asked who was going to handle the rest of the parish's functions, if they didn't see Father doing that, they said that there WERE no other parish responsibilities.  The parish existed for one reason: to have Sunday Mass.  Period.  Nothing else.  It was a stunningly depressing moment, to see these wonderful people who had no idea of what being a Catholic parish ought to mean within the larger human community.

What's going on where you live?

Time for a little levity: Priests and Deacons working together

There are so many important things going on in the world today, and we usually treat them with deadly seriousness.  World hunger, global warming, illness and disease, human trafficking, gut-wrenching poverty, new translations of Latin Mass texts. . . . all of them deadly serious, to be sure.  Sometimes, though, we just need to see the humor in things.  So, thanks to one of my former students, now a very effective diocesan youth minister, we have this great story.  Chelsea, thanks for this!

"Father, you want me to do what?"

Some cautions before I share it with you:

1) Please don't get distracted and hung up about what SHOULD or should NOT have been done in this case.  As a deacon for nearly 22 years, and a very active and committed lay person for at least as many years before that, I can attest to seeing even crazier things happen, some which would put this little tale to shame!  I'm sure many of you can do the same.   But for now, just enjoy it!

2) What I particularly enjoy is how the priest and the deacon work together on this one!  Would that we always had this kind of good collaboration!

Now -- enjoy!  Here's the story. . . .

22 November: A Personal Reflection

Today, 22 November 2011, we commemorate the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.  I leave it to political pundits and scholars to hypothesize about the impact of JFK's loss on our nation.  For now, though, I simply offer one man's personal reflection.

On 22 November 1963, I was a freshman in high school seminary: St. Henry Preparatory Seminary in Belleville, Illinois.  I was studying to become a priest in the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI), hoping to become a missionary priest.  Three years before, while still in grade school at St. Patrick's Parish in Peoria, Illinois, my class had staged our own version of the Nixon-Kennedy presidential debates, as we learned that, for the first time ever, the United States might actually elect a Catholic to be president!  Not everyone was a Kennedy supporter: even at home, my Dad was firmly behind Richard Nixon.  After the election, Kennedy had won and then came that marvelous inaugural address!  "Ask not what your country can do for you. . . ."  What an exciting time!

As JFK was preparing to run for president, of course, things were changing in the Church, too -- the other great influence on those of us in Catholic grade school.  In 1958, the long-serving Pope Pius XII died, and Cardinal Angelo Roncalli was elected pope, taking the name of John XXIII.  There was such excitement about the new pope, especially when, in January 1959, he announced that he was convening a general Council of the Church: Vatican II.  To me, as a young Catholic boy who had already decided that he wanted to go to the seminary, it seemed like everything and anything was going to be possible in the church and the world.

1962: the year of the opening of the Council and the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and as a 12-year old, I watched with my Mom and Dad as President Kennedy showed those frightening photos of the missile launchers in Cuba and announced the naval blockade.  If I could have enlisted in the Navy that night, I would have.  The world was rapidly changing, and we wanted to be part of it.

In 1963, suddenly, things began to change in a negative direction, including the death of "good Pope John" and then the assassination of President Kennedy.  Even though I was only 13, I made two scrapbooks that year, and I still have them: one on the President and one on the Pope.  Suddenly, our generation had to start to grow up and face unpleasant realities.  A new word, "Vietnam" replaced "French Indochina" in our news, and tensions increased in both our government and in our church.  This would seem to build until the awful year of 1968: the year of the Tet Offensive, and the year of the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.  While those events would really steer our generation in many ways, the process really began with that shocking day, 48 years ago, in Dallas.

Ultimately, it's not helpful to wonder "what if" JFK hadn't been cut down.  At the same time, it does seem opportune to see if we can recover some of the optimism and enthusiasm we all had for the Church and Country back then!  Wouldn't it be wonderful too see and encourage the possibilities of the future, and not all of the things that keep us angry and divided?

RIP, President Kennedy.  We're still here, still trying to live up to the potential of your inaugural challenge!