Barry Hudock's Blog, page 22

Congar’s call: “a prophetic awareness of what it means to be human”

The Pray Tell blog has recently been featuring select passages from My Journal of the Council, the remarkable personal journal kept by theologian (and later cardinal) Yves Congar throughout the Second Vatican Council. Congar played a key role in the council’s proceedings; in fact, it might be true to say that he had more influence on what went on there and the documents the council produced than any other single person.

In the passage posted yesterday, Congar mused on a comment made to him by another participant at the council, that ”one of the results of the Council, he believes, will be the emergence of a new kind of bishop.” This led Congar to observe that such a possibility would depend upon a new kind of “presence of the Church to the world.” That presence, Congar wrote, would need to come “not in the form of clerical authority but in the form of a prophetic awareness of what it means to be human.” (You can read the whole passage here.)

I love Congar’s phrase there, so pregnant with meaning: a church that possesses “a prophetic awareness of what it means to be human.” It’s a lofty calling.

It occurred to me that the phrase would have had great appeal to Pope John Paul II. He would surely have nodded vigorously and he would have commented that the church receives such an awareness only from Jesus Christ who — in a conciliar phrase that JP2 never tired of quoting – ”fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes 22). It is this awareness that Papa Wojtyla spent decades proclaiming to humanity with great urgency, reminding us of the moral courage and goodness, even the sanctity, to which it calls us.

And then I thought, Pope Francis would love the very same phrase, that call to “a prophetic awareness of what it means to be human.” And yet it would move his soul in a slightly different direction. Hearing it, Francis’s mind would turn immediately to what the Council called ”the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted” (Gaudium et Spes 1). Papa Bergoglio has indeed made these realities his own, especially as they regard those on society’s or the church’s peripheries, those who have borne with difficulty the burdens of life and perhaps known more failure than success in their struggle for sanctity — determined to extend Christ’s compassion, welcome, and solidarity as far as it might go.

Different personalities, different instincts, different pastoral priorities — both desperately needed by all of us.

Christ the center

I have been a Catholic all my life and a “professional” Catholic, in one way or another, for much of my adult life. I have studied our history carefully and our theology deeply. I have lived and studied in Rome in close proximity to a pope known for dramatic gestures and historic decisions. I once held the microphone for Blessed (soon to be Saint) John Paul II as he presided at Mass in Saint Peter’s Basilica, and I own a chalice he once used, in my presence, at a different Mass. In short, having been around and thought about these sorts of things for a long time (and realizing that much of it is just baubles and beads), I suppose, if I’m honest, it takes a lot to really and truly move me with “things Catholic.” But this morning, this (see photo at right) surely did it.

In terms of Catholic faith and life, it’s hard to get more momentous than this: Pope Francis cradling a metal box containing the bones of Saint Peter during the recitation of the Creed in Saint Peter’s Square, just yards from Peter’s place of martyrdom and his tomb, and just a few minutes before preaching to the believers and unbelievers, the saints and the strugglers gathered there that

[Christ] is the centre of all things, he is the beginning. God has given him the fullness, the totality, so that in him all things might be reconciled…. Christ, the descendant of King David, is the “brother” around whom God’s people come together. It is he who cares for his people, for all of us, even at the price of his life. In him we are all one; united with him, we share a single journey, a single destiny. Finally, Christ is the centre of the history of the human race and of every man and woman. To him we can bring the joys and the hopes, the sorrows and troubles which are part of our lives. When Jesus is the centre, light shines even amid the darkest times of our lives; he gives us hope, as he does to the good thief in today’s Gospel.

That’s a lot to take in and to ponder. But as I head off to Mass with my family on this Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, I surely, with awe and gratitude, shall try.

Rocco has the video and the full text of the homily here.

Francis’s Camaldolese visit: the U.S. connection

There’s beautiful video available now from Pope Francis’s visit earlier today to the Camaldolese Monastery of Sant’Antonio Abate in Rome. Beautiful prayer in a beautiful chapel, and beautiful words from the Pope about faith, hope, and the mother of Jesus (an initial report here). The event is part of the conclusion of the Church’s observance of a Year of Faith, inaugurated on October 11, 2012, by Pope Benedict XVI.

As Vatican Radio reports, there’s an interesting American connection to today’s event. The report refers to “the cell of a fellow sister [of the monastery the Pope will visit today] who died in 1990″:

She’s American born Julia Crotta who lived in seclusion for forty five years in this tiny space, sleeping on a wooden bed with a cross carved into it, participating in the monastery liturgies by peeking through a tiny window above the chapel, receiving communion through a cloth flap placed on the door and like the other sisters taking part in their production of little crosses made out of palm leaves for the Vatican. A charismatic figure, who took the name of Sister Nazarena, with reference to the reserved life of Jesus of Nazareth. And one whose reputation reached the ears of many, among them Thomas Merton. On Thursday Pope Francis will enter this cell.

The story of Julia Crotta is an interesting one. There’s more here at the Citydesert blog. A snippet from that post:

Not even her family quite understands why Julia Crotta undertook so arduous a vocation. She was born and raised in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Julia, her family remembers, was a cheerful, fun-loving girl with an aptitude for music. She studied violin and theory at the Yale School of Music, but left to take a four-year liberal arts course at New Haven’s Albertus Magnus College for women. “She loved life, dancing, good movies and good clothes,” says a brother-in-law.

After college, Julia taught violin and piano, worked in Manhattan. She was briefly engaged to marry, but broke it off and joined a convent of Carmelite nuns in Newport, R.I. The Carmelites were not strict enough for her; she left the convent and went to Rome, where a priest advised her to try the Camaldolese. In 1945 her abbess gave Sister Nazarena permission to attempt reclusion.

 

Has Jesus been “locked inside the Church and knocking because he wants to get out”?

The newsprint is yellowed now, despite being framed under glass. It’s the front page of an old edition of L’Osservatore Romano, English edition, from October 1992, that I bought in Rome the week it was published. The issue included the texts of homilies and addresses delivered by Pope John Paul II during a pastoral visit to the Dominican Republic earlier that month, during which the Holy Father marked the 500th anniversary of beginning of the evangelization of the American continents.

I had that front page framed because I loved the top headline, in big, bold letters over the text of a homily the Pope delivered at Mass in Santo Domingo, which reads: “America, Open Your Doors to Christ!” Those words captured the homily’s content beautifully. (“America, open the doors to Christ!” the Pope preached that day. “Allow the seeds planted five centuries ago to bear fruit in all areas of your life: individuals and families, culture and work, economics and politics, the present and the future. On this solemn anniversary, I desire to address my message of peace and hope to all men and women of good will who on this blessed continent experience the joys and the sorrows of the present and aspire to a more just and fraternal future…. Jesus Christ is our life and our only guide. Only in Him do we find hope.”)

The headline also captured what I wanted — at age 23, nearly half the age I am now – any ministry I ever engaged in to be about. By framing it, I intended the headline to be a constant reminder, a constant call back to the center.

I thought of that framed newspaper page , and then took another look at it once again, after reading a brief but bracing post over at the dotCommonweal blog recently. Journalist David Gibson posted a “Quote of the Day,” apparently something that then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio said to his fellow cardinals last March, just a few days before they elected him Pope. Here’s the line:

“I have the impression that Jesus was locked inside the Church and that he is knocking because he wants to get out.”

It’s a compelling sentence, and it surely offers some good insight into the general thrust and distinctive features of Bergoglio’s papal ministry. I thought immediately of the remarkable interviews with America and La Repubblica, then of a whole series of other aspects of the Francis pontificate.

But following closely on the heels of those thoughts, I thought of that old, framed L’Osservatore headline, which, if you remove it from the specific American context, truly could be said to sum up what John Paul II’s long and dramatic pontificate was all about. “Open wide the doors to Christ!” the brand new Pope called out to the world on the day of his election on October 16, 1978, and he never stopped calling us to that.

John Paul travelled the world, on trip after trip and after trip, long after his age and his health should have called for him to stop, in order to make Jesus known. He literally invented World Youth Day to bring Jesus to the young people of the world. During a pastoral visit to Haiti early in his pontificate, he coined the phrase “new evangelization” and called upon the entire church to make Jesus known more effectively through an evangelization that was new in ardor, in methods, and in expression. (By the way, when someone asks skeptically exactly what that phrase, “new evangelization,” is supposed to mean, what’s so new about it, that’s the answer.)  Anyone who takes a moment to peruse even the titles of John Paul’s many encyclicals and other teaching documents will noticed the constant repetition of the word Redeemer in the titles: Redemptor Hominis, Redemptoris Missio, Redemptoris Mater, Redemptoris Custos – almost as though whatever the topic was, John Paul was intent on bringing the conversation back to Christ as redeemer of the human race. JP2 did his own version of the America interview, too. It was a 1995 book called Crossing the Threshold of Hope, which he wrote as a set of responses to questions from a journalist. I can remember well the thrill of the publication of a book from the Pope that had no magisterial authority but which was intended simply as a new way for a pope to make known the Gospel to the world.

And it’s not as though Pope Benedict XVI’s focus was very different, though certainly his style was. Benedict continued the World Youth Days, and he surely didn’t have to. He brought the new evangelization further to the center of the global church’s agenda, founding the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization and making the two words an ecclesial catchphrase as it never had been under JP2. For all of what appeared to be Benedict’s liturgical fussiness, traditionalism, and ostentation, it’s hard to deny that what he intended for it all to achieve was a richer personal encounter of each person with Jesus. Indeed, it is not difficult to argue — as Christopher Collins, SJ, has, impressively — that the entire body of scholarly, pastoral, and magisterial work of Joseph Ratzinger / Pope Benedict XVI amounts to a sustained argument/proclamation that “Christianity is not a set of ideas to believe or, even less, moral laws to follow. Rather, Christianity is about a person [Jesus] and our encounter with that person.”

All this being the case, if enthusiasm for all that is new and beautiful about the ministry of Pope Francis amounts to suggesting that finally a good pope has come along who is not concerned only with maintaining a set of crusty old rules and who knows that what we’re really supposed to be about is proclaiming Jesus and demonstrating what it means to have a living relationship with him — well then, that’s not something to which I’d be willing to give even a nod. And if that we’ve-finally-found-a-pope-who-knows-Jesus message is part of what the right hears the left saying these days, then maybe therein lies some of their anxiety over the left’s enthusiasm for Francis.

But is that all there is to this? The left wants, falsely, to present Francis as a real Christian pope in order to dismiss recent popes whom they don’t especially like? I think there is more to it than that.

Pope Francis is going about his ministry in some ways that are significantly different – in some cases, ways our friends on the left have been proposing, with much criticism from the right, for decades – and these differences obviously are appealing to many, many people. I don’t know that the approach is objectively better, but it seems true that it’s better suited to our times, in which values like authenticity, transparency, equality, tolerance, and service are widely (and rightly) held in high esteem. Are these differences effective, not just in getting people’s attention or earning respect for the Pope, but in helping to make Jesus better known and loved? Does it effectively draw people into deeper communion with God, actualizing in their lives the salvation Christ won for us through personal prayer, participation in the sacraments, and living the truth in love and solidarity with others?  Those are important questions, and their answers largely remain to be seen.

On a more intra-ecclesial level, Francis is also offering the important witness that there is more than one way to be authentically Catholic, that is, to live one’s relationship with Jesus and follow his teachings within the church. This idea too has been proposed by the left for years, and the right has denied it all along. So this is surely part of the left’s enthusiasm for Pope Francis, too. For over three decades now, either through the teaching and the leadership of JP2 and B16 or through the particular spin given to it by other leaders within the church (it is surely a combination of the two), we have been offered a rather (and sometimes very) narrow vision of Catholic faith and life that has been presented as the only authentic way of believing and living as a Catholic.

John Allen, Jr., put it well in a recent NCR column:

During the John Paul and Benedict years, one byproduct of the emphasis on Catholic identity under those popes was the emergence of a caste of self-appointed guardians of loyalty who ran around “outing” bishops, parishes, schools, hospitals and so on that they felt were insufficiently Catholic. Critics derisively dubbed them the “orthodoxy police,” concluding that in at least some cases, this was mean-spirited and reflected an untoward lust for judgment.

One example of this might be Mother Angelica’s very public criticism of Cardinal Roger Mahony and Bishop Donald Trautman for their “unorthodox” teaching on the Eucharist and liturgy in the 1990s. Her campaign generated thousands of letters to the Vatican, mostly by people who were unable to make the nuanced theological distinctions necessary to understand why Mother was dead wrong. She ended up having to (sort of) publicly apologize to Mahony (though never to Trautman, apparently because he was not high enough on the ecclesial ladder to merit it).

Okay, you say, but that’s a nun who happened to own a TV station, not the pope at the time. But it’s also true that Trautman sat tight as bishop of Erie, Pennsylvania, from his installation in 1990 (at the age of 54) until his retirement in 2012, while many of his episcopal peers received transfers to higher posts. That lack of advancement was almost certainly because of his advocacy of positions on liturgical topics that, though in no way unorthodox, did not match the para-orthodoxy established at the Vatican under the leadership of JP2. Good for Erie, but unfair to Trautman.

I could offer many other examples by mentioning the theology of the body, liberation theology, the participation of women in the church, politicians receiving Communion at Mass, religious freedom, and more.

In short, Pope John Paul II and Benedict XVI made valiant efforts to proclaim Christ to the world. In some ways they succeeded, and in some ways they did not. There are ways to understand that Bergoglio quote above that would be quite wrong; in other ways, he was right.

It is no heresy for enthusiasts of JP2 and B16 (I count myself one) to acknowledge all of this. Just as even the most loving and wise parents are also limited and fallible and therefore will make mistakes, sometimes significant ones, in raising their kids, so even the most saintly and brilliant of popes will not get everything right. It is no disloyalty to rejoice at the new inroads being made by Pope Francis that previous popes were unable to make. It is no sin to suggest they may have, from time to time, put up roadblocks rather than opened doors.

One of many compelling scenes in the great movie Remember the Titans has high school athlete Gerry Bertier in a pivotal moment with his girlfriend Emma. Gerry has realized, through the experience of being on a football team with black students, the injustice of his previous attitudes on race. As Emma, who has shared his attitudes, invites him to join their (white) friends on a Friday night just as Gerry is about to drive off in a car with black teammates, the two stand at a crossroads. Gerry says to Emma, “Listen, when something unexpected comes, you just got to pick it up and run with it.” (To which Emma responds, before turning away, “I’m not running in the same direction as you are, Gerry.”)

I have thought of that scene from time to time in recent months. As one who is a “JP2 generation” Catholic and who has often found himself on “the right side” of issues both extra- and intra-ecclesial (to refer to my example above, I was sometimes unsympathetic to Bishop Trautman’s liturgical opinions, despite my high regard for him and his leadership), I have felt in recent months a bit like Gerry Bertier, wishing to invite my fellow Catholics (especially those on the right): There was much that was wonderful about John Paul II and Benedict XVI, and now something else – something unexpected, a bit different, and quite good – has come; let us together pick it up and run with it.

One thing is clear — the ride promises to be adventurous.

The trouble with Celestine

Uh-oh. Here may be one more sign that the devil has infiltrated the Vatican in the form of Pope Francis, one more example of that s.o.b. “making all of the wrong people happy.” In this case, it will be the religious sisters who will be given aid and comfort. Oh, not the real ones; the other ones, the ones who don’t wear habits. On October 31, Pope Francis recognized the heroic virtues of the U.S.-born woman Celestine Bottego, declaring her “Venerable” and bringing her an important step closer to canonization.

Mother Celestine, as she was known, was the co-founder of the Italian religious order, the Missionaries of Mary. From the very start, when it was founded in 1944, the order has never worn a religious habit. There’s your first sign of trouble, right there. (Never mind that Archbishop Fulton Sheen, in a 1954 conversation with Mother Celestine, congratulated her on that decision and said it was about time for such a change.)

It gets worse. Mother Celestine attended the opening session of Vatican II and was enthusiastic about the reforms it called for, including liturgical reforms that followed the Council. She also developed a very keen interest in ecumenism as a result of the Council.

Mother Celestine is a fascinating lady and will be of interest to every American Catholic – certainly our religious sisters (habited or not!), but also lay people, for she lived as a lay woman for a large portion of her adult Christian life, and the holiness that bore such extraordinary fruit in religious life developed primarily as a lay person, first in Christian family life and later as a lay adult. Born in Ohio and raised in Montana by immigrant parents, she moved back to Italy with them at age 14, where she lived as a single lay woman, working as a teacher until age 48, before founding, with an Italian priest, the Missionaries of Mary.

There’s plenty more interesting stuff on Celestine in an article I’ve written that will be published soon in Our Sunday Visitor, so keep an eye out. In preparing the article, I had a fascinating conversation with Sr. Rosetta Serra, who was among the very first sisters to join the new order in the 1940s (“I was number ten,” she told me with her sprightly Italian accent). Sr. Rosetta travelled together with Mother Celestine, just the two of them, to establish the Missionaries of Mary in the United States in 1954 (they came aboard the Andrea Doria, which tragically sunk two years later with two other Missionaries of Mary sisters aboard!), and she still lives and works today in Massachusetts. It was a fun and interesting article to prepare.

As for blaming Pope Francis for Celestine’s newly-declared Venerability — letting an unhabited nun into such esteemed company and all — well of course, her cause was under investigation long before Francis was elected pope, and I can’t imagine he personally had much to do with her getting to this point. So you can’t put the blame for this travesty squarely on him. I’m afraid the Holy Spirit, who offered such wonderful grace to Celestine in the first place, and Celestine herself, who was open to it and acted upon it in all kinds of ways, are primarily to blame.

Mother Celestine Bottego

Uh-oh. Here may be one more sign that the devil has infiltrated the Vatican in the form of Pope Francis, one more example of that s.o.b. “making all of the wrong people happy.” In this case, it will be the religious sisters who will be given aid and comfort. Oh, not the real ones; the other ones, the ones who don’t wear habits. On October 31, Pope Francis recognized the heroic virtues of the U.S.-born woman Celestine Bottego, declaring her “Venerable” and bringing her an important step closer to canonization.

Mother Celestine, as she was known, was the co-founder of the Italian religious order, the Missionaries of Mary. From the very start, when it was founded in 1944, the order has never worn a religious habit. There’s your first sign of trouble, right there. (Never mind that Archbishop Fulton Sheen, in a 1954 conversation with Mother Celestine, congratulated her on that decision and said it was about time for such a change.)

It gets worse. Mother Celestine attended the opening session of Vatican II and was enthusiastic about the reforms it called for, including liturgical reforms that followed the Council. She also developed a very keen interest in ecumenism as a result of the Council.

Mother Celestine is a fascinating lady and will be of interest to every American Catholic – certainly our religious sisters (habited or not!), but also lay people, for she lived as a lay woman for a large portion of her adult Christian life, and the holiness that bore such extraordinary fruit in religious life developed primarily as a lay person, first in Christian family life and later as a lay adult. Born in Ohio and raised in Montana by immigrant parents, she moved back to Italy with them at age 14, where she lived as a single lay woman, working as a teacher until age 48, before founding, with an Italian priest, the Missionaries of Mary.

There’s plenty more interesting stuff on Celestine in an article I’ve written that will be published soon in Our Sunday Visitor, so keep an eye out. In preparing the article, I had a fascinating conversation with Sr. Rosetta Serra, who was among the very first sisters to join the new order in the 1940s (“I was number ten,” she told me with her sprightly Italian accent). Sr. Rosetta travelled together with Mother Celestine, just the two of them, to establish the Missionaries of Mary in the United States in 1954 (they came aboard the Andrea Doria, which tragically sunk two years later with two other Missionaries of Mary sisters aboard!), and she still lives and works today in Massachusetts. It was a fun and interesting article to prepare.

As for blaming Pope Francis for Celestine’s newly-declared Venerability — letting an unhabited nun into such esteemed company and all — well of course, her cause was under investigation long before Francis was elected pope, and I can’t imagine he personally had much to do with her getting to this point. So you can’t put the blame for this travesty squarely on him. I’m afraid the Holy Spirit, who offered such wonderful grace to Celestine in the first place, and Celestine herself, who was open to it and acted upon it in all kinds of ways, are primarily to blame.

On a roll at First Things (UPDATED)

They’re on a roll at the First Things blog this week. I don’t often get to excited about what they have to say there — a bit too much of the ideology I criticized in my previous post about the National Shrine book store — but sometimes that’s not the case.

Yesterday there was this post from the journal’s editor, R.R. Reno, on the dissolution of “the great middle-class consensus that once dominated our society,” “the end of solidarity in working class America.” I kept waiting for the part where Professor Reno revealed the twist that would vindicate all that has brought us to “our current political culture [being]  dominated by upper-middle-class concerns,” but it never came. It’s a thoughtful post about a discouraging reality.

Now today, comes a post from David Nolan on the possibility that Pope Francis has been outed as an “anti-fracking pope.” One might expect a First Things blogger to share Sarah Palin’s reaction (it’s linked to in the post: “[Pope Francis has] had some statements that to me sound kind of liberal, has taken me aback, has kind of surprised me,” Palin said in an interview with CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”), but that’s not the case.

Nolan notes the strong committment to care for the environment displayed by our two previous popes. “And it makes sense,” he writes, ”that Pope Francis, with his vision of a ‘Church for the poor,’ would worry about the dual exploitation of nature and worker that can occur when an economy is based on non-renewable resources. We only have to look to areas of the U.S.—Appalachia, for example—to see what can happen to rural communities when mines run dry (sorry, mixed metaphor).” Nolan concludes: “If the Pope speaks out explicitly against fracking there surely will be a lot of noise, but given the various papal declarations from the last twenty-five years, we shouldn’t be hearing gasps of surprise.”

UPDATE: Time magazine’s Elizabeth Dias offers this thoughtful take on the Pope’s anti-fracking photo. She concludes wisely:

Posing with environmental activists of any kind—fracking or other—is a way for  Pope Francis to show his solidarity with the people ecological injustice largely  hurts. That’s the heartbeat of his mission, of his very name and identity. The  fracking photos, unless the Holy See decides to say otherwise, most likely  aren’t about the Pope coming out against one specific environmental issue. They  are about him coming out for the poor.

And finally, for a good laugh: The First Things blog included this headline over a round-up post: New Papal Encyclical Will Be Called “Frackicum Est Wackicum”.

On a roll at First Things

They’re on a roll at the First Things blog this week. I don’t often get to excited about what they have to say there — a bit too much of the ideology I criticized in my previous post about the National Shrine book store — but sometimes that’s not the case.

Yesterday there was this post from the journal’s editor, R.R. Reno, on the dissolution of “the great middle-class consensus that once dominated our society,” “the end of solidarity in working class America.” I kept waiting for the part where Professor Reno revealed the twist that would vindicate all that has brought us to “our current political culture [being]  dominated by upper-middle-class concerns,” but it never came. It’s a thoughtful post about a discouraging reality.

Now today, comes a post from David Nolan on the possibility that Pope Francis has been outed as an “anti-fracking pope.” One might expect a First Things blogger to share Sarah Palin’s reaction (it’s linked to in the post: “[Pope Francis has] had some statements that to me sound kind of liberal, has taken me aback, has kind of surprised me,” Palin said in an interview with CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper.”), but that’s not the case.

Nolan notes the strong committment to care for the environment displayed by our two previous popes. “And it makes sense,” he writes, ”that Pope Francis, with his vision of a ‘Church for the poor,’ would worry about the dual exploitation of nature and worker that can occur when an economy is based on non-renewable resources. We only have to look to areas of the U.S.—Appalachia, for example—to see what can happen to rural communities when mines run dry (sorry, mixed metaphor).” Nolan concludes: “If the Pope speaks out explicitly against fracking there surely will be a lot of noise, but given the various papal declarations from the last twenty-five years, we shouldn’t be hearing gasps of surprise.”

Inspiration and disappointment at the National Shrine

I had the pleasure of being on the campus of the Catholic University of America yesterday. I spent a couple of happy years at CUA, nearly two decades ago, studying sacramental theology, and it was good to be back. The purpose of my being there this time was to attend a conference called Where Justice and Mercy Meet: Catholic Opposition to the Death Penalty. That experience was quite good; perhaps more later on it.

My first stop upon arriving on campus had to be, of course, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. I would visit several times a week during my graduate school days, and it was a favorite place to go to confession during that time. I didn’t have a lot of time yesterday, but made several quick stops at some favorite places inside, including the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Chapel (I love the inscription on the altar: OUR LADY IS MORE MOTHER THAN QUEEN), the Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapel, and the glorious Blessed Sacrament Chapel. Another favorite part for me has always been stops at the statues of the American greats: Kateri, Mother Cabrini, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Rose Philippine Duchesne. And as an added grace, to follow up my stop in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, I also encountered Jesus himself in a poor person who approached me while I moved through the side aisle.

Then, before heading off to the conference, I made a stop at the Shrine Book Store. If you are not familiar with it, this is no simple gift shop chock full of chochkies (though there are those there, too). To the credit of the Shrine and its store, it also includes a selection of hundreds of good Catholic books written for the general reader, a great resource for the thousands of pilgrims who pass through there, many with not much regular access to such good reading.

It occurred to me — okay, yes, it’s vain — to see if my own Faith Meets World might be on the shelves, but I couldn’t spot it. No big deal. Then I realized that I really couldn’t spot much of anything having to do with Catholic social teaching — other than abortion — there was a good selection of books on that topic. There was a lot on catechesis, tons on saints, plenty on prayer, some on the sacraments, and on and on. Surely, I thought, there is something on Catholic social teaching.

I approached the young woman at the check-out: “Anything on Catholic social teaching?” She responded with a bit of a blank stare and turned to an older co-worker, telling her what I was looking for. The woman pondered the question thoughfully for a moment. She said, “We don’t really have a section on that, but they’d be scattered around the store.” I knew I had looked around and seen nothing. “Can you point me to something?” I asked. Another pause. “You might want to try an encyclical. Perhaps Gaudium et Spes, the Vatican II document.” Ok, so she knew, at least generally, the landscape of Catholic teaching, and her first suggestion for a document on Catholic social teaching wasn’t bad. She walked me to the shelf of church documents. The documents of Vatican II did not seem to be there, or at least she and I could not find them in a quick survey of the shelf. Pope Benedict’s Caritas in Veritate was, but she ignored that one and couldn’t find anything else that seemed relevant.

I knew it was getting time to drop it, but I had to push a step further. “Is there just one book on Catholic social teaching in the store?” I asked. She shook her head in resignation and said, “It looks like there’s not much here on that.”

I said with a gentle smile and as nonconfrontationally as I could, “Would you please convey to the manager my respectful disappointment?”

“Sure,” she nodded. “Let me ask the manager about this, just to be sure.” And she headed to the back room.

It was at this point, while I waited, looking at the shelf beside me, that I saw the store did have several copies of a book called Tea Party Catholic and several of another called Can a Catholic Be A Democrat? (I’ll give you one guess as to the answer the author provided.) Well, at least they were not lacking for Republican propaganda. Too bad a few good expositions of Catholic social teaching, against which the value of those two books could be judged, were nowhere in sight.

The woman emerged after a few moments and said, “We sometimes have the Compendium of the Social Teaching of the Church, but we don’t have those right now.”

“And no books.”

“No books. Sorry.”

I made one more comment, though probably had already said enough — but I assure you it was spoken without a bit of harshness in tone: “That’s kind of crazy. There are dozens of great ones that should be here.” She apologized again, I thanked her for her help, and I left.

It occurred to me as I walked away that our current and recent popes — about whom there were plenty of books  in the store – surely would not be pleased with the wide and screaming gap in the store’s selection, and the great saints whose statues stand in the lower level of the Shrine, who did so much to live and teach the principles of Catholic social teaching — Cabrini, Seton, Duchesne … Mother Teresa is down there, too — would definitely be unhappy about it.

The National Shrine Book Store — consciously or not — has a strong ideological streak that allows it to ignore a wide swath of Catholic teaching, tradition, and ministry. That would be one thing in a little mom-and-pop Catholic bookstore. At the bookstore of what truly is the home of every Catholic in America, the American Catholic Church’s patronal church, it’s sad and entirely inappropriate.

Dorothy — and her ongoing legacy

Today is Dorothy Day’s birthday! She was born November 8, 1897.

It’s a good day to point out that one of the newest Catholic Worker communities in the United States — the Central Minnesota Catholic Worker, which has developed over the past couple of years in St. Joseph, Minnesota — has a lot going on, both on their own initiative and in collaboration with other local organizations.

Here’s this, from their most recent email update [FYI, regarding the first one: MNsure in the name of Minnesota's new health insurance exchange]:

1.  MNsure Information Session – Monday, November 18th from 6:30-8 pm at the St. Joseph Fire Hall ( note this will BE our regular monthly meeting)

Are you currently without health insurance?   Are you curious about MNsure, the new Health Insurance Exchange?  Do you want to know more about healthcare reform and how it will impact you?  This presentation will answer those questions and will focus on the portions of the federal health reform law, the Affordable Care Act, that impact people who are currently uninsured or who purchase individual coverage in the private market.  Learn about Minnesota’s new Health Insurance Exchange:  how it works, who should use it, financial supports available for people with incomes up to 400% FPG, and the future of public programs like Medical Assistance and Minnesota Care.

Presenter:  Ralonda Mason is a supervising attorney at the St. Cloud Office of Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid.  She has over 25 years of experience working with public benefit programs including healthcare programs such as Medical Assistance and MinnesotaCare.  Ms. Mason advocates on healthcare access issues at the state legislature and with state agencies.  She was appointed by Governor Dayton to serve on the 2012 Minnesota Health Reform Task Force.

2.  The CW along with area churches and our ‘Poverty in St. Joe’ group is looking at organizing a Community Meal in St. Joseph once a month.  We are meeting on Thursday, November 7th at 7 pm at the Legion to discuss further details and share ideas.  All are welcome.

3.  Muslim/Christian Understanding:  Sunday, November 17th from 7-9 pm. @ St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Sartell,  Jama Alimad, the Executive Director of Community Grassroots Solutions of St. Cloud and a leader in the Somali community will be present along with several others from that community to share information about their Muslim faith and Somali culture while also hoping to dispel some of our possibly unfair assumptions.

4.  Workers’ Rights:  You are invited to attend a planning meeting to support immigrant workers around St. Cloud through the Greater Minnesota Worker Center. We will be planning an action to highlight abuses by temp. agencies. I  Saturday, November 9th 3pm:St. Cloud Public Library: Mississippi Room. This comes from the East Central Area Labor Council.

5.  Immigration Reform – Our immigrant brothers and sisters are counting on more of us to step up and voice our support for immigration reform.  If you have not done so already, please call our MN Congressional Representatives to ask that they support it.  A group from Waite Park has been very active on this issue. 

The Central Minnesota Catholic Worker website is here. They welcome donations, which would help keep some good early momentum going. (Full disclosure: My lovely wife is on the “core team” organizing committee for the group.)