An open letter to the American Bishops:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice! Your kindness should be known to all. The Lord is near. (Phil 4:4)

As you prepare for your annual meeting in Baltimore next week, please don’t forget the joy of the Gospel. It’s true that you have serious matters to discuss—including your own failures to protect children and steward responsibly the local Churches entrusted to your care. But as Pope Francis has forcefully reminded us, your primary responsibility as bishops is to proclaim the Gospel, the good news that brings us joy, not to scold people (including yourselves) for their sins and human weaknesses.

What the world needs now is authentic joy. We need to smile, to wonder at God’s creation, to laugh at ourselves, and to know that we are loved and appreciated and valued. You are called to give witness to this Gospel joy, not to wallow in sadness or self-doubt.

Rejoice in the Lord always, St. Paul tells. The Lord is near.

We have seen enough gloom and doom. We have cried too many bitter tears. We have lost hope too often. Show us the way to rejoicing—not in any superficial sense, but in truth and love. Show us how to encounter joy in the person of Jesus Christ.

Yes, with the help of God’s grace, you must address the current crisis caused by your weakness and sin as leaders and teachers and pastors. Yes, you must be held accountable. Yes, you must transform the customs and structures that have too often allowed clericalism and cronyism to be the modus operandi of Church governance. But please don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you can “fix” the Church’s problems by new laws (policies, charters or programs). Healing is needed—and so is hope—but these can only come with a renewed sense of gratitude and a profound experience of Gospel joy.

During the coming weeks, especially, you will be in my prayers and those of all faithful Catholics. We wish you Godspeed. We hope you can find in your ministries the peace of Christ and the joy of the Gospel. You need both to serve God’s people faithfully.

With sincere gratitude,

Daniel Conway

We expect too much from our bishops and priests and, so, are easily (and often) disappointed. 

Listen to these words from the second reading for today’s Mass:

It was fitting that we should have such a high priest: holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, higher than the heavens. He has no need, as did the high priests, to offer sacrifice day after day, first for his own sins and then for those of the people; he did that once for all when he offered himself. For the law appoints men subject to weakness to be high priests, but the word of the oath, which was taken after the law, appoints a son, who has been made perfect forever. (Hebrews 7: 23-28)

We expect our bishops and priests to be “holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and higher than the heavens” like Jesus. And they are not. They are sinners like us who have answered the call to follow Jesus in a particular way—as men subject to weakness who humbly represent 
the one and only “high priest” who has been made perfect forever. 

Only by the grace of God can they hope to live their vocation with integrity. Only by accepting and handing-over their weaknesses can they succeed in being Christ for others. 

We call it “clericalism” when bishops and priests exalt themselves as a privileged class. But it is also clericalism when we expect them to be super-human, “high priests” whom we place on pedestals only to be scandalized by their human sinfulness. 

Both forms of clericalism should be recognized as poisonous; both must be rooted out and destroyed if we wish to renew our Church.

Bishops, priests and all who exercise leadership in the Church must be held to the highest standards of morality and accountability. But the minute we expect them (us) to be perfect, we set ourselves up to be bitterly disappointed and angry. 

May the God of justice and mercy give us all the serenity,  courage and wisdom to accept our human weaknesses even as we work together to change and grow as faithful disciples of the one and only High Priest, Jesus Christ. 

Saints witness to Jesus, the source of joy

Today Jesus invites us to return to the source of joy, which is the encounter with him, the courageous choice to risk everything to follow him, the satisfaction of leaving something behind in order to embrace his way. (Pope Francis, Canonization of Seven Saints, October 14, 2018)

Since he became pope in 2015, Francis has called our attention to “the source of joy,” which is the personal encounter with Jesus Christ. The pope has written about, preached about and, through dramatic gestures, practiced the joy of the Gospel.

The saints canonized by Pope Francis last month were witnesses to joy. That doesn’t mean they were without sorrow or fear. It means that the human emotions that they experienced as we all do were handed over to Jesus with complete confidence in the Lord’s ability to transform them by the power of his passion, death and resurrection.

Just as Jesus was mocked, scourged and crucified, the saints all share in his suffering in their own ways. Some, like St. Oscar Romero, were brutally martyred. Others, like St. Paul VI, suffered internally from external criticism and internal anxiety and doubt. None was a perfect human being. All sinned, and all turned to the Lord, overcome with sorrow and guilt, seeking his forgiveness.
All saints are sinners, and all sinners are called to repent, seek the Lord’s mercy, and resume their journey to holiness. As Pope Francis reminds us frequently, it is Divine Mercy that transforms sinners into saints and redeems all the “poor souls” we pray for especially during the month of November.

Reflecting on the Gospel reading for the Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time, the passage in St. Mark’s Gospel where Jesus is asked what must be done to gain eternal life, the Holy Father observed that the Lord invites the rich young man (and all of us) to pass from the observance of laws to the giving of self, from doing for oneself to being with God. This is radical conversion. It requires giving up much more than worldly goods. It requires us to give ourselves wholeheartedly to love of God and love of neighbor.

The young man in the Gospel story couldn’t do it. But Nunzio Sulprizio, the young man who was declared a saint last month, did exactly what Jesus asked. He surrendered everything to Jesus, the source of joy.

Many articles have been written about the personal connection that existed between the two most well-known saints, Pope Paul Vl and Oscar Romero. They were very different personalities, and their paths to holiness were quite different.

“Even in the midst of tiredness and misunderstanding, Paul VI bore witness in a passionate way to the beauty and the joy of following Christ totally,” Pope Francis said. Oscar Romero gave up “the security of the world, even his own safety, in order to give his life according to the Gospel, close to the poor and to his people, with a heart drawn to Jesus and his brothers and sisters,” the pope said.

As Pope Francis observed—about all seven of the new saints, “Without a leap forward in love, our life and our Church become sick from complacency and self-indulgence. All these saints, in different contexts, put today’s [Gospel] into practice in their lives, without being lukewarm, without calculation, with the passion to risk everything and leave it all behind. May the Lord help us to imitate their example.”

Many times, Pope Francis has reminded us that saint are not super-heroes. They are ordinary women and men who have responded with extraordinary courage and love to the demands that Jesus makes of all his disciples: Go, sell what you have and give it to the poor; then come, follow me (Mk 10:21).  “May the Lord help us to imitate their example.”

What must we do to gain eternal life? The answer is simple but not easy. We must be grateful, accountable and generous stewards who willingly return all God’s gifts with increase. We must be holy people who leave everything behind in order to follow him who is the source of our joy.
October 2018 was a challenging month for Pope Francis and for bishops throughout the world. Scandals, internal divisions and a crisis of confidence among lay people dominated the headlines. Thank God, the Holy Spirit always gets the last word. Thank God, there is reason for profound hope and great joy in the witness of all the saints!



   

When I was five years old, my grandmother, Anna May Bernet Callaghan, picked me up at my family home to take me to her house to spend the night. She had parked her car on our side of the street (the wrong side) and when we got to her car she found a parking ticket.

We got in the car and drove directly to the police station. Grandma went up to the Sargent at the desk and waved the ticket at him. “I’m a grandmother,” she said. “I’m not going to have my grandchildren cross a busy street to get into my car.”

With that, she gave the parking ticket to the Sargent, grabbed my hand, and we marched out of the police station.

I never knew what happened with Grandma’s parking ticket after this encounter but I’m quite sure that she continued to park on our side of the street.

I am a confirmed moderate in all things. I believe that the truth usually can be found in the middle between opposing sides, and I generally think that extremists on the right and the left are equally looney.

This is not a good time for moderates. We are constantly being challenged to take up one extreme position or another. We must either loathe Donald Trump or idolize him. We have to either be convinced that the current pope is the Anti-Christ or hail him as infallible in everything he says or does. We must either condemn Brett Kavanaugh as guilty unless and until proven innocent or conclude that he is the finest justice ever appointed to the Supreme Court.

It’s all madness.

I am especially disheartened by the attacks on Pope Francis and on other Church leaders I know personally. I do not agree with everything the pope and bishops say or do. I have witnessed first-hand serious mistakes in judgment made by both Church and civil leaders. That simply reminds me that everyone of us is human. No one belongs on a pedestal to be worshipped from afar.

But the vile, viscious, ugly attacks against our political and religious leaders are not only unjustified; they are signs of a deep soul sickness. Our Church and our nation are in desperate need of healing. The longer we continue on the current roads, the closer we will come to schism in the Church and a civil cold war in our nation.

The Lord prayed that we would be one—as he and the Father are one in the Holy Spirit. There is no more urgent need. Unity in diversity (e pluribus unum) must be our battle cry. As long as we are divided, we are weak. Until we set aside our differences, forgive one another’s sins, and begin to work together for the common good, we are lost.

Moderation in all things—but especially in politics and religion. It’s the only way to survive the madness.

Pope Francis makes it very clear that he has no tolerance for hypocrites or self-righteous people “who love to cry ‘scandal,’ to point out the failings of others and make themselves appear pure.”

In fact, the Holy Father aligns the cries of hypocrites with the devil who is working overtime to create chaos and confusion in families, in society and in the Church. “If we look at the world scene in our time,” the pope says, “more and more voices are sowing division and confrontation—often by exploiting insecurity or situations of conflict—and proclaiming that the only way possible to guarantee security and the continued existence of a culture is to try to eliminate, cancel or expel others.”

The Church is full of sinners. Sometimes they sin grievously. But if they repent and seek God’s forgiveness, they can experience Divine Mercy. The problem with hypocrites is that they are unrepentant. They denounce the faults of others but are in denial about their own sins.

During a homily at his residence on September 20, the pope said, “The devil doesn’t have anything to do with repentant sinners because they look to God and say, ‘Lord, I’m a sinner. Help me,’ and the devil is impotent. But with the hypocrites he is strong,” Pope Francis said. “He is strong, and he uses them to destroy, to destroy people, destroy society, destroy the church.”

While God’s holy Church is made up of sinners, it also has its share of hypocrites who love to cry “scandal” to point out the failings of others and make themselves appear pure, Pope Francis said.

The word “scandal” is taken from the Greek word, scandalon, which originally meant “trap.” Scandal occurs when a person’s words or example cause others to stumble morally, to fall into a trap that is an occasion for unbelief or moral lapse. Scandal is an obstacle to faith in God because it creates doubt about the credibility or authenticity of someone who is supposed to be God’s representative. Those who cry “scandal” to point out the failings of others often intensify the effects of scandalous behavior. They relish the destructive consequences of the moral lapses they claim to denounce.

Who are these hypocrites who love to cry “scandal”? It’s tempting to name some of those well-known critics of Pope Francis who publicly question, accuse or condemn his words and actions. But that kind of speculation would only play into the hands of the devil who seeks to divide the Body of Christ by diminishing and degrading its leaders.

The devil’s “battle horse is hypocrisy because he is a liar. He shows off as a powerful, handsome prince, but inside he’s an assassin,” the pope said.

Reflecting on the Mass readings for September 20, Pope Francis said, “St. Paul, in the first reading, and the woman who anoints Jesus’ feet in the Gospel reading both realize they are sinners, but they are moved by love for Jesus.” But Jesus, in spite of their sins, “forgives, receives, is merciful—words we often forget when we speak ill of others,” the pope said. “Think about this: We must be merciful like Jesus and not condemn others.”

The Pharisees are shocked, “scandalized,” that Jesus would allow his feet to be anointed by a woman the Gospel describes as “sinful.” In fact, they are the ones causing scandal by setting a trap for Jesus.

The Pharisees were self-righteous hypocrites who were always watching Jesus “to see if they could find him in error” or could “set a trap for him,” the pope said. “They had an attitude that hypocrites often use: They were scandalized.”

Theirs is “the hypocrisy of the ‘righteous,’ the ‘pure,’ those who believe they are saved through their own merits,” the pope said. But “Jesus calls the hypocrites ‘whitewashed tombs.’ They look like beautiful cemeteries, but inside they are putrid and rotten.”

These are harsh words from a pope who constantly extols God’s mercy and forgiveness. Like Jesus, however, Pope Francis cannot abide the hypocrisy of those who condemn others without mercy. He lashes out at those who cry “scandal” as a means of setting traps, causing chaos and destruction.

In the words of Pope Francis, “Let us ask Jesus always to protect our Church, which is a holy mother but full of sinning children like us. And may he protect each one of us with his mercy and forgiveness.”

The sun refuses to shine on our nation and our Church. 

Were you there when the sun refused to shine?  Were you there when the sun refused to shine? Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. Were you there when the sun refused to shine?

A dark cloud hangs over the Catholic Church and the United States of America. Our leaders have betrayed us and the atmosphere has been poisoned by anger, hatred and the most vile and vicious name-calling and character assasination. God forgive us. We are in a bad way. 

In such an atmosphere, the sun refuses to shine, and our only recourse is to tremble with shame, tremble with sadness and tremble with fear for the future our our nation and our Church.