Pange Lingua Gloriosi

I love Palm/Passion Sunday.  Everything I love about the Church is wrapped up in the celebration on this day: the tradition, the call to reflect on just how the Church came to be, the music (of course, the music!), the sense of joy and pageantry that gives way to recalling sorrow and sacrifice.  Palm Sunday also calls to mind the more challenging parts of the Catholic tradition, as we hear in detail the Passion of Jesus, and the words that have historically separated us from our Jewish heritage and our Jewish sisters and brothers.  It's a day that I can't help but think about why I'm a Catholic, and that has become part of my worship for the day.

Two years ago, I sat in the congregation at The Oratory Church of St. Boniface in Brooklyn, broken and hurting still from leaving my previous church.  The homily that day (click on the March 28 recording) helped me start to heal.  Sitting in the choir loft of that same church this Palm Sunday, now a part of this community in ways I wouldn't have imagined two years ago, I was filled with gratitude that added to my appreciation of this celebration.  For all the things that drive me crazy about the Church and what people assume Catholics do and believe, the priests and the community at Oratory are a huge part of the balance that keeps me coming back.  We are the Church, the people.  The Church is imperfect because we are imperfect, and yet we keep striving to be worthy of God's love, sometimes forgetting that He loves us despite our imperfection.  I love that we as Church keep trying to be better.  I found such a great example of that in the back of our program for Mass this Palm Sunday, in a letter from the Ecumenical and Inter-faith Commission for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens, which I'm excerpting here:
The readings for this sacred time, while spiritually inspiring, present us with an important homiletic task.  In the past these readings were often chosen to legitimatize anti-Semitic rhetoric and behavior on behalf of some Christinas which caused suffering for the jewish Community and betrayed the emaning of the mission of Christ.
This was followed by this quote from Nostra Aetate rejecting anti-Semitism and persecution:

True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ;(13) still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.
Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel's spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.


So much food for thought.  Walking home from Mass, with Brooklyn in full bloom, I begin this Holy Week actually a little sad that Lent is coming to a close, but looking forward to another week of reflection, and music.

Pange, lingua, gloriosi

Corporis mysterium,

Sanguinisque pretiosi,

quem in mundi pretium

fructus ventris generosi

Rex effudit Gentium.

Catholics and politics, 1960, 1928, ...

Just wanted to quickly link to a couple of pieces that remind us of the history of Catholics in the US, especially since Kennedy's speech is getting a lot of attention recently:

John F. Kennedy speaking to Protestant ministers in Houston, TX

Reflecting on Al Smith and a time when Catholics were definitely "the other"

And from New-York Historical Society's library blog, this interesting little nugget:

In the mid 18th C New York City convulsed with anti-French and Catholic paranoia. A palisade was built on its northern edge to slow any invading force from Quebec, while dozens of slaves recently imported from Catholic islands in the Caribbean were executed. Irish malcontents were persecuted, and a Latin teacher was burned at the stake. You can see gallows and a fire pit just outside the palisade in David Grim’s map showing the city as it was in the 1740s.  Call number: M2.1.1

If I were a boy: learning how to be female and Catholic

This week's post is something I've been working on for awhile.  It could fit anywhere, but with so much discussion recently about Catholics and what we believe, and the particular focus on women in the church, I'm taking the liberty of posting this now, even though it continues to be a work in progress as I wrestle with being a faithful female Catholic.

Come on, Catholic sisters, think for a moment with me.  When did you first realize that there was a limit to what you would be able to achieve within the church?  Did it strike you as just part of the whole Catholic package:  two fast days, seven sacraments, unmarried clergy, and tradition, tradition, tradition?  Or did it really piss you off?

Guess which option I chose.

I guess I knew, on some level, for some time, that women had a particular role in the hierarchy of the Church, but it didn't become crystal clear until I was preparing for confirmation.  I remember my middle school years fondly, and I learned so much about myself, and life, the universe, and everything.  Yep, read those books during that time.  A lot of the questions I would wrestle with well into adulthood were formed during the year leading up to my confirmation, and the budding Catholic feminist began to emerge as well.

Picture it:  1978, Huntsville, Alabama.  My confirmation class had the opportunity to ask our parish priest questions, and since our church was in the process of prohibiting girls from being altar servers, we figured this was a golden opportunity to ask why.  I will never forget the answer, though I can’t even remember the priest’s name (let’s call him “Fr. Joseph”):

Why can’t we have altar girls?

Well, being an altar server can be a step to the priesthood.

So why can’t women be priests?

Insert appropriate look of pity and condescending tone here.  I truly believe that “Fr. Joseph” felt he was giving us an “enlightened” answer:  “Girls, men are not as morally strong as women.  Seeing a woman on the altar as a priest might cause many men to have impure thoughts, which could lead them to sin.  It’s best not to have that temptation there.”  And I remember him laughing, with a "what are you going to do" gesture; he may have even thrown up his hands in mock surrender.

So this “Fr. Joseph” assumed:

• No man could resist sexual thoughts about a woman, clothed head to toe in a shapeless robe, proclaiming the Gospel, delivering homilies, and consecrating the Eucharist.
• Women NEVER have impure thoughts about male priests, not even the young, hot, sexy ones.  He obviously wasn't reading The Thorn Birds, though some of us girls certainly were.
• This explanation would make us feel BETTER about being women in the church.

I remember that day being a turning point in my thinking about the church.  Even though our confirmation teacher tried to soften what the priest had said (something about tradition and being a man, so what did we expect?), I had made up my mind about my future in the church:

• I would be confirmed because it would make my mother happy.
• Once I was officially an adult in the church, I would make my own decisions about whether or not I would continue to go.  Okay, I stuck it out through high school, but it was totally up to me by college.
• I would never, ever take what a priest said as unquestioned truth ever again.
• Being Catholic was no longer a given for me.

I did go through confirmation, and I have remained a Catholic, but this memory has never left me.  How, and why I stayed:  stay tuned!

This week's fast: fasting from indignation

A recent episode of 30 Rock made me crack up but also hit very close to home.  I realized, to my dismay, that on the New York subway, I am Liz Lemon.  And while I still feel morally justified to call attention to the rudeness and incivility riding the rails, seeing it played for laughs gave me a little pause.

Add to that today, the seven-year-old in the backseat reminding me once again, as my righteous road indignation moved perilously close to rage, that yelling at drivers who cannot hear me only upsets me and my passengers.  And to cement the lesson, she quoted a recent commercial aimed at reducing road rage.  When my seven-year-old daughter is the moral role model, it is past time to carefully consider what type of example I am setting.

So I tried a little experiment after dropping my little role model off at school:  for every trigger that usually sets off my moral indignation alarm, I would take a breath and try to concentrate on examples I see of compassion and decency.  Let me tell you, it was not easy.  On the five minute-walk to the subway, there were pedestrians not paying attention to traffic, drivers leaning on horns out of impatience rather than actual danger, and teenagers being, well, teenagers.   I hadn't even gotten to the train platform, which always invites numerous opportunities to question just how people are raised.

But I was determined, and I concentrated on my late grandmother's voice, my touchstone for gentleness, compassion, and calm.  And I saw things that I ordinarily would have missed:  how many drivers actually do stop and waive pedestrians through unregulated intersections, parents (mostly fathers today) showing great love and patience with their toddlers and babies, the woman who not only remembered her iced coffee cup at her feet on the train, but actually took it off the train with her.  I know, I know, simple things, but I was struck by how differently I felt getting off the train today by focusing on these positive examples rather than the examples of incivility that usually drive me crazy.

And I realized, that at least so far today, that I am behaving more civilly myself.  Hopefully, my daughter will be proud.

Here's hoping your Friday fast gives you moments of calm reflection as well.
Peace

Another year, another Lent, another attempt

Yes, it's that time of year again, when I remember that I have this blog, and I recommit myself to making it a regular part of my Lenten meditation, at the very least.  Last year I wrote one entry, just one.  So if I double that this year, I'm improving, nu?

I make no promises, but the writing is flowing a little better this year, and perhaps I can even get three or four posts during Lent, which might turn into something even more regular...

But I get ahead of myself.

This is an interesting time to be a Catholic, is it not?  I hear so much about my faith, or rather what others think it to be, on the news these days.  I guess when two major presidential candidates identify as Catholic, and the current president's administration decides a few rounds with American bishops might be fun, people are going to be talking about Catholics.  And it is refreshing that not every thing I hear in the media makes me want to throw things, though I am tweeting a lot more than I used to.  Note to those of us "digital immigrants" of a certain age:  careful what you tweet, as you may get retweeted, and find yourself in conversations you never intended.  Thanks, Morning Joe (actually, it was kind of fun, and I do love my daily dose of Morning Joe)!

So I approached Ash Wednesday thinking a lot about what other people are saying being Catholic means, and went to Mass across the street at Our Lady of Refuge (not my regular church, but a lovely community itself, and, did I mention it's right across the street from my home?).  I was really moved by the service, one of the morning masses, full mass with ashes at the end.  The presiding priest began Mass with this thought: Lent is the time for us to reflect on our sins, not the sins of others, but our sins.  While that seems so simple, it was a great thought to focus on during Mass, and will definitely be part of my Lenten reflection these next forty days.  It is the thought I prayed on during the rest of Mass--how often do I think about what others are doing to me, or when someone else is "wrong", and how often do I stop and think about my own behavior and its impact on others?  How often do I think about how I'm living my faith, and my own accountability to God and myself?  All good questions that I hope will carry me through Lent and beyond.

So, happy Lent, and hopefully this will not be the last post of 2012.  In the meantime, check out someone who's an inspiration to me in his blogging, at Googling God.