Pilgrimage to Rome: Stalled soul on the Scala Sancta (reflections on minor sufferings of American commuters)

According to Catholic tradition, St. Helena, mother of Constantine, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in the years 326-328, where she recovered the True Cross. Evelyn Waugh's fictional account of Helena's pilgrimage, simply titled Helena, portrays her as a late comer to faith and spiritual kin to the three Magi, who arrived tardy at the manger of Christ.

A less well known tradition holds that Helena also discovered the actual stairs that Christ walked for his meeting with Pontius Pilate, who condemned Christ to a horrible death. Those stairs, called the Scala Sancta, are now in Rome, where pilgrims can crawl up all 28 steps in remembrance of Christ's suffering.

I creeped up those steps myself when I was in Rome earlier this month, somewhat reluctantly I confess. Pilgrims surrounded the stairs by the hundreds, and I had to wait in line for the privilege of my holy crawl.  I was aware of course that I should spend my time in contemplation as I ascended the stairs on my knees, and I resolved to reflect on the last terrible hours of Christ's life.

But as I waited for my opportunity to ascend the Scala Sancta, I observed a woman half way up the stairs, who wasn't moving. She would kneel for a time in prayer, pull herself erect occasionally to stretch her legs, and then sink to her knees again--always in the same place. In short, she was blocking traffic, forcing other pilgrims to veer around her, exactly like motorists veer around a stalled car on the freeway.

"How inconsiderate," I thought to myself. And that led me to think back on all the years I have spent commuting to work, all the minor traffic accidents I have witnessed, all the times I got stuck in traffic because someone's car broke down on the freeway, slowing the flow of traffic--sometimes for hours.

And that is what I thought about as I crawled up the Holy Stairs--all the years I've spent commuting to work in my car and all the millions of other Americans who spend so many hours of their lives simply driving to and from work. I thought of the collective boredom of all those commuting Americans sitting in their cars with nothing to divert them but their radios and their mugs of coffee.

And why do we do it? We do it to get to our jobs--our boring, uninteresting, unimportant jobs: the jobs we do simply to get a paycheck to pay our home mortgages. Most commuters drive to jobs in the cities but they live in the suburbs, where the schools are better. They sacrifice 2 or 3 hours of their lives every working day simply to live in a town that has decent schools for their children.

These are small sacrifices that commuters make--certainly small compared to the sacrifice Jesus was prepared to make when he walked up the Scala Sancta to meet Pontius Pilate. But I devoted my holy crawl to American commuters who suffer the minor inconvenience of driving to work every day for the sake of their children and for no other reason. Surely the Holy Family looks down on them in their daily commutes and sends them a blessing.

Cardinal Bernard Law, Saint Maria Goretti, and the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal: Would Saint Maria Goretti forgive a priest who put his penis in a child's rectum? Would she forgive an archbishop who protected child rapists?

The Story of Saint Maria Goretti: Virgin Martyr

Saint Maria Goretti, a virgin saint of the 20th century, died on July 6, 1902, murdered by Alessandro Serenelli, who had tried to rape her. Maria fought off Serenelli's sexual advances, but he stabbed her 14 times.  She did not die immediately; she lived about 20 hours. And before she died, Maria forgave Alessandro and expressed the wish that she would meet him in Paradise. She was only 11 years old.

Alessandro was convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He was initially unrepentant, but Maria appeared to Alessandro in a dream while he was sleeping in his prison cell. In that dream, Maria offered Alessandro 14 candles as a symbol of her forgiveness--one candle for each stab wound.  He then repented his terrible crime and became a different man.

After 27 years, Alessandro was released from prison. He became a Franciscan lay brother and died at the age of 87. He was still alive when Maria was canonized in 1950.

Would Saint Maria Goretti forgive Catholic priests who raped children?

A few days ago, I visited the Shrine of St. Maria Goretti, which is located in Nettuno, Italy, not far from Rome. I found myself pondering what Saint Maria's views might have been about the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal. She is the patron saint of rape victims, but she is also the patron saint of forgiveness. Would Maria Goretti forgive the Catholic priests who rammed their penises into the rectums of little boys? Would she forgive the bishops and church administrators who shielded child abusers from prosecution--evil men who introduced little children to oral sex?

Would she forgive Cardinal Bernard Law, the Archbishop of Boston, who covered up a massive sexual abuse scandal in his archdiocese and allowed predatory priests to have access to children? Would she forgive the lawyers who effectuated Cardinal Law's cover-up by drafting confidential settlement agreements? Would she forgive the psychiatrists who got paid to treat abusive priests and who certified that these priests were cured of their sexual pathologies?

Almost all the abusive priests were serial abusers. They raped a lot of boys, and they raped them multiple times. Would Maria forgive a priest who raped a little boy more than once? A priest who raped a lot of boys? Would she forgive Cardinal Law for every priest he protected?

Perhaps she would. But I think she would expect these sinners to make some act of penance. Alessandro, after all, spent 27 years in jail and lived a holy life after he was released.

But Cardinal Law is in Rome. In fact, he may have passed me in the streets of the Vatican last week. Perhaps he was among the VIPs who motored by me in their black luxury cars with tinted glass, accompanied by their smartly dressed body guards. The cardinal may have passed me as he was going to dinner at one of Rome's fine restaurants.

Perhaps Maria Goretti has forgiven Cardinal Law and all the bishops who closed their eyes to child rape. But I doubt it; I seriously doubt it.

Note

For other commentary on Cardinal Bernard Law or the sex abuse scandal, see these sources:

Abuse Enableng Bishops Who Were Resigned or Removed. Bishopaccountability.org. Accessible at http://www.bishop-accountability.org/bishops/removed/

Rev. Kenneth Doyle. How Can the Catholic Church Allow Bernard Law To Remain a Priest? Crux, December 14, 2015.  .Accessible at https://cruxnow.com/church/2015/12/14/how-can-the-church-allow-bernard-law-to-remain-a-priest/

Survivors Network of Those Abused By Priests.  Web site: http://www.snapnetwork.org/faqs10215

Pilgrimage to Rome: Labor Day Mass at St. Peter's Basilica where I heard people singing Pescadore des Hombres

On Labor Day, I attended mass at a side chapel of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. A priest from Iowa presided--a man in his mid-forties, humble and earnest. He told us we should ask God to bless the work of our hands and to be thankful for the work that God has given us to do.

An enormous painting of The Presentation of the Lord loomed over our side chapel, and the splendor of St. Peter's Basilica gave the mass a special power. But I was touched more profoundly by music I heard coming from another mass--a Spanish-language mass taking place somewhere beyond my sight at another side chapel in the vast basilica.

Somewhere people were singing a song I had often heard while attending mass in northern New Mexico--Pescador des Hombres. People were singing in Spanish, and they must have sung all four verses, because the singing continued for quite some time.

Immediately, I was taken out of St. Peter's Basilica. In my mind's eye, I was in the upper Rio Grande Valley of northern New Mexico. I saw the pure, unpolluted waters of the Rio Grande River, dappled by sunlight and teeming with trout. I saw the simple adobe churches of the villages in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Hearing that familiar and humble tune, I became aware of the long heritage of my Catholic faith in my own country. The Spanish came up the Rio Grande River from El Paso in 1598. By the early 17th century, they were farming the thin soil along the tributaries of that great river as far north as modern-day southern Colorado. They built their simple adobe churches and prayed the mass a good twenty years before the Puritans landed in Massachusetts Bay. They forted up in their churches and their homes against the Apaches and the Comanches.

As I listened to Pescador des Hombres echoing through St. Peter's Basilica, I was reminded that my faith is an ancient faith and a simple faith.  Although I was surrounded by the great splendor of Roman Catholicism--its art, its statuary, the Pieta of Michelangelo--I am sustained by the simplicity, the  humility, and the childlike faith of my Catholic ancestors.

I believe because my ancestors believed. I embrace the mystery of the Eucharist because the saints embraced this mystery and willingly died horrible deaths in defense of a mystical truth--that Christ is present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

I am proud to share in the patrimony of Catholicism--its literature, its beautiful art, the soaring architecture of its cathedrals. But when I am overcome by doubt--which I often am--my faith returns when the Holy Spirit reminds me that the Catholic faith is the faith of the poor and the humble. It is the faith of people who suffer.

Lord, When You Came To The Seashore/Pescador Des Hombres

by Cesareo Gabarain

Lord, when you came to the seashore you weren't seeking the wise or the wealthy, but only asking that I might follow. 

REFRAIN (English): O Lord, in my eyes you were gazing, Kindly smiling, my name you were saying; All I treasured, I have left on the sand there; Close to you, I will find other seas. 

REFRAIN (Spanish): Señor me has mirado a los ojos, sonriendo has dicho mi nombre, en la rena he dejado mi barca, junto a ti buscaré otro mar.

We don't need no stinkin' family (until disaster strikes): More notes from Redneck Katrina

Children can be such a nuisance. They're noisy. They're expensive. They have absolutely no appreciation for Thai food. It's a good thing we have a constitutional right to abort them.

There was a time when people needed children. Someone had to milk the cows, feed the chickens, and churn the butter.  And children would be such a comfort to us in our old age--remember that quaint old observation?

But now we live in cities. We get our food at the grocery store. When we are too old to live alone, we go to a Golden Age retirement home to play checkers with the other geezers. We rely on Medicare, pensions, and Food Stamps to see us through old age or hard times.  If we do have a couple of children, they most likely live on one of the coasts--far away from Mom and Pop.

And that's just fine until the Amite River starts flowing through the wall sockets of our lovely ranch-style homes, and the power goes out while we're watching CNN News.  And when we call 911, the Emergency Dispatcher puts us on hold with 150 other people.

And so we decide to wait for the National Guard to arrive in their big trucks to rescue us from the flood, but the Guard doesn't know where we live.  And when the National Guard finally shows up, their truck drops us off at an emergency shelter where we can sleep on a cot with 200 other flood victims; and some of those people snore.

That's when it would be nice to have a family. Or more particularly, that's when it would be nice to have a relative with a boat.

Believe me, I know. My wife Kim and I were trapped by flood water last week along with thousands of other people. A lot of those people were milling around on Route 16 hoping the water would subside or a National Guard truck would rescue them.  And the National Guard did rescue a lot of people.  But some people waited a long time before being evacuated.

Our family was more fortunate. My stepson Charlie has a shallow-draft boat, and he rescued my wife Kim, her brother Jim, Kim's parents, and me. And he didn't dump us off at an emergency shelter. He delivered us to my brother-in-law's house in Baton Rouge, where we celebrated our escape by eating jambalaya and drinking Crown Royal on the rocks.

So families can be handy when you need to be rescued from a flood.

Families can also be handy when you are cleaning up after a flood. My wife's parents lived in a subdivision of around 40 homes.  With one exception, every home in the subdivision was flooded.

People who have been through this know that it is vital to "gut" a home as soon as possible to remove all wet sheet rock and insulation. Mold appears incredibly fast after a flood. In just two weeks, a flooded home can become permanently uninhabitable because of mold.

My wife's parents have a big family; and at least ten family members worked four full days to gut their house.  Four generations participated: Ivy and Kitty, the home owners;  all five of their children; at least a half dozen grandchildren; and three great grandchildren.

The home flooded on Saturday night. By the following Friday, Kitty and Ivy's home was completely stripped of all wet sheet rock and insulation; mold treatment had been applied; and the house was ready for a contractor to install new flooring and sheet rock.

Most of Kitty and Ivy's neighbors were not so fortunate. Some were able to do nothing themselves and had to hire demolition contractors. Others had relatives and friends dribble in to help, but not enough volunteers to get the gutting job done quickly.

As debris piled up in front of Ivy and Kitty's home, I could see we were far ahead of the rest of the neighborhood in the demolition process.  By the end of the week, more than half of the homeowners had no debris in their yards, an indication that the demolition process had not even started.

At first, I reveled in my family's progress compared to the neighbors, but as the week wore on it made me sad to see so many homeowners who had absolutely no one to help them cope with the tragedy of this historic flood.

Most of my family are Catholics or lapsed Catholics; and for Catholics, family is a sacred concept. After all, we celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family on the first Sunday of every year; and the Church itself is understood as being part of a family--she is the Bride of Christ.

Blah, blah, blah! How I run on.  If you live in a city and have no family, you will do just fine in postmodern America.  After all, you've got insurance; you've got your pension; you've got your golf buddies; you've got President Obama.

You'll do just fine until you experience a major disaster of some kind--like a flood or a fire, the loss of a job, a serious illness.  And then you might wish you had a family.

Of course, we love our family members, whether they live close to us or far away. My own children live on the East Coast, and I love them dearly. But I often wish I lived closer to my children, not because they could help me, but because I would like to help them.  The older I get, the more I appreciate how hard it is to be young in the United Sates; and I wish I could help my children more.

A white ex-Dallasite reflects on the killings of 5 white Dallas police officers by an African American: "We do the things that come to hand"

A few years ago, while living in Dallas, I had a harsh encounter with a Dallas police officer--an encounter that scared me and made me angry. I had gone to DFW Airport to drop my wife off for her flight, and I pulled into the designated parking area for my wife's departure gate. A Dallas police officer blocked the entrance and told me to drive to the next parking area--about a half block away. I asked if I could stop just long enough to allow my wife to get out of the car, and the officer screamed at me. "Get out of here right now," he bellowed.

I was shocked by the officer's menacing rage, and it made me mad. I thought about confronting him and getting his name so I could file a complaint, but I knew if I did I would probably wind up in handcuffs with my face on the pavement.

In the months to come, I continued thinking about this incident, which I internalized as an assault on my human dignity. Why was the cop so irrational? Why did he block me from parking where I am normally allowed to park? Was he reserving the parking lot for a VIP? Was he on edge because of an oncoming crime? I didn't know.

And I recall thinking how much angrier I would be if I were a young African American or a Hispanic. I think I would have assumed the officer's rage was triggered by my race.

Then a few months later, I had another encounter with a Dallas cop--this one in downtown Dallas. I was driving to St. Jude's Chapel on Main Street for noon Mass and I inadvertently made an illegal left turn right in front of a Dallas cop in a police car.

I didn't wait to be pulled over. I immediately parked at a curb and waited for the officer to approach me. Before the officer said anything, I apologized, telling him I recognized that I had made an illegal turn.

The officer's response surprised me. "Are you OK?", he asked. I told him that I was. "Do you know where you're going?", he asked me next; and I told him I was headed to St. Jude for noon Mass.

Then he asked a final question: "Do you know how to get there?" And I told him that I did.

The officer then wished me a good day and waved me on.

This brief exchange completely neutralized the smoldering resentment I had harbored toward the Dallas cop at the DFW airport. I felt like the Holy Spirit had intervened on my behalf to heal a small but festering wound I had been nursing.

I realize of course that the second friendly cop was asking me questions to determine if I was drunk or otherwise impaired. But he did it in a courteous and respectful way. He had no way of knowing that his demeanor restored that part of my dignity that a DFW cop had deprived me of when he yelled at me a few months earlier.

This brings me to the terrible shooting incident that took place in Dallas not long ago when Micah Johnson, an African American, killed five white Dallas police officers who were guarding a peaceful protest demonstration. What prompted Johnson's insane rage? Had Johnson been treated rudely by a white cop sometime in his life?

And this caused me to ask myself what I can do to reduce racial tensions in my own home town--Baton Rouge, where a white police officer shot and killed a black man just a few days before the Dallas shootings.

The troubles of this world seem overwhelming. In spite of all the public rhetoric, racial tensions are getting worse in the United States, not better. The gap between the rich and the poor is growing in this country. Terrorism can strike anywhere: in a movie theater, a nightclub, a seaside promenade. What can I do to help make the world a better place?

Dorothy Day asked herself this question while locked up in jail, and this is the answer she came to:

When I lay in jail thinking of these things, thinking of war and peace and the problem of human freedom, of jails, drug addiction, prostitution, and the apathy of great masses of people who believe that nothing can be done--when I thought of these things I was all the more confirmed in my faith in the little way of St. Therese. We do the things that come to hand, we pray our prayers and beg also for an increase of faith--and God will do the rest.

So, like the kind Dallas police officer, let us do the things that come to hand. Let's treat everyone we meet with respect and courtesy, let us look for opportunities to perform small acts of kindness, let us follow the little way of St. Therese and Dorothy Day.

That's really about all most of us can do to make the world a better place; but, as Dorothy reminds us, we must trust that God will do the rest.

___________

Note: My quotation of Dorothy Day comes from Loaves and Fishes. I italicized part of the passage for emphasis.

So many white martyrs: How many nameless American Catholics suffer silently and willingly in faith?

Today is the Feast Day of St. Justin the Martyr, who was beheaded in Rome by order of Junius Rusticus sometime around 165 A.D.

Father Matthew reminded us at the noon mass that there are two kinds of martyrs: red martyrs and white martyrs. Red martyrs who die for the Christian faith. Over the long history of the Catholic Church, there have been thousands of red martyrs, in fact millions. Some of them are famous and lived in ancient times: St. Agatha, St. Stephen, St. Lawrence, St. Cecilia, and many more. Others died more recently:  Thomas More, John Fisher, and Margaret Clitherow, who died during the English persecutions of the sixteenth century. And there are the famous North American martyrs of the seventeenth century: Rene Goupil, Isaac Jogues and Jean Lalande and others

Robert Royal, author of The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, persuasively argued that the twentieth century produced more Catholic martyrs than any century in the history of Christendom. Millions of Catholics died for their faith in Europe, Asia and Mexico. Two million Polish Catholics were killed by the Russians or the Nazis during the Second World War, and most of them are unremembered.

And then there is white martyrdom, which is martyrdom without blood or the violent taking of life. As Paula Anne Sharkey Lemire explained:

White martyrdom, is a total offering to God, a 'dying' to the world and its allurements. A white martyr willingly gives up worldly concerns and makes his or her life a perpetual pilgrimage. A white martyr lives a life of heroic devotion for Him alone, eagerly uniting that devotion with Christ's sufferings.

Who might be described as white martyrs? Kateri Tekawitha, for one; John Paul II, and Therese of Lisieux. Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin might justly be described as white martyrs. And of course, there are thousands and thousands of others, most of whom died in obscurity and without being formally recognized in any way.

In contemporary American society, we do not think much about martyrs or martyrdom--whether red or white. We are a culture obsessed by the quest for power, for wealth, and for fame. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the people of the hour. Barrack Obama had his long moment in the sun: Editor of Harvard Law Review, President of the United States, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. But now he fades into hoary obscurity while others scramble to be just as powerful and as famous.

But white martyrs are all around us; many are my friends. I have a friend who unjustly lost his job at a Catholic university and now works as an adjunct professor  at three universities located in three different cities. He drives  300 miles or more a week to teach five classes. He and his family are suffering because an adjunct's salary is not a living wage. But he is steadfast in his Catholic faith and active as a layperson in the life of his parish. Maybe he is a white martyr.

I have another friend who was swept up in an ugly family quarrel that left her disinherited. Without question, she needed her share of her parents' estate more than the siblings who received a bigger portion of the family wealth when she was cast out. But she goes to Mass every week.  Perhaps she is a white martyr as well.

How many people do we know who are struggling with old age and illness but are not bitter, who still go to weekly Mass? How many people nurse aging spouses who suffer from dementia, Alzheimer's Disease, or some other hopeless illness? How many people have lost their jobs before they were ready to retire and see their lives stretching before them as a slow decline into humiliating poverty? And how many of these people still go to Mass?

None of these people will be recognized as saints. No feast day will be set aside to give them honor. And when they are dying, there may not even be a priest available to administer last rites. These are America's white martyrs, and as long as we have them, there will always be a Catholic faith.

Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin

References

Paula Anne Sharkey Lemire. The White Martyrdom of Kateri Tekawitha. Catholic Online. Accessible at http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=980

News Flash!! Catholic Law Students Take Over Harvard Law School's Langdell Library, Demanding an Endowed Chair in Thomistic Studies and Renaming of Library after Catholic Woman Hanged by Puritans

African American students at Harvard Law School have taken over the student lounge, renaming it Belinda Hall in honor of a slave owned by one of Harvard's early donors.  The group issued this statement of grievances:

Since the law school refuses to provide adequate institutional support for an office of diversity and inclusion, hire critical race theorists, promote staff of color in the workplace to management positions in their due course, provide adequate contextualization in curricula, educate its professors, its staff and its students around cultural competency, take the steps that are necessary to accord adequate and equal dignity to marginalized students and staff, Reclaim Harvard Law aims to provide that space at the law school. Reclaim assumes the burden of educating ourselves and others in spite of this institution and not because of it.

Christopher Columbus Langdell:
Anti-Catholic Bigot &
Harvard Law School Dean

Heartened and emboldened by these events, Catholic law students at HLS took over Langdell Hall, the world's largest law-school library. Catholic students charge that  the library's name honors Christopher Columbus Langdell, an anti-Catholic bigot.  Langdell  was Harvard Law School Dean during the late 19th century and enforced a policy of refusing to admit any student to the law school who had graduated from a Catholic college. Langdell''s policy was upheld by Harvard President Charles Eliot, who once wrote that he hated Catholicism "as I do poison." The Catholic protesters renamed the library Glover Hall, in honor of Ann Glover, a Catholic woman hanged by the Puritans on the Boston Commons in 1688.

The Catholic students issues a list of demands, including the establishment of an endowed chair in Thomistic Studies, a 'Catholic-friendly" menu at all Harvard dining facilities during Lent, and an official apology from Harvard President  Drew Gilpin Faust for the prejudicial treatment of Catholics during the Langdell-Eliot years. They also want Eliot House, which was named after President Eliot, to be renamed Feeney Hall, in memory Father Leonard Feeney, a 20th century Catholic priest who was parish priest in Cambridge, Massachusetts for a time and who preached that all non-Catholic Harvard professors were going to hell.

Father Leonard Feeney:
No salvation outside the Church

President Faust issued a statement promising to burn all Catholic law students at the stake in Harvard Yard if they do not decamp from the law library with 24 hours.  Faust stressed that no student would be burned until after receiving a full due process hearing.

References

Minority Students Take Over Lounge at Harvard Law. Inside Higher Education, February 22, 2016. https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/02/22/minority-students-occupy-lounge-harvard-law?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=194526da11-DNU20160222&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-194526da11-198564813