Soul strumming

Years ago I was employed by our diocese at the Paraclete bookstore/Catholic Center in downtown Salt Lake City. I was the director who was given the sad task of closing the Center down, a wise but difficult decision taken by our diocese in light of the fact that building we were in was slated for demolition and the impossible cost of setting up somewhere else. While employed there I had the privilege of meeting many people who worked in the downtown area. One such person was Deseret News columnist Jerry Johnston, who was always a pleasure to speak with. I always learned something from him and enjoyed our encounters. I remember upon my leaving the Catholic Center Jerry giving me a copy of his book, Spirits in the Leaves, which was published by Signature Books here in Salt Lake City.

I have read Jerry's book and found that his writings and reflections have struck many chords in me. Even though we have lost touch, I always read his columns in the Deseret Morning News. I especially liked his latest column, which appeared in the paper last Thursday. It is entitled Personal ministries have made Pres. Monson 'pastoral' leader. This struck a couple of chords.

My reading of this column came on the heels of a conversation about President Monson with the rector of the Cathedral Church at which I serve. In this conversation, I was told about the personal interest President Monson takes in the more than $45,000 of help the LDS Church provides each year to our parish outreach, known as the Good Samaritan Program. This interest took the form of Monson singling out this good priest and telling him he was happy to cooperate in our parish endeavor, telling him "there's plenty more where that came from."

In his column, Jerry favorably compares President Monson to the wonderful Albino Luciani, known to the world as Pope John Paul I. Here is what he has to say:

"When Albino Luciani of Italy became Pope John Paul I, he — too — was known for his large 'personal ministry.' He was democratic by nature. And in Catholic circles, where there's a distinct split between 'high' and 'low' church, the more brainy fretters feared his "personal touch" would hamper his ability to govern on a global scale." Jerry continues, "It was hogwash, of course — the hand-wringing of skeptics with too much time on their hands. Luciani was a breath of fresh air. And I felt sad the world never got to fully appreciate the sweetness a shepherd can bring to mighty tasks."

As for me, I always think of the observation about the 33 day papacy of Papa Luciani Of his all too brief papacy it was said: "God knew we needed a smile".

I disagree with Jerry's conclusion about Monson eschewing "The Shoes of the Fisherman". After all, he did not seem hesitant about becoming the head of the LDS Church. Nonetheless, here's to friendship, to reaching across divides to serve others, to encourage and strengthen each other. As Michael Card, who is a Protestant, has written:

"Every time a faithful servant serves
A brother that's in need
What happens at that moment is a miracle indeed
As they look to one another in an instant it is clear
Only Jesus is visible for they've both disappeared"

First Friday of this Lent

I think it important on the first Friday of this Lenten season to post something about our tendency to reduce faith to morals, thus making it about us, a rejection of grace. Morality, while important, is not the most important thing. Neither is the most important thing to love God. The most important thing is coming to an understanding, even getting a glimpse, of how much God loves us, how much God delights in our very existence, each one of us individually and all of us together. In an article that appeared last year in the lenten issue of Emmanuel magazine, Dcn Owen Cummings writes: "Thirty years ago, Harry Williams, a member of the Community of the Resurrection, began a sermon on Ash Wednesday and Lent with these words: 'It is a pity that we think of Lent as a time when we try to make ourselves uncomfortable in some fiddling but irritating way. And it’s more than a pity, it’s a tragic disaster, that we also think of it as a time to indulge in the secret and destructive pleasure of doing a good orthodox grovel to a pseudo-Lord, the Pharisee in each of us we call God and who despises the rest of what we are.'"

Scripture is instructive on this point: "God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another" (1 Jn 9b-11). This gets things in the right order, we are only able to love in the assurance that we are first loved. Our love of God and of neighbor, if genuine, is always a response to God's love, which is not only prior to our response, but consitutes reality, the reason that anything exists at all. Sadly, we often do not really believe that God can love me, this me. Nonetheless, He does. This, my friends, is the Gospel, the Good News. Lent is about responding in love to Love. Whenever we see a crucifix it is not a reminder of our sinfulness, but of how much God loves us. To believe that our sins are greater than God's love is to grossly overestimate ourselves.

Fr. Timothy Radcliffe, OP writes incisively on this point: "The Church has nothing to say about morality until our listeners have glimpsed God's delight in their existence. People often come to us carrying heavy burdens, with lives not in accord with the Church's teaching, the fruit of complex histories. We have nothing to say at all until people know that God rejoices in their very existence, which is why they exist at all" (What is the Point of Being a Christian? pg. 59). What a lovely lenten thought! We exist so that God can rejoice, not in what we do, but in the very fact that we are!

A friend, that is, a witness, not a mediator

Caravaggio, The Call of St. Matthew, 1599-1602
I was struck full force this morning by the words of Fr. Carron from the end of his synthesis of Friends, That is, Witnesses, the International Responsibles' Assembly, especially given the newness of our SLC School of Community and our meeting last evening:

"We do not accompany people by managing them, like 'mediators' in their relationship with the Mystery. A 'mediator' wants to spare you the dizziness that the Mystery produces ('I'll see to it.' 'No thanks.') He thinks he has a direct line to the Mystery, that he knows what the Mystery wants from you. No! The 'I' is direct relationship with the Mystery. What Fr. Giussani says seems little, but is crucial. A mediator thinks he knows what the Mystery has in store for you, but someone who would spare you the Mystery is cheating you-it is an attempt at possession. There is only one mediator: Christ. What is the meaning of Christ as a figure? Christ is the mediator because He lived in the first person His relationship with the Mystery, with the Father, and when someone tried to draw Him away from this, like Peter, He sent them to blazes: 'Go away from me' (Matt. 16,23; Mk 8,33). Christ generated disciples not because He explained things to them, but because He lived His unique, personal relationship with the Mystery in the first person, up to the Cross, up to the last instant. His problem was not to organize the Church, but to live the Father's will, and in this way he generated the Church, He generated the people, He generates us.

"Our problem is not the management or the organization of our people, my problem and your problem is to live!" (pg. 77)

True living is religious living and, according to Fr. Carron, "is the only thing that generates true friendship, because friendship is going together toward destiny, going together toward the Mystery. This is the only true friendship, the only one that lasts; the rest are relationships of convenience. All other types of relationship, apart from this, are political. We have to decide whether we want to establish political relationships of convenience, or to be true friends. Do we want to play games with each other, or accompany each other to destiny?" (pgs. 78-9)

Our SLC School of Community, our gathering of friends, will occur again on Friday, 15 February. We will first walk the Stations of the Cross in the Cathedral, which begins after Vespers, around 6:10 PM, then we will gather in the Our Lady of Zion chapel to recite the Angelus before moving to our gathering place where we will conclude our discussion, our learning from, our illumination by the Holy Father's encyclical Spe Salvi. After the Holy Father's encyclical we will read Fr. Carron's presentation of Giussani's book Is It Possible To Live Like This? before moving to the book itself.

LENT: The Journey continues

Memento homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris. =
Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

In a funeral discourse on his brother's death, St. Ambrose said:

"Death was not part of nature; it became part of nature. God did not decree death from the beginning; he prescribed it as a remedy. Human life, because of sin . . . began to experience the burden of wretchedness in unremitting labor and unbearable sorrow. There had to be a limit to its evils; death had to restore what life had forfeited. Without the assistance of grace, immortality is more of a burden than a blessing." Earlier in the discourse he said: "Death is, then, no cause for mourning, for it is the cause of mankind's salvation" (Spe Salvi par. 10).

In this way our lives are caught up in the Paschal Mystery, the life, passion, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. May we today be reminded of who we are and of our common destiny: to be children of God through Christ. This injunction also serves as a reminder of our baptism, or, in the case of catchumens, a looking forward to baptism, in which we die, are buried, and rise to new life, "the life which is simply life, simply 'happiness'" (Spe Salvi par. 11).

If you are still looking for what do for Lent, check out the Ironic Catholic. She has many good suggestions. Personally, I'd be impressed by discalced theology professors in Minnesota in February!

Liturgy and Mission

I am happy to share the joyful news that I am now published. An article I wrote last year, based on a liturgical paper written for St. Mary's University of Minnesota Institute in Pastoral Ministry, appears in the March/April 2008 (Volume 114, Number 2) issue of Emmanuel Magazine, published by the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament. Though I am identified as Don Scott Dodge, a confusion of the abbreviation for deacon (i.e., Dcn) I often use in correspondence, I am very thrilled to have been published in this magazine to which I have subscribed and read ever since becoming engaged in pastoral ministry, which was at the time I first met members of the Congregation, all of whom have so richly blessed my life.

It is even more of a privilege to have an article published in same issue as two of my mentors, both of whom I am grateful to call friends, Fr. J.T. Lane, SSS and Dcn Owen Cummings. My article is entitled Liturgy and Mission. Beyond that, in his editorial for this issue, Fr. Paul Bernier, editor of Emmanuel and author of a very good book on ministry, entitled Ministry in the Church, picks up where I left off in my post Cognitive dissonance.

After addressing Anselm's satisfaction theory of atonement and the unsatisfactory way this theory has played itself out in Christian history, he writes about the aspect of the Paschal Mystery that needs to be stressed now, namely that in the Scriptures Jesus is primarily portrayed "as our exemplar, our model in his total commitment to the will of the Father. It was Jesus' complete fidelity to his vocation, his willingness to pursue the right path, no matter the difficulties that was pleasing to God. It was also redemptive for us inasmuch as it puts us on the right path, and enables us to live as God's true children. Since we have been ennobled in baptism to become members of God's family, the exemplary life and death of Jesus makes it possible for us to know God's will for us, and - with the grace of the Holy Spirit- to live it" (pg. 99). With this reminder I have learned twice today not just the importance of other people, but of Christian brothers and sisters. We need to encourage each other, challenge each other, correct each other so that we can be more faithful to the One we have encountered.

At times I find myself full of doubt, not about faith, but about life, about people. I suppose this counts as a way of being serious about what I have found along the way, though not a very useful way. I need to look deeper than appearance. In my case analysis, which breeds anxiety and causes me to be hyper-sensitive, often swamps simplicity of heart. I suppose needing reassurance, being reminded that it is about Him, not anything else, is what I needed to reminded about today. Too often in my own experience it becomes about so many other things. As I have been working through the La Thuile exercises, something I neglected all weekend, I have been reminded of this and warned against the dualism to which I am so prone, pitting faith against life and vice-versa.

A note of explanation

Many of the following posts date back to last Fall, which is why they seem a bit dated. Hopefully, they are still relevant, especially as we approach what is being termed Super Duper Tuesday.

Religion and faith in the public square

Over on Observations & Contentions, which is the First Things blog, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, the journal's editor, has web-published his remarks given last Saturday at a debate sponsored by The Economist. The resolution being debated was "Religion and politics should always be kept separate."

He begins by defining terms which, in a debate, is absolutely essential. He uses Aristotle's definition of politics according to which politics is our answer to the question, "How ought we to order our life together?" He points out that "The ought in that definition indicates that politics is in its very nature, if not always in its practice, a moral enterprise."

He goes to ask about the role of religious institutions, which "understand themselves to be divinely constituted," in the polity of these United States. According Fr. Neuhaus, the United States Constitution views them as "voluntary associations of citizens who join together for freely chosen purposes." Hence, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc. are "on the same constitutional footing as labor unions, political action groups, professional associations, and a host of other organizations formed by common purpose. In the heat of the political fray, all these institutions are tempted to claim that, on the issues that matter most to them, they have a monopoly on morality. All of them are wrong about that."

He goes on to state that "religion cannot be separated from politics. More precisely, religion cannot be separated from democratic politics. But I do believe that religious leaders should be more circumspect and restrained than they sometimes are in addressing political issues, and that for two reasons. The first and most important reason is that the dynamics of political battle tend to corrupt religion, blurring the distinctions between the temporal and the eternal, the sacred and the profane. So the first concern is for the integrity of religion." The second reason, lest I leave you hanging is "concern is for the integrity of politics".

He also gives some of his thoughts and impressions on Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship that are well worth reading in their own right as well as nicely complement his remarks from the debate. The USCCB document includes this section: "In making these decisions, it is essential for Catholics to be guided by a well-formed conscience that recognizes that all issues do not carry the same moral weight and that the moral obligation to oppose intrinsically evil acts has a special claim on our consciences and our actions. These decisions should take into account a candidate’s commitments, character, integrity, and ability to influence a given issue. In the end, this is a decision to be made by each Catholic guided by a conscience formed by Catholic moral teaching," which some cynical and morally ill-informed commentators have turned into what Neuhaus calls "the conscience clause", which gets interpreted in our emotive culture as, at the end of the vote anyway you like as long you feel strongly about it.


Fr. Neuhaus is accurate and succinct in his observation that this so-called "conscience clause" "is not a loophole but speaks to a solemn obligation. It is clear Catholic teaching that one must act in accord with conscience, even if one’s conscience is misguided. At the same time, one is obliged to form one’s conscience according to moral truth. It is also the Church’s teaching, reiterated in this document, that acting according to a rightly formed conscience is a matter that impinges upon one’s eternal salvation" (underlining and emboldening mine).