Stay in the same house, taking what food
and drink they have to offer, for the labourer deserves his wages; do not move
from house to house. Whenever you go into a town where they make you welcome,
eat what is set before you. Cure those in it who are sick, and say, “The
kingdom of God is very near to you.”
Luke 10:7 - 12
The days when no one locked
the back door, or front door for that matter, and left their keys in the car,
are well and truly gone. Having visitors turn up at any time was somewhat
serendipitous, but providing drink and something to eat was essential. Not
offering hospitality was considered ill-mannered and poor form. It still exists
in some places, but turning up unannounced in the 21st century is generally met
with surprise and occasionally indignation – because our favourite programs are
on the box, because we all have routines that we must keep to.
It is less surprising that
when Luke is looking for images of the Kingdom of God, that he uses hospitality
in the form of banquets, meals, invitations and welcomings. Indeed when those
who preach the Gospel are welcomed into a new community, Jesus assures them
that the kingdom is close at hand.
This is a real challenge to
us in our busy lives – making ourselves available not only to friends and relatives,
but remarkably to our own families – let alone to perfect strangers. We’ve all
overheard or even used excuses for not visiting or to avoid having visitors as
if opening our homes and offering hospitality is an invasion of privacy not an
invitation to intimacy and deeper relationships.
Our words hospital,
hospice, host and hospitality are derived from the Latin hospes meaning
both host and guest or stranger. This gives us an idea of what hospitality is,
how it is an act of reciprocity – we are givers of hospitality and recipients
of hospitality.
Luke is keenly aware that
fellowship at the table, the sharing of meals is a particular moment of grace.
It is in the making of companions (companion means one who breaks bread with
another) that grows out of eating together, sharing stories, dreams and visions
that unveils hospitality’s deeper purpose: remembering and reliving. It is
something we do each day around the family table, ordering our responses
according a rubric that scaffolds our love and friendship in our stories which
draw concern, approval and advice, and we in turn listen and give of ourselves
in return. This is holy, sacred time. It is here just as in our churches that
God is truly present, he is indeed near.
Bringing our friends and
perfect strangers to our table, into our homes, to begin new memories and to
link with ever deeper common stories is the very reason we must break out of
the chains of our 21st century culture and be nothing less than hospitable.
Peter Douglas
Catholic bishops need a year of
abstinence on preaching about sexuality
Thursday, June 27th, 2019
If Catholic bishops hope to reclaim their moral credibility after
revelations about covering up clergy sexual abuse, the hierarchy might start by
sending a simple but potent message: Church leaders should take a year of
abstinence from preaching about sex and gender.
It might seem obvious that a church facing a crisis of legitimacy
caused by clergy raping children would show more humility when claiming to hold
ultimate truths about human sexuality.
Instead, in the past month alone, a Rhode Island bishop tweeted
that Catholics shouldn’t attend gay pride events because they are “especially
harmful for children”; a Vatican office issued a document that described
transgender people as “provocative” in trying to “annihilate the concept of
nature”; and a Catholic high school in Indianapolis that refused to fire a
teacher married to a same-sex partner was told by the Archdiocese of
Indianapolis that it can no longer call itself Catholic.
There is an unmistakable hubris when some in
the church are determined to make sexuality the lynchpin of Catholic identity.
Moreso at a time when bishops have failed to
convince their flock that they are prepared to police predators in their own
parishes.
There is an unmistakable hubris displayed when some in the church
are determined to make sexuality the lynchpin of Catholic identity at a time
when bishops have failed to convince their flock that they are prepared to
police predators in their own parishes.
Even before abuse scandals exploded into public consciousness more
than a decade ago, many Catholics were tuning out the all-male hierarchy’s
teachings on sexuality.
Surveys show the vast majority of Catholics use birth control and
nearly 70 percent now support same-sex marriage.
This isn’t simply a matter of the church’s image, however.
When the Catholic Church describes sexual intimacy between gay
people as “intrinsically disordered,” it fails to take into account how this
degrading language contributes to higher rates of suicide among LGBTQ people;
when it condemns even civil recognition of same-sex unions that don’t impede
the church’s ability to define marriage sacramentally, bishops appear
indifferent to the roadblocks committed couples without marriage licenses face
in hospitals and other settings.
Unless church leaders are content to drive away a generation of
young people, these positions are self-inflicted wounds.
“Male and Female He Created Them” feels as if
it was written in a bunker sealed off from the world in 1950.
Millennial Catholics understandably ask why centuries of Catholic
teaching on human dignity and justice don’t apply fully to their LGBTQ friends,
family members and teachers.
Those who are raised Catholic are more likely than those raised in
any other religion to cite negative religious treatment of gay and lesbian
people as the primary reason they leave, according to the Public Religion
Research Institute.
A document on gender identity released earlier this month from the
Vatican’s congregation for Catholic education, titled “Male and Female He
Created Them,” underscores why we need a break from lofty church pronouncements
on these issues.
Walk the talk
The document is right in its call for respectful dialogue with
LGBTQ people, but the work itself fails to reflect that ideal.
The authors clearly didn’t spend time with transgender Catholics.
There was no apparent effort to engage with modern science or
contemporary medical insights about gender development.
It feels as if it was written in a bunker sealed off from the
world in 1950.
Ray Dever, a Catholic deacon who has a transgender daughter and
who ministers to Catholics with transgender family members, called the document
“totally divorced from the lived reality of transgender people.”
Dever added, “I think that anyone with first-hand experience with
gender identity issues will confirm that for an authentically transgender
person, being transgender is not a choice, and it is certainly not driven by
any gender theory or ideology.”
Abstract musings are one thing…
While abstract Vatican musings on sex and gender are unhelpful,
the church faces a more urgent crisis in the making in the firing of LGBTQ
employees at Catholic schools.
In a rare display of defiance, Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School
in Indianapolis clashed with Archbishop Charles Thompson, who wanted the
independently operated school to terminate an employee who is civilly married
to a person of the same sex.
The school refused, and the archbishop now says the school can no
longer call itself Catholic.
Brebeuf Jesuit’s supervisory body, the Midwest Province of
Jesuits, said the decision will be appealed through a church process all the
way to the Vatican if necessary.
“We felt we could not in conscience dismiss him from employment,”
the Rev. William Verbryke, president of Brebeuf, told the Jesuit publication
America magazine earlier this week, explaining that the teacher in question
does not teach religion and is not a campus minister.
After the Jesuit school’s decision became national news, another
Indiana Catholic high school announced it was complying with the archdiocese
and dismissing a teacher in a same-sex marriage.
Administrators at Cathedral High School called it “an agonizing
decision” and wrote a letter to the school community.
“In today’s climate we know that being Catholic can be challenging
and we hope that this action does not dishearten you, and most especially,
dishearten Cathedral’s young people.
More than 70 LGBTQ church employees and
Catholic school teachers have been fired or lost their jobs in employment
disputes.
Heterosexual Catholics who don’t follow church
teaching that prohibits birth control or living together before marriage, are
not disciplined the same way by Catholic institutions.
In recent years, more than 70 LGBTQ church employees and Catholic
school teachers have been fired or lost their jobs in employment disputes.
Heterosexual Catholics who don’t follow church teaching that
prohibits birth control or living together before marriage, for example, are
not disciplined the same way by Catholic institutions. The scrutiny targeting
gay employees alone is discriminatory and disproportionate.
Efforts to narrow Catholic identity to a “pelvic theology”
hyperfocused on human sexuality raise questions about what Christians should be
known for as we seek to live the gospel.
Are Catholic employees at schools and other Catholic institutions
evaluated for how often they visit the imprisoned, care for the sick, treat the
environment, confront inequality?
All of these moral issues are central to papal encyclicals,
centuries of Catholic social teachings and the ministry of Jesus.
“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage
and the use of contraceptive methods,” Pope Francis said in one of his first
interviews after his election.
“The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the
transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.
We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the Church
is likely to fall like a house of cards.
Efforts to narrow Catholic identity to a
“pelvic theology” hyperfocused on human sexuality raise questions about what
Christians should be known for as we seek to live the gospel.
A year of abstinence for church leaders preaching about sex would
demonstrate a symbolic posture of humility that could substantively show those
of us still left in the pews that the hierarchy isn’t completely clueless to
the stark reality of the present moment.
During their silence on sex and gender, Vatican and local Catholic
leaders should get out of their comfort zones and conduct listening sessions
with married, divorced, gay, straight and transgender people.
They should step away from the microphone and take notes.
There would be disagreement, but the simple act of flipping the
script — priests and bishops quietly in the back instead of holding forth up
front — might help clergy recognize there is a wisdom in lived reality and
truth not found solely in dusty church documents.
Taking risks and sitting with discomfort is part of a healthy
faith.
It’s time for our bishops to lead by taking a step back.
John Gehring is Catholic program
director at Faith in Public Life and author of “The Francis Effect: A
Radical Pope’s Challenge to the American Catholic Church.” The views in this
commentary do not necessarily represent those of Religion News Service
Image: RNS. First
published in RNS.
