Welcome the stranger

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.