Where
do we really ‘belong?’
Guest Columnist
By Father Leonard Peterson
The cartoon appeared in the morning paper, right where it always does.
It is called “Non Sequitur,” and I like to check it out because
I often find it funny. Its Latin title translates to “a conclusion
that does not follow from a previous statement.”
That particular entry depicted an elderly couple standing outside a building
for “The Association of People Better than You.” The mat on
the doorway floor read “Not Welcome,” and in an upstairs window
you could see a man making a two-handed gesture of dismissal. The man
outside the building, seeing all this, is turning to his wife and saying,
“I’m repulsed, offended, and want to know how to join.”
It seems to me that the humor there touched on a definite truth. An assumed
superiority is underneath the evil of racism. Subtle language that distinguishes
between “us” and “them” has come out in the current
presidential campaign. It also strikes me that many members of the so-called
“mass media” have joined that imaginary association, particularly
when it comes to the Catholic Church.
I grant you that we practically asked for such an inferior status when
the awful scandal of 2002 broke. That gave the enemies of the Church a
field day. All the good that the Church has done since then, in terms
of victim assistance, rarely gets mentioned. The many safeguards for children
by strict adherence to screening procedures for both clergy and laity,
especially in our Archdiocese, barely get a nod. But we’re used
to that by now. At least we have William Donohue and his Catholic League
for Religious and Civil Rights as our watchdog and champion.
But a related, thorny question does arise: Have we ourselves been guilty,
as a Church, of joining a mythical “Association of People Better
Than You” as we collectively faced the world? My source for a “yes”
answer to that is none other than our late great Pope John Paul II.
Recall the painful but purifying litany of apologies he made to the world
on behalf of the Church during the millennial year. They fell into seven
general categories of wrongs which included everything from the Crusades
to the Inquisition, the forced conversions and sins against women and
anti-Jewish acts. It was a first for our Church. Only rarely and only
in specific instances before then have we confessed our past errors.
As you can imagine, not all Catholics agreed with the Pope. (I have learned
that causing such disagreement is one sign of a good leader.) Their argument
was that one can’t blame contemporary Catholics for past acts of
their forebears. However, the late Pope was looking at all the history
of the Church’s first thousand years.
While it is true that the Church Christ founded “subsists”
(a technical word in theology) in the Roman Catholic Church, we also hold
that there is goodness in all churches that seek the truth and pursue
it to the best of their ability. We can wonder about the uneven distribution
of the gift of faith, but that is not ours to fathom.
Meanwhile, it seems that there has developed in the Church a certain hesitancy
to remain ecumenical, not among our leaders, but in the minds of many
of our fellow members. What began as a strong, healthy outreach from Vatican
II has somewhat withered on the vine. Now is when we have to remember
that truth will not be confined to any one group. In such a case, truth
would lose its ability to be an agent of freedom. Christ said otherwise.
Some byproducts of such an imagined captivity would be that the Gospel
would become “bad news.” Easter would lose its luster. Frowning
would be the appropriate facial expression for believers. Recognizing
that as a kind of “Nazi nightmare,” we praise God for the
incomparable truth of Easter, and the Good News invites perennial smiles!
Believing in the truth of Easter should not ever allow us to think we
are better than anyone else. Instead we have to recognize a call to be
humble, grateful and hopeful. As the late Cardinal Basil C. Hume of England
put it: “The great gift of Easter is hope — Christian hope
which makes us have that confidence in God, in His ultimate triumph, and
in His goodness and love, which nothing can shake. … But we know,
do we not, that the struggle between good and evil will go on, and evil,
alas, will often prevail.”
Father Peterson is pastor of St. Maria Goretti Parish in Hatfield.