‘This is a loving, caring Jesus,” is how the director of a play involving abortion described a leading man to the New York Times.
The play, written by a Notre Dame grad, recently took to stage at the University of Delaware. The dialogue includes a gal asking Christ: “Did you ever say, ‘I’m Jesus, and I say that stupid girls who let guys talk them into going to the back seat of their cars have to have babies?’ Did you say that ever?”
Advertisement
“No,” Jesus replies.
“All you talk about is, be nice to each other!” the teenager continues. “You never said nobody’s allowed to have an abortion.”
The fictional Jesus confirms her assertion.
“So can I? Can I? Can I?” she asks.
“Honestly, I — I don’t really have an issue with it,” Jesus tells her.
Honestly?
Honestly. Rather than uplift and challenge, the hallmark of great art, this just seems to bring Jesus down to our broken level. Where’s the hope in that?
Recently, I spent a Saturday night in the heart of Washington, just blocks away from the White House, with college kids who were too young to have seen much of Pope John Paul II, but wanted to learn about him. At an event hosted by the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) on campus at George Washington University, John Paul’s biographer, George Weigel, talked about the late pontiff’s formation, his faith, and his place in history.
What was most impressive about the event was the questions. The students wanted to know what fed John Paul, what made him who he was, what kept him faithful, where he found his courage.
What made John Paul so attractive to so many was his loving, caring courage. That he was able to bring Christ and His teachings to people in a loving, caring, and still rock-solid way. That he was able to stand before world leaders and admonish them, demonstrating a loving, caring concern in doing so. It was the same courage and concern that helped him to face down the evil of Communism in his homeland and beyond.
I don’t want to pick on the Notre Dame playwright. I’m more inclined to want to apologize. Who was it who made her think that mercy means validating abortion? Was it in the education she received? Was it in the fallen witness she saw on campus, in the pro-life movement? In this way, in bringing these questions to mind, her play does inspire, it does challenge.
They’ll know we are Christians by our love, we pray. But sometimes, all too often, what they see is something different. Heaven knows, it’s typically our failures that get more attention.
But the Notre Dame graduate doesn’t have to remake Jesus into a “loving” and “caring” abortion proponent. If it is mercy that she seeks, it is at the heart of Christianity, not in a reinterpretation of “Thou shall not kill.” Those kids may have goofed, but there is a life inside her now. And that life deserves as much mercy as anyone.
We know way too much about the unborn to deny that.
And if she looks around enough, John Paul II and the beloved Mother Teresa were not alone as contemporary witnesses of a loving, caring, pro-life message. Christians abound who are loving and caring in their defense of life: The Sisters of Life in New York, religious women whose charism is protecting the most vulnerable among us — the unborn, and their families, even, yes, past the point of delivery. The young men at the filled-to-capacity North American Pontifical College in Rome and closer to home at its domestic brother, the Josephinum, in Columbus, Ohio, forming “Spiritual Fathers for the New Evangelization.” The young women Oprah noticed on her show, joining a convent in Michigan in shockingly healthy numbers — and they’re not alone. There is a renewal going on, one of service and catechesis. One that, in many ways, defies the last few decades.
Christ asked a little more of us than to be nice to one another. We must do that. But we must also not walk away from other truths just because it can be hard to stand against an evil. We must know what it is we say we believe.
There is actually a lot of love out there for those kids in the back seat. And the best-intentioned abortion activist is actually only affirming and feeding what has become a moral mess.
We sure know the pursuit of unhappiness.
That night at GWU, a young man talked about his “reversion” to the Catholic faith of his family. A lot of what he saw in college was not the recipe for any kind of happiness. Confession changed his life. Knowing he wasn’t the end-all changed his life. There is “freedom,” he said, in seeking to know God’s will. It’s actually a relief to know that we are not one another’s final judge. Now this young man works with college students, helping them sort through their own discernments about their lives. And on Saturday nights in the coed dorms.
On Good Friday, the culmination of the season that began with us going among coworkers and fellow commuters with those outward symbols of our sins — ashes on our foreheads — Christians reflect on our ignorance, on our bad witness, on our fallenness. And take comfort in the mercy of a God who knows us too well to condemn us because of our mistakes, as long as we are contrite, as long as we keep getting up to walk with Him — and helping one another do the same. On campus, in politics, on the stage of the University of Delaware, and in and out of the back seat.
You don’t have to believe (we have free will, in a free country). But those of us who do ought to embrace what we’ve been given. There may be no gift-giving this holiday season. It’s because we’ve got the best gift yet: loving, caring mercy.
I know somewhere at Notre Dame they still teach something about that.
— Kathryn Jean Lopez is editor-at-large of National Review Online. She can be reached at klopez@nationalreview.com. This column is available exclusively throughUnited Media.
I would have a lot more respect for Pope John Paul if he had devoted as much time protecting the innocent children he allowed to be molested by priests as he had protecting children never meant to be born.
Bravo, Kathryn. Loved your approach and points. The playwright also needs care and clarity, as do we all. Great positive tone without smarm or shallow cheerleading. I think your article subtitle is incomplete as it feels your central point is on how we are remade, not Christ. Still, you deserve a raise for this one.
Nice article. However, why the veiled contempt for Notre Dame? You keep repeating "Notre Dame graduate" again and again throughout the piece in a kind of dog-whistle attack on the school. Why not focus on the playwright and the play?
I know it's disappointing that the most recognized Catholic university in the U.S. has turned out a graduate that appears to be so morally confused. But I'm a little put off by the passive-aggressive tut-tutting aimed at the school when it should be aimed at the playwright herself. Notre Dame graduates thousands of students each year, the vast majority of whom are probably good Catholics (or at least people whose single takeaway from Catholic theology isn't just that we should "be nice to eachother"). Why should it be pilloried for the handful that are confused?
NB: I admit that I'm an ND grad, so I do have some skin in the game. While I have plenty of issues with the way the university has conducted itself in recent years, I do still hold it in the highest regard. So I get a little defensive when I think it's being unfairly maligned.
After reading SmithersJones implication that Pope John Paul essentially pimped for pedophile priests, and zapbrannigan1's sensitivity to ND being blamed for the actions of the attendees, I think they should discuss where responsibility for an act lies. Is it with the one who commits the act, or the organizations with which they are associated?
The next issue would be determining what to do in the aftermath of discovering a sinful act has been committed. I don't say the Pope made flawless decisions, not being a Catholic myself, but the Church spends a lot of time discussing forgiveness. I think the Bible says something like "seventy times seven" times a person should be forgiven if they ask for forgiveness. The children ought to have been better protected from the weak priests, but the forgiveness had to be granted.
Similarly, if the playwright asks forgiveness for misrepresenting the theology of the Catholic Church, she should be forgiven. Perhaps ND is not in the forgiveness business, like the Church is, but it also sounds as though she has not apologized. She ought to have had better teachers, just as the children ought to have had better priests.
Jesus forgives murderers if they ask for forgiveness, so if abortion is something He considers murder (which I think is the case), then forgiveness is available. The Bible (at least in the Old Testament) has some words on punishment for causing a pregnant woman to lose a baby. It's part of the Jewish Law, as I understand it (also not Jewish), and Jesus did not throw away Jewish law. Sounds like He would be against abortion.
Brilliant advertising campaign in that thing you have to type to prove you're human... Brilliant.
But why is the abortion debate a religius question? I thought we were supposed to have separation of church and state. Do I really flying hoot what this J guy believed or not? Are we going to require people to believe in him to get a tax break now? Really scary stuff. The Left's use of Christianity to create law is a little scary to us non-Christians. This is an issue society must decide and not be compelled to fund abortion based on Christianity.
Our Family has had a long connection with Notre Dame, I got my PhD there, was born there when my dad was getting his PhD and my great Grand Father was tossed out of the Seminary there in 1891.
I think that you observation about the ND Grad play write goes to a more basic issue at Notre Dame, that being the Land of Lakes Statement. At the point Notre Dame and other Catholic Universities basically declared that Academic Inquiry would reign supreme over the Catholic Nature of the Universities. During his tenure as president of Notre Dame Fr. Malloy consistently referred to Notre Dame's peer institution, and did not mention any Catholic University (Stanford, Duke, Northwestern). So it does not surprise me that with the dilution of the catholic identity of Notre Dame (and other Catholic Universities) as student could graduate with very little understanding of Catholic Teaching.
Similarly with the secularization of the Church that occurred in the same time frame as Vatican II it is not surprising that priest would heed the message of popular culture of "if it feels good it must be good" "just do it". John Paul II and now Benedict XVI are working to reintroduce the message that to be Catholic means something and there is meaning in following the teaching of Christ.
The "playright", if that he could be called, must be a fan of Alanis Morissette: What if God was one of us? / Just a slob like one of us? At least Ms. Morissette was humble enough to recognise she was a slob.
"The "playright", if that he could be called, must be a fan of Alanis Morissette: What if God was one of us? / Just a slob like one of us? At least Ms. Morissette was humble enough to recognise she was a slob."
Unfortunately, you don't need to show proper deference to the moral teachings of the Universal Church to attend or even teach at Notre Dame. You can even receive a position of honor at the school while metaphorically spitting on the corpses of the aborted millions.
Until someone changes the minds or the positions of the local ordinaries behind some of these teaching missions they will continue to put secular education on a pedestal and use the deposit of the faith out as a door mat.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has Jesus's answer to this character's question writ very clearly within it, complete with documentation. Seriously, though, even a hater shouldn't have been able to graduate from Notre Dame without learning how such a specious argument as the one put into this play is grounded in nothing by logic fallacies.
I think if public tax revenues is spent on abortion for which some use it as a lifestyle choice that renders the taxpayers whether Catholic or other a valid say in the issue.
Every time an article like this comes around, there invariably follows a helpful chorus of reminders from critics of the Church recounting for us the sins of the faithful (usually of those in positions of authority in the Church)--as if their sins are somehow an indictment, if not an utter refutation, of the Church itself.
I won't deny that such sins (like pedophilia and the covering up thereof) are odious. But there is more to the Church than a bunch of guys running around in funny hats and gowns pretending to be important. The Church is more accurately submission to God's law, and the Church is those who faithfully submit to God's law. Those who chose to not to submit to God's law--those who sin--indict themselves, not the Church.
Indeed, it's probably safe to say that all of us since Christ have sinned at one time or another (ok--probably often). Yet we have our Church there to help us realize our sins, to give us the opportunity to realign ourselves with God's law, to renounce the error of our ways, to go forth and sin no more.
The true Catholic may not be perfect, but he seeks perfection. And so long as we have our Church there for us, our Church is working just fine.
The question to ask is whether God, in the incarnation of his Son Jesus, would be acting in a truly "loving and caring" manner if he simply chose to overlook the brokenness all humanity has brought upon itself through our sin against him? God's law was designed not to constrain us, but rather to make us truly free--free in the ways that only God, in him omniscience, can fully comprehend. Our sin entered into the world because we vainly convinced ourselves that we, the created, were better to determine the course of our existence than the God who created us. As a parent, would I be truly loving towards my son if I turned a blind eye to his persistent desire to walk into a fire simply because he was attracted to its pretty colors? Or would it not be more loving for me to warn and even try to restrain him from doing so? But God gave us free will--he sorrowfully allowed us to choose to "walk into the fire"--our choice which resulted in our separation from a God who cannot tolerate sin. But he did not give up on restoring our relationship with him. He came himself and lowered himself to human form in the person of his son Jesus, who came to earth not to condemn us (through our actions we were condemned already) but to save us from the consequences of that condemnation. Though without sin, Jesus took upon himself the guilt and punishment for our sins. In so doing, he "cleared our records," and continues to do so because in our humanity we continue to fall back into sin. If we're all "just OK the way we are," why did Jesus have to die on the cross? What need is there for a sacrifice if there's nothing to be sacrificed for? Jesus did not come to pat us on the back and tell us we are OK the way we are, he came to save us from the consequences of our sins and to put us back in a proper relationship with the God who created us and who continues to love us although through sin we turn our backs on him and reject his love. Jesus is not the pop psychiatrist, as this playwright cast him to be, who came to sooth our consciences; rather, he gave himself to become our lasting cure for our selfishness, deceit, hatred, violence, contempt for his creation, pride, murder, envy, hubris--all of those things we choose to do, and in so doing separate ourselves from him. The first step towards that cure is acknowledging our sickness--our sin--and admitting our complete inability to cure ourselves, and then throwing ourselves upon the mercy of God for the cure that was secured for us in the sacrifice of his son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. I would invite this playwright to go back to the Gospels and honestly assess how Jesus dealt with individuals. She would find those Gospel accounts to be utterly inconsistent with how she's portrayed him in her play.
Follow
