Deep within St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue is the heart of the place. The Blessed Sacrament — what Catholics know as the Eucharistic Real Presence of the Resurrected Lord, Jesus Christ — resides there, in a chapel dedicated to Our Lady.
For days now, I’ve been absorbing the commentary — much of it expressing disappointment and anger — swirling around next year’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. No one seems happy with the news that the parade will include employees of NBC with an “Out@NBCUNIVERSAL” banner (a social/civic banner rather than a political one). The decision is seen by some as a capitulation and by others as not going far enough.
New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, for his part, issued a statement expressing the prayer that it may be an opportunity for unity. And much of the ire from those who believe, as the Church teaches, that the homosexual lifestyle does not conform with God’s will for us is directed at the cardinal archbishop.
His thinking — could it even be pastoral wisdom? — can, perhaps, be best understood in terms of an observation about Pope Francis that Dolan made in a recent interview with John Allen for the new website Crux:
My biggest surprise, and it’s a good one, is that he’s moving at the speed at which he is. He’s got a beautiful blend of humility and self-confidence, and he himself is willing to do what he encourages us to do, which is to not be afraid to have some accidents. There are moments when he might rethink . . . “I was misinterpreted there, people took me the wrong way.” But it’s well worth those periodic misinterpretations, because the general record has been such a smashing success.
Many would disagree that the misinterpretations are worth it. As Cardinal Dolan himself also admits to Allen, people quoting Pope Francis on all sides “can be a headache.” But herein lies the crux of the matter: Doesn’t this both expose and illuminate the fundamental message everyone needs to hear from the Church? The Church — and everything it is called to be and do — is about Christ. If we’re manipulating the Body of Christ or the Gospel of Christ for our own agenda, we’re not serving Him. Enough with the Left and the Right in the Church. Enough with us vs. them. Enough with sinners and saints. Enough with Democrats and Republicans. Enough with gays and straights. We are all sinners in need of God’s mercy. We are all sinners loved by God our Father and Creator, who takes delight in us, sent us His Son and gives us His Spirit. And Christ’s Mother, that model of the perfect Christian life, who said yes to God’s will and who, as we give her our devotion, leads us only to her Son. People aren’t hearing that. There is an unnecessary drought in the souls of men, even while the Church has the divine healing waters of eternity!
All are welcome. The life of Christ demonstrates this — and then some. Cardinal Dolan has said this. Pope Francis said it in his Tuesday-morning homily in Rome. Across the street from Penn Station in midtown Manhattan stands St. Francis of Assisi Church, where there is a sign outside that says the same. St. Francis’s has Eucharistic Adoration from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. every weekday, and there is Confession there too, for many hours throughout the day. Be reconciled to Christ. That is the invitation. Fallen away, lost, miserable, confused, trying. Come to the healing waters of eternal life.
If we can’t even sit down to a meal together, we’re in even worse trouble than we already knew, as Cardinal Dolan said to me a little before one in the morning in the Tampa convention center after his prayer at the Republican National Convention two years ago (he would go on to pray at the Democratic National Convention the following week). And Heaven knows we are in trouble. The cardinal was reflecting on the Al Smith Dinner, the annual charity dinner hosted by the archbishop of New York, which can be a political lightning rod every four years. He was getting criticism for letting the show go on a few weeks before the 2012 presidential election, despite President Obama’s unprecedented attack on religious liberty. Something similar has been going on with the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. A parade has become a source of perennial annual division, obscuring the faith, the history, the tradition, with people feeling put out and excluded. Can’t we even march together with shamrock sweaters, have a green beer together, or pray together any more?
Yes, I know it can be seen as sowing confusion. Yes, I know it can feel like surrendering to the bullying by Guinness or to that familiar insatiable intolerant secularism that is increasingly the air we breathe. But it is also just a parade. And I can’t help wondering if the criticism is actually from another time. The culture of the Empire State — which has been dubbed the abortion capital of the country, where, in 2012, 37 percent of all viable pregnancies ended in abortion — is not such that if the cardinal with the Irish name says something, everyone rallies to march in line. And we don’t exactly live in a culture today where St Patrick’s Day looks like this:
Go to Mass.
March in parade — with the children wearing Catholic-school uniforms.
Fellowship and corned beef, and beer for the adults.
Watch Bells of St. Mary’s.
Examination of conscience.
Night prayer.
God bless you if that is your St. Patrick’s Day — as you work to rebuild Catholic culture with your family, perhaps with friends and other families — but overwhelmingly souls are rotting away in confusion about who we are and Whom we are made for. How can the light of faith illuminate, as described in the encyclical largely written by Pope Emeritus Benedict and signed off on as the first from Pope Francis? And how can we all be of that effort — the missionary mandate of the Gospel, the field hospital in a culture drowning in immiseration? How can we rebuild Catholic culture in a welcoming way — without compromising the Gospel? And how can we rise to its challenges radically and completely (which is an ongoing sanctifying journey for every hour of our lives)?
It’s an important parade — since 1762, a big deal in the life and history and culture of New York. And it’s in honor of the patron of the archdiocese, for Pete’s sake! But what is it that the life of St. Patrick pointed to? The life of the Trinity. And despite great pockets of renewal and leadership, life and culture in New York City today is not exactly radiating self-surrender to this life, the life of the Gospels, bursting with merciful love.
Another Francis, Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George, wrote in a column this week that “Catholics do know, with the certainty of faith, that, when Christ returns in glory to judge the living and the dead, the church, in some recognizable shape or form that is both Catholic and Apostolic, will be there to meet him. There is no such divine guarantee for any country, culture or society of this or any age.”
Christians are called to counterrevolutionary leadership, and there is a sense of urgency about some of the pleas some pastors have been making of late. As Pope Francis told young people as he left Rio last summer:
The service you have given during these days brings to mind the mission of Saint John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus. Every one of you, each in his or her own way, was a means enabling thousands of young people to “prepare the way” to meet Jesus. And this is the most beautiful service we can give as missionary disciples. To prepare the way so that all people may know, meet, and love the Lord. To you who in these days responded with such readiness and generosity to the call to be volunteers for World Youth Day, I say: May you always be generous with God and with others: one loses nothing thereby, but gains great enrichment in life.
God calls you to make definitive choices, and he has a plan for each of you: to discover that plan and to respond to your vocation is to move toward personal fulfilment. God calls each of us to be holy, to live his life, but he has a particular path for each one of us. Some are called to holiness through family life in the sacrament of Marriage. Today, there are those who say that marriage is out of fashion. Is it out of fashion? In a culture of relativism and the ephemeral, many preach the importance of “enjoying” the moment. They say that it is not worth making a lifelong commitment, making a definitive decision, “forever,” because we do not know what tomorrow will bring. I ask you, instead, to be revolutionaries; I ask you to swim against the tide. Yes, I am asking you to rebel against this culture that sees everything as temporary and that ultimately believes you are incapable of responsibility, that believes you are incapable of true love. I have confidence in you and I pray for you. Have the courage “to swim against the tide.” And also have the courage to be happy.
On Monday the Church celebrated the Nativity of the Blessed Mother. And in the prayer of the Church, St. Andrew of Crete seemed to offer wisdom that could be of help here:
The fulfillment of the law is Christ himself, who does not so much lead us away from the letter as lift us up to its spirit. . . . He changed whatever was burdensome, servile, and oppressive to what is light and liberating, so that we should be enslaved no longer under the elemental spirits of the world, as the Apostle says, nor held fast as bondservants under the letter of the law.
He went on to say: We are led toward the truth, and we are led away from our condition of slavery to the letter of the law. How can this be? Darkness yields before the coming of the light, and grace exchanges legalism for freedom.
In Christ is our hope. The world needs to see this light. We need to stand in the public square.
St. Peter Claver, whose feast is September 9, made himself a slave to slaves. He fed them. He gave them Christ in his very being, in his loving service, before he ever said a word about Him. Sometimes you see Pope Francis doing that. Sometimes we have to do that.
Over these last decades, so many Catholics have not been who we are called to be. We do evil. We privatize our faith. We kill with our words. We put up obstacles to evangelization and pour salt into open gaping wounds. Enough. Too much.
Sometimes Pope Francis leads with “I am a sinner.” He urges us to have a good lunch with friends on a Sunday, after his Angelus message and a prayer. Sometimes it’s the embrace of a man who has been cast aside or overlooked in this world. Sometimes it’s begging us to ask Jesus to forgive us — He is waiting for us and never tires of immersing us in His mercy. It’s always invitational.
Cardinal Dolan was castigated by some this spring (a familiar position, such is the life of the Cross!; although this time his critics were more the likes of the Huffington Post crowd than his usual conservative critics) for telling George Stephanopoulos that people with same-sex attraction are loved by God and the Church, are “made in God’s image and likeness,” and are as entitled as anyone else to friendship. Everyone is called to a life of chastity, and friendship is such an important part of that. He said that we’ve “got to do better to see that our defense of marriage is not reduced to an attack on gay people. And I admit, we haven’t been too good at that. We try our darnedest to make sure we’re not an anti-anybody.”
But the conventional wisdom is that the Church is the anti. The challenge is to show Christ — be Christ — in a culture and legal structure that is becoming increasingly hostile not just to the specifics of Church teaching but to robust faith in the public square at all. It is in this atmosphere that the Church must take a confident but also penitential posture, knowing that this c ountry has scarcely been overwhelmed by Catholic witness, faithful to the Gospel, in recent decades.
After a court ruling on marriage in Portland, Ore., earlier this year, Archbishop Alexander Sample there said:
Our teaching about the true nature of marriage is no castigation of people who are gay. We simply believe that two people of the same sex are unable to marry. That is not to say that gay people cannot experience deep friendships, commitment, loyalty, generosity, and love just like anyone else. It is to say that men and women were made for each other by God in a unique and complementary way. Their union in marriage is something we believe cannot occur between two people of the same gender.
. . . Our teachings are not meant to engender attitudes of disrespect or hostility, and perhaps we don’t always do the best job of stating them. The Catholic Church is not interested in numbers in the pews or money in the collection basket, but only in bringing people to Jesus, serving the poor, reaching out to the lost and the broken, and in helping lead all to eternal salvation in Christ. Where we are failing in these areas, we need to change, but we cannot change Christ’s call to be faithful to the truth of the Gospel. . . .
As this dialogue and discussion continues, we wish to extend a full welcome to every person who wishes to be a part of our faith community, knowing some of these tensions will not be easily resolved.
It is through prayer and mutual charity that together we honor God and move forward towards cooperating with Him in building his Kingdom on earth.
In the life of the Church this fall, we are entering into an intensive conversation about the family — culminating in a synod in Rome next month. Issues of communion and divorce have gotten most of the press attention, but at the heart of it is taking a look at the beam in our own eyes. How much more can the Church do — lay leaders and parishes and, yes, bishops and cardinals, too — to help men and women know they are loved and created for God’s love and service to one another? That is our identity. How can we better support the living of Gospel truth and Church teaching? How can we be better stewards of the treasure of eternity? How can we better show Christ to generations feeling isolated from the Church?
There is so much confusion, on so many fronts. There is so much pain on so many fronts. Christians need to live the life of faith radically, and also give one another a little freedom to be creative, even clever, for Christ, as Father Robert Spitzer, S.J., recently put it. In all humility and deep prayer and surrender to His will and His alone. These are times for courage in the fullness of freedom in Christ.
We don’t have to agree with every statement a priest, bishop, cardinal, or pope makes. But is it of Christ? Is the Holy Spirit at work? Let us pray this is so, and, by His grace, He will write straight in our crooked lines.
The upcoming synod on the family is not all about divorce, and the St. Patrick’s Day Parade is not all about sex or politics. Each can be an opportunity for an opening into the life of the Church, as eyes turn to Rome in October and marchers pass by St. Patrick’s next spring. There is a Presence, after all, more powerful than any press statement or op-ed. And it’s difficult to communicate an invitation without being present to people, showing that the Church has something more — something real and practical and beautiful and true — to offer them. Lead people there, and darkness may just yield and freedom may be restored. That’s the renewal we need. That’s where it happens.
With more than a little intercessory help, we New York Catholics pray, from Saint Patrick.
— Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review Online, and founding director of Catholic Voices USA.