TIME FOR TESTING THE SPIRIT

   During my doctoral studies in Rome, I lived at the North American College graduate house on the Via del Umilta':  Humility Street.  Humility Street is a very narrow street, one block from the Trevi Fountain.  For a while it was a chaos of two-way traffic with Fiat autos and Vespa motor scooters racing headlong at one another.  The situation got so bad that the Roman authorities changed the street from two-way traffic to One Way.

   One afternoon I opened the door and out of habit, looked both ways before stepping out.  It was siesta time and the street was empty.  Then to my right, a Fiat turned the corner and came in my direction--the wrong way.  I looked the other way and there at the corner stood a Roman policeman, waiting for the car to reach him.

   I said to myself, "The poor driver is going to get a ticket!"  But then, I saw the policeman look both ways down the cross street. Though I couldn't see, he saw that no traffic was coming either way.  So instead of stopping the driver and giving him a ticket, the policeman motioned the driver to continue past him and go on his way.  In that little experience, I saw the policeman take a "pastoral" approach rather than apply the literal meaning of the law.

   Cardinal-designate Gerhard Mueller, the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, takes a strict, literal approach to the law, including the teaching that divorced and remarried Catholics cannot receive Communion.  Recently, Cardinal Maradiaga, of Honduras, suggested that Mueller soften his approach and be more flexible.  Maradiaga noted that Mueller is German and is therefore accustomed to following the letter of the law.  Maradiaga, whose culture is closer to that of the Roman policeman, is suggesting that he take a pastoral approach.  Each approach must account for the other in our expression of morality. 

   Besides our approach to morality, our understanding of what is moral arises from several sources.  Most immediately, it arises from our everyday life-experiences, i.e., from our "everyday wisdom".  More deeply, it arises from reason--and this includes our best understanding of science and our best understanding of human nature.  Finally and most deeply, it arises from our Faith.  

   In the past, we have used these sources to change our moral teachings and approaches, e.g., on slavery, usury, and religious liberty.  Today we can legitimately ask, "Could there be reasons from everyday human experience, from reason itself, and from our Faith, that make it all right for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Communion?  And if so, like that Roman policeman many years ago, can't our church leaders allow for these reasons?"

   Also, beyond the question of marriage and divorce, many Catholics today are looking anew into their lived experience, and at reason and our Faith, to question and re-discern the teachings on responsible contraception, on the gay expression of our humanity, and on the theology of women.  In many ways, this is a time for testing the Spirit. (Cf. 1 Thess. 5:19-22).

WHEN WE CATHOLICS LOSE OUR WAY

   Catholic public officials have the grace and responsibility to elevate their profession and the society they serve, and where necessary, to heal their profession and our society in order to make them more just, peaceful and loving--in short, more luminously human.

   Here in my state of New Jersey, two Catholic public servants, Bridget Anne Kelly, Deputy Chief of Staff to Governor Chris Christie, and Governor Christie himself, appear to have directly or indirectly lost their way and failed in their graced responsibility.  In an outrageous, small-minded political vendetta, Ms. Kelly ordered traffic restricted on the George Washington Bridge between New Jersey and New York--the most heavily traveled bridge in the world.  For four days, people were late for work, school children were late for school, and emergency vehicles were hampered from arriving to help people in distress.  And since this bridge is a known terrorist target, this ridiculous action could possibly be considered a mini-terrorist attack.

   Governor Christie has denied any knowledge of this action and has fired Ms. Kelly--curiously, not for what she did but for lying to him when he asked her if she knew anything about it.  But everything happens in a context, and it is publicly known that Governor Christie has created a pugnacious culture in his administration.  Did this culture influence Ms. Kelly's action?    

   Both Kelly and Christie received a Catholic education:  Kelly from a Catholic university and Christie from a Catholic law school.  We should expect that a Catholic education helps form Catholics into spiritually mature persons who see beyond themselves and their own interests to the greater society that they serve in the grace of Christ.  If Catholic education doesn't do this, we must ask why not; if it does, we must ask what caused these two Catholics to fall from expressing spiritual maturity in their profession.

    One obvious answer to this latter question is the state of politics in today's culture.  What Pope Francis recently said about our country's corruption of capitalism, we can also say about our corruption of politics.  If our capitalism is corrupted by self-serving greed, so is our politics.  In fact, we have reduced both professions to themselves, i.e., "Business is business," and, "Politics is politics."  In such a self-imposed, closed-in context, there is no opportunity to see the bigger picture, to work for a greater community of justice, peace and love.

   Catholic morality tells us that the corruption of the highest ranked people is the greatest corruption.  Catholic spirituality tells us that our narrowing down of business and politics for their own sake is spiritual corruption.  Our faith is not some abstract idea that is floating in the air above our heads; it is an incarnate faith that take on flesh, e.g., in the form of our politics run by spiritually mature persons.  As Catholics we are graced and responsible to make our politics luminously human.  When we fail to do this, we lose our way and fail our community and our God.