Matthew Kelly's mission is to get us back on track

I just finished Matthew Kelly's The Three Ordinary Voices of God, and can heartily recommend it. It is an inspirational short book that focuses on learning to listen to the voices through which God communicates with us. Those voices are our needs, talents, and desires. Kelly's main point is that we live in a noise-filled society that distracts us at every turn. Just think social media, news, materialism, emphasis on worldly success, the newest gadgets--the list is long. All of them encourage us to ignore the important voices that want our attention. In a non-judgmental way, Kelly prods us to pay attention before it is too late. His fear (for himself and for us) is that we will mis-live our lives and not become the 'best versions of ourselves'. That we will waste our lives on non-essential things rather than the essential things. We can only become the best versions of ourselves if we 'let go and let God', if we ask God to show us what he wants for our lives. His appeal to readers at the end of the book is to 'come to the quiet', because it is only then that we can hear and pay attention to the voices of God and discover the 'want beyond the want' (we are never really satisfied when we get what we think we want), which is God. His words resonate with me and many others because he knows how difficult it is to pay attention to the voices of God (our needs, talents, and desires) in a society that is constantly distracting us and pulling us in all directions. It is his opinion that most people don't know what they want and don't know who they are or what they're made for. He's on a mission to wake us up and get us back on track. He doesn't want us to waste our lives. Because in his view, society as it is now will drag us down and prevent us from moving toward God.  

I was reminded of Mary Oliver's poem The Summer Day; the last two lines ask 'Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?' Indeed--a very good question. Mary Oliver was acutely aware of the natural life around her; she paid attention to it and to her needs, talents and desires. She wrote “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work". Not unlike what Matthew Kelly says. However, unlike Kelly, she was not part of an organized religion (Kelly is a committed Catholic), but she had a special relationship with God. 

My question is--how can one go through life and not pay attention? There is so much to pay attention to. We live in a marvelous world that can inspire and energize us. Even if you are not a person of faith, you can seek silence and watch and listen to the world around you. It has so much to teach us. I never tire of learning, and I think will serve me well as I move into my later years. I can sit silently in my garden and watch the sparrows approach me tentatively, hoping for a handout (they usually get one).  During hot dry summers, I've learned that the sparrows and bees will line up on the bird bath in order to drink water. Who knew? Who knew that sparrows like to bathe communally? These are just a few small observations about the natural life I see in my garden. I find God in my garden because I have hours of quiet in order to do so. What about the dearest people in my life, without whom I would not be who I am today? I love them, and it would not occur to me to ignore them. I thank God everyday for them. I am still working on becoming an essentialist, on cutting away all that is non-essential in my life. I know it is and will always be a work in progress. We are not perfect and will never reach perfection on this earth. But books like Kelly's remind us that it's possible to change, to turn our lives around. Sometimes in order to effect change, we just need to change a small thing each day. For example, make a little time for silence. Go to the quiet. It's a good place to start. 

Thoughts to reflect upon--Staying Catholic at Christmas--by Ross Douthat

I found this opinion piece to be well-written; it offers food for thought in this chaotic world, a world that includes a Catholic church that faces and has faced sexual scandals that are appalling. I've written about this before, but this article sums up how many Catholics are feeling about their religion and their church these days. Well-worth reading........

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/opinion/catholic-christmas-church.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Some of my favorite spiritual writers

Faith and religion are two different things; the latter is an organized attempt to systematize and support the former, but it is my contention that a strong faith will outlast religion in the long run. My father had a strong faith in God, and fed it with spiritual literature, some of it by Catholic writers. He shared that interest with me, and I have read many of the books he recommended. Some of his favorite authors (and now mine) are Francois Mauriac, Georges Bernanos, Evelyn Waugh, C.S.Lewis, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Merton, and Willa Cather. He also was a fan of Graham Greene and G.K. Chesterton, but I have not read their books as of yet. All of the books I've read by these writers have left an indelible impression on me. They made me think and reflect on many of life's situations, problems and (often-tragic) outcomes. Not all of them are directly spiritual in tone (inspirational); some of them are heart-wrenching, others witty, still others poignant and spiritually-challenging. The books are all excellent in their own right, and worth reading.

Francois Mauriac's books:

• The Viper's Tangle
• The Desert of Love
• Therese
• A Woman of Pharisees

Georges Bernanos books:

• The Diary of a Country Priest

Evelyn Waugh's books:

• Brideshead Revisited
• A Handful of Dust

C.S. Lewis' books:

• The Screwtape Letters
• Mere Christianity
• A Grief Observed
• Surprised by Joy
• The Four Loves
• The Problem of Pain

Thomas Hardy's books:

• Jude the Obscure
• Tess of the d'Urbervilles
• Far from the Madding Crowd
• The Mayor of Casterbridge
• The Return of the Native
• The Go-Between

Thomas Merton's books:

• No Man is an Island
• Thoughts in Solitude
• Wisdom of the Desert

Willa Cather's books:

• Death Comes for the Archbishop
• My Antonia

Pope Francis and clericalism in the Church

Excellent opinion piece from The New York Times article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/20/opinion/pope-francis-catholic-church-sex-abuse.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region)


Here is an excerpt from the above article--very relevant to the Church's current problems.......

In closed-door meetings on the eve of the conclave that elected him in March 2013, Pope Francis — then Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires — gave a brief, powerful address in which he said the church needed to open up or risk becoming “self-referential” and “sick” with “theological narcissism” that leads to the worst evil, the “spiritual worldliness” of an institution that is “living in itself, of itself, for itself.”

The church, he was saying, had to undergo a moment of kenosis, of self-emptying, like Christ on the cross, surrendering power and prestige and privilege in order to truly become what she is called to be.

As pope, he has saved his harshest rhetoric for his fellow clerics, especially the cardinals and bishops, criticizing them as “careerists” and “airport bishops” who spend more time flying around the world than tending their flock.

“Clericalism is a perversion of the church,” Pope Francis told 70,000 young Italian Catholics at a rally this month. “The church without testimony is only smoke.”

Pope Francis’ vision of the church is clearly more radical than the defensive posture of John Paul or the nostalgic traditionalism of Benedict. But is he willing and able to implement it?

One Catholic’s reflections on the sexual abuse scandal in the Church

Who knew? Who the hell knew that the Church, that bastion of all that was good and right and ethical and moral (or so we were told as children), would turn out to need a complete overhaul? Who knew that behind its closed doors, priests were behaving as criminals? No, not all of them, but enough of them to make me sit up and take notice, become angry, and demand change as of this week. When we were growing up, we would never have imagined in a million years that priests would be carrying on with young boys and girls in ways that literally make you sick to your stomach. When I read the recent article in The New York Times this past week about the grand jury’s report investigating abuse in six dioceses over a period of 70 years (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/us/catholic-priests-pennsylvania-church-jury.html), I was horrified. And then something inside of me snapped. Like in so many other areas of my life, I simply do not want to tolerate bad behavior anymore. I won’t have it. I don’t want to be lied to, dissembled to, promised to, or cajoled. I have previously done so, and will continue to, cut off people who behave badly toward me. It’s that simple. They get the short shrift. No more second chances. And that philosophy now extends to the Church. I have given the Church a lot of my time over the years; I have attended mass faithfully, and have defended the Church when I felt it was unfairly attacked. And when I was a teenager, I worked church Bingo, in addition to being a church receptionist part-time, answering phones and writing out mass cards for parishioners. I also helped the cook at the rectory serve dinner to the priests, and cleaned up the dining room and their living room afterward. I saw a lot and registered it for posterity. I see now that they were nothing more than men, human, frail, weak, and lonely. They drank, many of them heavily, they smoked a lot, and they ate too much. They were decent men, the ones I knew, with one exception (a priest who was much too interested in my sex life at that time). Many of them did not stay the course; they met women in the course of their daily life, and left the Church to marry them and raise families. I understood then why they left, and I understand it even more now.

I want change in the Church, and I want it now. I want clarity, openness, honesty, and ethical behavior. I want an end to a patriarchal, male-only culture that thrives on power, prestige, secrecy, and on keeping women out. The criminal pedophile priests were allowed to do what they wanted to do, unimpeded by the law. Had they not been priests and been discovered, they would have ended up in jail. But not in the Church; pedophile priests were merely moved to other dioceses in other states, so they could start the pattern of abuse all over again. Their abusive and criminal behavior was played down by bishops and Church leaders, lied about, and covered up. The sheer arrogance, the 'we are above the law' attitude, is mind-boggling. You need only read the above article to get the full picture. Just the fact that the Church is paying out huge sums of money to the victims of these crimes, is witness enough to the magnitude of the crimes. But how many lives did these priests destroy? How many? Even one life is too much. Parents trusted priests, children likewise. Parents even encouraged their sons to become priests--that is how revered the Church was in some families. The Church could do no wrong, and of course, when that attitude becomes prevalent, it is only a matter of time before the opposite is a matter of fact.

I want priests to be able to marry, I want the vow of celibacy to be voluntary, I want women to be able to become priests, and I want pedophile priests to be prosecuted as the criminals they are. I don’t want to listen to more promises, more speeches, more 'all talk and no action'. If the Church won’t institute some of these changes, I am going to stop supporting it financially, and I encourage others to do the same.

I am so disappointed in my Church. I grieve for the parents, children, lay people, nuns, and other priests who bought into the lies sold them by an arrogant Church. While the faithful were trying to abide by the strict and unforgiving sexual codes set down by the Church (no sex before marriage, no birth control, etc.), some priests were doing anything other than abiding by moral and legal sexual codes. They were instead criminally abusing children and scarring them for life. It is a betrayal so huge that it boggles my mind. I can never forgive these men. I keep my faith, and honor my faith, because my faith is in God and Christ, not men. I am on the fence at present about how I want to punish the Church, because it is in need of punishment. It has confessed to its crimes, yes, and now it needs absolution. In my book, that means that the pedophile priests go directly to jail. The leaders who covered up their crimes can join them there. It means paying out until the coffers are empty. It means zero tolerance for criminals and criminal behavior. It means returning to a simpler Church, without the layers upon layers of bureaucracy and career power trips—bishops, archbishops, etc. It means living simply, and it could start in the Vatican, which is in possession of treasure after treasure. Open the coffers, feed the poor, shelter the homeless, and take care of the sick. God knows there are millions of them on the earth. For example, help the Venezuelans, whose country is falling apart economically, resulting in their being unable to buy food and support their families. That is far more important to me than preaching to married couples that they should not use any form of birth control. Christ would have worried about feeding the poor and homeless. Do what Christ would have done, and would have you do. I have no stomach anymore for supporting the lifestyles of priests who drive new cars, take fancy vacations, live well, and eat well. That is not living the vow of poverty that they took. I understand that priests too need shelter and food, but they would do well to take a look around and see how their parishioners live, and adjust their needs accordingly. But it would be a moot point if they could marry and live among us ordinary souls. Then they would know what it was like to earn a living, afford a place to live, buy food, raise children, and take care of aging parents. They would know what it is like not to be able to afford a third or fourth child. They might learn compassion and empathy when they actually had to face some of these problems themselves.

I close by including a link to an article, also in The New York Times, which was a response by the Vatican to the recent grand jury findings https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/us/catholic-church-abuse-vatican-statement.html). I pray that this is the beginning of major reforms in the Church. It is the only way it can survive. The faith of its parishioners will survive, but as my father used to say, the Church is made up of men who are human. They will fail, themselves and us, in ways that Christ will not fail us. Our faith should be in Christ. We cannot place our faith in men and institutions; they betray us without compunction.

Good Friday and Easter Sunday

This is the third year I have attended Good Friday services at Gamle Aker church, a Protestant church that is very close to where I live in Oslo. The church was built around 1080 AD, making it the oldest building in Oslo. It is a beautiful old church with a lot of atmosphere—massive stone columns around the nave of the church that give it an air of being an ancient building. When you step into the church, you walk along a dark and cool aisle that leads to the altar; chairs have been placed on either side of the aisle for parishioners. The church is devoid of statues or any decorations save for a few candelabras on the altar. The service for Good Friday is divided into two parts: the first part is the passion and suffering of Christ, with a lot of readings interspersed with relevant songs from the choir which stands on the altar together with the priest. This part of the service ends with parishioners being able to stand or kneel before a crucifix so that they can pray or touch the feet of Christ, much as we do in the Catholic Church on Good Friday. But the thing that most surprised me and has kept me coming back is the second part of the service; this is a symbolic burial of Christ after he is taken down from the cross. The crucifix is placed on the ground in a circular area behind the altar, and parishioners are encouraged to take a flower and place it on the ‘grave’, then the priest says a few prayers and the service concludes. I found this part of the service to be incredibly poignant the first year I was part of it. It felt so real, and so sad, and that of course is the point of it. It is to make you realize that Christ died and was buried in this way. Experiencing this in a church from 1080 also has the effect of placing you that much closer to the actual event in history; at least that is how I ended up feeling, and I was glad for the experience.

On Easter Sunday I attended mass at St. Olav’s Catholic Church. I happened to attend the high mass, which is a mass sung in Latin or Norwegian, or in this particular case, both languages. It was a joyful celebration of the resurrection of Christ; the day was sunny and warm, the church was full of people, and the priest gave a very good sermon about doubt, the scientific search for evidence of Christ’s resurrection, and the importance of faith. His words struck a nerve; this is how I have been feeling lately. I see how important having faith is, much more important than having scientific explanations and evidence for everything that we doubt or that we meet with skepticism. Doubting Thomas comes to mind; Christ had a lot of patience with him but did tell him that some people had faith and did not need to ‘see’ what Thomas needed to see. Some things in this life are mysteries that we will never be able to explain. Love is one of them. We do not require explanations for why we love or why we are loved; as soon as we start to dissect love it can very well disappear or become merely banal. We trust another or others with our heart, with our love, and we take a leap of faith to do that—whether it is romantic love or friendship or charitable love. If we did not take that leap of faith, we could not give or receive love. We can gather as much knowledge about another person as is humanly possible; still that person is a mystery to us and will remain so until the day we die. We will have learned a little about that person but not everything. This does not stop us from loving. How important this is for me to remember when I doubt my faith; that I love and am loved. If I can experience love, then I can have faith and I can trust that Christ’s life and death have meaning for me and for our world. This is the Easter message and it has become a very important message for me. 

The Catholic Church and Women Priests

When I visit the Protestant churches and see the presence of women priests and that they are leading the services (and doing a very good job), it makes me wish that my church, the Catholic Church, was more enlightened on exactly this issue. I have never understood why women are not allowed to become priests in the Catholic Church, and I have never understood why male priests are not allowed to marry. Both bans are in my opinion, self-defeating and short-sighted. The Church complains about the lack of vocations, but does not understand that if they allowed women to become priests, they would no longer have problems with the lack of vocations. They would also attract more men into the priesthood if men knew that they could marry and still become priests.

I am disappointed in my Church and in the Vatican powers-that-be--disappointed by their discrimination against women, disappointed by their decisions to make the Church remain a patriarchal institution, disappointed by their refusal to let men marry and still become priests, and disappointed by their fierce desire to resist all forms of change in these areas. Most of the women I know who have worked within the Church—nuns, counselors, teachers, altar ministers, office workers—would have made good priests. They were kind and service-minded women, highly-educated and very empathic. I don’t know if they wanted to be priests, perhaps some of them did. They certainly would have done as good a job, if not better, than most of the male priests I have known. I know a little something about the daily lives of male priests because I worked as a receptionist in my neighborhood church in Tarrytown for several years. One of my jobs was to serve the priests dinner in the evening as well as to clean up after them. Most of the priests were lonely middle-aged men who drank and smoked too much and who overate. Some of them died of cancer in their 50s. Others left the priesthood to marry. The loneliness became too much for them. The ones who remained in the Church were often cynical; I think of one in particular who told his congregation that if he had not become a priest he would have become a criminal and probably would have ended up in jail. He was completely serious. He was controversial from the pulpit, and while this was not necessarily a bad thing, he was not a positive or encouraging person, so he was of little help to those who were in emotional pain or struggling with their faith. Some of the priests would come to talk to me in the evening when I sat in the receptionist’s office; they were honest with me about their loneliness and I know they enjoyed talking to me. I was perhaps seventeen years old at the time. The women I have known who have had various service functions in the Church have managed to live much healthier, happier, less lonely lives. I don’t know why. It is strange to acknowledge this after so many years, but it is the truth. In any case, it is time for the Church to let women in; it is time for it to open its doors to major change. I hope that it happens in my lifetime.