Faith & Politics, Part 3

A dozen parish members and guests gathered for our final session in the series on a cold wintry evening.  This time, we got a picture before we said goodbye.

In this session, called "Practically Faithful,"  we tried to answer two main questions:

How do we deal with the differences among us?

How do we move toward integrity? 

First, we considered spiritual practices that might help us.  Among the ones the group raised were meditation, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the Eucharist, and any other kinds of prayer that "open us up" to others.

Then we spoke of interpersonal practices that might help us overcome differences.

One example came from Katharine Hayhoe, a Texas Tech climate scientist, who illustrated a Haidt-type approach to talking with people who did not believe in climate change in this video:

I noted that, in this and other videos, Hayhoe is clear about her Evangelical Christianity as well as her stance on climate science.  By being open about her own life, she acts as a bridge to scientists (who may believe that Christianity is opposed to science) and evangelicals (who may not realize that their faith is compatible with science).

Another practice is "fraternizing with the enemy," illustrated in the story of  Marci Velando, a pro-choice California woman who marched in the West Coast March for Life to support her friends, a group of Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.  Whenever we cross boundaries and get to know people with different views, we are doing something to counter some of our current political polarization.  I shared a little of my experience as a participant in both the Women's March on Washington and the March for Life this year.

It is valuable also to notice, as Gandhi did and Pope Francis clearly does, that no one person or group possesses the whole truth.  Rather, we need each other in order to move closer to the truth.  I cited as an example how, at the recent synods on the Family at the Vatican, Pope Francis gave the bishops room to share ideas and debate opinions, without controlling their discussions.  This is a significant departure from Vatican practice at such synods, which have often been tightly controlled.

Finally, I recalled the "seamless garment" image that Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago used in the 1980s.  In the Wade Lecture of March 11, 1984, Cardinal Bernardin said:

There is, I maintain, a political and psychological linkage among the life issues—from war to welfare concerns—which we ignore at our own peril: a systemic vision of life seeks to expand the moral imagination of a society, not partition it into airtight categories.

Similarly, in On Care for Our Common Home (Laudato Si'), Pope Francis called for an integrated approach:

That is why it is no longer enough to speak only of the integrity of ecosystems. We have to dare to speak of the integrity of human life, of the need to promote and unify all the great values. [224]

In the current American political framework, this is very difficult, with political parties that emphasize certain concerns of Catholic social teaching, but are far afield on others.

In the end, we had to recognize that our efforts to prepare the way for the coming of the Reign of God will always fall short.  This is not a reason to give up, but a reason to open ourselves to God's mercy expressed in Jesus.  We ended our session standing in silence for several minutes before this image of Jesus Pantocrator (the Ruler of All) from the great basilica of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul and, once more, we chanted the Lord's Prayer together.

"Patience and Persistence," Fr. Ken's Homily for October 20, 2013

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"Our Father" -- Fr. Ken's Homily for July 28, 2013

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What is your practice of prayer?

As another way of following up on the last post:
What is your practice of prayer?  How many different ways do you pray?  Which ones are most fruitful for you now?  Why those, do you think?

Hummingbirds and the Approach to God

A small group of people gathered at St. Scho’s yesterday morning to watch the ninth episode in Fr. Robert Barron’s Catholicism series.  The episode was about prayer, and afterwards we talked about our practice of prayer.

One person commented on how her prayer life had changed over the years.  She noticed that forms of prayer that had been helpful at one time in her life gave way to new practices that seemed to bear more fruit.  Another person commented on how the Mass was the highlight of her prayer life.  Yet another spoke of how she was moved to prayer by natural beauty, giving the example of hummingbirds that she loved to watch as they buzzed about her feeders.

As the conversation continued, I raised a question that I struggle with.  There is a strong strain in the Christian spiritual tradition that insists that we must free ourselves from attachments to the fleeting things of this world in order to approach union with God.  Fr. Barron emphasized this “purgative” tradition during the video, pointing out that when we try to fill the infinite longings within us with finite things, we are on a path to addiction.  We try more and more of our preferred fixes in an attempt to fill a gap that only God can fill.

Okay, but what about the hummingbirds?  Is there any better example of a “fleeting thing of this world”?  In order to get close to God, do we need to turn away from the hummingbirds?

As a group we agreed that things like hummingbirds, far from being obstacles to God, seem to provide us doorways into prayer because of the gratitude that their beauty evokes.  This is thoroughly in line with a Catholic sacramental sensibility that sees God as potentially present to us in many persons, things and events.

But the purgative tradition has a point as well.  I love to be comfortable.  I tend to arrange my life with comfort in mind.  I am truly grateful—and I thank God!—for all the comfortable and pleasurable things:  a cooled house on a blistering afternoon, a quiet time and place to pray, a pulled pork sandwich for lunch, my family gathered at the table at dinnertime.  But no matter how grateful I am, doesn’t the gospel call us away from organizing our lives around our comfort?  After all, “Foxes have dens and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to rest his head.” (Lk 9:58)

So what do you think?  When does our attraction to earthly beauty and goodness and pleasure lead us toward God?  How do we know when they start holding us back?  What is your experience?