WHERE'S THE MORAL OUTRAGE?

This past week UN officials in Syria counted the bodies of 92 Syrian citizens, including 32 children under the age of 10, all shot in cold blood, execution style. I've watched horrifying footage on television. There's hardly a peep out of the 'civilized' world, which appears to be in hiding or in denial. Our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, looks as if she's spinning her wheels when she describes Assad's regime as 'rule by murder.' And British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, calls for yet another (!) emergency meeting of the UN Security Council. Russia and China chide the murderers for their 'bad behavior' - rapping them on the knuckles - coupled with a knowing wink of the eye! Assad himself takes a line from Sargent Schultz' script in Hogan's Heroes: 'We see nothing.'

Where's our Christian moral outrage? Where's our sense of absolute repulsion at the callous, cold-blooded dismemberment of a civil population; the wholesale slaughter of families, women, children and infants? Why aren't we lobbying our political representatives in Washington DC, or even more locally? How can we calmly eat cake without throwing up at the sight of mutilated bodies, bloodied and grotesquely disfigured?

Hey there people! We're not living on another planet! We are all effectively one global community, one extended Body of Christ. The hole being drilled at the other end of our boat will sink us as well. Are we not passive accessories to brutal murders done in front of our eyes - as the lens of media and internet peer into our living rooms and bedrooms without remorse?

The pleading eyes of tomorrow's victims stare at all of us, pleading for their lives, as the laughing eyes of their Nazi-like killers mock us all - sensing our cowardice and carefree nonchalance. They figure us for suckers. Are they right? The victims must be wondering, as they watch us ignore them while we pick our blackberries, if our much touted Christianity means anything in practice. Tell me our Christianity is compelling and credible to these unfortunate people.

This Sunday we celebrate the feast of the Blessed Trinity, the community that is God. We were created into community, baptized into community in the name of the Father, the Son and ther Holy Spirit. We are meant to live and care for each other as members of community. It's time to get off our hunkers, make our voices heard, accost our politicians, and hope that God will forgive us for 'what we have done and what we have failed to do' in the face of Syria's tragedy today.

PASTOR EMERITUS

RESPECT OUR SISTERS

The Vatican's recent move against the LCWR, the leadership which represents more than 55,000 religious women in the United States, should not have come as a surprise to anybody who was aware of the two-year long investigation that preceded it. As somebody pointed out to me at the time, the Vatican appears always to condemn those whom it investigates. Why mount an expensive investigation if the outcome is a foregone conclusion? And why all the secrecy?

I cannot help wondering if any of the people to whom these dedicated women minister - whether in parishes, hospitals, schools, orphanages, soup kitchens, prisons, refugee camps etc. - were offered a chance to provide independent input. I'd like to have seen more disclosure, more transparency about how the information gleaned through the interview process was eventually edited.

Such disclosure might have forestalled the widespread consternation among Catholics across the country at the outcome of the investigation. Unfortunately, the Vatican may have unwittingly set itself up to evoke the ghosts of Galileo, St. Joan of Arc and the innocent victims of the Inquisition. Local pastors like Frs. Brian Joyce and Tony Maguire have publicly questioned the validity of the results, and Brian Cahill published an Op Ed piece in the SF Chronicle a month ago. These guys are no slouches when it comes to knowing what's happening on the ground where the Sisters minister day in and day out, and what are the real pastoral needs of the Church. How many Vatican Cardinals have had anything like their kind of pastoral experience? I'd wager a hefty bet that if Brian Cahill and Frs. Maguire, Joyce and others like them conducted the investigation of the Sisters, the results would have been vastly different!

More people need to speak out against what appears to be a miscarriage of justice done to these women. Far from being above criticism, the Church needs criticizing, and is worth criticizing. Healthy criticism prevents Catholics from becoming infantile. The suppression of it only leads to cowardly servility disguised as loyalty. St. Thomas Aquinas said constructive criticism within the Church is a form of 'fraternal correction' - an obligation for subjects as well as rulers in the Church. Thomas sees it as "an act of love - a matter for everyone in regard to anyone whom we are meant to love"- Summ Theol 2-2, q.33, arts 1-8. Repression of criticism has always been characteristic of totalitarian states, a sign not of strength but of weakness and fear.

The Vatican has not had a healthy track record with its investigation of 'suspects.' During the last century, the then Holy Office shamefully silenced for years certain theologians who later became the architects of the Second Vatican Council - people like Cardinals Yves Congar, Jean Danielou and Henri de Lubac, Frs. John Courtney Murray (who made the distinctive American contribution to the Council), Karl Rahner and Teilhard de Chardin....to name only a few. I never heard if the Vatican ever apologized to these gentlemen, whom it was eventually forced to bring in from the cold.

The LCWR Sisters have offered for more than two centuries, and continue to offer, the finest examples of Christian ministry in the Catholic Church of the United States. Despite gallant efforts by some to whitewash this issue, the results of the Vatican investigation have hit the Sisters hard and undeservedly.

PASTOR EMERITUS

LOVE ONE ANOTHER

I remember a time - it was back in the 'sixties and long before Cher sang 'Love One Another' - when the age old commandment to 'love one another' sounded fresh and exciting. Those were the heady days of hope and homemade banners that said "Make Love not War." The Second Vatican Council had just ended and young Catholics were excited. The 'new' doctrine of 'love one another' was looked upon with skepticism by my parents' generation who felt more comfortable in their church of the 'ten commandments.'

When we listen again this Sunday to Jesus telling his disciples at the last supper to love one another he was not telling them to like each other. Love is a decision; 'like' is a feeling. It's a match made in heaven if and when the two go together. The practice of love is very slippery. One of the finest Catholic brains of the last century, French philosopher, political scientist and spiritual writer, Jacques Maritain, wrote: Only two kinds of people think that love is easy: saints, who through long years of self-sacrifice have made a habit of virtue, and naive persons who don't know what they're talking about.

My mother liked to read deepish things. She loved 'The Four Loves' by C.S. Lewis, and encouraged us to read it. When my sisters were beginning to fawn over boys she would tell them that love wasn't easy to keep up: 'Love is blind, but marriage is an eye-opener.'

I've witnessed families where relations between siblings and parents are not always lovey-dovey. Irritations, misunderstandings, hurt, boredom, the familiarity that breeds contempt, and temperamental differences have their innings. They might fray love's emotional edges but they don't necessarily destroy it. Love lives in a deeper place.

When John wrote his Gospel, some sixty years after the death of Christ, he had already watched his fellow disciples shed their blood for love. Paul appears to have been the symbol of love's energy and enthusiasm, fire-branding his way all over Syria, Cyprus, Turkey, Greece, and on to Rome itself. He suffered grievously for preaching the gospel and eventually was decapitated for his beliefs. He cared so deeply about what he had to say that he was willing to endure humiliation, physical torture, and finally death in order to say it. His magnificent 'hymn of love' ('Love is patient, love is kind....' 1 Cor 13) ranks as one of the most beautiful ever written. But it came from a man who walked his talk and understood the difference between decision and feeling, loving and liking.

Some people confuse the ritual of offering the sign of peace in church with having to feel loving and peaceful. Some arrive at the office feeling down, and don't say 'Good Morning.' For all I know, some family members leave home in the morning for work or school without saying goodbye, simply because they find it boring or too routine.

Ron Rolheiser often talks about the importance of ritual as a way to keep the love alive that's hidden under the cloud of irritation, impatience or whatever. These rituals, cold and impersonal as they may feel sometimes, say in action that which we cannot always bring ourselves to say in our words and our feelings.

Sunday Mass is a ritual. By deciding to honor it, even when we're out of sorts, we keep our faith and love for God and God's people alive. If Paul was symbolic of love's energy and enthusiasm, Peter, after the death of Christ, became the church's symbol of discipline and good order. Love, energy and enthusiasm need to be disciplined, as Paul himself points out in his great hymn of love. Love's discipline consists in staying on track with the poor and disenfranchised, and not succumbing, as Paul says, to the allure of angelic tongues or gifts of prophecy and comprehension of mysteries.

In light of the current turmoil between the Vatican, the American Sisters, and various groups of priests in Europe, maybe we can ask if here is a way that Peter and Paul might once again work together - the enthusiasm of the Sisters and priests on the one hand, and the Vatican's desire for church order on the other?

PASTOR EMERITUS