CONSCIENCE VERSUS LAW

Through the mental fog of jetlag I am aware that today, fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. marched to Washington D.C. and proclaimed his "I Have A Dream" speech. Many speeches will be made today, not least one from Barack Obama who may never have been president were it not for King and his speech on August 28, 1963.

King practised what has come to be called Civil Disobedience, and broke the law of the land in doing so. He was, like the biblical prophets of old, the conscience of his people. The world, including this country, has had a line of such prophets, people who broke the law in order to draw attention to an injustice. They were people who recognized that sometimes the law can protect and even foster systemic injustice.

Back in 1968, a helicopter pilot on a reconnaissence flight above Mai Lai in Vietman took action to prevent the massacre of women, old men and children. He spotted heaps of human corpses lying in an irrigation ditch and a group of villagers, some of them children, running from a platoon of soldiers. Images of Nazi atrocities in the second world war came to his mind. Setting down his helicopter between the villagers and their pursuers he ordered his machine gunner to open up on his fellow Americans if these soldiers fired on the defenceless villagers. 

Thompson's actions stopped a massacre, but what he did was highly treasonable. He became later a key figure in the defiance of the official cover-up of the My Lai atrocity in which US troops had murdered more than 500 innocent civilians, many of whom were raped and mutiliated. For a long time afterward, Thompson was seen as a pariah - a serious threat to his country and of enormous propaganda value to the enemies of the US in Vietnam. It was only in 1998, when most people recognized the truth and value of his actions that he was awarded one of the army's highest honours, the Soldier's Medal. (You can get more on this from the PBS "American Experience" series which has six episodes on the war in Vietnam, and oodles of sources.)

Outrageous acts of political law-breaking, prophetical statements, have been made by many in this country and appear to embody what's best in human nature: William Lloyd Garrison burning a copy of the Constitution because it did not outlaw slavery; Henry David Thoreau going to prison for refusing to pay his poll tax because his home state, Massachusetts, had voted to return fugitive slaves to their masters; Susan B. Anthony arrested for voting (illegally for a woman) in the 1872 presidential election; Rosa Parks refusing to sit at the back of the bus; Martin Luther King Jr. getting himself arrested for demanding service in a whites-only restaurant.....

What is the difference between Hugh Thompson and Bradley ("Call me Chelsey") Manning? You tell me! I don't see very much, especially if you take into account  the shift in the conduct of war from the personal to the digital since 1968. Thompson saw from his helicopter US troops massacring civlians in My Lai. Manning saw graphic video of a US Apache helicopter gunship killing a group of innocent people in Baghdad. For exposing that he was handed down a savage 35 year prison sentence.

We all of us need to take a stand against systemic injustice, and come down on the side of conscience.

PASTOR EMERITUS

THE SMILE OF GOD

The church for which I was ordained priest almost half a century ago came to have a bad breath over the past twenty five or more years. The sound of joy had become faint. Leaders were grim-faced and and the police of doctrinal and ritual orthodoxy were everywhere. Catholic publications were giving more and more space to condemnation of new ideas and pastoral initiatives. Catholic politicians were being publicly demonized by self-appointed vigilantes for not forcing the Catholic way of life on everybody. Gays were deemed to be "disordered," even twisted persons. Charity was out; puritanical correctness was in. And then, when it was more needed than ever, a new light appeared, bringing a smile to the world stage, attracting attention, speaking a simple language, and not bothering with the accoutrements of office. From his first appearance on the loge above the main door to St. Peter's, Francis showed he was different.

For many years I felt I was a stranger and a foreigner in the official church. A cold wind blew from the north and our people were going south.  Pastoral plans were coming down from the top and chancery officials were telling pastors how to pastor. The language of the New Missal and formalities of dress and ritual were becoming more and more distant fom lived realiy.

Was it Vatican rigidity or was it transatlantic legalism? Somehow, a rot had set in. I watched people disappear from the pews like rats from sinking ships, people who had come to see the Church as no more than a sacramental service provider. God had gone missing - but was not missed. People had stopped listening to us. Peter's boat was adrift. The rock was crumbling. Strange currents and undertow seemed to be in charge.

And then Francis appeared.

He smiled. He suffered little children to come unto him. He spoke. He chatted. He wasn't guarded in his comments. He talked about the poor. He told the young people of the world in Brazil some of the following, and has made a habit of casting little gems around as asides:

Shake up the status quo.

Get out of the stuffy sacristies.

Go to the margins.

Don't over-intellectualize faith.

Use a grammar of simplicity.

Spread a message of love and forgiveness.

Fish for God in the deep waters of his mystery.

The Church has appeared as too weak, too distant from the needs of ordinary people -

even too cold and too caught up in itself.

The Church is unfit for the new questions in life.

Have warm hearts.

Make a noise and a mess and a fuss.

Talk about Jesus Christ.

To those who send him names for future bishops he said:

"Make sure these men are not careerists."

And to the South American Sisters he said:

"Don't worry about upsetting the CDF.

 Get on with your work and make mistakes if you must."

The stodgy language of church has so little to say to so many. But with Francis the smile on the face of God appeared to the world. The smile is back after 51 years. The poetry is back. The artist is allowing us to breathe again. The windows are open and fresh air is pouring in. Francis is all about warmth and simplicity. We know he is right. We know he is sincere.

Will he get everyhing right? He won't. Will he tidy up everyhing? He won't. Has he been surefooted so far? It appears so. Will that continue? Probably not. Many will dig into his history and drag up some muck: Frs. Yorio and Jalics - two Jesuit priests tortured by the Junta in Argentina while he turned a blind eye. Some suggest that Francis comes across as so good because he realizes his own weakness and mistakes and sins. But if that leads to humility and lack of infallibility, and makes him a useful instrument in God's hands, so much the better.

PASTOR EMERITUS