OF MANY THINGS he conference room in Senator were trained. The gathering grew in size 106 West 56th Street New York, NY 10019-3803 Elizabeth Warren’s office suite and scope until it was formalized as the Ph: (212) 581-4640; Fax: (212) 399-3596 on Capitol Hill can comfortably Ignatian Family Teach-In in 1998. This Subscriptions: (800) 627-9533 T www.americamedia.org seat a dozen people. But on a Monday year, a record-breaking crowd of 1,600 facebook.com/americamag morning earlier this month, triple that attended. twitter.com/americamag number had crammed themselves into If you’re like me, you greeted with President and Editor in Chief it. A few minutes past 11 o’clock, three dread the release of recent Pew polls Matt Malone, S.J. Warren staffers squeezed their way into showing religion among millennials in Executive Editors the crowd and, after brief introductions, free fall. But then you attend an event Robert C. Collins, S.J., Maurice Timothy Reidy a young man in jacket and tie rose to like the teach-in, and you’re reminded: Managing Editor Kerry Weber address them. “As people of faith,” he Ah, right; Jesus promised the Holy Spirit Literary Editor Raymond A. Schroth, S.J. Senior Editor and Chief Correspondent began, “we are motivated to work for to the church until the end of time. Kevin Clarke justice. And so we are here to share our “Where two or three are gathered in my Editor at Large James Martin, S.J. concerns about some of the issues our name, there am I in their midst.” And Executive Editor, America Films country faces.” The young man, a student where 1,600 are gathered, there is faith Jeremy Zipple, S.J. at Holy Cross College, then motioned to and hope and joy in absurd abundance. Poetry Editor Joseph Hoover, S.J. Associate Editor and Vatican Correspondent his 30 or so companions. All of them, he The young people who show up at Gerard O’Connell explained, were constituents of Warren’s. the annual teach-in do not approach Associate Editor and Director of Digital For the next half hour, the students faith casually. They strive daily to Strategy Sam Sawyer, S.J. offered the staffers a seminar on three embody the Beatitudes. In the delegation Senior Editor Edward W. Schmidt, S.J. packed into Senator Warren’s office was Associate Editors Ashley McKinless, Olga key issues troubling them: immigration Segura, Robert David Sullivan reform, climate change and U.S. a Boston College student who tutors Assistant Editors Francis W. Turnbull, S.J., relations with Central America. As these prison inmates, two others who have just Joseph McAuley impressive students were meeting with spent a semester with campesinos in El Art Director Sonja Kodiak Wilder Warren, some 1,200 others—most Salvador, a woman who volunteers at a Editorial Assistant Zachary Davis Columnists Helen Alvaré, John J. Conley, S.J., of them from Jesuit high schools and school in a low-income neighborhood Daniel P. Horan, O.F.M., James T. Keane, John W. universities across the country—were and many others like them. Martens, Bill McGarvey, Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, conducting similar visits at other America Media was privileged to be Margot Patterson, Nathan Schneider a part of it all. James Martin, S.J., roused Correspondents John Carr (Washington), An- congressional offices. thony Egan, S.J., and Russell Pollitt, S.J. (Johannes- The day on Capitol Hill marked the crowd with a talk based on his burg), Jim McDermott, S.J. (Los Angeles), Timothy the culmination of an annual three- book Jesus: A Pilgrimage. Kerry Weber Padgett (Miami), Steven Schwankert (Beijing), David Stewart, S.J. (London), Judith Valente day conference that brings together moderated breakout sessions, and The (Chicago) students from across the Jesuit universe Jesuit Post team handled all social media Moderator, Catholic Book Club and beyond. It’s called the Ignatian for the event. In partnership with the Kevin Spinale, S.J. Family Teach-In for Justice, and this Ignatian Solidarity Network, we also Editor, The Jesuit Post Michael Rossmann, S.J. Editorial e-mail year, its agenda featured a keynote tried something new: a collegiate social [email protected] address by Helen Prejean, C.S.J., and justice film festival called Voices From the Publisher and Chief Financial Officer breakout sessions on topics ranging Margins. The contest attracted nearly 70 Edward G. Spallone Deputy Publisher Rosa M. from income inequality to migration to entries from dozens of schools. We hope Del Saz Vice President for Advancement Daniel human trafficking, intellectual disability the film fest can become another example Pawlus Advertising Sales Manager Chris Keller Development Coordinator Kerry Goleski and “Laudato Si’.” There was plenty of of the kind of Jesuit and lay collaboration Business Operations Staff Khairah Walker, laughter and tears, reflection and prayer in the arts that Mark Bosco, S.J., writes Glenda Castro, Katy Zhou, Frankarlos Cruz about in this issue (pg. 14). Advertising Contact [email protected]; to go around, too. 212-515-0102 Subscription contact/Additional The teach-in traces its history to the So if you ever find yourself in need of copies 1-800-627-9533 Reprints: reprints@ early 1990’s, when, after the deaths of a reminder that the church’s future is in americamedia.org the Salvadoran martyrs in 1989, Jesuits excellent hands, have a look at America’s © 2015 America Press Inc. and others began gathering informally recap video from the weekend, available each year at Fort Benning, Ga., on the on our website, or peruse the winning anniversary of the assassinations. Fort film fest entries at filmfest.americamedia. Cover: People wait in line at the Fred Jordan Benning was the location of the School org. Or pick up the phone and call your Mission annual giveaway of shoes, clothing and backpacks for more than 4,000 homeless and of the Americas, where the Salvadoran congresspersons. Even they will tell you. underprivileged children in Los Angeles, Calif., military leaders behind the murders JEREMY ZIPPLE, S.J. on Oct. 1. Reuters/Lucy Nicholson Contents www.americamagazine.org VOL. 213 NO.16, WHOLE NO. 5109 November 23, 2015

ARTICLES 14 KINDRED SPIRITS Catholic writers inspired by Jesuit friendships Mark Bosco

19 SEASONS OF PRAYER Spirituality for every stage of life Patricia Cooney Hathaway

23 REVERSAL OF FORTUNE The topsy-turvy world of Psalm 118 Daniel F. Polish

14 COLUMNS & DEPARTMENTS 4 Current Comment

5 Editorial Family Time

6 Reply All

8 Signs of the Times

12 Column The Pregnancy of Mary Nathan Schneider

26 Vatican Dispatch Francis Looks East Gerard O’Connell

27 Faith in Focus When Did I See Him? Chris Bruno 19 39 The Word Preparing With Love John W. Martens BOOKS & CULTURE

30 THEATER “The Humans” POEM When the Wing Gives Way OF OTHER THINGS Waiting in Hope BOOKS The 51 Day War; Flannery O’Connor; Oscar Romero

ON THE WEB Announcing the release of the new book ​Praying With America​. Plus, Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I.​, right, talks about Christ’s Passion on “America This Week.” Full digital highlights on page 29 and at americamagazine.org/webfeatures.

30 CURRENT COMMENT

constitution’s “robust protections against the use of public Other People’s Families funds for religious education.” The amendment that What may be history’s longest experiment in population provides that “robust protection” was added in 1880. It control ended in late October with China’s announcement that was among similar additions to state constitutions, passed it will abandon its infamous “one child” policy. Chinese families at a time of rising anti-Catholic bigotry, known as “little are still limited to two children, so the experiment is not quite Blaine amendments”—named for the Maine politician complete, but the demise of the uniquely harsh “one child” James G. Blaine, who proposed an amendment to the U.S. rule is welcome news. Not only did the policy create a severe gender imbalance in Chinese society; it also led to a multitude Constitution with the aim of denying public resources of horrors, from forced abortions to involuntary sterilizations. to “sectarian” education. Noting that odious lineage, the It is incredible that the international community allowed these Washington-based Becket Fund filed a friend of the court gross human rights violations to continue for so long with so brief defending the Nevada program on Oct. 28. little protest. Other Western nations have long funded or subsidized Or maybe it isn’t. The Chinese policy was a natural, both public and religious schools. Could the Nevada option if extreme, outgrowth of the international population offer the United States an opportunity to reconsider its control movement, which sees the “population bomb” as a bigoted 19th-century denial of support to Catholic schools? dire environmental threat that must be addressed. These A Nevada court, and perhaps ultimately the U.S. Supreme warnings often come from elite quarters of the developed Court, may have to make that call. But families in Nevada world and are usually aimed at the poorest corners of are already beginning to vote with their feet: 3,600 of them the developing world. China may be the most prominent at last count. example, but it is not the only state to fall prey to these cruel ideas. It is now clear that population control measures have Turkey’s Putin? an especially harsh effect on women, a tragic fact that public Given the landslide victory that voters gave the Justice and opinion is finally beginning to notice. Development Party in the parliamentary elections in Turkey on Pope Francis received criticism this summer when, in Nov. 1, there are concerns that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “Laudato Si’,” he rejected population control as a path to will use the electoral returns as an excuse to further his aims by environmental sustainability. Yet he is right when he argues, consolidating all political power in himself. His goal seems to “To blame population growth instead of extreme and be to rewrite the nation’s Constitution to reflect that fact. selective consumerism on the part of some is one way of Ever since he lost a parliamentary majority back in June, refusing to face the issues.” A society that seeks to preserve Mr. Erdogan has strategized about how to restore that lost its way of life by controlling the growth of other people’s power and, more important, how to enhance and keep it. families of families—at home or abroad—has much to After calling for the snap election back in August, he has answer for. China’s policies may have been widely vilified, taken several steps to do just that. He has renewed the but they did not develop in a vacuum. war against the Kurds. He has proceeded to systematically curtail or eliminate in every possible way political The Mark of Blaine opposition and public dissent, specifically by cracking down Nevada has ranked last in education four years in a row in a on all forms of social media as well as the traditional press. national survey of child well-being conducted by the Annie And he has not been averse to using tear gas and water E. Casey Foundation. What to do about that sorry outcome cannons as well. remains a matter of sometimes scalding dispute. As a public demonstration of his enhanced stature, Mr. Some Nevada parents no longer have the patience to Erdogan has built a 1,150-room presidential palace, at a await another systemic fix; and in legislation passed last cost of some $600 million, which is 30 times the size of the June, Republican lawmakers offered them a way to opt out. White House, complete with a laboratory with a staff of The state began one of the nation’s broadest school choice five, whose sole purpose is to be presidential “food tasters”— programs this September, allowing parents to establish all of which speaks volumes about the president and his educational savings accounts for their children in lieu of conception of leadership. attending public school. To some, Mr. Erdogan is guilty of “pulling a Putin”— The program was quickly challenged by the American consolidating power in a manner unworthy of his position as Civil Liberties Union, among others, which argues that the head of a secular democracy that straddles both East and the proposed disbursements to parents violate the Nevada West. The nearly 80 million Turkish citizens deserve better.

4 America November 23, 2015 EDITORIAL Family Time peaking to a gathering of Christian business execu- But private initia- tives on Oct. 31, Pope Francis addressed the need for tives, even of the large Smaternity leave and strikingly insisted that women scope possible for the U.S. should not be forced to choose between work and family. Catholic Church, will not They “must be protected and helped in this dual task: the be enough. In the United right to work and the right to motherhood.” He argued that States, uniquely among the harmonization of work and family life is a way of rec- developed economies, new ognizing that employees are the most valuable resource of mothers (and fathers) are guaran- a company. teed nothing but 12 weeks of unpaid leave under the 1993 While respecting employees’ duty to their families is Family and Medical Leave Act, and then only if they work certainly in line with the Catholic faith, the pope’s insight full time for a company with 50 or more employees. In 2013, is not one that must come only or even primarily from the Bureau of Labor Statistics determined that just 11 per- the Gospel and the church’s social teaching. Netflix made cent of workers in private industry had access to paid family news in August by allowing unlimited paid parental leave leave. Only three states—California, New Jersey and Rhode during the year after a child’s birth or adoption, matching Island—require large employers to provide leave. their unlimited vacation and sick leave policies. Announcing Opposition to a federal guarantee of paid family leave the shift, they explained that it would provide employees focuses on the imposition of a one-size-fits-all plan on em- “the flexibility and confidence to balance the needs of their ployers and especially on the way this would affect smaller growing families,” helping the company because “experience businesses less able to absorb the costs. Programs need to shows people perform better at work when they’re not wor- be designed to spread these burdens out structurally instead rying about home.” of simply mandating employers to pay for time off. Existing Other tech firms have made similar moves, with state-level programs, which are structured and funded simi- Microsoft and Amazon also recently announcing improve- larly to temporary disability insurance, provide a good mod- ments to their parental leave policies. But the recognition el. A report prepared for the Department of Labor in 2014, that more generous leave is important is not limited to evaluating studies of the first decade of California’s program, Silicon Valley’s hyper-competitive talent market. In July the found that this approach worked well, with positive effects Navy tripled the length of its maternity leave in order to on women’s employment and on children and families. help recruit and retain women in the service. Roughly 90 percent of employers reported no effect or pos- These moves should of course be applauded, but they itive effects on productivity and profitability. also raise the question of what befalls employees whose The sometimes exaggerated concerns from the busi- skills are not in great demand or who are not lucky enough ness community highlight the fact that more attention is giv- to work for companies whose executives might hear the call en to the needs of employers than to “the right to work and to be “missionaries of the social Gospel.” the right to motherhood,” as Pope Francis put it. We cannot In fact, many whose work is directly connected to the allow having children and participating in the workforce to Gospel do not benefit from the kind of policies Pope Francis be traded off against each other, as if workers’ becoming par- called for, which is a scandal. Church employees—in parish- ents is some outside interruption to the normal course of es, schools, social service agencies and diocesan offices—are their careers. This approach commodifies parenthood, valu- covered by a patchwork of different family leave arrange- ing it at the cost of a worker’s lost wages and an employer’s ments. Since many of these Catholic organizations operate lost productivity. It is an insult to the worker, who is reduced essentially as small nonprofits on shoestring budgets, they to the value of his or her job, and to the business that is often find it difficult to offer adequate (or sometimes any) reduced to extracting that value at the lowest possible cost. paid leave. The church should lead the way in making sup- The right answer, which is pro-woman, pro-family port for family through paid leave a baseline component of and pro-life, is to take family obligations off the market by employment rather than a perk. National norms or a model supporting programs at both the state and federal level that policy from the bishops’ conference would help to set a stan- offer a baseline guarantee of some time to welcome a new- dard for Catholic institutions to reach. born into the world without losing a paycheck.

November 23, 2015 America 5 REPLY ALL zealotry. I’d love to see a more civil ing his students to think about and re- public discourse, but it is bound to fail flect on institutional racism. Many of Model of Discourse if you take a “pro-life approach” to the our Jesuit schools taught us about sol- Re “Keep It Civil,” by Bryan Vincent project. idarity and promoting the dignity of (11/2): I welcome Bryan Vincent’s NEIL PURCELL all. As alumni we must also do our part thoughtful analysis of the current Online Comment to fight racism. Many of us belong to trends in American civic discourse. institutions—in industry, higher edu- With a few reservations, I find he pres- Euthanasia in the Netherlands cation, social services or health care— ents a sensible way of convincing our “Euthanasia in California” (Editorial, that tolerate, if not sometimes prop- fellow citizens of the correctness and 11/2) is excellent. We need only look agate, racial disparities. It’s not just appropriateness of our various pro-life to the Netherlands for a clear-eyed Jesuit schools that need to do more. positions. I do find it ironic, however, view about where our Brave New Alums, parents, boards and donors that within our churches the pro-life World may be heading. Since eutha- must also work for the greater glory of position on abortion is expounded, nasia was legalized in that country in God and for all of God’s people. taught and enforced by a simple fiat 1981, it has increased at approximately MARY HOMAN rather than by the methodology pro- 15 percent per annum. In the case of Online Comment posed by Mr. Vincent. I have always elderly individuals seeking euthana- Inner-City Needs been of the opinion that we need to sia, family pressure is often one of the On Alex Mikulich’s article about Jesuit convince simultaneously our own motivating factors. It is also becoming institutions and racism: as a graduate members of all the various pro-life easier to qualify for state-legitimated of Creighton’s nursing program in the positions as we attempt to do likewise euthanasia with such non-life-threat- 1960s, I was fortunate to attain a posi- in the broader American society. Mr. ening physical or mental conditions as tion as a school nurse in an inner-city Vincent presents the way. Pope Francis depression, autism or blindness. In ad- area. The dropout rate is high in our follows it. Now if only we American dition, children 12 to 15 can seek eu- inner-city high schools. Yet the Jesuit Catholics would do the same! thanasia if they have parental permis- VINCENT GAGLIONE sion; there are social pressures to lower presence in urban areas at this time Online Comment the age limit still further. Dutch au- is generally one high school per city. thorities have also noted an increase in The needs are great for this age level. A Source of Division “double euthanasias,” where the spouse I wonder what the early Jesuits would To a secular person, the idea of cen- of someone seeking euthanasia also re- think if they wandered our city streets. tering an effort to foster a more civil quests the procedure because life will Perhaps the influence of today’s Jesuits discourse on pro-life advocacy seems be unbearable without the spouse’s could be focused on the high school tone-deaf and ridiculous. What issue partner. To my mind, any state-sup- level for the sake of the children of our has been more to blame, aside from the ported euthanasia regime will be nation. I applaud their discernment on segregationist cause, for angry and un- fraught with abuse in its application. this issue. civil discourse than the so-called pro- BILL COLLIER MICHAELE ANN RITCHIE POKRAKA life movement? The far right in this Online Comment Riverside, Ill. country embraced a southern strat- Yonkers’ Heroes egy in the 1970s but also sought the All God’s People Re “Communal Combat,” by Maurice support of Catholics and Evangelicals Re “Breathing Space,” by Alex Timothy Reidy (10/26): I will admit through exploitation of the abortion Milkulich (10/26): My brother is a I did not watch HBO’s “Show Me issue. The deep polarization we see Jesuit brother and just began teaching a Hero,” but I did read the book it is today rests on the twin foundations at a Jesuit high school. I am so proud based on during the first month of my of racial resentment and anti-abortion of the manner in which he is challeng- assignment at Sacred Heart in Yonkers, N.Y. “Show Me a Hero” does tell a riv- Letters to the editor may be sent to America’s editorial eting story—but how I wish they had office (address on page 2) or letters@americamagazine. interviewed some parishioners of mine! org. America will also consider the following for print What the book and Mr. Reidy’s publication: comments posted below articles on essay both miss are the real stories of America’s website (americamagazine.org) and posts on Twitter and public Facebook pages. All correspondence Yonkers: a community that has con- may be edited for length. tinually bound itself together through family and faith as major industries

6 America November 23, 2015 have left the locale. Is Yonkers perfect? the mindset of “ask not what your par- Francis is causing us to rethink all of Of course not. But if you want to be ish can do for you, but ask what you this if we dare to pay attention. shown some heroes, just come and visit. can do for your parish.” FRANK LESKO MATT JANECZKO, O.F.M.CAP. (DEACON) PETER BROUSSARD Online Comment Yonkers, N.Y. Coos Bay, Ore. Call to Conversion Hard Readings Not Optional “Doctrinal Challenges,” by Peter Folan, Re “Costly Scripture,” by Corinna Re “The First Canon: Mercy,” by the S.J. (10/12), is a thoughtful essay, but Guerrero (10/26): Something is Rev. Kevin McKenna (10/12): When I would rather look to Blessed John lost when we read only the passag- I read that Pope Francis said, “Mercy Henry Newman and his essay on es in Scripture we like. Why, in the is not just a pastoral attitude, but it is doctrinal development than to Father Lectionary, are the last lines of Psalm the very substance of the Gospel of Rahner. I would also look to the classic 137 not fully given? “Blessed are those Jesus,” what I heard is that orthopraxy formula of St. Vincent of Lerins regard- who pay you back for the evil you have is inseparable from orthodoxy. Belief ing orthodoxy: that which has been be- done to us. Blessed are those who seize and practice, faith and works, these all lieved in the church “everywhere, always, your children and smash their heads go hand in hand. Too often, we treat by everyone.” The living tradition of the against the walls.” We live in a wicked practices as a secondary status, as icing church is always a vital source of the be- and brutal world. How and why God on the cake—as if beliefs are absolute lief and morals for Catholics. allows such violence and how grace but practices are optional. We do this Yes, we must look to pastoral real- works in this den of iniquity are ques- in our sacramental life. No matter how ities with respect to doctrine; but we tions that need to be addressed in any sinful a priest may be, the sacraments must never use the excuse of “pasto- theology course and in any Christian are still considered “valid” as long as ral realities” as a source for doctrinal church. They should not be ignored, protocol is followed. Mercy is not seen change. Nor should we oppose pas- skipped or papered over with false ex- as essential. It’s nice if a priest is kind toral practice and doctrine, relegating cuses and non-explanations. and compassionate in the confession difficult doctrinal teachings to the HENRY GEORGE booth, for example, but not necessary. realm of ideals, as is done by some re- Online Comment There’s a beauty in this theology garding the church’s teaching on con- that grace can come despite our human Ask Not traception. Doctrine is often the call of weaknesses, but also a horror as we re- “Church-Shopping,” by Kaya Oakes the church to conversion, and for that move all humanity from our liturgical (10/19), was subtitled “Why is it so God provides his grace. We hear the life. Scripture tells us that without love hard for young Catholics to find the refrain every Lent: Turn away from sin all our actions are nothing but a clang- right parish?” Those of us with pasto- and be faithful to the Gospel. ing gong, yet we never view love as ral duties are always interested in ways LEONARD VILLA essential in our sacramental practices. Online Comment we might better reach out to people. Unfortunately, the article reveals what many of us in pastoral ministry already OMG! know. Young people are too often trapped in the mindset of “How can this parish [or Jesus] entertain me?” Ms. Oakes’s spiritual director has the right advice: focus on the Eucharist. For within the Eucharist is found the selfless sacrifice, the most complete expression of love anyone is capable of: the hard message of Christ’s cross. This is the message that must ring out again and again from parishes. Regarding parishes being welcom- ing communities, all mature Christians “…and I’m most thankful that God gave us Thanksgiving are charged with engaging in the new so that we can have a day of rest and nourishment to prepare evangelization of all people, including ourselves for all the goodness of Black Friday.” our departing youth. We must adopt BY BOB ECKSTEIN S.J.; ART WRITTEN BY JAKE MARTIN, CARTOON

November 23, 2015 America 7 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

ENVIRONMENT THANKS, OBAMA! Activists celebrate outside the White House Long-Debated Keystone XL Pipeline after the Obama administration’s rejection of the Keystone XL Shut Down by President Obama pipeline on Nov. 6. fter hovering for years in political limbo, the long-proposed Keystone XL pipeline, intended to move heavy Canadian crude oil through America’s Aheartland to the Gulf of Mexico and ultimately out into the world mar- ket, was brought to ground on Nov. 6 by President Obama. After noting that Secretary of State John Kerry had completed the State Department review of the proposal and determined that the pipeline “would not serve the national interest of the United States,” President Obama simply said, “I agree with that decision,” bringing years of political drama to an end. The president said that the United States is now a global leader in action against climate change. “And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership. And that’s the biggest risk we face—not acting.” According to the president, the State Department ultimately rejected Keystone because the pipeline would not make a meaningful long-term contribution to the U.S. economy and would not lower U.S. gas prices. He added that “shipping dirti- er crude oil into our country would not increase America’s energy security.” Reacting to the White House call on Keystone, Dan Misleh, executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant, said, “President Obama’s decision...is another sign of the growing awareness that business as usual with regards to fossil fuels is not sustainable. “As Pope Francis said in ‘Laudato sumed by a debate over whether or referring to the upcoming U.N. spon- Si’,’’ we need to begin to envision a new not this pipeline would create jobs and sored conference aimed at hashing out future for our children and to begin lower gas prices,” he said, “We’ve gone national commitments to respond to to reduce our use of fossil fuels.” Mr. ahead and created jobs and lowered the various threats of global warming, Misleh added, “It seems to me that we gas prices.” He described the pipeline which begins at the end of November. have to accompany this big and sym- as a symbol “too often used as a cam- Mr. Carolan said that the presi- bolic ‘no’ with an affirmative and actu- paign cudgel by both parties rather dent’s decision reflects the culmina- al ‘yes’ on what we can do to not only than a serious policy matter.” tion of six years of grassroots mobili- reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, “And all of this obscured the fact zation and coalition building, “groups but to invest in and deploy cleaner, that this pipeline would neither be a that you would never think could more sustainable energy technology silver bullet for the economy, as was work together coming together” to re- and sources.” promised by some, nor the express sist the pipeline. Remembering scores Mr. Misleh said that the Catholic lane to climate disaster proclaimed by of demonstrations and hundreds of community, with its size and resourc- others,” he said. arrests, he said, “It’s been a long battle.” es, “ought to quickly become a leader in Patrick Carolan, executive director Mr. Carolan recalled the mockery this new, exciting and sustainable fu- of the Franciscan Action Network, endured by activists standing against ture...to show our love of the Creator described himself and the members of Keystone’s formidable alliance of in- through love of creation.” the network as “elated” by the apparent dustry and political interests in the In his statement the president end of the proposed pipeline. He said early days fighting against the project. said that debate about the Keystone the decision was long overdue. “People said resistance was a waste of Pipeline “has occupied what I, frank- “This sends a real strong signal go- time, that this was a done deal, that ly, consider an overinflated role in our ing forward to Paris about [the U.S.] there was no way we could stop it. political discourse.” commitment to bring about serious This just goes to show you that—with “While our politics have been con- action on climate change.” Carolan was coalition building, coming togeth-

8 America November 23, 2015 place in relation to these over past dia, following the publication of the years. The leaked documentation was two books—Merchants in the Temple gathered by a commission specifically by Gianluigi Nuzzi, and Avarizia by set up by Francis in July 2013 to inves- Emiliano Fittipaldi—based on the tigate the whole situation of Vatican leaks. finances. “I know that many of you have Two members of that commis- been upset by the news circulating in sion—a Spanish monsignor who recent days concerning the Holy See’s worked in the Roman Curia, Lucio confidential documents that were tak- Angel Vallejo Balda, and an Italian en and published,” he told them. public relations expert, Francesca “For this reason,” he said, “I want to Chaouqui—were arrested for al- tell you, first of all, that stealing those legedly leaking the documentation to documents was a crime. It’s a deplor- two Italian journalists. While Msgr. able act that does not help.” Vallejo Balda, 54, is still in a Vatican He told the crowd, “I personally prison, Ms. Chaouqui, 33, is back in had asked for that study to be carried her home, released because she had out and both I and my advisers were begun to collaborate with the investi- well acquainted with [the contents of ] gators. those documents and steps have been America has learned that there taken that have started to bear fruit, was another reason for the rapid re- some of them even visible. lease. Ms. Chaouqui is more than “I wish to reassure you that this two months pregnant, and sources sad event certainly does not deter me say the pope did not want her held in from the reform project that we are er, taking it out onto the streets— prison given her condition. This also carrying out, together with my advis- things can happen, things can change.” explains why she was detained in a ers and with the support of all of you,” KEVIN CLARKE convent of women religious inside Pope Francis added. He concluded, the Vatican and not in a prison cell, as “I therefore thank you and ask you to Vallejo Balda was. He is in the same continue to pray for the pope and the VATICAN cell that was occupied by Benedict church, without getting upset or trou- XVI’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, author bled, but proceeding with faith and Pope’s Reforms of the original Vatileaks scandal three hope.” GERARD O’CONNELL Will Continue years ago. Since being released, ope Francis on Nov. 8 de- Ms. Chaouqui has maintained nounced the stealing and leak- her innocence in conversa- Ping of confidential documents tions with journalists, and on from the Vatican as “a crime.” At the Facebook and Twitter she stat- same time, he confirmed his deter- ed: “I am not a mole. I have not mination to press ahead with the fi- betrayed the pope. I never gave nancial reforms that he started in July a page to anybody.” She blames 2013 and that are now underway in Vallejo Balda for dragging her the Vatican. into the scandal. It was the pope’s first public com- After greeting thousands of ment about the theft and leaking of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s confidential documents regarding Square, Pope Francis spoke Vatican finances and the mismanage- publicly about these criminal FULL PRESS. Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi is surrounded by the media after a news ment, difficulties, failures and even acts and the negative publicity conference for his new book Merchants in the criminal activities that have taken they have generated in the me- Temple on Nov. 4.

November 23, 2015 America 9 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Declaring Unity Drawing on five decades of dialogue, NEWS BRIEFS the Catholic and Lutheran church- After a deadly outbreak of violence around his es together have issued “Declaration parish in the Central African Republic’s capital on the Way: Church, Ministry and of Bangui, Moses Otii Alir, a Comboni priest, ex- Eucharist.” It includes 32 statements pressed the hope that Pope Francis’ planned visit of agreement describing points of con- would open people’s hearts to God’s love and “re- vergence on church, ministry and the new the face of this beautiful country drenched in Eucharist. It also notes the differences blood.” • Meeting in Cairo on Nov. 5, the executive Central African which remain between Lutherans and council of the Middle East Council of Churches Republic Catholics and suggests possible ways urged “heads of state and religious and political decision-makers forward. Among its recommendations in the world, Arabs and Muslims” to work toward the preserva- is “the expansion of opportunities for tion of religious pluralism, saying it is “the most precious treasure Catholics and Lutherans to receive of the East.” • Speaking on Nov. 5 at the National Press Club in holy Communion together.” Bishop Washington, former U.S. Representative Patrick Kennedy argued Denis Madden, auxiliary bishop of the for equal access to treatment for those needing addiction or mental Archdiocese of Baltimore and co-chair health treatment, calling it a “moral imperative.” • Rescuers were still of the declaration’s task force, said there looking for at least 18 people who disappeared in the town of Bento are already accepted provisions for ec- Rodrigues, Brazil, on Nov. 6, the day after two dams from a nearby umenical gatherings at which “both iron ore processing plant gave way. • René Girard, the influential Lutherans and Catholics can come literary critic and Catholic philosopher, died in Stanford, Calif., on together at the communion table.” He Nov. 4 at the age of 91 after a long illness. hoped the declaration would encour- age pastors from both denominations to “take advantages of those provisions and how they might be widened.” tions sided with the Obama adminis- striking comments regarded a more tration. The rulings said the religious integral development of technology. Mandate Challenge entities’ freedom of religion was not Cardinal Turkson noted the pope’s burdened by having to comply with concern that “the more that people U.S. Supreme Court justices said on the mandate as they have argued, be- live through their digital tools, the less Nov. 6 they will hear seven pending cause the federal government has in they may learn ‘how to live wisely, to appeals in lawsuits brought by several place an accommodation for a third think deeply and to love generously.’” Catholic and other faith-based entities party to provide the contested cover- As the Vatican makes a concerted ef- against the Obama administration’s age. But the religious groups object fort to influence the outcome of the contraceptive mandate. Among the to that notification, saying they still U.N. Climate Change Conference plaintiffs are the Little Sisters of the would be complicit in supporting in Paris later this month, Cardinal Poor, the Archdiocese of Washington, practices they oppose. Turkson told America that civil so- Priests for Life, Southern Nazarene ciety and business leaders must play University, Texas Baptist University a role in the success of the meeting of and several Catholic institutions The Earth at Risk world leaders. “It is not just now a mat- in Pennsylvania. Under the federal On Nov. 3 Cardinal Peter Turkson, ter of politicians and political leaders Affordable Care Act, most employers, president of the Pontifical Council and policy makers meeting to decide including religious ones, are required for Justice and Peace, gave the keynote anything,” he said. “But the awareness to cover employees’ artificial birth con- address at Santa Clara University’s is now very well shared that the earth trol, sterilization and abortifacients, two day conference on “Laudato is at risk, and there is something that even if employers are morally opposed Si’”: “Our Future on a Shared Planet: needs to be done to ensure that life on to such coverage. In all the cases to be Silicon Valley in Conversation with this earth is sustainable.” argued before the high court in March, the Environmental Teachings of Pope appellate courts in various jurisdic- Francis.” Some of the cardinal’s most From CNS, RNS and other sources.

10 America November 23, 2015 SIGNS OF THE TIMES

DISPATCH | CHICAGO Robert Marx, Bishop Jesse DeWitt of the United Methodist Church and Wage Theft, a ‘National Disgrace’ the late Msgr. Jack Egan. Bobo’s mes- sage to churches was simple: hunger, he dignity of work and work- the Edgewater Presbyterian Church homelessness, domestic violence and ers’ rights are recurring motifs on Chicago’s north side. For 20 years, the breakdown of families are often di- Tthroughout Scripture. “You Interfaith Worker Justice has been a rectly connected to the inability to earn shall not withhold the wages of poor consistent, sometimes solitary voice in- a living wage. and needy workers, whether other vestigating wage theft and other work- In its early days, Interfaith Worker Israelites or aliens,” says the Book of er abuses. Justice promoted union membership, Deuteronomy. Pope Francis, in his Wage theft occurs when employers fair wages and employee benefits. Bobo address to Congress, stressed worker fail to pay the legal minimum wage or often confronted religious institutions concerns, saying he spoke for “the thou- overtime, force workers to work off as well, including Catholic hospitals, sands of men and women who strive the clock, withhold tips or final pay- parishes and schools, about the way each day to do an honest day’s work, to checks and misclassify workers as in- they compensated their own employ- bring home their daily bread...to ees. “Those were some of the most build a better life for their families.” Ordinary citizens can horrible conversations,” she recalls. Even in the modern age of labor Still, the Interfaith Worker Justice regulation, many American work- also take action, ask movement spread, and now in- ers still don’t receive a full day’s pay how much workers cludes 20 worker centers across the for a full day’s work. These em- country that assist and advise em- ployees usually occupy the lowest will be paid. ployees. rungs of the pay ladder, working in I.W.J. has designated Nov. 18 a fast food, retail, garment assembly, “Day of Action” to highlight wage poultry processing, the service industry dependent contractors to avoid paying theft. Lopez says he hopes an increas- and building trades. payroll taxes, workers’ compensation ing number of churches will form com- Some companies cited are part of and other benefits. Interfaith Worker mittees and discussion groups dedicat- familiar national chains we might pa- Justice estimates that about $50 bil- ed to workplace concerns. The group tronize on a regular basis. Take, for lion in wage theft occurs each year. is also advocating several reforms, in- example, Papa John’s Pizza. Four of its Executive Director Rudy Lopez calls it cluding targeted federal investigations franchises in New York recently agreed “a national disgrace.” of industries where wage theft has to pay close to $500,000 in back pay From the start, Interfaith Worker been a problem; requiring employers owed to workers. Before closing all its Justice tied its mission to religious prin- to supply workers with pay stubs that restaurants in 2014, Chicago-based ciples. Its charismatic founder, Kim show hours, deductions and how wag- HomeMade Pizza, once a favorite of Bobo, started the organization with a es were calculated; removing the stat- TV personality Oprah Winfrey, was $5,000 inheritance from an aunt. Bobo ute of limitations on wage claims; and forced to pay back wages to six workers believed religious institutions repre- creating stiffer minimum penalties for who said they were paid less than the sented natural partners for promoting violations. minimum wage and were denied their worker justice. Ordinary citizens can also take ac- final paycheck. When she began calling local tion, Lopez says. In hiring a contrac- Helping workers at those two churches, she often found staff or vol- tor or service provider, ask how much companies—and many others—is unteers who worked on alleviating workers will be paid. Will they be paid a small advocacy group working out hunger or homelessness. “When I got overtime? Leave cash tips when possible of a fourth-floor office belonging to on the phone and asked who was han- or ask how a server will be compensated dling labor issues, it was like, huh?” for a credit card tip. Founder Kim Bobo Bobo recalls. says I.W.J. also plans to highlight ethical JUDITH VALENTE, America’s Chicago corre- That changed once Bobo enlisted business owners. “We’ve got to start af- spondent, is a regular contributor to NPR and “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.” Twitter: the help of several well-known Chicago firming the good guys,” she says. @JudithValente. religious leaders, including Rabbi JUDITH VALENTE

November 23, 2015 America 11 NATHAN SCHNEIDER The Pregnancy of Mary

his time of year, the Mother to come forth.” She then sends Joseph years ago no less than she represents of God is very pregnant. The to find a midwife in Bethlehem, and us, now—especially at this time of Tskin around her belly stretch- when he returns with one, Mary gives year, when we can accompany that girl es to hold the weight of her child. She birth in a burst of bright light. in her strange, miraculous pregnancy. feels him squirm and settle as no one The Quran—which refers to Mary The pregnancy of Mary, this year, else ever will. He presses against her more than the New Testament itself coincides with pangs of violence in the organs. She gets short of breath and does—describes her leaning against a land where she gave birth. Bethlehem has trouble finding a comfortable po- date tree in agony during labor, to the overlooks the Palestinian sprawl of sition at night for sleep. She wonders point of preferring that she were dead. East Jerusalem and the manicured if she can stretch any more than this to But she has the aid of an angelic dou- Israeli settlements scattered through- contain her son and all he will become, la; a voice from the ground announces out it. Just to the north, along an yet each day she does. that God has run a stream apartheid wall covered As Advent nears, Christians wait beneath her and instructs Perhaps with militant graffiti, for the child to come. We count the her to shake the tree so its the Aida refugee camp days and prepare for celebrations. In ripe dates will fall. “Eat and we need has stood for 65 years our preparation, though, we can ne- drink, and be at peace,” says to meditate and counting. Just as glect the gestation. Nativity scenes the voice, and we hear no there was no room center on a bloodless and unattached more about the pain after more on for Mary in an inn, child in the manger. We skip straight that. (In 2011, clinical re- Palestinian women have from Ordinary Time to anticipation to searchers in Jordan report- the active given birth—or have infancy, neglecting to dwell on the pre- ed a correlation between work of tried—while stopped at cious journey of the figure Christians eating dates during preg- the region’s ubiquitous for centuries have venerated as Maria nancy and higher mean Advent. checkpoints on the way Gravida—Mary, Mother-to-Be. cervical dilation.) to a hospital. What did Mary feel in pregnancy, The image of Mary imprinted on Closer to home, the United States labor and birth? Did she have pain? Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin’s cloak at remains one of the few countries Some mothers do more than others, Guadalupe in 1531 wears the attire in the world that does not guaran- and the canonical Gospels are sparse of an Aztec woman in pregnancy. The tee paid maternity leave. God may with details. stars on her veil and the crescent under have dispatched legions to defend Many of the church fathers, from her feet have made it common to iden- the woman in the sky and her child, Augustine to Aquinas, held that tify her with the woman in the sky of but too few American mothers have Mary, free of sin, was surely spared Revelation, who “wailed aloud in pain even the protection of time. We often the pain of childbirth. The apocry- as she labored to give birth.” As the treat pregnancy and birth as a kind of phal Protoevangelium of James de- woman flees with her newborn son, a disorder, resulting in a Caesarian sec- picts Joseph seeing Mary, nearing child “destined to rule all the nations,” tion rate of more than 30 percent— active labor, apparently suffering and Michael and his angels fight the dragon, twice the national rate that the World then suddenly laughing. “I see two Satan, who wants to devour the boy. Health Organization recommends. people with mine eyes,” she explains, Another common interpretation of Perhaps we need to meditate more “the one weeping and mourning, the that passage identifies the woman in on the active work of Advent, not just other laughing and rejoicing.” When the sky with the church—ever in labor the waiting. We can walk with the she wants to be taken off her donkey, to manifest her savior. Pope Benedict Mother of God through her pregnan- she says, “that which is in me presses XVI has insisted that there need not cy and labor, then meet her child while be any contradiction in accepting that he is still covered in blood and tied to NATHAN SCHNEIDER is the author of Thank You, Anarchy and God in Proof. Website: she stands for this and for Mary, both. her with an umbilical cord. We can be TheRowBoat.com; Twitter: @nathanairplane. She represents a Hebrew girl 2,000 her, her midwives, her doulas.

12 America November 23, 2015 November 23, 2015 America 13 Kindred Spirits Catholic writers inspired by Jesuit friendships BY MARK BOSCO t a recent conference focused on the future As I began to consider the conference’s title—“The Future of the Catholic literary imagination in the of the Catholic Literary Imagination”—I was struck with United States, I was asked to be part of a pan- the fact that perhaps this future can be glimpsed by looking el entitled “The Jesuit Literary Imagination.” back at the great Catholic writers of the 20th century who There are lots of ways one might explore the participated in Jesuit friendship, who regularly corresponded Amodifier “Jesuit,” though I would be prone to use the word with Jesuits, who entered into spiritual direction with them “Ignatian” over “Jesuit”: an Ignatian imagination finds inspi- and used them as confessors. I want to suggest that spiritual ration not in the structures of a religious order but in the friendships deepen the spirit as well as the art of the literary more inclusive and universal experience of Ignatian spiritu- imagination. ality. The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola are a series of imaginative forays into concretizing the universal drama A Jesuit Inspiration of Christ in the singular life of a person. Ignatius developed In Great Britain, the Jesuits Martin D’Arcy and Philip this series of meditations, prayers and contemplative prac- Caraman informed Evelyn Waugh’s Catholic imagination. tices out of his own personal experience of God at work in Father D’Arcy, the master of Campion Hall (the Jesuit college his life. He gathered this wisdom into a carefully designed at Oxford University) and a future superior of the English framework of retreat so that others might grow in union Province of the Jesuits, shows up everywhere in Waugh’s with God and discern God’s will. The Exercises, done with correspondence and biography—noted at his dinner parties, the assistance of an experienced spiritual director, lead one family gatherings, liturgies and on various retreats. It was on a journey of spiritual freedom and enthusiastic commit- Father D’Arcy who gave Waugh access to the Jesuit archives ment to the service of God. to write his history of Edmund Campion, the Elizabethan The language of the Spiritual Exercises is structured in a Jesuit martyred for the faith. Waugh’s imaginative history, way that brings literary language and theological language to- Campion, is still a good read today. (In 1947 Waugh gave a gether: the composition of place in any Ignatian meditation; share of his royalties from Campion to the English Province; the application of the senses entering into our imaginations; and in 1948 and 1950 he gave all the paperback royalties the centrality of the Incarnation throughout but especially in from The Loved One and Vile Bodies to the Jesuit missions.) the second week of the Exercises (“The Call of the King,” “The If Father D’Arcy was mentor to Waugh’s deepening un- Two Standards”); the narrative journey of sorrow and witness derstanding of the faith, then Philip Caraman, S.J., one- in Christ’s passion; the imaginative moment when the risen time editor of the Jesuit journal The Month, was even more Christ appears to his mother and then to his disciples; and the a friend and spiritual companion. Father Caraman, a young surplus of love and joy felt in making a decision for Christ. In protégé of Father D’Arcy, had a remarkable bond with many many ways, then, the Exercises are a work of art, an encounter British writers, Catholic or not. It was Father Caraman who with divine love that re-visions one’s life, gives a salvific cast celebrated for Waugh the Easter Mass of 1966, with permis- to one’s personal history—especially one’s brokenness, sinful- sion to use the so-called Tridentine rite—Waugh was de- ness and strangeness—all in order to regain a sense of hope, a spondent about the new liturgy—and on the very afternoon felt sense of interior freedom. For those who have experienced after this Easter Mass, Waugh died of a heart attack. the “grace” of the Spiritual Exercises—in one form or anoth- Graham Greene, an exact contemporary of Waugh, was er—this quick summary will ring true. This Ignatian way of rarely without a priest confidant his entire adult life. Not redeeming the imagination, of reforming the imagination, of- all of them were Jesuits, but two very influential friends, fers a way to know oneself in order to know, love and serve who served as both confessors and companions, were Philip another. The great Jesuit scholar of the Spiritual Exercises, Caraman, S.J., and the C. C. Martindale, S.J. Part of the David Fleming, once said that its sole aim is to draw one into fun of researching my book on Greene was coming upon a deeper friendship with Christ. so many exchanges between these men. Father Caraman was Greene’s confessor. Given what is publicly known about MARK BOSCO, S.J., is a professor of English and theology at Loyola Greene’s personal life, that must have been quite a task. It University Chicago. was Father Caraman who gradually encouraged Greene to

14 America November 23, 2015 end his affair with Catherine Walston, the inspiration for the LITERARY FRIENDS. Philip Caraman, S.J., and character Sarah in his novel The End of the Affair. So psycho- Martin D’Arcy, S.J. (inset) logically distraught was Greene that he both blamed Father Caraman for meddling in his affairs and pleaded with him to help him make sense of his life. The other Jesuit, C. C. Martindale, himself a Catholic con- vert, was a friend and confidant, too, an Oxford philosopher and a curate at the Jesuit church in Farm Street. Father Martindale was especially close to Greene in the late 1940s and ’50s and a constant correspondent as Greene tried to take the theological themes from his novels and reimag- ine them for the dramatic stage of the West End. I enjoyed coming across some of their correspondence in the Jesuit archives at Farm Street, impressed with the way the two men loved and appreciated each other and how Father Martindale would thank Greene for sneaking in a bottle of whiskey for them to share. Dame Muriel Spark, years younger than Waugh and Greene, met Father Caraman in 1953, a year before her con- version. In her autobiography she writes:

On the way home from a lunch at the Ritz I bumped into Father Philip Caraman, a “Farm Street” Jesuit, ed- itor of The Month. Philip Caraman was a much-loved friend of a great many writers, known and unknown, of nuclear annihilation, civil rights activism, Southern agrar- Catholic and otherwise. Philip said if I would walk ian thought and an assessment of the Jesuit scientist/mys- back with him to the office he would give me a book to tic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whom Flannery was reading review. On the way there, I felt in the mood to entertain and reviewing for the newspaper of the Diocese of Atlanta. him with some amusing stories. He gave me the book The literary historian Ben Alexander, who has seen the en- to review and a cheque for 15 pounds for having made tire collection of unpublished letters (I have only seen some him laugh. of them) notes that Father McCown served as her spiritual director and offered her great support in her writing. Spark made her first confession with Father Caraman, But probably the most important Jesuit interlocutor for and he assisted her with editing a selection of John Henry O’Connor was William Lynch. There is no epistolary corre- Newman’s letters, lending her original correspondence be- spondence between them, but O’Connor admits she owed a tween Newman and some English Jesuits. They kept up a great debt to Father Lynch, especially his work in the journal correspondence until the day he died. Thought, published by Fordham University, and in his books In the United States, Flannery O’Connor had a wonder- Christ and Apollo and The Image Industries, both read and fully rich correspondence with James McCown, S.J., known commented upon by O’Connor. Father Lynch’s work vali- as Hooty, a Jesuit pastor in Macon, Ga., 40 miles from dated O’Connor’s particular modernist, even postmodernist Andalusia, O’Connor’s family farm in Milledgeville, Ga. proclivities and her own artistic claim to a Christic imagi- Father McCown visited O’Connor and her mother, Regina, nation. Father Lynch argues straight out of the Spiritual regularly for the last eight years of O’Connor’s life, and Father Exercises that the Incarnation is not a temporary blessing McCown’s personal characteristics appear re-imagined in but a Christification of the world that renders the human her short story “The Enduring Chill”—in the one-eyed sacred—as depicted both in the infant Jesus in a Christmas Jesuit. It is with Father McCown that we get a long-ranging crèche and in the Christus figure on a crucifix above an altar.

PHOTOS FROM THE ARCHIVES OF THE JESUITS IN GREAT BRITAIN PHOTOS FROM THE ARCHIVES OF JESUITS IN GREAT correspondence on politics and the Cold War, the prospect Finite and infinite realities coalesce; so for Father Lynch, as

November 23, 2015 America 15 for O’Connor, there is no need to pull together what has nev- er been separated. O’Connor, echoing Father Lynch, wrote to a friend that “the resurrection of Christ seems the high point in the law of nature,” a loaded observation that underlies much of her fiction. Let me end with a few words about Walker Percy. It was a Jesuit church in New Orleans on whose door Percy knocked in 1947, asking to see a priest. He received instruction from the priests at Loyola University New Orleans and would attend retreats at Jesuit retreat houses, themselves weekend distillations of Ignatian spirituality. And it was the Jesuit Patrick H. Samway, a former literary editor of America, who became Percy’s biographer and remained very close to Percy and his family during the last 12 years of the artist’s life. What might we learn from all this? Simply that in the very recent past the Catholic literary imagination was fos- tered in the art of spiritual conversation, and at least with the artists mentioned above, it was a distinctly Ignatian conversation: about the composition of place, about moving from being a flat character into a three-dimensional one of depth, of desires, of choices; about how characters leap off the page because they take God seriously, they take grace seriously and they see the Christian adventure played out in thousands of places, lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his, to the Father, through the features of human faces. A

16 America November 23, 2015 November 23, 2015 America 17 18 America November 23, 2015 ART: SHUTTERSTOCK.COM/ LARISSA KULIK ART: Seasons of Prayer Spirituality for every stage of life BY PATRICIA COONEY HATHAWAY

he seasons of the year provide for many people Spring of Life: Awakening an intuitive metaphor for understanding sea- Spring is a time of blossoming, a season full of promise and sons of our lives. The lyrics to Frank Sinatra’s possibilities. On a spiritual level, spring involves “waking up” poignant “September Song” need no explana- to the discovery of God as personal in a way that is possible Ttion: “Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December/ only when we have grown into the capacity to fall in love But the days grow short when you reach September.” Over with another. Here we are invited to begin to personally ex- the years I have found that the seasons also provide a helpful perience God as friend, companion, disciple, beloved daugh- lens through which to describe our lives of prayer. While no ter or son. Such an awakening can be gradual or abrupt. And two people journey to God in exactly the same way, the met- it can occur at any time in our lives. Its defining quality is the aphor of seasons can give insights into the ups and downs, discovery of God as real. peaks and valleys, periods of intimacy as well as times of Dorothy Day provides us with an example of such an staleness that make up each stage of our spiritual lives. awakening. As she began to read the Bible for the first time, she realized “a new personality impressed itself on me. I was being introduced to someone and I knew almost immedi- PATRICIA COONEY HATHAWAY, a professor of spirituality and system- ately that I was discovering God.... Life would never again atic theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Mich., is the au- thor of Weaving Faith and Experience: A Woman’s Perspective (St. be the same.” Anthony Messenger Press). Using the analogy of friendship, spiritual writers describe

November 23, 2015 America 19 this season of prayer as the “getting to know you” phase. Our ing us to the center of our souls where the Holy Spirit joins initial step in pursuing a relationship with God often begins our spirit. Jesus invites us to “Abide in me and I abide in you” with vocal prayer. We use someone else’s words to begin a con- (Jn 15:4). versation with God: the Our Father, Hail Mary or reciting the Summer invites us to find God in the world. As we learn rosary. St. Teresa of Avila encouraged such prayer, reminding to be present to God within, so too should we be develop- us that vocal prayer, faithfully recited with a realization of ing the habit of finding God in the context of our daily lives. who it is that we are addressing, has the power to carry us Most of us in the summer of our lives are involved in raising ultimately into the deepest depths of contemplative prayer. a family, earning a living, caring for people in ministry, etc. Such vocal prayers can be helpful How can we live a deep prayer life while through the whole of our lives as well. leading such full lives? While sick with cancer, Cardinal Joseph Jesus is our model. He did not leave the Bernardin found that praying the prayer of How can we world to find God; on the contrary, he lived St. Francis, “Lord, make me an instrument live a deep each day in the midst of people, and he of your peace,” brought comfort and peace. found God there. Yet he often went off to Spring invites us to “come and see.” prayer life while commune with God—early in the morn- Getting to know the one we are drawn to ing, late afternoon—before all his major de- love leads us to the Scriptures. In John’s leading such cisions. As Jesus had a rhythm to his life, so Gospel, Jesus’ invitation to two of John must we. We can pray anywhere—driving the Baptist’s disciples to “come and see” full lives? to work in the morning, waiting in a doc- expresses his invitation to each of us as tor’s office, walking along a beach. Our life well. As we spend time with God through of prayer should center us, enabling us to be reflecting on his words and actions, we come to know what more intentional as we discern God’s presence in the people kind of person Jesus is, what his values are and what becoming and activities of daily life. his friend will entail. As one young man I worked with com- mented, “Before I commit myself to this relationship, I want Autumn of Life: From Satisfaction to Value to know who it is I am committing to.” As in any relationship, The season of summer gradually shades into autumn. The we cannot love someone we do not know. season begins with Indian summer-like days, brisk, clear air, As we seek to put on the mind and heart of Jesus, we are leaves reaching their peak of brilliant colors. Gradually the challenged to get our life in sync with our desires. Motivated days get shorter, grayer and the trees begin to let go of their to cultivate a life of virtue, we gain self-knowledge regarding leaves to reveal the barrenness of limbs. the myriad ways in which egocentricity and selfishness block In one of my favorite books on prayer, Experiencing God, our ability to grow in love of God and others. We begin to Thomas Green, S.J., describes the invitation of this season: strive to love God with all our hearts, mind and strength, to “After the Lord has gotten us hooked on himself, then he align our will with God’s will and to love those who are a part says, ‘Okay, now we have to go about the serious business of of our lives with the same loving kindness that characterizes transformation. You’re going to have to let me work to make God’s love for us. you divine if you’re ever going to realize the kind of union with me that you desire.’” Summer of Life: From Knowing to Loving That work begins with the invitation to deepening con- Summer brings images of warm, sunny days. The rich smells templative prayer, that is, a resting in God—a quiet, word- and vivid colors of nature are in full bloom. Many spiritual less, being present to God in the core of our being. In this writers employ the imagery of summer to describe the hon- resting or stillness, the mind and heart are not actively seek- eymoon phase of our relationship with God, similar to that ing God so much as being receptive to God’s presence and of a good marriage or a deepening friendship. Our one-on- action within it. one prayer time with God is filled with consolation. We feel At times, God is close, and prayer is easy and joyful. At the warmth of God’s love and presence; we enjoy spending other times, and more frequently, God seems far away and time with him. our prayer feels empty and dry. Drawing on his own expe- Our prayer becomes more spontaneous, devotional and rience, one student commented, “I feel like I’m in the desert, affective as we open our minds and hearts to God in prayers and occasionally I come upon an oasis.” A woman offered this of petition, thanksgiving, praise or adoration. As we come to reflection during a spiritual direction session: “I’d have to say know God more intimately, we are also drawn more to listen that for about a year and a half I’ve been more aware of God’s than to talk. We find ourselves more content to simply be absence. It has been emptiness, longing, yearning, darkness. present to God in love. We become aware of the divine draw- And then there are times when we come together. When the

20 America November 23, 2015 shift comes, I experience God moving toward me. Then my prayer is relaxation, a receiving and an affirming.” Autumn asks us to move from lives of pleasure to self-giv- ing. As with prayer, so too with life. We all begin life with great desires, and we spend years experiencing the satisfac- tion of achieving our goals. But it is important that we realize there will come a time when every significant relationship with God and others will reach an impasse—that is, we will experience its limits, its inability to satisfy us in the way it did before. Through these life experiences, God encourages us to make the passage from loving, serving and being with him and others because of the pleasure and joy it gives, to loving and serving God and others out of self-giving love. Father Green provides the following example. Two people getting married at the age of 25 say to each other, “I love you because you fulfill all my desires. You make me happy.” This is nice, but still essentially self-centered. Hopefully, by the age of 60, after many years of marriage, the couple now say, “I love you, and therefore your joy makes me joyful, your happiness makes me happy.” This is the kind of transformation God is working in us. God prunes us, stretches us and enlarges our capacity to receive him not only in prayer but in life.

Winter of Life: From Loving to Truly Loving The season of winter conjures up a mixture of sentiments. On the one hand, winter is biting, bleak, desolate, barren, frigid; on the other, it is peaceful, calm, clear, stark, tranquil. While the wintry season of prayer can and does occur at any time in a person’s life, for many women and men it describes the mixture of blessing and diminishment that characterizes life’s final season. For many, prayer at this time is a quiet abiding with God in gratitude for all of life’s blessings. It is also a time when, in taking stock of our lives, we seek God’s forgiveness for the hurt we caused others along the way. In deep trust and sur- render of our one and only life to God, contemplation con- tinues to be a look of love that simplifies and deepens. For others, the habits of prayer—learned and practiced through the former seasons of life—kick in to offer suste- nance during times of suffering and loss. The poet and writ- er Kathleen Norris describes how the Liturgy of the Hours became a constant companion helping her to cope with the difficulty of her husband’s illness and death. She describes going to visit him in the hospital on a day when the air was so frigid that it hurt to breathe: “As I cursed the cold and the icy pavement under my feet, these words of the canticle from the Sunday divine office came to mind: ‘Bless the Lord, winter cold and summer heat.../ Bless the Lord, dews and falling snow.../ Bless the Lord, nights and days....’” Unaccountably consoled, Norris was grateful that the Liturgy of the Hours she had prayed so often was having the desired effect. The words were now a part of her, and when

November 23, 2015 America 21 she most needed them, the rhythm of her walking had stirred with God. This is a union of wills and a partnership with them up to erode her anxiety and remind her that blessings God that is the source of fruitfulness in every aspect of our may be found in all things. lives. Winter invites us to be at home in darkness. For many in At a conference I once gave on prayer, a woman shared this wintry season, God seems distant and prayer feels barren her experience of God in this final season of life. Her words and dry. It is at this time that many are tempted to stop pray- expressed the joyful outcome of a life lived in love and fidelity ing because they feel nothing is happening. But St. John of through the challenges and graces of each season: the Cross encourages those in this state to be content with a simple loving, peaceful attentiveness to God without con- Years have mellowed me considerably so that I’ve come cern, without effort, even without desire to taste or feel him. to be much more gentle and forgiving with myself and After many years of experiencing God’s consoling pres- others, because I’ve experienced a God who is so gentle, ence, Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta found herself im- loving, forgiving, inviting and patient—an ever-present mersed in darkness, feeling abandoned by God. Through a God. The “beloved” of God in John’s Gospel has be- good spiritual director, she realized that her very longing for come a faith model for me. The beloved was a witness God was indeed an experience of God. Thus, she learned to to the light. That is my relationship with God at this be at home in the darkness, trusting that God was drawing point in my life—to be a witness to the light. her into an ever-deepening union with him. She found hope and reassurance in knowing that loving surrender to God at As a spiritual director, I have found that while many peo- this time was not a feeling but a choice of the will. ple are graced with similar experiences of being the beloved She chose to believe in God, hope in God and love God of God, others often become discouraged or lose their way as the source of her deepest meaning and fulfillment—and because they are not familiar with the church’s rich teaching deep joy and peace returned. on prayer and the spiritual life. I hope this description of the seasons of our relationship with God will strengthen the A Light in Latter Days conviction of fellow pilgrims to stay the course, trusting in The journey of prayer through the seasons of life should God’s personal, loving presence and guidance through each gradually bring us closer to its final goal: transforming union stage of our journey to fullness of life in God. A

22 America November 23, 2015 Reversal of Fortune The topsy-turvy world of Psalm 118 BY DANIEL F. POLISH ome accounts tell us that when Lord Cornwallis sur- They promise us that the world can turn upside down—in rendered to George Washington after the Battle of our favor. As still one other folk song suggests, “The world is Yorktown in 1781, the band played the then well- always turning toward the morning.” The world can turn to a known English ballad called “The World Turned brighter side for us. And that is what Psalm 118 celebrates. SUpside Down”: If there is one theme that we can trace throughout the Book of Psalms it is the pattern that I like to think of as “re- Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this versal of fortune.” Repeatedly it describes things moving in thousand year: one direction and then abruptly reversing themselves for the Since Herod, Caesar, and many more, you never heard the better. There are many examples of what in classical Greek like before... drama is called peripeteia: the point when a sudden reversal Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world occurs. We see a peripeteia in Psalm 30: turn’d upside down. For His anger is but for a moment For Lord Cornwallis at that moment the notion of the His favour is for a life-time world turning upside down certainly would have signified a Weeping may tarry for the night, cataclysm. But it need not always be so. There are times in our But joy cometh in the morning… lives when things are sufficiently awry that the only solution to our dilem- ma would be for the world to upend itself. A more recent song title, from Richard Farina, asserts, “Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me.” All of us have times when we have been down. Things go wrong for us with our health, in our personal relation- ships, professionally, economically. These can be painful, difficult times. And when we are in the midst of such times, it seems as if we cannot imag- ine a way to get out. At moments such as these, Psalm 118 and others like it can be particularly precious.

DANIEL POLISH, the Rabbi of Congregation Shir Chadash of the Hudson Valley in LaGrange, N.Y., is vice-chairman of the International Committee for Interreligious Consultations with international religious TURNING TOWARD MORNING. bodies and the author of Bringing the Archbishop Blase J. Cupich of Psalms to Life. In honor of the 50th an- Chicago blesses a rosary for Jaime niversary of the Second Vatican Council’s Dones as he visited with patrons “Declaration on the Relationship of the during a Thanksgiving dinner put Church to Non-Christian Religions,” America on by Catholic Charities on Nov. has invited Rabbi Daniel Polish to reflect on 27, 2014. The dinner is held for the psalms. This article is the second in a four- the homeless and the hungry. CNS PHOTO/KAREN CALLAWAY/CATHOLIC NEW WORLD CNS PHOTO/KAREN CALLAWAY/CATHOLIC part series.

November 23, 2015 America 23 Thou didst turn for me my mourning into dancing; the reversal of fortune, the story becomes unique to us and Thou didst loose my sackcloth, and gird me with gladness we can feel ourselves moving from darkness to light, from de- (Ps 30:6,12) jection to hope and then onward to praise and thanksgiving. What could be more uplifting than to hear—as our own sto- Elsewhere in Psalms we read: ry—the words of Psalm 118:

God maketh the solitary to dwell in a house; Out of my straits I called upon the Lord; He bringeth out the prisoners into prosperity He answered me with great deliverance. (Ps 68:7) The Lord is for me; I will not fear; Who is like unto the Lord our God, What can man do unto me? That is enthroned on high, (vss. 5, 6) That looketh down low Upon heaven and upon the earth? We read of travail and triumph, just as we ourselves have Who raiseth up the poor out of the dust, experienced. We are challenged, threatened, oppressed—and And lifteth up the needy out of the dunghill; yet we prevail: That he may sit him with princes Even with the princes of His own people. They compass me about, Who maketh the barren woman to dwell in her house yea they compass me about; As a joyful mother of children. Verily in the name of the Lord Hallelujah. I will cut them off (Ps 113:5-9) (v. 11)

This reversal of fortune talks to us in the most direct, per- The psalm speaks in direct, graphic language. It tells its sto- sonal terms. We can read it when we are most troubled, letting ry—and ours—in rich poetry. It declares, “I will not die but its words become our own. As we find ourselves celebrating live/ And declare the works of the Lord” (v. 18). And “The voice of rejoicing and salvation/ Is heard in the tents of the righteous” (v. 15). And perhaps the most heartening and powerful image in the psalm—perhaps the most forceful words of hope in the entire Book of Psalms:

The stone which the builders rejected Is become the chief corner-stone

This is the Lord’s doing It is marvelous in our eyes

This is the day which the Lord hath made Let us rejoice and be glad in it (vss. 22–24)

The poet David Rosenberg has captured in modern idiom the spirit of the reversal of fortune in verse 6:

cry yourself to sleep but when you awake light is all around you

Psalm 118, and so many other songs in the Book of Psalms, recognizes that we all have times when we enter the valley. It holds out for us a vision of the mountaintops that can be ours.

24 America November 23, 2015 It affirms that no matter what sloughs we may find ourselves in, there can be a reversal of fortune. The world can turn up- side down and what is but a distant vision of contentment and joy can become our immediate reality. That hope is one of the great gifts of this remarkable book. Psalm 118 also gives us the opportunity to explore one un- fortunate chapter in the use of the psalms and in the relations between Christians and Jews. The “father of English Hymnody,” Isaac Watts (1674–1748), wrote over 750 hymns. His hymn “O God Our Help in Ages Past” continues to be sung in, and is beloved by, many Protestant churches. It turns out that, rep- resentative of his time and place, Watts’s religious perspective caused him to have profound contempt for Jews and Judaism. Watts believed that the psalms were never really understood by the Jews who first sang them but came into clarity only after the advent of Jesus. His antipathy to things Jewish is reflected in one of his several paraphrases of Psalm 118. Watts builds on the New Testament’s own interpretation of the “stone which the builders rejected” in verse 22 as refer- ring to Jesus (Mt 21:41, Mk 12:10, Lk 20:17, Acts 4:11 and 1 Pt 2:7). Watts reflects that New Testament perspective in strident terms in his rendition of that verse:

See what a living stone The builders did refuse Yet God hath built his church thereon In spite of envious Jews

The scribe and angry priest Reject thine only Son; Yet on this Rock shall Zion rest As the Chief corner-stone.

This is hardly a sentiment we would recognize in our time of mutual recognition and respect between these two sister traditions. Watts’s vituperation reminds us just how far we have come. In yet one final hymn based upon Psalm 118, Watts in- cludes none of his interreligious disputation and has creat- ed a lovely interpretation of several verses of this psalm that demonstrate the unity in which, amid our topsy-turvy, up- side-down world, we are united by one God:

Like angry bees, they girt me round; When God appears they fly; So burning thorns, with crackling sound, Make a fierce blaze and die.

Joy to the saints and peace belongs; The Lord protects their days: Let Isr’el tune immortal songs To his almighty grace. A

November 23, 2015 America 25 VATICAN DISPATCH Francis Looks East ould Pope Francis make im- Sinologist at the Verbiest Institute of was seriously ill in the hospital. portant breakthroughs with Leuven Catholic University, said in a That all this happened is without CBeijing’s government and with recent interview with UCA News. In precedent since Sino-Vatican talks Moscow’s Russian Orthodox patri- fact, this is the strategy advocated by started three decades ago, and it cer- arch within the next 12 months? This Pope Francis, as he spelled out in his tainly could not have occurred with- cannot be excluded, I think, and if ei- talk to young people in Havana last out high-level clearance. One may con- ther or both were to happen, then it September. clude, therefore, that China and the would surely be a major achievement It avoids dealing immediateley with Holy See are not only talking but have for his pontificate. such problematic questions as the de- also begun walking together on the A number of signs suggest that tention of Baoding’s Bishop James Su road to the normalization of relations. progress is being made on both fronts. Zhimin; the status of eight illicit bish- It is not clear how long the journey will Here I offer a first take, starting with ops and of the underground bishops, take, but one cannot exclude the pos- Beijing. as well as of Shanghai’s aux- sibililty that they could On Oct. 11 a six-person delegation iliary bishop, Ma Daqin; reach their destination from the Holy See arrived in Beijing the question of the number Something within one year. for “talks” with their Chinese coun- of dioceses; and other is- On the Moscow terparts. The delegation, comprising sues, including the question important front, too, there are officials from the Vatican’s Secretariat of freedom of movement has changed indications that the of State and the Congregation for the for the Chinese bishops. Holy See and the Evangelization of Peoples departed The October meeting in in Sino- Patriarchate of Moscow on Oct. 16, but so far neither side has Beijing was the second since are actively working revealed the content of their conversa- Francis became pope, and it Vatican toward the first-ever tions. appears to have gone well. relations. encounter between the The one question that would cer- I say this because the Holy bishop of Rome and the tainly have been on the agenda is the See’s delegation visited the patriarch of the Russian nomination of bishops in mainland National Seminary in Beijing (which Orthodox Church. Francis has often China. That has been at the center of is under the Patriotic Association’s expressed his wish for such an encoun- discussions for many years, and the control) on Oct. 15. There he was ter, and it now appears there is willing- periodic failure to resolve it has led to welcomed by the rector, Bishop Ma ness on the Russian side as well. The illicit ordinations, excommunications Yinglin, who was ordained without Russians ruled out meeting in Moscow and tensions. The absence of such papal approval and is president of the or Rome, so alternative venues are now negative elements in recent times, and government-sanctioned bishops’ con- under consideration. the ordination of a bishop approved ference, an entity not recognized by The latest positive signal on this by both sides, suggests that the Sino- Rome. On past visits, the Holy See front has come from Bishop Tikhon, Vatican dialogue has entered a posi- delegation always avoided meeting the new vicar for the Diocese of tive phase. Patriotic Association officials and the Moscow, a rising star in the Orthodox The reason for this may well be bishops’ conference leaders. That it Church and long considered Vladimir that both sides “agreed to leave aside, happened now suggests something im- Putin’s spiritual advisor. Speaking in for the time being, negotiations on portant has changed in Sino-Vatican Rome on Sept 28, he predicted “some- the more thorny questions” as the relations. Also noteworthy, though less thing concrete” will come with respect Rev. Jeroom Heyndrickx, a veteran important, was the delegation’s meet- to a meeting between Francis and ing with Bishop Li Shan of Beijing on Patriarch Kirill. If such were to hap- Oct. 14. In the past, delegates of the pen on the eve of the Pan-Orthodox GERARD O’CONNELL is America’s Rome Holy See were not allowed to meet the Council in 2016, that would be truly correspondent. America’s Vatican coverage is sponsored in part by the Jesuit communities of city’s bishop, though he was ordained significant. the United States. with papal approval, except when one GERARD O’CONNELL

26 America November 23, 2015 FAITH IN FOCUS When Did I See Him? Bringing the Beatitudes behind bars BY CHRIS BRUNO hris, I brought you some appeared to be staged of the material. I thought for “The Truman Show.” you might want to....” The water was glass. The “No,” I said, cutting air was still. Trees in the ‘Coff my sister, Liz. “I don’t want to pre- distance looked like fur read any of the material. It’s my week- on the land. A family was end—I’m not working.” throwing crab rings off a She asked me again a few days later: neighboring pier, and cars “Chris?” were lining up to board an “Ugh—” My grunt of negation adjacent ferry. was meant to be pre-emptive. She ad- We walked down the dressed me by name only when she ramp to a pier on which was going to ask me for something I a large white building did not want to do. She was in profile stood—it had an ante- now, driving through the countryside chamber with secured toward Puget Sound in an S.U.V. she doors on either side of a was constantly either apologizing for, guard standing behind a because the interior was coated with glass partition. We slid dog hair, or bragging about because it our ID’s through, and wasn’t. “Do you want to go over a bit Liz picked up the con- what you’re going to say?” versation she had left “No,” I said. “I’m not going to say behind the last time she anything—I’m not going to do any- was here—all smiles and thing except listen to you. You do ev- laughter with the three erything.” guards who signed us in “Are you sure?” and led us through the “Of course, I’m sure, Liz.” I put metal detector. in my earbuds to drown out the The empathic powers Christian rock station that she had Liz deploys in her day started listening to. (Christian rock?, I job as a therapist in psychiatric lock- holdover from our attempts to bolster thought, what’s next? Books on tape by down wards border on the clairvoyant: our egos when we were outgunned Joel Osteen?) Daily she talks people out of suicide, intellectually in our youth by our two She parked the car in a one of consoles them as they attempt it over older siblings—and humiliating each those seaside Washington towns that the phone—“Joey, I’m hanging up now other in public, because people who looked like a typo—Steilacoom—on and calling 911; I will see you when suffer from megalomania are such easy a day in which the entire Northwest you arrive”—looks into their eyes as targets. they emerge from their most recent Liz said I had to watch a safety video CHRIS BRUNO is a graduate of Santa Clara unsuccessful attempts to kill them- before getting on the ferry, so I walked University. A basketball jersey with the surname selves. over to the television monitor playing of Bruno hangs from the rafters at the athletic When reunited, Liz and I alter- with no sound. I stared at it for a while center there. John ’80, Liz ’82 and Chris ’84 all lay claim to it. Katie ’81 is simply too short to nately spend our time telling each oth- and then turned around. Liz and the be believed. er how great we are—an adolescent two female guards started laughing at SEAN QUIRK ART:

November 23, 2015 America 27 me. “There’s no safety video! Just get on took turns at the readings and respon- It was not the Beatitudes that were the boat and hang on!” sorial psalm and the Gospel acclama- making it hard for me to see and speak. McNeil Prison grew in size before tion. We stood as my sister read the It was some other words that came to us. It was closed now, but like Alcatraz, Gospel. As we sat back down to hear me: “When did we see you in prison which I spied often through my swim what I assumed would be her reflec- and come to you?” “Truly I say to you, goggles, its hundred-year penitentia- tion, I was about to say, “Liz, please do as you have done it for one of the least ry past and current ghost town status not be boring,” when she turned to me of my brothers, you have done it for were irresistible to me. We were me.” headed deeper into the island to Jesus might be sitting there This thought, of being face-to- the Special Commitment Center, face with Jesus, of sitting across where 300 level-three sex offend- right now before me, it from him here on this remote is- ers reside. Most have been impris- land, in this Special Commitment oned for decades and will never seemed. He might. Center—of having him listen to know freedom again. me in the flesh—this tore through For the past decade, Liz had How would I know? me. I did not lift my eyes. He made it her mission to bring the might be sitting there right now good news to these men—to read them and said, “Chris, do you want to read before me, it seemed. He might. How the readings from Mass once or twice the Beatitudes?” would I know? I continued to cry. a month and bring them Communion “The what?” I looked over at her. He would not find me now meek, from her parish in Redmond, Wash. “The Beatitudes—it’s on the hand- pure of heart, a peacemaker or particu- She had been telling me for years sto- out I gave you.” larly merciful—as he might have when ries of “her guys,” as she called them, I picked up the paper and looked at I first read these words, as a boy in and always asked me to come with her it—it was short. So I read it: parochial school. At this age he would some time. I was game. see me as I actually was and not how I We entered a building by way of a Blessed are the poor in spirit, for hoped I would one day be. tunnel that dips beneath the security theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I think I wanted to visit McNeil fences and were ushered into a central Blessed are they who mourn, for Island partly to see a freak show. I area, which resembled the check-in they shall be comforted. think my curiosity got the better of desk of a slightly outdated health club. Blessed are the meek, for they shall me. Orange being the new black, I as- There were no heavy fortifications inherit the earth.... pired to improve my wardrobe. But sit- inside—no phalanx of 12-gauge-tot- ting there, among those men, unable to ing guards or steel catwalks up above, I finished. “Can you read it again?” speak, I realized that I was the freak. I which was my preconceived image of she asked. I read it again. And then was the oddity: a free man imprisoned the place. Liz and I were ushered into looked at her. at this moment by his emotions—by an empty room with chairs and a tem- “Can you tell the guys what it a part of me I did not understand or porary altar already set up. means?” was scared of or wanted to go away. “What it means?” I wondered. Everyone remained silent. My sister ‘When Did We See You?’ I looked down at the words. And did not say a word. The men walked in one at a time. Of they began to swim on the page. The the eight men, one impressed me as tears in my eyes caused everything to On First Hearing unusually old. Another was so short blur, like saltwater had seeped into my I cleared my throat. his jeans had to be hand-hemmed; swim goggles again. I am a profession- “The most astonishing account of he looked too young. There were two al speaker, but words could not come. Jesus I have ever read,” I said, “is from black men—one older and one young- The harder I tried, the less I could a history book written by a husband er. There was a rural type with a lazy see and the more impossible it was and wife couple named Will and Ariel eye, who was married. And one thin, to speak. Tears dripped on the paper. Durant. A volume of theirs entitled very quiet man, European-looking, One of the inmates to my right put his Caesar and Christ illustrates how rev- whose speech was so indistinct it hand upon me. He was a serial rapist, olutionary was the appearance of Jesus scared me a little. One of them, I knew, who had attacked female guards when during ancient Rome’s domination of was a pedophile; I was told not to he was first imprisoned. the world. speak of children in their midst. He rubbed my back—this was “The Beatitudes represent an in- After initial introductions, the men against the rules. “It’s O.K.,” he said. version of what was then the human

28 America November 23, 2015 condition. The concept that the poor are the meek, etc.’ their first hearing. or the meek or the persecuted or the “So these thoughts, I think, came “I, of course, haven’t heard anything mournful had any value at all—or to him, one at a time, as he pursued he said myself. I haven’t met him, but would receive some reward, in time, this particular line of reasoning until as I look at these words I realize some- owing to their condition—was incom- it made such an indelible imprint on one conceived them. Historically, they prehensible at that age. him that he was able to recall each of are ascribed to Jesus. In my heart, I “What always struck me about these inversions in a lot, almost as a recognize these words as God’s. this passage, because it is so short, is poem, when pressed by the multitude “So, Liz,” I said, looking back at that thoughts of this inversion must to speak. my sister, “that is what the Beatitudes have come to Jesus one by one. He “For their part, these words must mean to me.” didn’t begin preaching at 17. He was have been so radical to hear initially “Thank you,” Liz said. She smiled a tradesman. We have this quaint no- that some of the people who heard a large artificial smile at me, devel- tion of his hammering wood in the them committed an individual line oped decades ago in our near Irish- dirt of some backward town, but he or two to memory at the hearing of twinship to communicate nonverbally grew up just one hour away on foot it. Imagine being a kind and gener- that something we did was really stu- from an exceedingly cosmopolitan city ous person in an empire that extracts pid or that we were probably in big [Sepphoris—which itself looks like blood from men and hearing that one trouble again with Mom. “Thanks for a typo]—but this fact is lost on us. line, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they preparing!” He was exposed to the best of Greek shall obtain mercy.’ Wouldn’t you walk By preparing, I presume she re- and Roman sophistication. He saw home after hearing that one sentence ferred to my 16 years of Catholic ed- an upscale but corrupt city, where he and repeat it to everyone you met, ucation versus her 18, including her probably had a lot of customers— rejoicing that of all the things Jesus master’s degree, which, to my mind, makes sense, doesn’t it? I imagine as he could have said, that he included a was being diminished minutely by her walked back home and compared what description of you and your life in exposure to Christian rock. he saw with the people he lived with his revolution of the status quo? The “You’re welcome,” I said, returning these thoughts came to him—‘Blessed things Jesus said were unforgettable at that smile in kind. A

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Catholic Theologians Condemn Ross RADIO Douthat’s Recent Piece on the Pope Jim McDermott, S.J. Ronald Rolheiser, O.M.I., talks about searching for a vocabulary for Christ’s Passion on “America This Pope Recalls ‘Slander’ of Blessed Oscar Romero, Kevin Clarke Week” on The Catholic Channel.

“Attempt to do God’s work in the world and trust in him. And all will be well.” —Winifred Holloway, “Anxiety and Sanctity”

November 23, 2015 America 29 Books & Culture

America,” have a much wider canvas. THEATER | ROB WEINERT-KENDT What is more, a focus on family is hardly a uniquely American predilec- MISSED CONNECTIONS tion (see the Oresteia, “King Lear,” “A Doll’s House”). It is among the signal ‘The Humans’ offers a fresh take on the family drama. achievements of Stephen Karam’s stark and beautiful new play The Humans he social-conservative no- that it keeps returning, like an aimless (now running Off-Broadway at the tion that the family is the adult child who never moves out, to Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theatre basic unit of society is un- the family as a default template for dra- through Jan. 3, 2016, and scheduled cannily mirrored by the ma. From Eugene O’Neill to Arthur for a Broadway transfer next spring) Tcommon leftist and feminist critique of Miller, from Lorraine Hansberry to that it seems, from its first moments to the family as a factory for authoritari- Tracy Letts (“August: Osage County”), its last, to transcend the confines of the an values—a basic unit, all right, but the “great American play” often seems “family play.” of a corrupt and joyless social order. stuck in the living room. Yes, Karam assembles a basically in- You can sometimes hear a similar com- Of course, many iconic American tact nuclear clan over a Thanksgiving plaint about American playwriting: plays, from “Our Town” to “Angels in dinner, at which they bicker, josh and

NUCLEAR OPTION. Clockwise from top: Sarah Steele, Cassie Beck, Arian Moayed, Jayne Houdyshell, Reed Birney PHOTOS: JOAN MARCUS

30 America November 23, 2015 mutually disapprove across genera- ingly snaps Momo back to coherence, thumps and bumps from an upstairs tions. There are tensions, revelations, a few startling spills and spats and a apartment and the occasional forbid- half-reconciliations, a bit too much climactic fit of writhing dementia and ding hum of the trash compactor. It is alcohol consumed. But context is ev- subsequent calming that are as harrow- no spoiler to say that these eerie, root- erything: The setting for this uneasy ing yet tender as anything I’ve seen on a less environs ultimately prove strangely gathering of the Irish Catholic Blake stage. Meanwhile, the lights in Brigid’s both enveloping and isolating—a literal family of Scranton, Pa., is the low-ceil- new apartment keep successively fail- dark night of the soul. inged basement of a largely unfur- ing; there are shocking, never-explained If this all sounds unremittingly nished duplex apartment in New York City’s Chinatown, into which Brigid (Sarah Steele) has just moved with her sensitive, grad-student boyfriend When the Wing Gives Way Richard (Arian Moayed). Brigid’s par- ents, Erik (Reed Birney) and Dierdre I (Jayne Houdyshell), have driven in How to feel his death? On the street. for the meal from Scranton, bring- The shots. My friend’s scream. ing with them his dementia-stricken, One cracked the air, the other wheelchair-bound mother, nicknamed pierced the thin veil, a usual evening “Momo” (Lauren Klein), for what Erik returning from somewhere, grimly calls “her last big trip.” Also on returned from many times before. hand is Brigid’s sister Aimee (Cassie Beck), a lawyer recently dumped by her longtime girlfriend and hence go- When I look for where to fix the broken city that I love, ing through the familiar first-holiday- the whole tower wobbles. What the government hasn’t done. without-a-loved-one jitters. What the gunmen’s’ parents didn’t do. What hands the drug lords forced. And yes, this is one of those dramas What? What I haven’t done with my puny song? in which a faltering patriarch gives a toast, a little too emphatically and with And now: the sirens. more than a trace of desperation, about And now: the neighbors say, “Did he resist?” how family is all that really matters, And now: how can I live in this place or any place? even as he is watching his own fray and Can I live with myself—a part of his self, lying there, crumble before his eyes. Erik voices a part of the selves who dropped him there. this sentiment twice in “The Humans,” All of us, under the wing that is no wing. but with a kind of abashed diffidence that suggests he is trying to convince II himself as much as his wife and daugh- ters. He never quite makes the sale, but In my mind-voice, without knowing why Karam has written no big, declarative or from where it came, a whisper: speeches to strip this flawed father of his illusions or to give us a clear sense “When the wing gives way…” of where he has arrived by play’s end. “When the wing gives way…” Instead, as far as dialogue goes, Erik simply makes a brief announcement, I want to be more ready than I am today. faces a moment of reckoning and Ready to let what is left lift me, draw me into meanings some testy exchanges—and then it is that will shatter me more than this. straight into the logistics of getting ev- eryone home safely. (Call a car service? JENNIFER WALLACE And how much will that be?) Indeed, the big moments of Karam’s Jennifer Wallace is a poetry editor at The Cortland Review and a founding editor of Toadlily play aren’t strictly in the dialogue. Press. CityLit Press published her book of poems and photographs, It Can be Solved by There’s a warm but wary Irish family Walking (2012). singalong, a pre-meal prayer that fleet-

November 23, 2015 America 31 bleak, rest assured that But the most tragic thing Karam—whose previous Left to right: Sarah about “The Humans” is its plays include the tetchy Steele, Arian Moayed, unflinchingly authentic Jayne Houdyshell “Speech and Debate” and and Lauren Klein in depiction of the way most the sleek, yearning “Sons “Humans” families in fact don’t have of the Prophet”—is also a the big, cathartic fights nimble showman with an and clean breaks we often eye for small, comic ab- see in plays and films— surdities. There are laughs that instead we spend so amid the aches and pains, much of our time togeth- in other words, though er just dealing with the they spring less from a exigencies of living, clean- joke-writer’s eagerness to ing up after ourselves and please than from the play- each other, snatching mo- wright’s sense of family it- ments of connection and self as the ultimate inside comfort but otherwise joke. Under the director managing or medicating Joe Mantello, the play’s flawless for better and worse, outside our time our problems rather than resolving cast executes an exquisitely subtle with them. them. Like poor, anxious Erik, we will choreography of eyerolls and small Still, there’s no way around it: This all eventually call that car service and exasperations, not to mention barely is a heartbreaking play, and not only wait in the dark for it to arrive. suppressed arguments-in-waiting, that because Karam has matter-of-fact- give the play’s characters a convincing ly folded into it so many markers of ROB WEINERT-KENDT, an arts journalist scope beyond their 90 minutes’ traffic millennial middle-class malaise: eco- and editor of American Theater magazine, has written for The New York Times and Time Out on the stage. We get the sense that the nomic insecurity, health-care horrors, New York. He writes a blog called The Wicked Blakes have lived, and will go on living, even the long twin shadows of 9/11. Stage.

32 America November 23, 2015 OF OTHER THINGS | KERRY WEBER WAITING IN HOPE

early a billion people watched find a way out of here,” says one miner. share with us what the meaning of the live news feed as the 33 Depictions of the miners’ faith lives hope really is,” Pope Francis said during Nmen slowly emerged, one by are plentiful in the film, but not over- the audience. “Thank you for having one, from the chamber that had held bearing. The men make the Sign of the hope in God.” them 200 stories below the earth. It Cross as they pass a statue of Our Lady In a strange way, the film is a per- was October 2010, and for the pre- when entering the mine; they pray to- fect one to watch as the Advent season vious 69 days much of the world had gether in stressful moments. But the begins. In one of the film’s final scenes, been captivated by the ongoing efforts film generally resists overly pious plat- the last man to leave the mine pauses to rescue these miners from the depths itudes and avoids the in the darkness before of the collapsed San José mine near use of faith purely as a he climbs into the cage Copiapo, Chile. Although there had narrative tool. The men that will carry him out. been notes and video communications in the mine are men of Wherever He takes a moment to with the men after it was learned they faith in real life, and so consider a message the were alive, no one could be certain that the film simply works we go, men have carved into any of the men would make it out, and to demonstrate this, Christ is the wall of the mine: those awaiting their loved ones on the with powerful results. “God was with us.” surface still knew little of what the men In one scene, the always there Even as the mine col- had endured together. men have had no sign first. lapsed around them. Five years later, we have a fuller pic- that they might be res- Even in those darkest ture of their suffering—the hunger, cued and are down to moments. Even as they high temperatures, the fear of death— the last of their food: a fought and starved and but also of the hope and camaraderie single can of tuna fish to prayed and forgave one that existed within that darkness, that be split 33 ways. Each is another. time of waiting. This lesser-seen story given a few spoonfuls of It is a sentiment that is one that is movingly captured in the a watered-down mix- Pope Francis echoed new filmThe 33, directed by Patricia ture. As the final bites in another papal audi- Riggen. Filmed on location in two are taken, each man ence, reminding us that, Colombian mines and in the Atacama imagines the meal he wherever we go, Christ Desert in Chile, it depicts the struggles wishes he had, the per- is always there first: of the families above ground, but even son he wishes was bringing it to him—­ “When we arrive, he is there waiting,” more poignantly depicts the journey of all of them knowing that this may in- Francis said. Of course, this is not al- the men who were trapped below, both deed be their last supper together, all ways easy to remember, and even when by their circumstances and by their of them still holding out hope that this we know it, often difficult to recognize. own failings. suffering might be taken away. Then, In trying times, it is not always The story at its core is one of hope, in a moment reminiscent of “Sullivan’s easy to feel or find God’s presence. forgiveness and community, and so, Travels,” the men find a reason to laugh Jesus’ own disciples struggled to rec- although the entire world knows how even in this desperate situation. ognize the risen Jesus: On the road to it will end, it is these personal encoun- No individual or corporation was Emmaus, Jesus arrives in the midst of ters and relationships that maintain ever held accountable for the collapse daily life and walks alongside the dis- the dramatic tension necessary to car- of the mine, and the men have since ciples as they are “conversing and de- ry viewers through to the end. Their returned to their regular routines— bating.” He stays with them and urges rescue depends on the tools and the for the most part. In October, on the them forward, even though they can- persistence of those on the surface, fifth anniversary of their rescue, the 33 not yet understand. His presence on but their true survival depends on traveled to Rome and were greeted and that road reminds us that, all too often, their interactions in the mine: “If we blessed by Pope Francis during a gen- that which we are searching for is be- can be good to each other, we might eral audience. The men presented him side us all along. If only we could rec- with a miner helmet covered in signa- ognize that burning in our hearts for KERRY WEBER is America’s managing editor. tures. “I think any one of them could what it is and follow it.

November 23, 2015 America 33 BOOKS | MARK J. DAVIS man shield while they pinned him to a window and fired at his neighbors. INEVITABLE VIOLENCE? An older Rafah man stated: “This didn’t start yesterday. When I build a THE 51 DAY WAR victims of the violence and their fami- house, the Israelis bomb it. When I try Ruin and Resistance in Gaza lies. By the time the conflict ended two to make a living, they destroy my busi- By Max Blumenthal weeks later, Blumenthal reports that ness. When I try to raise a child, they Nation Books. 272p $25.99 the “Israeli military had not only torn kill him.” through the civilian population like a Blumenthal explains that the Israel One year after a cease-fire between buzz saw...killing some 2,200 people— Defense Forces had been planning a Israel and Hamas ended the third more than 70 percent were confirmed major assault against Gaza since late Gaza war in seven years, no one expects as civilians—and wounding well over 2013. The I.D.F.’s assaults on Gaza that this recent conflict will be the last. 10,000; it had pulverized Gaza’s infra- stem from a military doctrine that Prime Minister David Cameron of structure,” including schools, hospitals uses massive force against the civil- Britain has described Gaza, with 1.8 and mosques. By comparison, Israeli ian population instead of targeting million inhabitants crammed into a its guerilla foes. To maintain the sta- narrow strip of 141 square miles un- tus quo, the I.D.F. must, according der tight Israeli suveillance, as “an open to an Israeli journalist, periodically air prison or even concentration camp.” do “maintenance work in Gaza and Although Israel withdrew its soldiers to ‘mow the lawn,’” including regular and settlers from Gaza 10 years ago, assassinations of Hamas leaders and continuous hostility and the absence occasional invasions. What distin- of a long-term truce between Israel guished the 51-day war was the un- and Hamas make another round of vi- precedented amount of firepower the olence likely. Israeli military deployed. The expectation of another war ex- The kidnapping and murder in plains in part why Gaza is still in ruins Hebron, in the West Bank, of three despite a commitment by international young Jewish hitchhikers on June 12, donors of $2.5 billion in reconstruc- 2014, by “a rogue Hamas cell” fur- tion funds when the cease-fire was nished the Netanyahu government announced on Aug. 26, 2014. Donors with a pretext to round up hundreds have been reluctant to honor their of Hamas members who had been pledges; Palestinians have continued released under a 2011 prisoner swap their infighting; and Israeli approval of for an Israeli captive soldier. Although reconstruction permits has proceed- Netanyahu knew that the Jewish teen- ed glacially. As a result, not a single agers had been murdered, he contin- one of the nearly 18,000 homes de- losses amounted to 66 soldiers and six ued to dispatch armed search parties stroyed or damaged in Gaza is habit- civilians killed and 576 wounded. and mounted a propaganda campaign able; only one-fourth of the rubble has Blumenthal’s aim, however, is not against Hamas that included biblical been cleared; 100,000 Gazans remain to show this statistical disparity of and revenge rhetoric. When Jewish homeless; and unemployment stands suffering but to allow Gaza’s survivors extremists killed and burned the body at 43 percent. Meanwhile, internation- to tell what happened to them. A wit- of a 16-year-old Arab high school stu- al attention to Gaza’s misery has been ness described how his unarmed 23- dent in retaliation, Hamas elements in supplanted by the rise of the Islamic year cousin returning to his home in Gaza began firing rockets into south- State, the Syrian civil war and Iran’s Shujaiya to search for missing family ern Israel. The Hamas leadership even- nuclear program. members was killed by a sniper’s three tually took credit for further rocket at- The 51 Day War seeks to return the shots when he waded into a pile of tacks, and the war was on. focus to the suffering of Gaza’s civil- rubble. A man in Khuza’a recounted a In an effort to avert war, Hamas ian population. Max Blumenthal, the tank commander’s shooting of an un- proposed a 10-year truce, including author of a book about the Israeli oc- armed elderly man trying to escape the the release of the prisoners that had cupation, arrived in Gaza on the 38th closed military zone. A man in Rafah been arrested after the killing of the day of the war and began interviewing said Israeli snipers used him as a hu- three youths, the lifting of the siege and

34 America November 23, 2015 opening of border crossings, and with- The U.N. Independent Commission Southern Gothic writer, stricken with drawal of Israeli tanks from the Gaza of Inquiry in a June 2015 report, lupus as a young woman and forced to border. Hamas wanted relief from the while finding Israel responsible for abandon a nascent literary career in siege; Israel wanted to preserve the most of the possible war crimes, also New York to convalesce on her moth- status quo. Emboldened by the refus- cited Hamas’s firing of rockets at er’s farm in Georgia. Her fiction lingers al of Egypt and the United States to population centers and its execution on the grotesque and strange. Her sto- consider these humanitarian demands, of 21 suspected Gazan collaborators ries are populated by misfits and cast- Israel flatly rejected them and insisted as violations of international law. offs, ugly people acting badly whose on a return to the status quo of siege Blumenthal glosses over these events marginality elucidates the broken, and surveillance. Blumenthal shows and fails to hold Hamas responsible beautiful nature of God. O’Connor’s that throughout the war, the Obama for its actions. Although Blumenthal’s Catholicism was daily Mass with her administration accepted Israel’s expla- sympathies are clearly with the Gazan mother, a near-monastic schedule and nations for its actions at face value and people, one must ask whether they the contemplation of evil, truth and continued to replenish I.D.F.’s sup- are being well served by a government beauty. plies, while professing to be “heartbro- willing to sacrifice so many of them. Blessed Oscar Romero was the ken” by the suffering of Gaza children In the final cease-fire, the only conces- archbishop of San Salvador assassi- torn apart by Israeli shrapnel. sion to Hamas was the extension of nated by a government-backed death Blumenthal falters in his refusal to Gaza’s fishing limit from three to six squad sniper as he celebrated Mass. consider Hamas’s responsibility for miles. Was this gain worth the human He was killed because he loudly and the suffering of its people. He claims cost? steadfastly condemned the state ter- that unlike the I.D.F., Hamas focused rorism committed against religious its most lethal force on military tar- MARK J. DAVIS is a retired attorney who lives educators, peasants, workers and stu- gets. This argument strains credulity. in Santa Fe, N.M. dents—a popular movement for politi- cal change in El Salvador—and against anyone remotely suspected of sympa- EILEEN MARKEY thizing with that movement. Romero had turned his Sunday homily into a HAUNTED BY THE INCARNATION weekly catalogue and denunciation of massacre, murder, abduction, rape FLANNERY O’CONNOR It reminds me of a trick my father used and torture. His was the Catholicism Fiction Fired by Faith to play on us kids, urging us to pat our of community, the establishment of a By Angela Alaimo O’Donnell bellies and rub our heads at the same human rights office of the archdiocese, Liturgical Press. 152p $12.95 time. But I suspect the old Jesuit is still the running of a refugee and relief op- trying to teach me something. eration, meetings, speeches, defending OSCAR ROMERO Blessed Oscar Romero God in the dispossessed Love Must Win Out and Flannery O’Connor and finding himself in By Kevin Clarke do not have much in advocating for them. Liturgical Press. 164p $12.95 common, except that Flannery O’Connor: they are among the most Fiction Fired by Faith, Raymond A. Schroth, S.J., America’s recognized 20th-century by Angela Alaimo literary editor and the most unrelent- Catholics—particularly O’Donnell, and Oscar ing and exacting (for my own good) among non-Catholics. Romero: Love Must Win professor I had at Fordham University, They appear to repre- Out, by Kevin Clarke, assigned me a double book review. sent polar extremes of are both carefully crafted, It seemed at first a generous offer, a Catholicism, not in the slim but densely packed chance to read a book I’d already been way of our current qua- books. They are part of planning to read and yet be able to si-left/right, evolution- Liturgical Press’s fine call it work. But immediately the as- ist/orthodox antago- “People of God” series signment came to seem like a perverse nisms but in the age-old on the lives of prominent challenge. I was to review two biog- tension between the cloister and the contemporary and near-contemporary raphies, about two radically different cathedral, the private and the public. Catholics. (Both authors are America kinds of Catholics, in the same piece. Flannery O’Connor is the reclusive contributors.)

November 23, 2015 America 35 O’Donnell, a poet and profes- examines its meanings and relates sor at Fordham’s Curran Center for the themes to profound Christian American Catholic Studies, introduc- ones. Through O’Donnell, the reader es us to Flannery O’Connor’s child- comes to know O’Connor as an art- hood, family and the social world of a ist whose vocation is to contemplate small Southern Catholic community. the Incarnation, to make us recognize, But we really grow to know O’Connor even—especially—in the horrors, that, as a young writer leaving her paro- as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, the chial home for the Iowa world is charged with the Writers’ Workshop, a grandeur of God. naif with incipient tal- The learned and ent carrying her God- loving discussion of haunted vision into the O’Connor’s work in this secular literary establish- book makes the reader ment. want to go back and read “O’Connor’s artistic O’Connor’s stories again, vision is radically incar- one by one, while flipping national, in every sense back to Fiction Fired by of that word. Her deep- Faith. ly Catholic sense of the Oscar Romero: Love world posits belief in the Must Win Out is a deeply creation as good (albeit researched and carefully misshapen by sin), in the annotated retelling of the human being as made in the image and archbishop’s conversion from a cleri- likeness of God and in a world that is cal and rule-bound, though gentle and immanent with the divine presence,” sincere, practitioner of charity to an in- O’Donnell writes. spired and daring advocate for justice. O’Donnell does good work weav- Clarke, like O’Donnell, synthesizes ear- ing the story of O’Connor’s life, ex- lier biographies of his subject but brings amining her cherished, intimate and, his own reporting and analysis. What for much of her life, long-distance he achieves, in a fast-moving 140 pages, friendships, exploring the tension in is an intimate portrait of a man search- the oddball author’s relationship to ing for God, struggling against his own her rural community. O’Connor was demons of scrupulosity, need for con- from Georgia—its people and mores trol and loneliness before he becomes populate her stories—but she was not the Monsignor Romero we know. of it. She was an outsider, a watch- This is a valuable examination of er. Drawing on O’Connor’s letters, Romero’s inner life, his longing for O’Donnell helps the reader under- connection—communion—particu- stand O’Connor’s vocation as an artist larly now as canonization approaches, and her embrace of her own suffering elements of the Salvadoran church and as a way to draw closer to God. society attempt to depoliticize him, and But the strength of O’Donnell’s gauzy pieties threaten to reduce him an book, what makes reading it as enjoy- image on a T-shirt. Through Clarke we able as dropping in on a senior seminar meet a stilted and often awkward man led by an expert professor, is the deep who struggles to serve God in his peo- literary exegesis of O’Connor’s work. ple, as the world and his church shift Many of us have read O’Connor’s sto- beneath him. We meet a pastor forced ries at some point, and probably a vis- to confront horror and evil. ceral impression of the haunted char- Love Must Win Out lays out the acters remains with us. But O’Donnell political realities of 1970s El Salvador plumbs each short story and novel, in some detail, a welcome and nec-

36 America November 23, 2015 essary inclusion if readers are to un- Before becoming archbishop, from poverty and degradation and derstand the promise and challenge Romero used his weekly column in celebrated the incarnational notion of of Romero’s martyrdom. He did not the diocesan newspaper and appear- God beside the brutalized people was speak on behalf of some faceless and ances on television and radio to call anything but a road to Damascus. It mute “poor.” Romero was critical of out “subversives” in the church and at- played out slowly and interpersonal- a specific economic system and the tempted to roust the Jesuits from a San ly, spurred famously by his friendship state violence employed to preserve it. Salvador high school where they had with Rutilio Grande, S.J., who was as- Readers learn about the primacy of the established night classes for poor stu- sassinated by the right wing in 1977. export economy, the steep stratification dents and their parents and were tak- But it emerged earlier, too, in 1975, of Salvadoran society, the role of the ing rich students on eye-opening visits when as auxiliary bishop in Santiago church as ally in enforcing the status to poor barrios. These Jesuits taught de María he witnessed the aftermath quo and the bubbling up of resistance that Christ was incarnate in the suf- of a National Guard massacre. “The to this system. fering people, the body of Christ bro- villagers reported that the victims, all Clarke spends ample time exploring ken again and again in the violence of members of one extended family, had Romero’s early antipathy to liberation poverty. When Romero was invited by been pulled from their beds, tortured, theology and his contentious relation- members of the already numerous base then murdered in cold blood with bul- ship with Jesuits. He was so frightened Christian communities to a Mass in lets and machete.... Their blood still by the thinking emerging from the the early 1970s, they admonished him stained the walls, the floorboards still Latin American Episcopal Conference for his positions. Romero grew unchar- held the stench of blood.” meeting at Medellín, which articulated acteristically hot-tempered, shouting, The violence and ugliness O’Connor a preferential option for the poor and “You are not doing pastoral work here invoked in fiction to expose readers to condemned the violence of structural at all. You are doing political work. You deeper lessons were real in Romero’s or social sin (concepts now closely as- haven’t called me to a Mass, you’ve El Salvador. One saw Christ cut down sociated with him), that he developed called me to a meeting of subversives!” every day. a facial tic at the mere mention of the His conversion to a Catholicism Clarke tells us that Romero was si- name Medellín, Clarke tells us. that specifically embraced liberation lent and pensive as he walked to his car

November 23, 2015 America 37 one day with one of his priests. Once he changed. His lifelong devotion re- Clarke and O’Donnell tell the stories inside he said, “We have to find a way quired that he defend that Incarnate of two dramatically different peo- to evangelize the rich, so that they can God in the people being cut down. But ple, each haunted and driven by the change. So that they convert.” in finding courage, including the cour- Incarnation. As Romero saw firsthand the gro- age to allow himself more love and less tesque horrors inflicted on suspected judgment, he also found connection. EILEEN MARKEY is the author of A subversives and witnessed the daily His loneliness abated. Dangerous Woman, to be published by Nation Books next year, a biography of Maura Clark, brutality of poverty in a country with Can there be different kinds of one of the U.S. churchwomen killed in 1980 in an infant mortality rate of 60 percent, Catholics, one private, one public? El Salvador.

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38 America November 23, 2015 THE WORD Preparing With Love FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT (C), NOV. 29, 2015 Readings: Jer 33:14–16; Ps 25:4–14; 1 Thes 3:12–4:2; Lk 21:25–36 “The days are surely coming, says the Lord”(Jer 33:14)

hile the season of Advent great joy, which shall be to all people” ilance “at all times.” This is not a passive is imbued with remem- initially were heard only by a few shep- caution but an active preparation. Wbering, recalling Christ’s herds (Lk 2:8). The preparation for the apostles first coming as an infant, when divini- Yet Jeremiah’s day had come. That was life with Christ, as it must be for ty became incarnate, it is also a time of was the time when an unknown us too. Christ walks with us as we look anticipation, as we reflect on and await baby was born “in the city of David a to the past and await the future, in the Christ’s second coming. But Advent is Saviour, which is Christ the Lord” (Lk Scriptures, in the church and in the not only a celebration of the past and 2:11). The infant savior grew to world with our brothers and sis- an eager expectation of the future; it is manhood, gathering disciples, ters. Revelation, a living thing, a season that asks us to meditate on the that momentous incarnation emerges from the pages of the present and delight in Christ’s presence becoming not only the be- Scripture for us; it comes to with us now. It is this very season that ginning of a human life but us in the liturgy, lives with us concentrates our hearts, minds and a touchstone of human his- and guides us to our future. souls on Christ in order to make pres- tory and destiny. The apostle Paul also ent the days that have already been and As Jesus prepared his dis- gave concrete direction to the the days that are surely coming. ciples for the end of his life, Jeremiah said, “The days are sure- though, he did not direct them to ly coming,” when God would “cause his beginning but to the future, when PRAYING WITH SCRIPTURE a righteous branch to spring up for he would return. He promised them As you think about preparing for the David; and he shall execute justice that “there will be signs in the sun, coming of Christ, what is one thing that and righteousness in the land.” A sense the moon and the stars, and on earth helps you focus your attention on Christ? How can you grow in love and holiness of imminence looms over Jeremiah’s nations will be in dismay… in antic- this Advent? How can you do so more and prophecy, as does the mystery of its ful- ipation of what is coming upon the more? fillment. Its surety is promised—what world, for the powers of the heavens DUNNE TAD ART: God has promised, God will do—but will be shaken. And then they will church in 1 Thessalonians as he aided its arrival could only be anticipated. see the Son of Man coming in a cloud them in preparing for the future. In an- But what was anticipation for the with power and great glory.” These ticipation of the “coming of our Lord prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled in powerful apocalyptic images point us Jesus with all his saints,” Paul prays Christ’s birth centuries later. According to the coming redemption, the days that God will make them “increase to Luke’s Gospel, in the little southern that are surely coming. and abound in love for one another Judean town of Bethlehem, his humble And bracketed by the birth of the and for all” and that their hearts would parents called there by a Roman cen- infant savior and coming of the cosmic be strengthened “in holiness that you sus, the future became the present. For redeemer, there is the now: the present, may be blameless before our God and those of us raised on the Charlie Brown the preparation. What does it mean to Father.” Paul acknowledged that the Christmas specials it is hard not to re- prepare at Advent? In Luke’s Gospel Thessalonians were living with love call Linus reciting Luke’s Christmas Jesus warns his disciples against twin and holiness, even as he encouraged story in the King James Version, re- threats—not to become “drowsy” with them, but asked that they “do so more membering that the “good tidings of partying or to become anxious with and more.” More and more love and the worries of day-to-day life but to holiness now, to honor the infant who immerse themselves in the promises of came to us then and in preparation for JOHN W. MARTENS is a professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn. the past, the hope of the future and the the days that are coming. Twitter: @BibleJunkies. joy of the present. Jesus counsels a vig- JOHN W. MARTENS

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