So I was only semi-serious yesterday when I mentioned that maybe Marx had something to do with the trouble between the Catholic Church and the government of Mexico in the 1920s. I’ve done a little Wikipedia reading, and boy is the situation a whole lot more complicated that that.

When mentioning Marx, I was imagining that, since the 1920s was soon after the 1917 revolution in Russia, that maybe there was some sort of spillover into Mexico. And didn’t Trotsky end up in Mexico? And I was thinking that the Catholic Church was probably involved somehow on the wrong side, on the side of landowners and the oligarchy. That was about all I figured, and mostly all wrong.

Well, the Mexican Revolution started a bit earlier, and is sometimes known as the Mexican Revolution of 1910. So it pre-dates the Bolsheviks, and but anyway was more of a popular uprising against dictatorship, in this case Porfirio Diaz, when he jailed Francisco Madero on election day. There was various back and forth, revolution and counter-revolution, and our pals Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, and of course the United States meddled in things as we always do.

The thing about the Church was a lot more serious than I imagined. The Mexican Constitution of 1917 specifically outlawed monastic vows and orders, nationalized all Church property, prevented worship outside of Church buildings, and denied voting, property holding, or even the right to comment publicly, by Church officials. All this in the land of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

And this wasn’t just idle stuff, laws on the books only, as the government violently enforced these laws too, especially President Calles starting in 1924. And so all this led to the Cristero War, beginning on New Year’s Day 1927. Imagine, revolutionaries naming themselves after Christ himself.

So it’s like at first it was the Church on the side of the oligarchy, but then the revolutionaries oppressed the Church, so then the Church became counter-revolutionary, and then peasants revolted in support of the Church, or something like that. I can’t even begin to figure this out.

I’m thankful that Easter isn’t just one day; rather, it’s a season. And even Easter the day is an octave, it’s eight days, so today’s readings are Easter readings still. So this is like re-doing last week, having the big day again but with and among the people who want to be here, rather than the crowds who for some reason had to be here.

And I know I’m being snotty and judgemental and awful. And I’m sorry. It’s something I need to work on.

But the readings are great and so is the music and we’ve got incense and sprinkling of holy water. It’s a beautiful Mass, although the choir is somewhat rearranged. Bill has put Ellen over on the right, next to Jenny who was the cantor at our wedding.

And the first reading is from Acts, and it’s of a similar piece to my favorite in Acts. In fact, today’s reading is the specific one for Year B, but the Worship book lists an alternate reading for any year, from the second chapter of Acts, my total favorite: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s need.” The Year B reading, the one today, has the similar:

There was no needy person among them,
for those who owned property or houses would sell them,
bring the proceeds of the sale,
and put them at the feet of the apostles,
and they were distributed to each according to need.

Either way I love the total c.f. with one Karl Marx and his “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Okay, so everything doesn’t especially square with his “religion is the opiate of the masses,” but we can’t have everything. I like to tell people that the Democratic Party is too conservative for me, that I myself am somewhere to the left of Fidel Castro. Or, I like to remember the story Peter Case told when I saw him at the old 9:30 Club. The Berlin Wall had recently fallen, and a friend of his had remarked that with the fall of Communism, he was now awaiting the fall of Capitalism. “What’re you, an anarchist?” someone asked. “No,” the friend replied, “I’m a Christian.”

And that helps me some, because I certainly haven’t sold my house and given the proceeds to the Church. And I still want more stuff, much beyond what I need. And so that’s more to work on too.

And then there are the relics. The Knights of Columbus are sponsoring a pilgrimage of relics of six priests who were martyred in Mexico during the persecution of the Church in the 1920s. They’re in a beautiful silver reliquary that’s stationed just inside the sanctuary. Father Caulfield invites us to venerate them after Mass, and he urges us to pray for their intercession. I wrote recently about the unlikely event of ever having my life threatened for my faith, and how I failed even in the abstract to demonstrate even a minimal amount of strength. And so here now are six martyrs, and we’re not talking like ancient Rome or anything, but in recent history, within the lifetime of my grandfather, himself a Knight of Columbus and after whom I am named. And so after Mass we kneel at the communion rail and I pray for the strength of faith.

And so now I think about maybe finding out more about what the heck was going on in Mexico in the 1920s. Some sort of revolution, I guess. Probably influenced by that Marx fellow.

So, what happened was, my wife tried to comment on the post this week about His Holiness Benedict XVI, and wanted to know what I thought of him in the context of having approved the Instruction, of seeming to personally take such a hard line against gay priests. But she posted the comment to the wrong blog entry, one about helping my mother pack. So I didn’t understand that she was asking about the Instruction in the context of the Holy Father.

So, yes, I do really like Benedict XVI, and, no, he’s not especially progressive on the gay rights front.

His Holiness is actually a lot more progressive generally, or, rather, a lot less conservative, than was expected at first. As Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for almost the entirety of His Holiness John Paul II’s reign, then Bishop and later Cardinal Ratzinger was nicknamed “God’s Rottweiler” for his conservative zeal. And then upon his installation to the papacy, he was expected to be much the same way. So he has apparently surprised some quarters with his general amiability and with so far having made few changes to the curiate. And, heck, he appointed, as his successor to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, William Cardinal Levada, the Archbishop of San Francisco. Yes, Cardinal Levada is apparently a fairly conservative guy himself. But, c’mon. He’s the Archbishop of San Francisco.

And but anyway, we have to note that we’re operating here still under the sexual abuse scandals of the past decade. Yes, it’s a scandal of pedophile priests, not gay priests, but I still think the Instruction addresses the scandal. And I hope that a lot of things in the Church will continue to be influenced by the scandal. While I think in many ways the Church’s reactions to individual cases of sexual abuse, especially say in the forties and fifities, simply reflects what generally American society’s reaction would be, as something not discussed, as something to be dealt with discreetly for all involved especially the victim, is somewhat understandable. And also the Church is in something of a bind in that ordination is a sacrament, not something to be given lightly sure but then also not something to be taken away easily either. The Church’s actions as to the issue of sexual abuse, however, the Church’s very inability to protect innocents from predatory priests, agents of the Church herself, is nothing short of breathtakingly wrong, an utter tragedy, as well as being legally tortious and surely criminally negligent on quite a few folk’s part.

And I can only admire the courage of those who have come forward to testify to what happened and bravely face their abusers.

So then what to do now, how to go forward from here, is to comfort those victims and make damn sure that it won’t happen again. And of course individual cases will happen again, but we need to make damn sure that we do all we can to prevent it from happening and then also own up to it when if does happen and try to help the victims, and deal with the guilty, when it happens. And, for goodness sake, dealing with it doesn’t just mean transferring the priest to another parish. This is first of all criminal behavior, so the first thing to do is to involve the civil authorities. Call the cops. Yes, it’s a Church matter, but it’s not just a Church matter. It’s not even primarily a Church matter. And that’s probably been the biggest problem all these years, thinking of it as and trying to keep it a Church matter. It’s not and it can’t be and it’s a tragedy that the Church thought so.

And so that’s the context of the Instruction. It can’t help but have come about because of the sexual abuse scandals. It’s not so much a product of Benedict XVI, as it’s a product of trying to protect the innocent and, yes, the Church itself. It’s wrongheaded, and misguided in that it seems to equate homosexuality with pedophilia, and it doesn’t attempt to even think about heterosexual abusive priests or celibacy in general although that’s another story for another day, but it’s the Church doing something at least. And so that’s how I think of it with respect to the Holy Father, as less to do with the Holy Father himself but with the Church as a whole.

And lastly I want to emphasize that the Church is not simply an institution or an entity separate from the people, from us, those who comprise the Church. The Church is the people in the Church. I am the Church and we are the Church. The Church is the people of the Church. And I sometimes say, “Don’t underestimate the ability of people to fuck things up.” By that I mean that we’re human. We’re fallible. So the Church has often gotten things wrong, Galileo and the sexual abuse scandals being merely the greatest examples. But on the whole I can only believe that the Church, that we, get more things right than wrong. And that we are working on it. That we are working on the Kingdom of God.

My wife writes in and asks what I think of the Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders.

I’m not sure why she writes in to ask about this. I immediately think her interest is somewhat suspect. That she’s being, well, let’s say mischievous, rather than snarky. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but she’s never mentioned this document to me or asked me about it before. However, I decide to treat her question seriously. And so I go and read the thing.

By way of background, the Instruction is a document of the Catholic Church, approved by the Holy Father on August 31, 2005, and formally published on November 4, 2005. Specifically, it is a document of and by the Congregation for Catholic Education, which itself is one of many congregations, and congregations are one department of many in the Roman Curia, the administrative apparatus of the Catholic Church. The Congregation for Catholic Education is ultimately responsible for what is taught, and how it is taught, in seminaries, universities and schools. My wife is herself something of a product of the Congregation, having received a number of graduate degrees from the Catholic University of America.

The particular Instruction at present, as its name attests, speaks to what to do with gay men who want to become priests. The Instruction first reiterates the Church’s position that homosexual acts are grave sins and it describes homosexual tendencies as a disorder. Therefore, “the Church … cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called ‘gay culture’.”

Okay, so I’m not real thrilled about this. And, frankly, I don’t have to be.

As I understand it, I’m required to believe in Jesus Christ to be a Christian. And I’m required to believe in a lot more things to be a Catholic. We recite the Creed at Mass most Sundays. And I just personally figure that I ought to believe these things that I say out loud every week that I believe. And then there are further Catholic dogmas that we have to believe that we don’t talk about every week, like the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. And I love those, by the way, so, hey, no problem believing those.

And so then I can disagree with the Church on things beyond that. I’m not in charge, mind you, so I can’t directly change a lot of those things, but I can disagree. It’s kinda like living in America under the Bush regime. Just because it’s official United States policy that we attack Iraq doesn’t mean I have to like it, that I have to agree with it. And disagreeing with it doesn’t make me not an American. And disagreeing with certain doctrines of the Catholic Church doesn’t make me not a Catholic.

So I believe that someday we’ll have married priests, and women priests, and openly gay priests. And gay marriage. Probably not in my lifetime, but someday. And I’m okay with that. Vitally integral to my return to the Catholic Church was my realization that I don’t know everything, that I don’t have all the answers. And I suppose the opposite side of that coin is that nobody else knows everything or has all the answers either. I follow the Catholic Church because it is the faith of my parents and grandparents and goes way back. It’s a part of me. And I do believe. I believe in God, in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord, in the Holy Spirit, in one catholic and apostolic church, and the resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come. Amen.

But the Church has been wrong before and likely is wrong about things now and will be wrong about things in the future. And it’s right about things too. And so too me. And we all work towards getting it right.

His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, celebrates today the first anniversary of his installation as the 264th or so successor to the chair of St. Peter.

I like him.

And I hope he visits the US. Apparently His Eminence William Cardinal Keeler, the Archbishop of Baltimore, has announced that the Holy Father might visit in the fall of 2007. The General Assembly of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is in Baltimore in November of 2007, so maybe he’ll address the assembly. And I’d hope he would preside at some big outdoor mass that I could go to.

The reason I like him, other than just because he’s the big cheese, is that I’ve been actually reading him. I read his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est and really liked it. I mean, I’ve never read any other encyclicals, so what do I know, but I found it not just readable but enjoyable. I talked about it with Michael Winters, who has written about the Catholic Church for the New Republic as well as other publications, and who helped run inquiry classes back in the summer of 2002 when I was an inquirer, and who most recently has been teaching classes at St. Matt’s on the history of the Church. He loved the encyclical as well, even noting that it contained the first ever joke in a papal encyclical. The joke was maybe a little highbrow, but it was a joke nonetheless, he said.

Should [man] aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise lose his greatness. The epicure Gassendi used to offer Descartes the humorous greeting: “O Soul!” And Descartes would reply: “O Flesh!”.

I suppose it’s not even his own joke, since he’s really just repeating Pierre Gassendi’s and René Descartes’s joke. But still. It’s a joke.

And during Lent I read the first section of Journey to Easter: Spiritual Reflections for the Lenten Season, adapted from then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s talks at a Lenten season 1983 retreat at the Vatican. It was pretty much like daily homilies through the first week of Lent, commenting on and explaining the readings for each day. Unfortunately the readings were from year C, and we’re in year B, but it was great to read and hear him preach this way anyway.

And I’ve discovered that the Holy See website posts his actual homilies, a few days later after translating them. That’s pretty cool.

We usually sleep in on Sundays, sometimes until 8:00 a.m., but today we’re going to 8:30 Mass to miss the crowds. So we’re up early early. But we’re having brunch after Mass, so not that early, not early enough to cook breakfast. Dawn drives, and traffic is light, and parking is easy. The day starts off well.

And there’s still plenty of room to sit. The section where we sit, up front but to the right, in the east transept, is practically empty. While we’re still kneeling and praying, Monsignor comes by to wish us Happy Easter. I’m a little surprised, since he’s not in any vestments and I thought he was going to be presiding at our Mass. “Who’s on for 8:30?,” I ask him. He tells me it’s Father Caulfield. Then I feel embarrassed that I asked who’s on, like it’s some kind of sports lineup or something.

Then Mass starts and but people are still arriving and cramming in. And the organ is too loud compared to the cantor Ellen, and all these people aren’t singing, and I can’t find a good voice to sing along with. We get three people who jam into our pew with us, so there’s five of us and it’s crowded. Deacon Rice’s microphone is hardly working during the Kyrie, so he sounds like a fuzzy radio underwater.

The first reading is from Acts, Peter quite simply and beautifully pretty much sums up Christianity. But there’s babies crying and I’m all distracted and now I’m starting to get cranky. But I don’t want to get cranky. It’s Easter and it’s the big day and I’ve been so looking forward to this. So then I start to develop a real downward spiral funk.

To him all the prophets bear witness,
that everyone who believes in
himwill receive forgiveness of sins through his name.

We try to sing this Easter Sequence, but it’s in Latin and I still can’t especially hear, and all these people here are for sure not singing this thing, so it’s beautiful but it doesn’t go very well. And more babies are crying.

Victimae paschali laudes immolent christiani.

The Gospel is from St. John, just the quick scene where they discover the empty tomb. I love ‘the other disciple whom Jesus loved.’ He shows up a lot. Or she, I guess. It’s probably St. John himself. But still.

During the Eucharistic Prayer, someone starts shouting in the back of the nave. I can’t make out what he’s saying, but I’m expecting at this point it to be Allahu Akbar and then he’ll pull the pin on his vest. Dawn says that it’s right at the intercessions of the prayer, so maybe he’s shouting out the name of someone who has died and gone before us marked with the sign of faith, for whom he is now praying. One or the other, I’m sure.

And then the lights go slowly dim during the doxology, coming back up right after the Great Amen. It’s a weird moment. And then during communion, none of these people knows where to go and line up and then how to get back to their pews. It’s a mess. And then they don’t sing the recessional hymn, and they start streaming out before the hymn is even over.

And I’m in a fierce, foul mood.

I slowly come back around, back to normal, on the drive home, and then eating the wonderfully rich and filling brunch that Dawn makes. We drink mimosas; booze in the morning is always a pick-me-up. Then I nap upstairs while Dawn wrestles with the Sunday sudoku. I help a little, happy to have my beloved sudoku back after having painfully given it up for Lent. I talk to Will next door, who has had something of a similar experience at his Easter service this morning, with all the people there who otherwise never come. We get out the ladder and explore the construction next door, trespassing guiltily. Kevin comes by and I go back up with him. Later Dawn works on the wainscoting while I cut and build some templates for the new stair railings. I’m glad Kevin suggested his electric miter saw, since I end up having to do some compound angles, both mitered and beveled. I couldn’t do that with my hand miter box. We go for a walk and hear & see a woodpecker going at it rat-a-tat way atop a tree. And Dawn makes a special risotto for dinner. It ends up being a lovely day.

When we get to church, not only have we missed the Hour of Reflection service, but there are no seats left now. Dawn woefully leads us to a spot in the St. Anthony Chapel, where we can sit on the marble steps, dwarfed beneath and behind one of the massive pillars that form the cathedral crossing. The four pillars each sport a Gospel author; the other side of this particular one depicts St. John. Our side in the chapel is blank marble, except for an audio speaker about a third of the way up it. So we can’t see anything, but we can hear just fine.

And we can at least sit. Unfortunately there’s also a lot of kneeling, and on the marble steps it’s pretty painful. But then I suppose it’s rather gauche to whine about pain when it’s the Liturgy of the Passion of the Lord.

The reading from Isaiah is utterly and overwhelmingly heartbreaking.

He was spurned and avoided by people,
a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity,
one of those from whom people hide their faces,
spurned, and we held him in no esteem.

I think of this woman whom Dawn and I see most mornings on our walk to work. She is apparently homeless, or is semi-homeless, or is in some way a street person anyway. We see her when we walk by the Catholic Charities facility on D Street, the John L. Young Center. We say good morning to her whenever we pass by, or we exchange waves if she’s on the other side of the street. I love how excitedly she waves to us. She doesn’t seem inclined to talk to us, though. We were crossing the street together recently and I tried to initiate some type of conversation with her, but she just kind of wandered away. But anyway, she has this issue, some sort of compulsion, where she applies cream or balm or something to her lips and all around her mouth and nose around her face. I’m not sure if she has a rash or condition, something that requires this medicating, or if she has simply this compulsion that really now has made her face raw and rubbed and chafed and looks really painful. Sometimes her lips will be cracked open and it’ll be hard to look; it just seems so dreadfully painful.

This Isaiah reading makes me think of her, and how there’s nothing I can do for her, but that she seems to suffer so. And suffer in anonymity.

Yet it was our infirmities that he bore,
our sufferings that he endured,
while we thought of him as stricken,
as one smitten by God and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our offenses,
crushed for our sins;
upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole,
by his stripes we were healed.
We had all gone astray like sheep,
each following his own way;
but the Lord laid upon him
the guilt of us all.

And I love the strong verbs in the passage: pierced and crushed. It’s a great passage for Good Friday.

The gospel reading is two chapters from St. John, from Gethsemane to being laid in the tomb. Again with the “I AM,” what Christ says to the gang who have come to arrest him, echoing the name that God said to Moses. And I don’t know why but I like the odd little disagreement about the inscription on the cross.

“Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’
but that he said, ‘I am the King of the Jews’.”
Pilate answered,
“What I have written, I have written.”

Again, I have no idea why this sticks out to me. It’s a funny little moment. I wonder if that’s why it’s memorable enough for St. John to have included it. St. John is always harsh to my ears when he writes “the Jews” instead of “the Sanhedrin” or whatever. So this might be more of that, only this time a little more subtle, but anyhow St. John’s way of making the Jews more responsible than Pilate. Or it’s also not altogether dissimilar to the “I AM.” The grammatical construction is somewhat the same, declaring that something is simply what it is. The subtext is power, either the power of God or the power of the prefect. Power does not need to explain. Maybe it’s that parallelism that I like. Or maybe it’s just Pilate being snotty, and that’s kinda funny in so solemn a setting.

There’s veneration of the cross afterwards, but there’s such a long, long line of people waiting. And we have to go to my Mom’s to help pack for the move. So we don’t stay. But I think veneration of the cross is way cool. It’s way primitive or something, kissing the feet of the corpus on the crucifix. And I like the polite way that the altar server will wipe the feet after every kiss.

Dawn leaves work early, and I leave just after five, so that we can get to St. Matt’s and get a seat. I’m just into the pew and kneeling down when Dawn arrives. It’s not even quarter after, fifteen minutes before starting, and there’s still some room left. We’re in a pew generally meant to hold four people, but by Mass’s start we’ve got five squeezed in. Lots of other pews filled up like ours too. The choir sings Nos autem gloriari oportet, the Proper Introit, by Palestrina. “Let our glory be in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The booklet says it’ll be Cardinal McCarrick, and in fact it is this time. The processional hymn is At That First Eucharist. The booklet has the words, but I look it up in the Worship hymnal for the music as well. I can use what I learned about reading music, when I played the clarinet in grade school. I can at least tell quarter notes from half and full notes, know how long to hold a note, and whether the next one is higher or lower. About all I can do. I don’t really feel like I’m in especially good voice tonight, though. Some days I feel like, although I can’t sing, I can pretend like I can sing. I can imitate singing. Is partly why we sit so near to the choir.

The Gloria is of recent vintage, apparently by one Peter Jones. I think it’s a mess.

The first reading is from Exodus, God establishing the Passover with Aaron and Moses. My dashing young protege at work and I were talking about the Last Supper, about how it was a Passover meal. She said that the highlights were the bread and the wine, but I disagreed. Yes, that’s what we do now, those are our highlights. But at a proper Passover seder, it’s the lamb and the bitter herbs along with the bread and the wine and prayers and remembrance. Christianity takes a whole lot from it, most especially for us Catholics its establishment of the Eucharist. Christ declaring the bread his body and the wine his blood and giving it to his disciples, to us. But I like to think that it was also a proper seder, a proper order, as well. We learn from all of it.

The psalm of the responsorial psalm is Psalm 116, but the response itself is from First Corinthians, Chapter 10. I wonder how many times we do that, mix them up like that. And then the epistle is from First Corinthians, Chapter 11. I think of it as a pretty straightforward recitation of the Last Supper from any one of the Gospels. But I’m reading it again from the New American Bible on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ website, and a footnote innocently notes that it is the “earliest written account of the institution of the Lord’s Supper in the New Testament.” And it’s like a light bulb going on for me, something that’s so obvious that it’s too obvious. It’s like, so, duh.

St. Paul’s letters were all written before any of the Gospels. He died in 67 A.D. or so, and St. Mark’s Gospel is dated around 70 A.D. So of course all of his letters pre-date the Gospels. But I never really thought about it before. Like I said, I took tonight’s epistle reading as a simple recitation of the Last Supper from the Gospels, but it’s so much more profoundly important than just that. And now I want to read a whole lot more about Paul. I’ve read Bokenkotter’s Concise History of the Catholic Church, and I swear I remember reading Hans Kung as well, although now I’m not so sure, but anyway, I should really know the timeline and understand Paul like way better than I do. So back to the books for me.

The Gospel is from St. John, where Christ washes the feet of the disciples. And His Eminence washes the feet of twelve parishoners as well. I recognize Kirse as one of the washees, and I feel for her. I was one of the washees in 2003. It was totally nerve-wracking, to have the Cardinal wash my foot. I mean, I certainly recognize the humbleness of him doing it. I appreciate that. But being up in front of the packed cathedral, with this poor old man bending down and pouring water over your foot and having to hand him a towel. Ack. Totally frightening. After Mass I ask Kirse how it was, and she says she wanted to pass out.

And in St. John, Christ not only washes their feet, but stops and takes time to let them, to let us, know how important this all is. “Unless I wash you, you will have no inheritance with me,'” he tells Peter. “Do you realize what I have done for you?” he asks.

In so many places in the Gospels Christ speaks in parables, telling us the Kingdom of Heaven is like this or that. No parables here. No similies. Just action and straight talk. ” I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do.”

He slows down, speaks to us patiently, so that we really get it. No fooling around. Tonight he just flat out tell it to us. The bread is his body. The wine is his blood. Do this in remembrance.

You should also do, he says.

And then, while I try to sing the impossible Pange lingua gloriosi, the Blessed Sacrament is carried out of the Sanctuary, entombed in the St. Anthony Chapel until the Easter Vigil Mass. Dawn asks that we wait for a while. The we stay and witness this. This is her favorite part, when they strip the altar bare and turn out the lights.

At work we have these consultants with whom I meet every Tuesday. We start at ten a.m. and usually go past one, by which time I’m starving and achy and ready to bolt. Every other week we have a call at eleven with our customer service rep Suzi at TMAR.

Today though I announce that I’ve got a church thing at 12:15 and that we gotta be done by then. And magically enough we are. But then I get back to my office and check the Lent 2006 brochure, and it says it starts at 12:10, not 12:15. Ack! I’m late!

I get to St. Matt’s just barely before 12:10, dashing madly across Connecticut Avenue against the light. I’m huffing and puffing when I get to my pew and kneel, so it’s hard to calm down and pray and get settled before the service starts. We have a booklet to go by and, unusual for midday Mass, we sing a processional hymn. Ah, but this is a Holy Week service, not a Mass.

Specifically it’s a Communal Penance Service. I’ve come to this in lieu of going to confession during Lent, because confession is so scary. But then I notice, in the procession, instead of eucharistic ministers, there are priests. A lot of priests. I guess that they’re here because they’ve been hearing confessions all morning, and they all might as well join in and concelebrate Mass.

But wait, this isn’t Mass, remember. It’s a service. So I look in the back of the booklet and, sure enough, the confessions are going to be after the service. They weren’t before. And now there’s no reason whatsoever for me not to go to confession. I mean, I’m here already. I can’t now just not go, just not do it. I would now have to affirmatively walk out, reject it even.

I’m stuck! Wait! Stop! I’ve been tricked!

Now, now, calm down. How bad could it be?

Okay, first of all, I haven’t been in three years. And that’s like the first thing you’re supposed to say, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been three years since my last confession.” You’re supposed to go at least once a year. Even better if you go more often, but once a year is the minimum. So I’m in trouble right there.

And this is pretty much emblematic of my whole life, my whole level of organization, anyway. I don’t do something I’m supposed to do, and then the longer I go without doing it the worse it gets. And then I can’t do it after all this time because it’s been too long. So it gets worse. And then I really can’t do it, because it’s now been way, way too long. Lather, rinse, repeat.

And then I have to tell the priest actual sins. Like about the Internet porn. Yeah, that’s gonna go over well. And then the biggest sin, it’s easy to confess but much, much harder to actually do something about, much harder to stop. That’s the first and last commandments, having other gods and coveting my neighbor’s goods. I talked about this the other day, about worshipping the god of consumerism, about wanting more stuff, when people are starving in the world.

So I think about all this. And then I screw up my courage and deliberately go to Monsignor Jameson, rather than sneak off to any one of the many priests who don’t know me. And but then he’s so very kind to me, thankfully. He doesn’t yell at me, like I half expect him to do. He doesn’t stand up and denounce me to the assembly. I’m sure he’s heard much worse than poor little me. He does tell me to read Psalm 100, though. And I perk up, asking, “Isn’t that ‘Make a joyful noise.’ That one?” Indeed it is, he tells me. So I’m pretty pleased all around with the whole thing.

I get back to the office and read Psalm 100, but unfortunately the Catholic Bible has it simply as “Shout joyfully to the Lord.” Other translations have the ‘joyful noise,’ but not us. Sigh. But then I go to www.biblegateway.com and compare, and there’s no substantive difference between our New American Bible and, say, the King James. But the King James is so much lovelier.

Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.
Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.
Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.

And actually, even back when I was not a practicing member of the faith, heck, even when I didn’t especially believe in God (although I was always a lapsed Catholic atheist, as in “There is definitely no God, but the God who doesn’t exist is the God of the Catholic Faith.”), whenever I stayed in a hotel room, when I checked out I would leave the tip for the maids in the Gideon Bible, lying open on the nightstand, opened to Psalm 100. This really used to annoy my girlfriend Erin.

The booklet had said that Cardinal McCarrick was to be the principal celebrant and homilist. But he apparently can’t make it, because Monsignor leads us and Father Greenfield gives the homily. He tells us that when he was in grade school, one nun had this particular grading system. There was c-plus, c-minus, and “see me.” (It’s a better joke when you hear it rather than read it.) And he relates that to the Gospel reading from today, the Prodigal Son from St. Luke. I may have noted before how I always feel for the older son, the good son, who doesn’t even get invited to the party for the no-good younger son returned from his wanderings. Father Greenfield talks about the words prodigal and prodigy, next to each other in his dictionary. How the tax collectors and the sinner are the prodigals, the c-minuses, and the Pharisees and the scribes are the prodigies, the c-plusses. And the story is for the prodigies. They’re the ones who need to hear it.

Listening to the parable today I’m struck anew by the language, about how we sinners are the prodigal sons, the ones who have returned to our father’s house after wanderings and sinning. Yes, that’s obviously why it’s the reading at this service. But Father Greenfield tells us that a lot of times we are also the prodigies, the older son, the Pharisees and scribes to whom the story is told. We expect things of God, we want things on our terms, forgetting that God is the one whose terms we need abide. And, hey, okay, now I have a lot less sympathy for the older son, that dolt, for forgetting that he’s had his father’s love all along, and then he’s whining about missing this little party that’s for someone else, that’s not for him. For me, the dolt, for wanting things on my terms and forgetting God’s terms.

And, so finally, the Act of Contrition is beautifully poetic too, although there are a number different of versions of that as well, but our booklet has this one.

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin.

Amen.

The Gospel is long. It’s two full chapters. The deacon and both lecters take turns reading it. (And we started the Mass with another Gospel reading as well.) Many things jump out at me.

First is the woman pouring the expensive oil over the Lord’s head. For some reason I’ve always remembered the line, “The poor you will always have with you,” even quoting it, during my life, most of which has been spent away from the Church. I always thought of it as a realistic sort of assessment of the state of things, that there will always be rich and there will always be poor. And while that’s true, there always will be, in the context of the Gospel here, the point is not that there will always be rich and poor, but that Jesus is facing death, and it’s really hard and frightening. That’s his point. Here’s someone doing something very kind to him. It helps in facing the terror about to happen.

And now I think also about the Kingdom of Heaven, about how it will not include rich and poor, that either such things won’t matter or that the rich will have to pass the camel through the eye of the needle first. And then I think about how most of the world lives on a dollar a day. And how utterly rich I am. But of course I don’t feel rich. Not comparatively, not here in America, not when I live in the neighborhood where I live. I still want so many things; I still want so much stuff.

And then I’ll never make it with my camel through that needle.

Then in today’s Gospel there’s Judas. And this week the National Geographic Society has made some headlines with an ancient work called the Gospel of Judas. And what to make of Judas, eh? On the one hand, Christ himself says in our reading today, “[W]oe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would be better for that man if he had never been born.” And, although not in today’s reading, afterwards Judas immediately regrets his betrayal and hangs himself. But, on the other hand, and the Gospel of Judas apparently speaks to this, is the necessity of Judas, the necessity of a betrayal. Christ has come down from heaven to become the paschal sacrifice; that sacrifice has to be effected. He must somehow be handed over to the authorities. So somebody’s gotta do it.

In the Gospel of St. John, Jesus hands the morsel to Judas and says to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly,” sending him off to do his awful deed. Jesus knows who it is and when he’s doing it. But this Gospel of Judas adds this whole backstory where Jesus reveals all manner of mysteries to Judas. Okay. But in St. John, during this moment with the Lord and Judas, there’s this about Judas: “After he took the morsel, Satan entered him.” So how does that work, Judas as secret mystery of the kingdom guy, but also tool of Satan? How can he be both? I just can’t see how he can. (See the Wikipedia article for more on the whole Cainite heresey.) Apparently the Church fathers who codified the canon couldn’t either.

Then the Passover meal, the Last Supper, where the Lord gives us the Eucharist:

While they were eating,
he took bread, said the blessing,
broke it, and gave it to them, and said,
“Take it; this is my body.”
Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them,
and they all drank from it.
He said to them,
“This is my blood of the covenant,
which will be shed for many.

We hear and remember and re-enact these words at every Mass. So in one way they’re so familiar, almost rote. But then today we have them in context, and in such a context. In the hard and the frightening and the terror that’s coming.

And then there’s my man Peter. How he screws up so much, is why I like him so much. Here’s one of his biggest, denying Christ three times. And this makes me think of the recent thing in Afghanistan, with the convert from Islam to Christianity, and the trouble he got into. I was talking to Dawn about it, and just idly wondering what I would do if I were arrested, were facing death because of my faith. And without even having to think too hard about it, I knew immediately what I’d do.

I said that I would lie, of course. Like Bruce getting out of the draft, checking off that he was a communist, a homosexual, whatever. Tell ’em I was a Druid. Tell ’em I was a Muslim. Whatever. Just get me outta here man.

And then I immediately thereafter felt sad. Felt guilty. I mean, here we venerate the saints, the martyrs especially. My beloved St. Agnes, martyred for her faith, for her refusal to renounce her faith, and I without hesitation decide to lie? How awful is that? So I wonder where that comes from. I mentioned earlier, thinking partly about this too, that most of my life has been spent away from the Church. So I’ve developed many ways of doing things and thinking that I have to change. And believe me, lying is the very least of what I’ve done. Although lying is pretty bad, of course. Let’s not minimize it. But other stuff? Yikes. You don’t want to know.

And so anyway, the point is that I’m wanting to not do bad things, to live by certain values from now on. And I think I’m doing pretty well. I mean, I don’t feel like I’ve changed drastically since picking up the faith again. I can still have a beer, watch a movie, say “fuck” too much. All that. And then not steal, not kill, not covet my neighbor’s ass. Go to church. Pray. Those too. And but then in another sense I’ve undergone a profound conversion, giving up on the pride of thinking that I’ve got all the answers, that I’m going to figure it all out on my own, that I can do anything but hang my head and beg for God’s grace and mercy.

And, okay, that’s all great, all well and good. But, at the very least, I would like to think that I would at least consider not renouncing my faith if pressed. I’m not saying I’m ready for sainthood, for martyrdom. But just for a second, maybe, to think about it. Is all I’m saying.

And that I suppose is why I like Peter so much.

And the Lord at Gethsemane is so utterly heartbreaking. St. Mark describes him as troubled, as distressed. He says, “My soul is sorrowful even to death.” He says, “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me … ”

So just for a second, maybe, he thinks … But he knows what he has to do, no matter how hard and frightening it is. “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will.”

Thy will be done, is our standard prayer. Not my will, Lord, but yours.

And, later, the high priest asks him, “Are you the Christ?” I think of my first marriage, my mother- and father-in-law. They had this sort of Quaker notion, where they thought Jesus was a cool guy, a great philosopher even, but they just didn’t like the whole Christology business. I wasn’t much of anything at the time, just an estranged Catholic I guess, but even then that didn’t make much sense to me. And here the high priest asks, “Are you the Christ?” And Jesus replies, “I am.” And cross-reference here the burning bush in Exodus. Moses asks what he should call him and God says, “This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to you.” Jesus is equating himself with, and declaring that he is, God. There’s your Christology right there, from Jesus himself.

And I’m glad that the responsorial psalm is “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” It’s always struck me as such a strange line, such a strange thing for Christ to say. So at least here we see that he at least was quoting scripture, that he was quoting Psalm 22. Although I’m still not sure why he quotes it. I guess because the psalm is itself a cry for help. “[D]o not stay far off,” it says. “[C]ome quickly to help me.” He is in such pain. He is in agony. He’s dying.

At “Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last,” we all kneel for a short time, as per the instructions in our little booklet we’ve been given. I’m disappointed though that the short time is so short. It all has been so moving and upsetting. A little quiet prayer time would be nice, but I’m just getting started when everybody heaves back up. Ah well. Later.

Then Joseph of Arimathea bravely gets the Lord taken down and buried. And the women watch over the tomb.

And welcome to Holy Week, folks.

Later in the day I’m thinking for no particular reason about the story of Jesus and the adulterous woman and “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” I think of how Jesus sort of doodles in the dirt during the story. Remember Jesus and the dirt and spit last week with the curing of the blind man? So then I figure that this story must be from St. John as well, with the novelistic detail and such. So I look it up and re-read it and sure enough it’s from St. John.

But then my Oxford Study Edition Bible tells me a bit more. And this is why I love this edition of the Bible. They note that most original Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of John don’t contain this story, that it looks to have been added later. Other manuscripts have it in St. Luke. And they point out that it fits better, stylistically and thematically, there in St. Luke, right after where the Pharisees ask Jesus about the widow of the seven brothers.

And why I like my edition so much is because of that critical eye they have towards everything. That honesty. Yes, tradition holds that St. John wrote this particular Gospel, but generally the scholarship is that he himelf probably didn’t write it. And different extant texts of it differ. And it originally was written in Greek except apparently the parts that weren’t.

So it was written by a particular person or persons for a particular audience for a particular reason. (And then it was copied and re-copied and changed and so on and so on.) And this actually is something that I don’t like about St. John’s Gospel. This Gospel was written later than the other Synoptic Gospels, written specifically for a non-Jewish audience. And so its references to the Sanhedrin or Pharisees or Saducees or whoever simply as “The Jews” is to my ears rather jarring. (And to some ears it’s nakedly antisemitic.)

But the point of all this, I guess, if I could even think that I have a point here, is that I don’t believe that the Bible is the literal word of God. Or, rather, in my Catholicism I have been taught that the Bible is not the literal word of God, that it’s a text, that it’s divinely inspired and it’s part of what we believe and practice, but is not the beginning or end of what we practice. What we do and believe is made up of the scriptures but then also the life and practices of the church and the Church.

Today marks the first anniversary of the death of His Holiness Pope John Paul II.

I went to the Mass celebrated by the Holy Father on the Mall in Washington on October 7, 1979. I went with my friend Tom and his parents. I remember Tom’s mother was horrified at people smoking during the Mass. There were only a handful of worshippers who received communion from the Holy Father.

Monsignor Jameson told me recently that he there were far fewer people at that Mass than they expected, so they had tons of communion wafers left over. They farmed them out to parishes all over the archdiocese.

I remember hearing in math class that he had been shot. Dr. Zeleznock must have heard on the radio in the teachers lounge or something maybe, because he came rushing in all upset and told us what had happened. It was only a little over a month after President Reagan had been shot.

I remember feeling so bad for him, John Paul, as he got so old and frail. He had been so utterly strong and vibrant when he first became Pope. Especially after the Parkinsons got really bad, it was just heartbreaking sometimes to see him.

Dawn and I were planning to attend Mass on Saturday, April 2, 2005 anyway. We heard in the afternoon that John Paul had passed away, so we got extra dressed up and got to Mass early, thinking it might be a little more attended than usual. It was packed. We were lucky to get seats, in the St. Anthony Chapel, which we don’t normally like sitting in because it doesn’t really allow much in the way of views of the altar and is farther from the choir. But we did get married in that chapel, and it’s beautiful in there, so it’s not all that bad either. And Cardinal McCarrick showed up to preside. And then President and Mrs. Bush strolled in. There were secret service agents wandering all around, one stern-looking woman near us.

I’m into woodworking now, and there was this cool article in Popular Woodworking about his coffin. They quoted the legendary Frank Klausz, who built a replica of one corner of the coffin from pictures and who said about the big pins and tails of the dovetails: “It was easy to tell nobody measured or used angle gauges.” The author of the article Kara Gebhart Uhl followed up all sorts of leads in Rome but was unable to find out who built the coffin, beyond being “made by Vatican Museums’ restorers and conservators.” Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Holy Father’s personal secretary, maybe knew something but wouldn’t say.

The first reading is from Jeremiah, which book I have never read and about which I know absolutely nothing. I’m going to have to do something about that.

But the reading is classic prophets prefiguring the coming of the Messiah stuff. “The days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” Then comes a really lovely line: “I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

I really like the imagery of writing upon hearts. I like how it’s not about rules or commandments but rather about the human heart and what the human heart wants and needs and desires and loves. I remember my religion textbook from college defining all religion as a search for an ultimate reality, a something else that many religions define as “god.” And so here seems to me a real recognition of that, of not just a story of how God creates and rules, but how also the human heart wants and seeks.

And the placing of the law within, that’s both the writing on the heart, the need and love for God coming from within but then also the placing of the law is Christ himself, God becoming man, God placing himself within the people as people, as a person. I think of how Christ tells us in St. Matthew that he has come not to abolish the law but to fulfill the law and the prophets.

Later I look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the great website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Well well well, right there, right at the beginning of the catechism, part one, chapter one, section one begins “The desire for God is written in the human heart.” I love it when things like that happen.