Reflections on the Rosary: The Birth of Christ

This is my least-favorite mystery, perhaps because I have never married and find Christmas Day excruciatingly lonely. As an adolescent, I lost track of a boyfriend was moved out of state at about the same time my mother remarried and we moved and I watched her happy with her loved one while I had lost mine.

In particular, I remember the Christmas Eve my future sister-in-law sat at the dinner table, scooted over onto my brother's lap and engaged in open-mouthed kissing with him.  I have never felt so lonely in my life because the man I was newly in love with was out of state. My mother, by the way, that my sister-in-law's actions were a deliberate attempt to wound me as that is her character. She finds a sore point and needles people about it.

The next Christmas, I asked my significant other to spend Christmas with me.  He told me he had electronic tickets waiting for me at the airport. I had dreams of hug and kisses, a nice present, and maybe, just maybe a ring. On Christmas Eve day, he called me and told me his sister had died.  She had been ill with an adult form of leukemia for a decade.  I spent the day crying my eyes out and avoiding the woman who was now my brother's wife.

I grew suspicious of my boyfriend's story and checked into it.  The sister was not dead--I spoke to her on the phone myself.  I have never wanted to know in too much detail what was going on with the guy but I assume he was married and, since he had several residences, he brought me to one residence and kept his wife in another.  (It took me a couple of years to admit this truth--both because I didn't want to and because he was  convincing liar.  The next Christmas we were supposed to by in Cyprus but he coudn't go because terrorists were chasing him--he was a professor of Middle Eastern studies and he allegedy served as a consultant about terrorism which had allegedly angered the terrorists who were now after him, etc. etc. etc.

Ever since then, Christmas Day has been marred by sadness and I dread the day. 

I try to find some joy in the birth of Christ but I cannot. I honestly find Jesus to be a remote, far-away figure.  Mary and the other saints are easier figures for me to relate to.  I do wish Jesus was not so remote.

A letter from a priest

My mother was a minister's daughter. When she was growing up, her parents taught her that Protestantism was better than Cathlicism  because Protestants can interpret the Bible for themselves and because Protestants can make their own relationship with God and don't need a priest to act as intermediary.  Protestants are often distinctly anti-clerical in their attitudes (and this attitude applies to the Protestant clergy as well) and this week, I can absolutely understand that point of view.

A priest mailed a letter home to all of his parishioners.  I am excerpting part of it.

"First, we Christians do not decorate for Christms until the day before December 25th. Until then, you ought to have an Advent Wreath in your home and pray prayers as a family each day.  Thanksgiving is NOT the beginning of the Christmas Season.  December 25th is. ....."

Apparently, he is urging us not to put up Christmas trees and other holiday decorations until Christmas Eve instead of following the American custom and putting them up after Thanksgiving Day.

Notice several things about this.  It is the custom of American Protestants to decorate for Christmas after Thanksgiving Day.  The phrase "we Christians" subtly classifies Protestants as non-Christians.  Secondly, this priest, who has headed this parish for less than three months, is intruding into his parishioner's zone of privacy by telling them how to decorate their homes. Thirdly, he is railing against a custom that gives pleasure to many people, especially children and their parents, and harms no one.  Fourthly, since a Christmas tree is not really a religious symbol but a seasonal symbol, what exactly is the problem with Catholics putting a seasonal symbol up after Thanksgiving Day?  Fifthly, lots of Catholic churches put up Christmas trees during Advent.

It also seems to me that this priest could have offered a compromise position.  Yes, put up the tree after Thanksgiving Day but until Dec. 24, decorate it using the Advent colors of pink and purple.  Then, decorate for Christmas on the 24th.  That way, people still get to enjoy the tree and Catholic identity is preserved.  Or, he could have acknowledged that people follow the custom of decorating after Thanksgiving Day but urged them to make the Advent wreath the center of family religious activities.  Or, as my brother suggested, instead of using the imperious phrase "we Christians," he could have simply started the sentence with "In my opinion."

Unknowingly, this priest confirmed every negative stereotype Protestants have about the Catholic clergy.

An Israeli Jewish woman friend of mine suggested mailing him his letter back without comment.  He would get the message.  I am not so nice.  In response to his "we Christians do not decorate until..." I would reply "We Americans do not let the clergy tell us how to decorate our homes."

Growing Vegetables for the Poor

The church that I belong to, St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Pompano Beach, has a wonderful youth group leader, Wendy Bourgault, who has come up with an innovative idea.  She is starting small garden plots on church property to grow vegetables which will be given, along with dry and canned goods, to recipients of food aid through the St. Vincent de Paul program.

She is starting small, with one plot growing broccoli, tomatoes, peppers, and green beans.  She is hoping that each ministry in the church will start its own plot.

For a long time, it has troubled me that truly healthy food--vegetables, whole grains, and fruits--are too expensive for the poor, who must subsist on white flour, corn syrup, and trans fats because those are the cheapest foods in America and the only foods they can afford.  The people who need healthy food the most to face the challenges ahead of them are exactly the people who can't afford it.  This project aims to fill that critical need.

As Father Paul Kane, the church's administrator pointed out to me, the lack of heathy foods increases the risk of Type II Diabetes and its complications: blindness, heart disease, and many more. He further pointed out the sad irony of the fact that the farm workers who grow the food are paid so little that they couldn't afford to buy the food they grow in the supermarkets.

I am often ambivalent about being a Catholic.  Sometimes, the politics of the church as an institution is simply awful and I often disagree  with and, I am ashamed to admit, dislike the leadership. However, programs like this make me proud to be a Catholic.

If you would like to contribute to this work, please start  gardens for the poor in your own church or house of worship. If you would like to send a donation to St. Elizabeth for the work, please send it to St. Elizabeth of Hungary,

3331 N.E. 10th Terrace


Pompano Beach, FL 33064

Phone: 954-941-8117

Fax: 954-941-0999

School Office: 954-942-2161

Religious Education Office: 954-943-6801

St. Vincent De Paul: 954-942-1850

Reflections on the Rosary: The Visitation

The second mystery, the visitation, describes the visit of Mary, when she was pregnant with Jesus, to Elizabeth, when she was pregnant with John the Baptist.  She stayed for three month. This mystery reminds us to mediate on Mary's charity in visiting Elizabeth.

Having a baby after menopause--and this does occasionally happen--was probably difficult for Elizabeth.  My paternal grandfather used to say that God knew what he was doing when he gave children to the young. He spoke from experience: he had children as a young man and, after marriage to a second, younger woman after his first wife died, as an older man.  It requires the energy and resilience of youth to comfortably manage pregnancy and parenting. No doubt Mary helped Elizabeth with the housework and cooking, which was grueling work in the days before labor-savng devices. 

There is a second way in which Mary's visit was an act of charity. When one has a momentous event in one's life, one wants to share it with someone who understands.  This is the underlying rationale for support groups.  As an older woman, Elizabeth was "out of sync" with her friends who, by now, were no longer bearing children and were instead fussing over grandchildren. Mary and Elizabeth were sharing the same experience at the same time--pregnancies, and miraculous pregnancies at that. Mary was there to sympathize with morning sickness, swollen ankles, and mood changes.

What I believe has often been overlooked is that Elizabeth was offering a great act of charity to Mary.  Because Mary had conceived out of wedlock, she was no doubt the subject of vicious gossip by her neighbors in Nazareth. Elizabeth's home was far away ,near Jerusalem.  Elizabeth allowed Mary to escape the gossip, the prying eyes of neighbors who were no doubt mentally measuring the size of her belly and snubbing her at the community well.  Because the people in Elizabeth's home town didn't know tthe dates of the pregnancy and wedding, they could assume that Mary was simply staying with family while her husband worked nearby.

No doubt many priests would regard this thought as heretical, but I have long suspected that Mary journeyed to Bethlehem to avoid the shame of being an unwed mother.  Popular pictures have a heavily pregnant Mary on the donkey about to give birth at any second but my own sense is that she could have arrived in Bethlehem much earlier.  As the adolescent bride of a poor day laborer, she might not have been able to afford proper lodgings and would have had to resort to giving birth in a stable.

This, of course, is speculation but what I believe is not speculation is that Elizabeth gave a home to a young girl pregnant under embarrassing circumstances, thus showing her deep compassion and capacity for charity. There is a Catholic song in Latin that translates as "Where there is true charity, God is there."  God, I am sure, was with Elizabeth.

Dorothy Day Article on Anti-Semitism

In the 1930s when most Christians greeted the rise of anti-Semitism with indifference, Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, wrote an article condemning it.

Her observations are valid today and are valid universally, not only in regard to Jews but to blacks, Muslims, or anyone else.

Reflections on the Rosary The Annunciation

Last week, I talked to a friend who is a life-long Catholic. She told me that she has always had great difficulty relating to Mary. How hard it was for her--a woman whose seventeen-year-old daughter committed suicide and whose son fought for his life after being deliberately hit by a car--to identify with the serene and perfect Mary depicted in Catholic art.

I wish to offer a different picture of Mary, one which does not--I hope--conflict with the teachings of the church but which does no doubt conflict her image in popular art.

Mary was almost certainly desperately poor, both because Palestine was itself a poor country and because she was betrothed to a laborer. In an agrarian society, a man who worked as a carpenter belonged to a family that had lost its land. Joseph was no doubt only a step above destitution. Recall that in the ancient world, there was not much of a middle class. With few exceptions, people were either properous or poor. An additional sign of Mary's poverty was that after the birth of Jesus, she offered two doves rather than a lamb as a sin offering. A woman who could not afford a lamb in a country in which sheep were common is poor indeed.

Children who grow up in poverty have a distinctive look, a kind of tightness in their features. You can see this most clearly, perhaps, in pictures taken during the Great Depression of families with small children. I sponsor a child in Honduras and receive photos of her several times a year. When I first began sponsoring her, when she was five, her face was open and happy. Over time, poverty has affected her facial expressions and she stares into the camera with a look of gritty determination that makes my heart ache every time I look at her. She is fifteen now.

Mary no doubt had that same look found in nearly all children who experience severe and prolonged poverty.

In Mary's day, parents arranged marriages for their children and no doubt she had very little say in her marriage to Joseph. Tradition records that he was much older but there is no real support in scripture for that. Still, the betrothed Mary was not a young woman in love but a woman about to embark on married life with a man she scarecely knew.

When the angel announced that she was to bear the Christ, her response is translated as "Be it done to me according to your word," but many scripture scholars report that her response indicates much more: an enthusiastic YES! to God's plans.

She said yes even though this event would make her an unwed mother in a culture that was sexually conservative, even repressive, and that subjected women suspected of adultery to severe sanctions. (In the ancient world, her betrothal meant that she was legally committed to Joseph and sex with someone else would be considered adultery.)

The Mishnah offers the following desciption of how women suspected of adultery were treated:

If she says: I have been defiled, she forfeits her marriage allotment and is sent away. If she says: I am pure, she is brought to the Eastern gate which is near the gate of Nicanor. There the suspected women drink the bitter water. There the women are cleansed after child birth, and there the lepers are cleansed. A priest gets hold of her garments, if they get torn, they are torn. If they are ripped, let them be ripped, so that her bosom becomes uncovered. He undoes her hair. Rabbi Yehuda says: If she has a beautiful bosom, he does not uncover it. If she has beautiful hair, he does not undo it. If she was dressed in white, he dresses her in black. If she wore ornaments of gold chains and rings in her nose and on her fingers, they are taken away from her to make her look repulsive. Then the priest takes an Egyptian rope and ties it above her breasts. Whoever wants to gaze at her may come and gaze upon her, with the exception of her slaves and bondswomen, because her heart would be hardened by this. All the women are permitted to gaze at her, as was said: (Ezekiel xiii, 48) That all women may be taught not to do after lewdness.



Mary was signalling her willingness to undergo severe and brutal public humilation, if necessary, to cooperate in God's plan. This passage indicates what kind of "public example" she would become if Joseph had chosen to do this. It also reveals Joseph's compassionate nature. As any man would be, he was no doubt hurt and shamed by Mary's suspected infidelity and yet he was able to conquer the angry feelings he no doubt had and act mercifully toward a spouse he believed to be unfaithful.


Mary's social humiliation no doubt continued all her life. All four gospels contain passages in which critics of Jesus allude to his irregular birth. "Is this not Jesus, Mary's son?" is one such veiled allusion. If Jesus had been regarded as legitimate, he would have been referred to as Joseph's son.

When Joseph was alive, he could extend his protection to her but after his death, she was alone, impoverished, and still regarded as an adulteress. One tradition records that as an old woman, Mary worked spinning wool into thread--a tedious, low-paying task that still left her deeply impoverished.

I urge you to remember the time before Mary became Queen of Heaven and was a child of poverty, an unwed mother, a widow in a village where everyone remembered that she became pregnant before her wedding, and a widow.

Sometimes, I think, people reject Mary with such passion and often vulgarity because they think of this serene, eternal virgin and think that she could never love them with all their (often sexual) sins. I believe the opposite is true. This is a woman whose life taught her the reality of suffering, social rejection, and the pain of being judged by others. This is the Mary who can understand your sorrows and respond to them compassionately. She was a human being as we are. She will help you.

Sacrament of the Sick

After more than a year of thinking about it, I finally asked my favorite priest to do the Sacrement of the Sick to help me with the depression I have been battling most of my life. This happened about two weeks ago. Maybe it is coincidence or a placebo effect, but I really do feel better. Much better. Optimistic about the future and looking forward to a fuller, richer life.

A Troubled Pastor

The pastor of the church attended by mother mother, brother, and nephew was recently replaced. The whole story is a troubling one. The priest apparently really did mismanage money. I don't know this for a fact but this is what I understand. He was fat, dyslexic, a poor homilest, and was also absolutely lacking in administrative ability. He was also generous-spirited, unfailingly polite, hospitable, and possessed the gift of compassion to a high degree.

My understanding of the story is as follows. If any priests or future priests are reading this, you may want to make note of what went wrong in order to avoid having similar problems yourself.

He spent large sums of money refurbishing the rectory. He bought an expensive stove, even though he didn't cook, and a widescreen TV. The stove seems legitimate. The rectory is church property and needs to be maintained.

If you are a pastor, appoint a parish finance council. If a committee approves expenditures, the parishioners are less likely to get upset and it removes the suspicion of personal enrichment.

If at all possible, make sure the church secretary and church steward get annual raises. At this church, employees were quite upset, and legitimately so, to see the pastor get a new widescreen TV when the steward hadn't had a raise in 3 years.

Keep the church employees on your side. They are there every day and know most of the people--especially the people attending daily mass who are the backbone of the parish. If they are unhappy, they will talk to the parishioners and undermine the morale of the entire church. In this case, the church steward discouraged my brother so much that he has stopped attending church. My brother struggles with health problems and could benefit from an active spirituality.

Give the best homilies possible. It is unfair but people judge you by your homilies. I was amazed to talk to parishioners after daily mass and learn how each and every detail of the homily was scrutinized and subjected to criticism. Poor homilies make parishioners think you don't care

Always visit the sick or at least make a phone call and ask if they would like a visit. Elderly people, many of whom are very much alone, are angry if their priests don't visit them in the hospital

After reading this, are you sure you want to be a priest?

Still Culturally a Protestant

During the last week, I have been watching and re-watching a video entitled Searching for the Wrong-Eyes Jesus. It is a documentary, produced by the BBC, about the Deep South. Much of the photo footage is about fundamentalist Protestant churches.

Because I was raised in conservative Protestant churches and perhaps because I have Scots-Irish ancestry, I feel a deep pull to the people appearing in the documentary even though people from different cultural backgrounds would no doubt regard them as semi-literate and uncultured. Most people would probably regard them as frightening. I feel this even though I was not raised in the South but in Florida, which is culturally not southern at all.

I love the passion, the sensuality, the risk-taking, the individualism of this kind of religion. It is a visceral attraction that moves me in a way that the Mass never will--even though I believe very much in the communion of saints and love many of the saints--the Blessed Mother, Anthony of Padua, St. Jude, and St. Therese especially.

I have enough education or intelligence or insight or whatever to doubt religion but not enough to escape it. Hence, I am torn between reason and faith, vacillating forever between skepticism and a kind of reserved faith. While watching this film, I longed for that total surrender to the irrational side of my nature that this kind of religion represents.

Think of Paul's words about the wisdom of God being revealed to the foolish. Perhaps in spite of all about this form of religious expression that is *gentuinely* frightening, there is a visceral wisdom. Fundamentalism survives when liberal Protestantism does not because the fundamentalists have an intuitive but accurate grasp of human nature and how to meet the needs of that nature.

The Negative Side of Religion

Until his death, I corresponded with a secular Israeli friend who was completely devoid of any religious feeling. In the early months of our correspondence, I wrote him that if I had to be someone on the margins of society--a prisoner, a prostitute, a drug addict, an unwed mother--I would rather take my chances with secular people than religious ones.

While religious people are often generous to the poor, that generosity not only fails but often turns into its opposite when someone lives in a way that challenges the received wisdom of the religious. Think of the Magdalens, the unwed mothers who were virtually imprisoned as slave labor in convents. Catholic reform schools were often brutally cruel.

Religion, it seems to me, often functions to improve the treatment that members of the ingroup receive from each other but worsens the treatment that "outgroups" receive.

I was heartened last week to hear a sermon by Father James Nero when he said that God's love is available to all people of good will and that while Christiand don't have to abandon our faith to follow someone else's, we should listen with respect to other people's religious experiences because God loves them and reaches out to them too.

The 7 Corporal Works of Mercy

Karen Armstrong, in A History of God, distinguishes between belief and faith. Belief is the belief in theological propositions while faith is the act of trusting God for everything. I have neither belief nor faith, it often seems. Hence, I decided to set aside questions about the theology of Jesus, which troubles me, and focus instead on the teachings of Jesus. In this spirit, I am focusing on the The Seven Corporal Works of Mercy, which are:

1. Give food to the hungry
2. Give water to the thirsty.
3. Clothe the naked.
4. Welcome the stranger.
5. Visit the sick.
6. Visit those in prison.
7. Bury the dead.

On the first Sunday of Lent, I read an article in the church bulletin challenging parisioners to perform each of the 7 works. It could be simple, like giving a drink of water to someone, or more elaborate.

I have tried to perform each of these works but I admit that I am fudging a little bit.

I participate in one of those child sponsorship programs. The family gets food aid every month. This qualifies as giving food to the hungry. Because the child also gets medical and dental care, I guess this sort of counts as visiting the sick--by making it possible for medical professionals to "visit" them. I know, that is cheating but I don't happen to know anyone who is sick right now.

I am donating a small sum of money to Catholic Relief Services and asking that they earmark that for their projects that provide clean drinking water to impoverished people in the third world.

My church has a program that asks people to donate long-sleeved t-shirts to farm workers in the area, who need protection from the sun, insects, and plants. Hence, clothing the naked.

Welcoming the stranger is a little problematic. My understanding is that in the Middle East of Jesus' day, welcoming the stranger did NOT mean bringing a cake to the new neighbor and saying "Welcome to the Neighborhood." More likely, it meant providing food and a place to stay for the night for visitors to the town.

I am a loner and don't want people in my house. Instead, I will make a donation to habitat for humanity.

Visiting the sick has been covered.

Visiting in prisons is difficult but I do write a former student who is serving a very long prison sentence. Perhaps I am visiting via letter.

Burying the dead is also problematic but this can be done indirectly but requesting masses for the recently deceased. I guess that works.

A useful thing for me to do is to put my change in a jar each day. After a month or two, I have accumulated enough money to make a reasonable contribution to a charity that helps the poor. I admit to saving the quarters for parking meters and tolls and donating the smaller coins. This is a ridiculously small effort for such huge problems as world poverty but if ten people did this, they could make a huge difference for one person or one family in a poor country.

Dominican Associates

A good friend is a member of the Dominican Associates, a group for lay members who want to follow Dominican principles. She invited me to two meetings. I have been fortunate to have met a wonderful group of very bright, socially committed women.

One woman, Barb, has 11 children. Instead of being beaten down and haggard, she looks years younger than her age, regards raising children as the most unbelievably wonderful thing she has ever done, and is a funraiser for a Catholic charity. She works with people of all faiths to provide assistance to the desperately poor and takes a a universalistic view of salvation. She told me that she never preaches her faith with her lips and believes that if she does good in the world that people will see the spirit of Christ in her, even if they don't think of the name Jesus. I liked that.

Another woman, who is quite young, lost her husband. She began dating and drove home one night when she had too much to drink. She was in an accident and killed someone. She served five years in prison and is still on probation. She was not an alcoholic or a habitual heavy drinker. She was someone who made a horrible mistake. It seems odd but she has a deep and obvious spirituality. I loved her the moment I met her.

An older woman I feel close to was "farmed out" to other people when she was a child because her parents didn't want to be parents. She has a peace about her.

Two of the women there have lost children, one in an accident, the other to suicide.

All of these women with so many struggles and challenges have managed to achieve a deep spirituality that I can only hope to aspire to. They have done it in an inclusive and not an exclusive way, too. Since I left Protestantism because I disagreed with the fundamentalist strain that is overpowering more moderate denominations, I was pleased to find a spirituality that is both profound and inclusive.

Fundamentalist spirituality is often quite deep and genuine but is disconcertingly narrow at times. More liberal spiritualities are broader and inclusive but also watery and saccharine.
Finding the proper balance is tricky. For now, at least, I see the Catholic Church as the best place to find that balance.

Huckleberry

A few years ago, a dear friend was dying. As a young man, he had written radio scripts for some Mark Twain classics, including Huckleberry Finn. My dog had just had puppies and I had named one of the puppies Huckleberry in his honor. I loved this dog and planned to keep him.

Unfortunately, one of the neighborhood children asked for him and because I am unable to say no to kids, I let him have the dog.

Fortunately, the family decided they couldn't keep him and they brought him back.

A few days later, the prettiest of the puppies, one my nephew particularly loved, disappeared. The girl next door put up signs advertising for the lost pup and offering free puppies from the litter. Another little girl in the neighborhood brought him back. While I was swamped by kids looking for free puppies, the girl next door picked up Huckleberry and put him in the other little girl's arms. Because she had returned my nephew's lost puppy, I didn't have the heart to take Huckleberry out of her arms and with great sadness in my heart, I let Huckleberry go to her home. She asked later if she could trade Huckleberry for the dog she rescued but since this was for my nephew, I had to say no. I briefly thought of making the trade and lying to my nephew and saying the dog had disappeared again but I couldn't do it.

I was also taking a medication at the time that had depression as a side effect.

A few days later, I found out that the little girl had not rescued the puppy, she had stolen the puppy and had been forced by her parents to return it when they saw the signs. (I also found out that the girl next door didn't like Huckleberry that much and probably chose that dog to push on the other girl so that I would keep a dog she liked better. Because I had more than half a dozen kids around me clamoring for dogs, I didn't think about everything that was not quite right about this situation and only heard about it later.)I had given my favorite puppy away to a thief. To make matters worse, my brother decided that my nephew could not have the other puppy and I had sacrificed Huckleberry for absolutely nothing.

Between the medication, the impending death of my friend, and the loss of the puppy named in his honor, I was distraught. I cried inconsolably for a month.

I lit a candle to St. Anthony and I KNEW, I just KNEW that Huckleberry was coming back to me.

A friend, a Protestant Christian, told me that probably the girl's mother didn't love the dog very much and I should go to her and ask for the dog back. I got up my nerve--how do you ask a kid to give a dog back--and knocked on the door. It turned out that they were moving and had to show the house they were living in. Since the dog was not yet toilet trained and they didn't want to show a house to tenants if the house smelled of dog waste, they asked me to keep the dog for a month while they showed the house prior to moving to their new house. I went to them the day before they were leaving for the new house. One more day and the dog would have been gone for good.

During that month, they never came to visit the dog at all.

At the end of the month, the little girl called and asked for the dog back. You would think I would be upset but I wasn't. I told people that even if they took the dog, they would eventually give it back.

I waited at home for the people to arrive and take the dog. THEY NEVER SHOWED UP.

This was about a year and a half ago. I have the dog to this day. He is a wonderful dog--gentle, loving, a dog who goes crazy with joy whenver he sees me and who doesn't have a mean bone in his body. Everybody who deals with him--vets, groomers, neighbors--comments about what a special dog he is.

I really believe that this was God showering his grace on me.

I don't know how God works when people go through so much worse and God seems so distant. I am thinking of the children who lost limbs in Iraq.

For that matter, I have struggled with severe clinical depression my entire life as have most of my relatives. I don't know why God allowed me to have this brutal illness that is almost certainly inherited and yet, I know that during my worst periods, he is showering his grace on my in ways that may seem little and yet that bring me comfort.

By the way, my mother says I got the dog back, not because of St. Anthony, but because Huckleberry was so hard to housetrain and they didn't want poop in the new house.

Still, I KNEW he was coming back after I lit that candle.

Christian theology often seems very difficult to believe--the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, the trinity, eternal damnation--but I have a mystical belief in the communion of the saints. The saints are God's gift to us. He knows we need other people--in this world and the next. We can use our trials, hurts, and disappointments as a stimulus to getting to know them. God will step back and let us develop relationships with them in the same way that a loving mother will step back and let her children develop close relatonships with other relatives.

Properly understood, devotion to the Saints does not lessen our relationship with God. Quite the opposite: it deepens my love for God who gave me an entire spiritual family.

And, a year and a half later, I want to say THANK YOU ST. ANTHONY.

The impersonality of evil

In the previous blog, I argued that human evil is the result of natural forces. It is not separate from other natural phenomena, like hurricanes or earthquakes, but is another facet of the operations of nature.

The impersonality of evil was brought home to me yesterday. A Palestinian gynecologist, a man who lives in Gaza but trained in Israel, worked in Israel, and treated Israeli patients, had three of his children killed in the recent war in Gaza. A fourth child, a daughter, is critically injured.

An Israeli woman I know told me about the interview he did after the tragedy. He sobbed deeply and said that he and his daughters had always wanted peace and not war.

These were not violent people but ordinary people. Many people on both sides who wanted war are alive while young women who wanted peace are dead.


My friend's daugther, an Israeli living in London, called her mother crying. She had known this doctor and had been distressed to learn that his children had been killed.

Was it Heschel who said something like "Expecting life to be fair because you are good is like expecting a bull not to charge you because you are a vegetarian."

Why Is There Evil?

No one has an answer to this question that is both logically consistent and emotionally satisfying. The traditional answer is that God allows us free will and that, alas, leads to evil.

I find this answer lacking for a variety of reasons--even though it has been endorsed by theologicans who are far more learned than I am.

To begin with, modern neuroscience seems to indicate that free will, if it exists at all, is much more limited than we would like to believe. As a simple example, consider fetal alcohol syndrome. One feature of FAS is that it impairs moral reasoning and the ability to make moral choices. The kids lack the ability to say "If I do x, then y will follow. Outcome y is immoral and undesirable. Therefore, I should not do x. " The kids did not make the choice to be exposed to alcohol in the womb and yet their ability to make moral choices is compromised by that exposure.

Other examples are available. People who have led normal, moral lives develop Alzheimer's disease and engage in acts of theft and physical agression. People with traumatic brain injuries experience severe personality changes as formerly easygoing people become angry and irritable.

These special cases point to the fact that behavior and personality have a large neurological component and that one's neurology is not usually a matter of choice. I believe these examples, extreme as they are, make us aware that "free will" has physical limits. If we are not aware of the limits of our own personal free will, I suggest that this is not because those limits don't exist, but that we are immersed in a society of people with similar limits and therefore don't notice them because we are not "different."

Even the most basic spiritual choice, the choice to reach out to God, may have genetic roots. Dean Hamer's book The God Gene offers the provocative hypothesis that religiosity is genetic. The Catholic faith has always taught that faith is a gift. Perhaps genes are the mediators of this gift.

In my struggle to understand this question, I have concluded that God loves us all personally but when he gave us physical life, he made us subject to physical laws and that these laws operate impersonally and, from an individual point of view, even cruelly. These laws govern not only our physical bodies but the workings of our minsd, our thoughts, and our emotions.

As Jesus said, "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous." (Matthew 5:43-45 NIV)

Neurology, like the rain, operates according to arbitrary but absolutely impartial laws of nature. Behavior is a result of the workings of the laws of nature and as such, produces results that can sometimes strike us as spectcularly cruel.


I once worked in a psychology lab and raised rats. If a rat pup was sickly, the mother would often kill it and cannabalize it. This made sense: by consuming this food, the mother needed to spend less time away from the nest searching for food and was better able to protect her newborns. The mother rat was behaving "naturally" but it was an injustice to the individual pup.

Most evil originates in either natural causes like fires or hurricanes or in human actions. If we see human actions as being governed by the same physical laws that govern non-human phenomena, evil stops being mysterious although it certainly doesn't become easier to bear.

Why did God create nature in this way? Why did he make us fragile, physically, intellectually, and yes, morally limited. (I believe original sin may lie in our genes.) Why did he design the universe so that we ultimately perish, usually painfully and with great difficulty?

I don't have the answer to this but let me suggest two things. First, we would not enjoy a world that was not structured by these laws. Second, we don't object to the laws of nature and in fact even benefit from them as long as those consequences apply to someone else and not ourselves.

Try to imagine a world without the laws of nature. None of us is pleased to fall but without gravity, the molecues of our body would not adhere together and we could not exist. If nothing died--no plants and no animals--we would be unable to feed or clothe ourselves.(at least in natural fibers.) Imagine no birthday parties, no backyard barbecues, no cotton clothing or leather shoes.

A more human example: Younger people at the peak of their physical attractiveness and strength are preoccupied with career, travel, and relationships. As people age, they become less interested in these things, maybe out of necessity, and turn their efforts toward nurturing others. Perhaps this is the reason why grandparents have such a tender love for their grandchildren and why children, often with some justice, complain that they never got the tender love and high level of investment from the same parent that lavishes love and attention on the grandchild.

If we are honest, we will admit that while we don't want to die, we want animals and plants to die, even if we don't say so directly. Harried parents of small children benefit from the fact that their aging parents are less interested in hot dates and more interested in taking the grandkids to the park. They want these benefits even though they result from the aging and physical decline of their parents.

In short, we want other people and things to be subject to the laws of nature but we want an exemption for ourselves.

Yet even though we are not and will not be exempt from the laws of nature, we can use this insight to see our physical selves as part of the continuing cycle of life.

I like to imagine life as a kaleidoscope. Hold it up to the light and an intricate but transitory pattern appears. Twist the kaleidoscope and the first pattern that enthralled us is destroyed and replaced by another intricate pattern that is equally intriquing. In order for that new pattern to appear, the old one had to be destroyed to provide the building blocks for the new one.

In a similar way, we participate in physical life forever because the atoms that are part of our body are recycled into newer forms of life. I am reminded of Jesus' saying that he who seeks to save his life will lose it. Compare the pharaohs to simple Egyptian laborers. The laborers were buried in a field. Their bodies returned to the soil and that soil was used to nourish other life. The Pharaoh was embalmed, his remains sealed in a sarcophagus. In his quest for immortality, he was entombed in a pyramid. The molecules of his body were removed from the larger ebb and flow of life and he did indeed lose a form of immortality in his quest to become immortal.



Death and a recycling of our bodies awaits as all. As a Christian, I hope to be one with the infinite universe when I enter the next world, one with no death or illness but also one without many earthly experiences that we covet--like sexuality and marriage and, therefore, childbirth and the creation of families.

Although we will lack these good things, we will, I believe, experience the love of God and the communion of saints even more fully than we do now.

And, I have to admit, that my solution--if it is indeeed a solution--only pushes back the problem a step and does not really solve it. After all, God made the laws of nature and they are concerned with life as a whole and apparently not with individual life. This is one example of why the arguments against religion are ultimately stronger than the arguments for it.