Followup on Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde and the Appropriateness of her Homily

Bishop Takes King

[[ Dear Sister Laurel, I read where you said you supported Bishop Budde in her comments to President Trump. I assume you are a Democrat and never Trumper because only someone like that could think that this so-called "Bishop" was really Christian or that this sermon of hers was proper to preach to the President of the US!! (I can't see it's right to let her preach at all since women are supposed to be silent in church!) You said you are teaching a Scripture class on Acts of the Apostles and that it is all about confronting the Leaders or Kings of this world with the Kingship of Jesus. But Jesus is no King and for sure he isn't the King of this world. He's the Lord of heaven, but not a King!! And you shouldn't make him political or the Gospel in the way Budde did. We have separation of Church and state here!! Anyway, I thought as a hermit you took a vow to stay separated from the world and focused on getting to heaven, like any good Christian.. . .]]

Thanks for your question, or perhaps I should say thanks for your comments. It is surprising to me to hear folks who consider themselves to be Christian or to understand the power and scandal of the Christ Event reacting in this way to Bishop Mariann Budde's homily. I say that because I recognized her proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom of God there, nothing more and nothing less. I could argue various points with you (e.g., the role of women in the Church, the nature of prophetic speech or what the NT calls parrhesia, the Kingship of Jesus, etc) and I could explain my vocation, but would that be of any assistance to you? Would you really listen or even see this response? If I am mistaken here, please write again and ask your questions or make your comments without the snark. I will be happy to answer or respond to them.

Let me point out one thing the Gospel writers make very clear, and that is the way Christianity, from Jesus' nativity to his death, resurrection, and ascension has always involved the political dimension of reality. Specifically, the Christ Event has always been a threat to the emperors of this world. Thus Herod wants to know where the newly born child is when the wise men come to Jerusalem looking for him and Mary and Joseph take their son and flee to Egypt until Herod's death when it is safer to return. Thus, the Jewish Temple leadership calls on Roman leaders to get Jesus tried and crucified; the disciples who preach with boldness after Pentecost are martyred, as is Paul in Rome despite being a Roman citizen. No one could read the New Testament and find that Jesus and his disciples, particularly after Jesus' resurrection and ascension or Pentecost, was not a threat to the established imperial order, or believe that it is not the role of Christians to speak truth to power in the same way Bishop Mariann Budde did in the National Cathedral the day following the inauguration.

I will also say to you what I said to my Scripture class last Thursday. Let's suppose President Trump (or anyone else in leadership in this country) had not wanted to hear the Gospel with all of its truth and challenge. In that case, if he did not want to be confronted with the message of Jesus who is God's Christ, the real King or Lord of this world (and certainly of the National Cathedral), he should have stayed away from there! If nominal Christians, don't want to hear a gospel focused on God's will in and for this world, God's will for the poor and marginalized, for the sick and suffering, or for the aliens we are called to make our neighbors and love as we love ourselves, then by all means find another faith or philosophy to embrace. Epicureanism might work since it involves significant values and a focus on pleasure** all without God, his Christ or the Holy Spirit. Don't use the Christian faith to give a patina of religious validity to an inauguration or other ways of celebrating someone's life or achievements when they are actually antithetical to the Gospel message! Especially, don't expect to hear Scriptures that do not condemn the ways of this world or that fail to celebrate the Kingship and values of Jesus, God's Christ. 

Spreading Hope and Compassion

Bishop Budde proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ and requested Trump to remember the merciful and otherwise demanding ethics of that Gospel in accepting his new post --- something he claimed to consider was ordained by the God of Love. Isn't that her job? Isn't this her mission and even a huge part of her very vocation? Isn't this why we attend Church upon making a life commitment or assuming a responsible leadership position?? Meanwhile, to those who have castigated Bishop Budde for doing her job and fulfilling her vocation, I would ask you to imagine this homily in another context, say for the establishment of a committee or board whose focus is on Christian Unity, or on the ordination of new priests and preachers. Listen to the homily with that context in mind and ask yourself if anything in that homily was contrary to the Christian Gospel. I don't think you will find anything. In fact, wasn't the content and tone exactly what you would want Christian leaders to be hearing from the Church on such an occasion? 

The second thing I would ask you to do is to take a list of the actions President Trump has taken in the past couple of weeks and set those down alongside the bishop's plea for mercy from the president. Ask yourself if that plea was inappropriate for someone representing the Gospel and the coming Kingdom of God. Again, I don't think you will find it inappropriate at all. What it may cause you to ask is why don't we hear these kinds of homilies more often if this is what Jesus represented? Too often, what passes for Christianity, is the pablum we required as children. When we are given a meal meant to nourish an adult we may spit it out as too difficult to chew, not sweet enough, or too unfamiliar. In an age where an intellectually demanding theology is despised as "elitist" or dismissed because it is not some simplistic version of what it means to love God or oneself and others as oneself, or when speeches are pared down to sound bite proportions we may be unfamiliar with challenging homilies. What is especially tragic is what I heard from Christians who didn't even recognize that what they were criticizing was the Gospel of God in Christ --- it was the meal adult Christians are supposed to regularly share with others in word and deed.

Preaching the Gospel is not an easy task. It requires that we speak truth to power as much as we speak it to console and empower the powerless. It requires courage and intelligence, and it requires a keen sense of the demands and promises of Christianity as well as an ability to tailor what one says to the specific assembly present that day. It requires integrity because one must be (or be committed to becoming) the image of the God one is proclaiming.  One must live from the hope Christianity gives us and be entirely dependent on and in communion with the God who empowers not only faith, hope, and love, but the authenticity of truly human life itself. Bishop Budde knows all this much better than I do and she takes her vocation to serve God, God's People, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ seriously. As I said in my first post, Thanks be to God, and today I am grateful especially for Bishop Budde's faithfulness during such a time as we are now facing in this country. It has been a source of inspiration for me in my teaching and writing this week. 

** Epicureanism, sometimes called Epicurean Hedonism, represents a philosophy with pleasure at the center of its thought. However, Epicurus never meant crudely pleasurable focuses on gluttony, greed, arrogant self-centeredness or license, and the like. Instead, he focused on the pleasure of the mind, a rational approach to reality rooted in living in the present moment and learning to be grateful for what one has right now. Epicureanism is an egalitarian and materialistic philosophy where genuine friendships are very important as is simplicity in the way one lives one's life. However, it has no room for God, particularly a God who dwells with us as Emmanuel!

*** Some may be interested in NT Wright's How God Became King for dimensions of the Gospel story that they may not have heard in the past.

On the Profound Benefits of Canonical Standing

[[Dear Sr. Laurel, I am one who considers himself a non-professed solitary. I have considered consecration under Canon 603, but have not found a reason to follow-through. Essentially, I envision formal consecration as a matter of primarily professing poverty, chastity, and obedience, but without benefit. For instance, confessed hermits do not receive stipends, medical insurance, pensions, or help establishing their life work, as other consecrated folk do. Recently, I read one of your posts that mentioned the "benefits" of consecration, but you did not list them; would you please expound on this topic?]]

Thanks for your question. I believe I have recently said "without benefit of consecration" rather than speaking of "the benefits of consecration" but it is true I believe consecration is beneficial to the Church as well as to the hermit and those she serves with her life. It is true that canonical (consecrated) solitary hermits do not receive stipends, insurance, pensions, assistance establishing one's life's work (which is eremitical life, nothing less and nothing other), financial support for library, retreat opportunities, housing, or expenses associated with limited apostolic ministry, and so forth. However, I think that this way of measuring the benefits of this vocation, is narrow and even superficial. It is also, at least ostensibly, self-centered. In any case, it is incomplete at best.

Thus, as I measure the benefits of canonical eremitical life, I do so not only in terms of associated rights, but in terms of obligations as well as in terms of others' expectations and the grace associated with consecration. Especially, I measure them in terms of the responsible freedom and witness value canonical standing and consecration create and sustain. Note that this way of measuring the "benefit" of consecrated eremitical life necessarily points directly to its benefit to others; it points directly to the Church and world as a whole, as well as to the hermit herself. Thus the term I use to "contain" and reflect on these dimensions of the consecrated or canonical eremitical vocation is "ecclesial"; that is, this vocation belongs to the Church and participates in a conscious, deliberate, and public way in the proclamation of the Gospel entrusted to her. 

All of the characteristics of public or canonical vocations contribute to this proclamation, and this is so whether we are speaking of the vows, the Rule a hermit writes, her stricter separation from the world, the silence of solitude, limited apostolic ministry, or the supervision of the vocation by legitimate superiors. All of these elements help produce a responsible freedom in the hermit which is very specifically directed to the living of the Gospel in the service of God, the People of God and a needy world. Moreover, because the Church herself recognizes and constitutes these vocations canonically, they are capable of doing so in ways private dedication ordinarily cannot and will not do. This is one of the reasons I persisted in pursuing canonical standing. It became clear to me that the Holy Spirit was working in my life in a way which made of my life a unique proclamation of the Gospel, especially as it so often is stated in paradoxical terms: divine power perfected in weakness, comfort in suffering, wealth in poverty, completion and wholeness in brokenness, and so forth.

You identify yourself as a solitary. Perhaps I can contrast that with the way I see my own vocation precisely because I am canonically professed and consecrated. Of course, I don't know how or why you use the term so I am not commenting on that, but I will say that because of the ecclesial and eremitical nature of my vocation I just can't use the term solitary as a definition of my life. The emphasis in the word solitary seems to me to stress aloneness and a lack of significant bonds; this, in turn, seems antithetical to who I am called to be.  At the very least it is a dimension I do not want to emphasize at the expense of the significant bonds associated with ecclesial vocations. Neither do I want to substitute a generic or unspecified solitude in place of desert spirituality as the Episcopal canon seems to do. Yes, I am a solitary hermit, that is, one who lives a very particular kind of solitude rooted in desert spirituality but without belonging to a community (aka, an institute) of hermits. Even so, it is my canonical standing which explicitly links aloneness with significant bonds and establishes the whole as a paradigm of paradoxical gospel meaningfulness. It is canonical standing that both requires and allows me to live my whole life in terms of the Gospel and, as one with an ecclesial vocation, to do this in the name of the Church.

At every moment I and other diocesan hermits are both called and empowered to do this in the very heart of the Church for the sake of the proclamation entrusted to her for the salvation of others. I understand the benefits of profession and consecration under canon 603 in these terms. When I write about the vows, canonical standing, responsible freedom, or freedom vs liberty and the capacity to become the person God calls me to be, or about the importance of the ministry of authority in this, etc., I am describing the benefits of canonical standing. I am doing this as one whose consecration means she is participating in and has been entrusted with the rights and  obligations of an ecclesial vocation in which she can become her truest self --- and in doing so, serve others and glorify God. Thus, again, I resist seeing myself as a solitary, while the way I measure the benefits of consecration is not in material terms, but in who I am called and empowered to be in light of this ecclesially mediated Divine call and setting apart.

On Anniversaries of Birthday and Profession and the Movie, "Calvary"

This last week I celebrated the anniversaries of both my perpetual eremitical profession and my birthday. For the past 7 years these days have been made incredibly special by what God has done in and with my life. I am immensely grateful for that but also so very grateful to members of my parish and other friends who have made these anniversaries so special during that time. One of the ways I celebrate with friends is to go to movies at this time. That was true this year and I wanted to recommend both of the films I saw (the first was When the Team Stands Tall, what is called around here, "The De La Salle Movie" --- it is both entertaining and inspiring), but especially I want to say something about Calvary.

Let me begin by noting that it is a brilliant movie --- difficult, horrifying in some ways, inspiring, challenging, provocative, and often beautiful both in its simplicity and its complexity. The structure is both spare and profound. The characters are complex and are sometimes easy to both dislike and to empathize with. At the center of the story is a good priest. The antagonist is a man who is the victim or long term sexual abuse by clergy. This man enters the confessional where the priest is waiting and begins by saying (essentially), "I first tasted semen at the age of seven." After a series of exchanges the priest, who has not harmed the man (or anyone else in his role as priest), is told that at the end of a week, Sunday next, the man will kill him on the beach. Like Jesus who knows if he goes to Jerusalem he will be killed, the priest has no doubts about the man's sincerity or intention. Like Jesus the priest continues his public ministry right up until the last minute and like Jesus he has a choice to flee or to "go to Jerusalem". In the end he goes, but not without his own Gethsemane crisis and related decision.

I should also say that the parallels with Jesus' story are not drawn in an "in your face" way. They are present because the man is a priest and a good one who lives his life in Christ with integrity. The parallels are there because they are there in the life of any priest, or any religious, for instance who lives his or her Christian vocation in this way. Still, this is not an easy vocation to live in an integral way and the degree of harm that can be done by those who do not do so is absolutely incalculable; Calvary does a very effective job of expressing both aspects of this truth. When the Church, and that means those individuals who live and act in the name of the Church, betray their commission to proclaim the Gospel in word and deed lives are ruined. Faith, though it may be vital and strong, is ALSO a fragile thing and it and the capacity for it can be murdered by ecclesiastical hypocrisy and sin. Calvary is also the story of such hypocrisy and the resultant death of faith in Ireland.

There is no way I can do justice to this movie but I do want to say what struck me most about it. First, we live in a world where even priests and religious who have NOT done terrible things and have lived their vows with integrity are sometimes treated with contempt or otherwise tarred with the same brush reserved for perpetrators. Last month, for instance, I had a conversation over lunch with a priest who was visiting from Ireland. He asked me about the response I got from wearing a habit and wondered if I received much negative attention or denigration because of it.

While I have had some ugly encounters (including one where someone I had never seen before almost succeeded in pushing me down a train platform escalator while snarling, "F___ing nun!") generally people are positive in their reception and many see me as someone they can talk to because of the habit (I like to think they approach because I personally signal an openness and capacity for pastoral ministry but certainly the habit invites them to consider speaking to me). In any case, this priest noted that in Ireland it is very different for a priest wearing a collar in public. Similarly, I know of a case where a priest here in the US was tried and convicted, falsely, and according to "evidence" that was flimsy at best and simply incredible. He was convicted on this basis merely because he was a priest, not because he had actually hurt anyone.

Calvary brings out what it is like to be true to one's calling in a world where who one is as well as what one stands for is often despised, denigrated, or ridiculed. It also makes very clear how a public life of ministry to others means that quite often one cannot share things with another person who truly understands but instead must bear them alone.  (This can be especially true when there are no other priests or religious around!) The loneliness which is a counterpoint to the consolation and communion of faith was striking and something many priests and religious know well.

Similarly,  the role of clergy and religious is a critical one in our church and world. While I do not mean to suggest that the laity do not serve similarly in their witness to the Gospel, a public ecclesial vocation can invite genuine faith or make it seem hypocritical and the Gospel a farce in a very profound way. In Calvary we spend a week with a faithful priest (Fr James LaVelle) who ministers the Word of God to those who both love and hate him and are often cynical at best about "the faith" they either cling to in some desperate but still-superficial way, or outright despise and reject. The relative dearth or even absence of priests, religious, and others who minister the Gospel with their whole lives is a terrible tragedy in our world and the results are particularly sad to see.

At the end of the movie, for instance, we revisit a series of scenes from the preceding week. Where once this priest walked with his daughter, was a hearing and healing presence, etc, now there are voids: an empty road, a deserted field, the ruins of a church, etc. I often had the sense during the movie that the Gospel of God is suffering for lack of priests (et al) while the world is suffering from a lack of a credible proclamation of the Gospel. The image I saw in my mind's eye was of a single priest (and often a single religious woman or man) holding darkness at bay like a small child with his  or her finger in the dike trying to keep it from disintegrating altogether and holding back flood waters which will destroy everything in their wake. I was struck forcibly by the weighty responsibility ministers of the Gospel hold today. For me this was a point of emotional "gravitas" and a lasting challenge.

When the film ends it seems at first that perhaps the assassin's bullets have allowed darkness to swallow up goodness or, perhaps worse, that Fr James LaVelle's life made no difference at all. But the priest's words have been heard by others; his observation that the lesson that needs to be heard more often and emphatically is that of forgiveness is picked up by his daughter (James became a priest only after the death of his wife). She in turn goes to visit his killer in prison. The killer's choice of a "good priest" was made so that people could be shocked --- just as Romans often killed people to shock and frighten the populace and deter revolution, etc. He was not looking for justice. Nothing, from his perspective, could be set right for him. He was angry and in pain and needed to scream as loudly as possible while exacting vengeance in some more-than-usually-inadequate way.

And yet, his murder of this good, though imperfect, man of God does more than simply shock. It begins a call for forgiveness and a dynamic of reconciliation which the whole of Ireland (and anyone else dealing with the scandals of the church in our world) really needs in order to move forward. This obedient priest has taken on the darkness and the sins of his confreres in religion and the priesthood and at the very least has demonstrated a nobility grounded in his firm belief in God and his vocation. While I did not personally have the sense this priest went to his death in expiation for the sins of others, in fact he does suffer innocently for those who are guilty and slowly the integrity of his life and death appear to allow light to shine in and through the darkness.

Of course there is SO much more to this movie: layers upon layers of structure and meaning and significant pieces and characters I have not even mentioned. It is a movie I am sure I could see at least a couple more times without "getting it all". More accurately perhaps, it is one of those movies which could be used for lectio over an extended period just as it is like one of Jesus' parables where we enter and reenter the story at different points with every hearing not in order to "get it" exactly, but to be challenged and changed by it so that we can see things in a new way. I recommend folks see it as soon as they can, especially since it is unlikely to be in theaters much longer --- it was slated for a limited engagement and was released on August 1.