Catholic and Still Proud
JUBA, Sudan
Maybe the Catholic Church should be turned upside down.
Jesus wasn’t known for pontificating from palaces, covering up scandals, or issuing Paleolithic edicts on social issues. Does anyone think he would have protected clergymen who raped children?
Yet if the top of the church has strayed from its roots, much of its base is still deeply inspiring. I came here to impoverished southern Sudan to write about Sudanese problems, not the Catholic Church’s. Yet once again, I am awed that so many of the selfless people serving the world’s neediest are lowly nuns and priests — notable not for the grandeur of their vestments but for the grandness of their compassion.
As I’ve noted before, there seem to be two Catholic Churches, the old boys’ club of the Vatican and the grass-roots network of humble priests, nuns and laity in places like Sudan. The Vatican certainly supports many charitable efforts, and some bishops and cardinals are exemplary, but overwhelmingly it’s at the grass roots that I find the great soul of the Catholic Church.
The Vatican believes that this newspaper and other news organizations have been unfair and overzealous in excavating the church’s cover-ups of child rape. I see the opposite. No organization has done more to elevate the moral stature of the Catholic Church in the United States than The Boston Globe. Its groundbreaking 2002 coverage of abuse by priests led to reforms and by most accounts a significant reduction in abuse. Catholic kids are safer today not because of the cardinals’ leadership, but because of The Boston Globe’s.
Yet the church leaders are right about one thing: there is often a liberal and secular snobbishness toward the church as a whole — and that is unfair.
It may be easy at a New York cocktail party to sniff derisively at a church whose apex is male chauvinist, homophobic and so out of touch that it bars the use of condoms even to curb AIDS. But what about Father Michael Barton, a Catholic priest from Indianapolis? I met Father Michael in the remote village of Nyamlell, 150 miles from any paved road here in southern Sudan. He runs four schools for children who would otherwise go without an education, and his graduates score at the top of statewide examinations.
Father Michael came to southern Sudan in 1978 and chatters fluently in Dinka and other local languages. To keep his schools alive, he persevered through civil war, imprisonment and beatings, and a smorgasbord of disease. “It’s very normal to have malaria,” he said. “Intestinal parasites — that’s just normal.”
Father Michael may be the worst-dressed priest I’ve ever seen — and the noblest.
Anybody scorn him? Anybody think he’s a self-righteous hypocrite?
On the contrary, he would make a great pope.
In the city of Juba, I met Cathy Arata, a nun from New Jersey who spent years working with battered women in Appalachia. Then she moved to El Salvador during the brutal civil war there, putting her life on the line to protect peasants. Two years ago, she came here on behalf of a terrific Catholic project called Solidarity With Southern Sudan.
Sister Cathy and the others in the project have trained 600 schoolteachers. They are fighting hunger not with handouts but with help for villagers to improve agricultural techniques. They are also establishing a school for health workers, with a special focus on midwifery to reduce deaths in childbirth.
At the hospital attached to that school, the surgeon is a nun from Italy. The other doctor is a 72-year-old nun from Rhode Island. Nuns rock.
Sister Cathy would like to see more decentralization in the church, a greater role for women, and more emphasis on public service. She says she worries sometimes that if Jesus returned he would say, “Oh, they got it all wrong!”
She would make a great pope, too.
There are so many more like them. There’s Father Mario Falconi, an Italian priest who refused to leave Rwanda during the genocide and bravely saved 3,000 people from being massacred. There’s Father Mario Benedetti, a 72-year-old Italian priest based in Congo who fled with his congregation when their town was attacked by a brutal militia. Now Father Mario lives side by side with his Congolese congregants in the squalor of a refugee camp in southern Sudan, struggling to get schooling for their children.
It’s because of brave souls like these that I honor the Catholic Church. I understand why many Americans disdain a church whose leaders are linked to cover-ups and antediluvian stances on women, gays and condoms — but the Catholic Church is far larger than the Vatican.
And unless we’re willing to endure beatings alongside Father Michael, unless we’re willing to stand up to warlords with Sister Cathy, we have no right to disparage them or their true church.
Beyond the norm…
Loving people has nothing at all to do with “liking” an individual’s personality, character, or habits, but it has everything to do with the grace to see beyond all of these. Jesus has walked this path before us by loving and weeping over those who desired and procured His very death! The wondrous narrow way!
The Archbishop of Canterbury
Let’s see if I have this straight. The head of the Anglican Church who condones the ordination of practicing homosexuals as bishops wants to lecture the Catholic Church on their faliings? I’d suggest he clean his own house first.
The priest/pedophile scandal is a horror. No question. It has been horribly mishandled. But neither has the Chuch condoned and held up as example people who sin, and openly proclaim it as acceptable behavior.
Reading Scripture
I wish every one of you (and I might be all alone on this blog!) could know the pure ecstacy of reading scripture as the lector at Mass. It was my honor (and I am truly not worthy) to be the lector at Mass for Easter Sunday! I can only hope that God’s glory was adequately proclaimed.
Bearing the Cross
I read the daily assertions against Pope Benedict and against my church and I am reminded that we are each given a cross to bear that we might walk in step with Christ
The Empty Tabernacle
I stopped to pray in the Eucharistic Chapel today and the Tabernacle was open and empty save for a photo representation of Jesus. It’s a vivid reminder of what He gave for us when He was crucified. He emptied His being that we might be saved.
Catholic and Proud
I think it’s important to say how horrified I am at the scandals rocking my church yet at the same time I remain a proud and committed Catholic. I wish everyone could know the many fine priests I’ve been privileged to meet and the wonderful gifts they have given me in my life.
A Holy Weekend
Isn’t this a great time to be a Christian? As I read, pray and listen to the Lord I am really overwhelmed with the joy and glory of knowing Jesus.
No Fireflies Allowed….
“My house S’out of the ordinary
That’s right Don’t want to hurt nobody
Some things sure can sweep me off my feet
Burning down the house”
Every day, I am awakened with a song. Some days it is a sweet hymn. Other days it is my “thought” for the day set to music
On occasion, there is no music, only a phrase or something to chew on for a while….and I will admit, I have been chewing on a few things for a long time. (Abba knows I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed). 
Today……it was “Burning Down the House” by the Talking Heads. This song finds it’s way into my spirit from time to time, but today it’s a little different…. in what way I cannot describe…yet.
And I wait for the fire Father!
