Reaction mixed to priest's advice not to be like Mother Teresa*

By GSM News Staff

Washington, D.C., February 13, 2019 - Reaction was mixed in response the advice of Jesuit Father James Martin, who last week published a spiritual reflection at America Magazine advising readers that "to be a saint, just be who you are."

Father Martin pointed to the example of St. Teresa of Calcutta, noting that few people are called to work with the poorest of the poor in the slums. "You're not supposed to be Mother Teresa," he wrote. "As the Trappist monk Thomas Merton said, 'For me, to be a saint means to be myself.' So maybe it's time to stop trying to be someone else. Stop looking at someone else's roadmap to holiness."

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Many contacted by GSM News were quick to praise the prominent Jesuit priest's advice to "be who you are," including Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who executed more than a million of his own citizens; Mao Zdung, whose "Great Leap Forward" killed tens of millions of Chinese; and Pol Pot, whose Khmer Rouge regime murdered nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population.

"He spoke right to my heart," said Adolf Hitler, German Führer from 1934 until his suicide at the conclusion of the Second World War. 

Others, however, found Father Martin's words troubling, most prominently the apostle Paul, who wrote rebuttals of Father Martin's advice in letters to the Christian communities he had founded in Galatia and Corinth. 

"I have been crucified with Christ," St. Paul wrote to the Galatians, who had turned from the Gospel to be themselves. "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."

St. Paul similarly advised the Corinthians to keep trying to be someone else, going so far as to hold himself up as their roadmap to holiness. "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ," he wrote.

The reaction from Pope Francis was also swift. In his 2016 homily at the canonization Mass for Mother Teresa he flatly contradicted Father Martin, telling the faithful to take the newly minted saint as their model: "Today, I pass on this emblematic figure of womanhood and of consecrated life to the whole world of volunteers."

"May she be your model of holiness!" the Holy Father concluded.

Being his typical self and not engaging his critics, Father Martin could not be reached for comment.


_______________________________
* Because right now, humor is the only thing that makes sense.

McCarrick's laicization a great honor for the laity, Vatican official says*

By GSM News Staff

Vatican City, Feb. 12, 2019 - Speculation is building that former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick could be laicized as soon as tomorrow. And while many consider laicization to be a severe penalty for McCarrick, an anonymous source has asserted that it's a great honor for the laity.

"You have to see both sides of the coin," said GSM News' anonymous source, who works for the Vatican's Dicastery for the Laity and Family. "It's been centuries since a Cardinal--albeit a former one--has rejoined the ranks of the laity. So what an honor for them."

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Credible allegations surfaced in June, 2018, that McCarrick, the powerful former archbishop of Washington, D.C., had sexually abused a 16-year-old minor in the 1970s. Two more allegations of the sexual abuse of minors also quickly surfaced, as well as claims that the archbishop regularly made sexual advances on seminarians while heading the Newark archdiocese from 1986-2000.

The Holy See swiftly removed McCarrick from public ministry and then from the College of Cardinals. The verdict of the canonical trial that could laicize him is expected ahead of a Vatican summit on sexual abuse scheduled to begin later this week.

The anonymous Vatican official from the Dicastery for Laity and the Family credited his belief that McCarrick's laicization would be a boon for the laity to Jesuit Father Antonio Spadero, a confidant of Pope Francis, who famously tweeted last year that theology is not mathematics, and that in theology two-plus-two sometimes equals five.

"It may look like an insult to the laity to give them McCarrick when we clergy don't want to be associated with him anymore," the official said. "But it's all a matter of perception. And the laity really need to perceive it as a great honor for them to be able to claim a Prince of the Church as one of their own."

Reacting to the Vatican official's comment was Joe Schmo, an average layman. "The Second Vatican Council sought to elevate the vocation of the lay faithful," he said. "But returning McCarrick to the lay state as a punishment demonstrates the very clericalism that Pope Francis has been decrying. I just don't understand it."

When asked about Schmo's statement, the Vatican official replied, "Really, the answer here is five, not four. So tell Schmo and all those other schmucks to pay, pray, and obey."


________________________________
* Because right now, humor is the only thing that makes sense. For a more serious personal reflection of mine on the fall of McCarrick, see my post from last year: Cardinal McCarrick and the Church's Continued Dark Night.

Cardinal Kasper says the Nicaean Creed spreads 'confusion and division'*

By News Staff**

Munich, Germany, Feb 11, 2019 – German Cardinal Walter Kasper has responded critically to a “Manifesto of Faith” released by the bishops who were meeting in Nicaea. He said that the bishops' manifesto, which they are calling their “creed,” contains many statements that are so heavy handed that they could lead to division in the Church.

Kasper said that while the Nicaean creed “contains many statements of faith that every upright Catholic can wholeheartedly affirm,” some of the truths in it “are pointed out so pointedly that it fades out the other half.”

Imagine from WikiCommons

For their part, the bishops said they were meeting at Nicaea because of “growing confusion about the nature of the relationship between the Father and the Son in the Holy Trinity.” Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, had argued that the Son is “consubstantial with the Father.” Arius, a priest of Alexandria, countered that the Son is not fully divine but merely an “inferior God.”

After being convened by Emperor Constantine, the Nicaean council was led by the imperial legate Hosius, bishop of Cordova. The 200-plus bishops were able to address all the disputed areas of Catholic doctrine. Particular emphasis was given to the divine processions and the hypostatic union.

In their manifesto, the bishops came down strongly on the side of Alexander, noting that the Son proceeds from the Father and is “true God from true God.” They add that “those who say: there was a time when He was not... or that the Son of God is created, or mutable, or subject to change, (them) the Catholic Church anathematizes.” They also reiterate the Church's longstanding belief in the divinity of the Holy Spirit.

Kasper, who has been an outspoken advocate for dialogue, accused the council fathers of making “unacceptable blanket statements,” such as the assertion that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity is “God from God, light from light, true God from true God.”

“It is undoubtedly true that Jesus is divine,” Kasper charged. “But how does this leave room in the Church for faithful priests like Arius? Are there not similarities between the beliefs of Alexander and Arius that would leave room for them both?”

He also said he was “totally horrified" to read the bishops' statement that the “Catholic Church anathematizes” those who fail to acknowledge that the Son is consubstantial with the Father.

Kasper suggested that the Nicaean fathers were following the dangerous path of St. Paul, who rebuked St. Peter at the Council of Jerusalem: “They rightly advocated for reforms in the Church but wanted to pursue their reforms behind the pope's back and enforce them in opposition to him.”

Kasper concluded, “What will happen the next time the bishops meet at Constantinople? Before you know it, they will be saying that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son. This can only lead to confusion and division. That could unhinge the Catholic Church.”

___________________________

* Because at this point, humor is the only thing that makes sense.
** Catholic News Agency has contributed to this report. Sort of.

Farming in the "polar vortex": journal entries for the past few days

It's in the single digits below zero, and it looks like we've made it through the worst of the cold weather here at Kleinshire. Rosemary and I appreciate all the prayers and expressions of concern that we've received from folks asking how the animals are managing in the extreme weather. I thought I'd put together a little journal for the past four days. If you're curious what life on the farm in the "polar vortex" was like, feel free to read on.

Monday, January 28th, 

As expected, we awoke to eight to ten inches of new-fallen snow. This was actually very welcome news due to the coming frigid weather. Snow is an excellent insulator, and with several thousand dollars worth of garlic cloves planted out in the field, there's the real danger of winter kill from excessively cold temperatures. Obviously it's good to have snow to bank against animal houses and cover the septic system as well. And of course, it's beautiful. This is the way winter should look!

I head out to the barn with a warmed-up bottle of milk for our one little doeling who needs supplement, and I'm followed soon thereafter by Rosemary, who feeds the goats their grain ration and does the milking every morning. For me, there are bales of hay and buckets of water to haul down to the goat barn, and a horse and the chickens and guinea hens to care for as well. Cyprian will be out soon to check for eggs and feed Snowy, our yard dog, and Clement will take care of the cats. All the chores will take a little longer this morning due to the snow.

In the goat barn, though, Rosemary calls out to me. She's heard a distressed cry from the baby Nigerian dwarf goats, who are separated from their mothers at night as we approach weaning time. The little tri-color buckling is practically frozen and clearly in distress. Later we surmised that he had gotten into the livestock guardian dogs' dry food. Although the goats ordinarily left the dog food alone, we recently switched to a new brand, and we had discovered just a day earlier that the goats like the new brand. The buckling's rumen clearly wasn't working properly, and his body temperature wasn't keeping up with the sub-zero weather. So I quickly scooped him up and snuggled him into my jacket, bringing him up to the house. Over the next four hours, Cyprian, Clement, and Cletus all took shifts snuggling the buckling in a blanket and attempting to bring his body temperature back up to normal.

About lunchtime, the buckling was finally showing signs of life. His eyes had rolled back in his head when we brought him up; several times this morning when he stopped grinding his teeth, we thought for sure that he was a goner. Eventually, I took him from the boys and placed him, still wrapped in the towel, in a box, thinking that nature would take its course. Miracle of miracles, he was now calling out weakly. First we experimented with a bottle. Unfortunately he had become too weak to suck, and as a dam-raised baby he just wasn't enthusiastic about the whole concept of a bottle anyway. So we began the process of giving him droppers full of milk at regular intervals.

With Rosemary's help, I finally finished shoveling the driveway sometime in the afternoon. We live on a windy ridge-top, and the drift in front of the pole barn was chest-high on one side! Thankfully school was cancelled due to the snowfall, and I didn't have to commute to La Crosse for the "brick-and-mortar" classes that I would ordinarily be teaching on Mondays. This meant Rosemary and I could spend some time winterizing things. In addition to shoveling, I banked snow against the bucks' house and added extra bedding. Rosemary put down extra wood shavings in the chicken coop. Our regular pattern of chores followed. I upped the hay ration for the goats and the horse. It's important to keep fresh, clean water and plenty of hay in stock for the goats. They produce their own heat through their constant "rumination." I also started mixing shredded beets into Tarcy's grain ration. The extra sugar gives him a needed boost.

I headed down to the goat barn with another bottle of warmed milk for Sadie's doeling around 7 p.m. She drank it down greedily, as she always does. She's sorta my baby these days. It's not even below zero at this point, and everybody looks cozy and comfortable. The livestock guardian dogs, Lilly and Leche, absolutely love the snow. The cold weather is yet to come. Up in the house, the buckling is still very weak. We've transferred him to a tote with pine shavings and straw for bedding. Although he can stand, he still can't take a bottle. He's wheezy, and it's clear that he has caught pneumonia. He's definitely still touch-and-go.

Tuesday, January 29th

A new day begins at about 6:30 a.m., and it's the same pattern as usual. Although it's below zero, the

The dogs don't seem to mind!

cold weather hasn't really set in yet. The real challenge begins when the temperature fails to rise very much and then, with the cold front moving in, dips even lower in the evening.  So, the regular chores, the regular pattern, all through the evening. Actually, Rosemary's chores have gotten a little easier. After what happened with the buckling, we were extra-cautious with the Nigerian kids. We decided that for the next few days we'd leave the babies on their mothers all through the night. That meant a lot less milk for us. But if it keeps the babies vigorous, then so be it.

The little buckling is a fighter, but he still wasn't not perking up as much as we'd have liked. His eyes and nose were quite gummed up. Although he was hungry today, he would fight every dropperful of milk due to his congestion. Although brick-and-mortar school may be cancelled, my Tuesday online classes were still held as usual. So it was a busy day for me.

Today was also Cyprian's tenth birthday, and we made merry despite the impending weather. In the evening the weather definitely started to come in. It was already in the double-digits below zero by the time I brought the bottle out to Sadie's doeling. The wind was blowing steadily from the north, and the cold seemed to pass right through my jacket. The bucks seem to have rejected Wrangler, the youngest, who was sleeping  out in the elements, alongside the hayrack. I took him by the horns and pushed him into the bucks' shelter, along with Matthias and Tuff.

These boys don't always get along.

Rosemary and I stayed up late on Tuesday night. It was already more than 20 below zero by 11:30 p.m., and we wanted to make sure that the goats were well situated vis-à-vis the wind and elements. Sure enough, Tuff had again kicked Wrangler out of the shelter. So yet again, I took him by the horns and pushed him into the shelter. This time I stayed until all three bucks have settled down. As unpleasant as I'm sure it smells in that shelter, they needed each others' body heat to make it through the night.

In the goat barn, the mothers and does were all cuddled up at my mid-night check. The Nigerian mothers and babies are all in one huge heap. Most of the other goats are in their family units--mothers with their babies from both this year and last year all snuggled in. Out in the pasture, Tarcy was ignoring his shelter, as he always has, choosing instead to stand along the fence by his haynet. But his look said it all--Why did you bring me from toasty-warm North Carolina to this cold, godforsaken place?!?

Wednesday, January 30th

It was 29 degrees below zero when we awoke at 7 a.m. Actually, I was awake earlier, but who wants to go out before first light when it's that cold. Poor dairy farmers! The wood boiler, which I filled extra full the night before, did an admirable job keeping our old, drafty farmhouse warm, and the temperature inside was still 68 degrees. What a contrast with the outside temperature, however! Thankfully the bucks were all still snuggled in their shelter. My first task was to give Sadie's doeling her bottle. At first I was worried when she stopped drinking; it was only later that I realized the nipple wasn't functioning correctly in the extreme cold!

Lifetime achievement for Rosemary:
milking a goat in an uninsulated barn at 29 degrees below zero.
Lifetime achievement for me: having married Rosemary.

The goats in the barn were also snuggled in. Usually they're up immediately, clamoring for food. But this morning, they stayed put until there was real evidence that something was forthcoming. There was a little shivering, but nobody looked overly stressed, not even the little babies. Some of the goats had frosty coats and muzzles, but they were all acting normal. Somehow, Rosemary managed to milk Jaline, the full-sized Alpine who doesn't have any babies to nurse. Yes, the milk started to freeze as she trekked back up to the house!

Chores were otherwise fairly normal. I've learned to wear fairly loose work gloves so that I can curl my hands into fists whenever I'm not using my fingers. Two pairs of wool socks keep my feet warm enough to make it through 45 minutes' worth of chores. Being outside, the bucks' water pail always has a thick coating of ice that needs to be broken. Annoyingly, the does have taken to defecating into their water pail and then refusing to drink from it. So that's another five gallon bucket to haul down from the house. Since it's a lot of work connecting and disconnecting the hose in the milkhouse in the extreme cold, I've taken to hauling water from the freeze-proof faucet up at the house.

They are still giving us six eggs per day!

The guineas and the chickens have unheated rubber buckets of water that need to be changed out every day and then broken every few hours on a day like today. Despite the weather, the chickens are still giving us five or six eggs per day. I think that with a check every few hours, we managed to bring in a few unfrozen eggs today!

With school cancelled again today, I was able to keep a close eye on the animals. The buckling in the house was still drinking droppers full of milk rather than bottles under Rosemary's care. But he was not fighting it as much, and he was starting to nibble on hay. Mid-day, with the temperature crossing into the teens below zero, I headed out to the barnyard with two five-gallon buckets full of warm water, with several cups of molasses mixed into each. The sugar and warm-temperature water will give the goats an extra boost. Almost everybody is out in the sun, standing along the concrete block wall of the old barn. They look puzzled, though. It may be sunny out, but the sun just isn't warming along the wall the way it usually does. Only the dogs looked relaxed and happy, with Lilly rolling over for a belly rub as she always does. The goats rushed me once they discovered I had molasses water, and it was a tangle of horns and collars as I worked to ensure that everybody got a little. Even Tarcy sucked down a few gallons!

I did chores extra early on Wednesday, still in the sunlight. Again, it's the same old pattern, just a little (perhaps a lot?) colder than usual. The temperature never rose above 15 below zero, even in the afternoon sun. The goats got extra hay. I turned on the chickens' light. The faucet in the milkhouse, which drips slightly, had formed a "stalagmite," which I dislodged with a sledgehammer. Since the faucet is wrapped with heat-tape, I'm not overly worried about the faucet itself.

My cold-weather selfie.

Again, the same pattern in the evening; again, the same bone-chilling cold. The doeling got her bottle, and it was already more than 20 degrees below zero at 7 p.m.. Up in the house, the buckling was eating a little hay but still has a long way to go if he's going to recover. The bucks repeated their same annoying stunt in my late-night, 11 p.m. check. I paused for a few minutes as the the bucks figured things out. The silence in the extreme cold was very deep. Occasionally there was a sharp crack from the woods as the trees responded to the cold. But the wind had completely died down, and the air is completely still. Back at the house, the boiler was going strong, with the reaction chamber at over one thousand degrees and the water temperature above 180. My phone said it was 29 degrees below zero when I went to bed

Thursday, January 31st

This is supposedly the end of it. But it'll need to warm up first. It was 31 degrees below zero, and school was cancelled yet again. The boiler kept us warm through another chilly night. The chores were done, and the animals have all made it. More molasses, plenty of hay, plenty of water. Nobody's happy, though!

Molasses water treats!

*****

Really, there are a lot of folks, especially dairy farmers, whose extreme-weather experiences these past few days were a lot tougher than ours. But this was our experience these past few days. And it's not over yet. This weekend, the temperatures are forecast to reach upwards of 40 degrees above zero. Although this may sound great, the extreme warmth may bring problems of its own. We're concerned about animal health, for example, with all the temperature extremes. And who knows what the shifts will do to the garlic.

So, please say a prayer for your farmers!

Liturgy as Poetry

Recently my family and I again started attending attending the Traditional Latin Mass on Sundays. We're not newbies, exactly. We were registered parishioners at Mater Dei, the FSSP-run parish in Dallas, during my years of study at the University of Dallas. But as a family we've been away from the Latin Mass for years, finding a home at a liturgically conservative suburban parish during our time in Raleigh, and trying to find a home during our first year back in Wisconsin at the little country parish where, a little more than a decade ago, Rosemary and I were married.

Just today, as we assisted at a beautiful Missa Cantata for the Feast of the Epiphany, I was thinking about a conversation I had had with a parishioner at that little country parish. He was curious, of course, as to why we'd jump ship to drive twice as far to attend Mass somewhere else. A number of folks at the parish are probably disappointed to have lost another young family. Folks there are fighting the good fight against dwindling numbers, and at most services the pews are no more than a third full. Dairy is failing, and farmers are closing up shop. Young people are going off to college and then settling down to life in the nearby towns. A significant percentage of young people stop going to church after being confirmed. A disturbing number of their parents, in fact, don't even attend Mass, even if they insisted on bringing their children to CCD.

Back to that conversation. "It's banal," I explained about my perception of the Novus Ordo liturgy.

Initially I startled even myself with the bluntness of this comment, and I tried to walk it back. I am far from disparaging the parishioners who've poured themselves into that parish, or the pastor, who loves his priesthood and serves the people faithfully. And of course, Jesus is made fully present, body, blood, soul, and divinity, in both forms of the Mass. In fact, these are points I make when I teach an online sacraments class to high schoolers for a program that attracts students whose families attend both forms of the Roman Rite. When we cover the unit on the Mass, we study both forms, and my diplomatic modus operandi has always been, and rightly so, to point out what is essential to the Mass--the consecration, the prayer of thanksgiving, the consumption of the sacred species by the priest--and how these elements are present in each.

But the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that banal--that is, lacking in originality or freshness, obvious, commonplace, hackneyed--although undiplomatic, is an accurate way to describe the perhaps rightly named ordinary form of the Holy Mass.

Another thread of my rumination is a conversation that I recently had with students in another class--a literature class. We had just finished reading Francis Thompson's "Hound of Heaven," his magnificent first-person narrative of a sinner's flight from God "down the nights and down the days," "down the arches of the years," "down the labyrinthine ways," and "in the midst of tears."

We had just spent half an hour dissecting the admonition from the end of the poem, where the speaker has shifted to God, the "hound of heaven" who had pursued that sinner with "deliberate speed" and "majestic instancy": "Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me." Drave is an archaic past tense form of drive, or propel, so basically God is saying that, since God is love, the one who pushes God out of his life also pushes love out of his life.

Although my students aren't exactly complainers, it came out, as we worked through Thompson's archaisms, that there was a general frustration at the way the odd language obscured the meaning of the poem. Why does he say Thou dravest when he could simply have said, You drove? Why, for that matter, speak of bruits, or robes purpureal, or sun-starts, or azured daises? In a poetry class this is tantamount to a rebellion, for difficulty is one of the things that makes poetry poetry, rather than prose. My inclusion of the word basically up above when I described the meaning of the final line of Thompson's poem was intentional because, well, in the context of the experience of the poem, the line means far, far more.

In a sense my students understood that, at least partially. As is my wont, we had begun class with a reading of the poem, with students having to rely solely on what they could take in by careful listening. Only later would I hand out the printed copies. Comprehension, unsurprisingly, was not great. But almost universally, students spoke enthusiastically about the way the poem "flowed," about the overlaying of words upon words, and of a frantic flight and of the chase that they had dimly been able to perceive. There was a general feeling of immense drama in the flight and the chase. Some students caught more of the specifics, some caught far less; everybody, however, wanted to figure out what was going on in what they had just heard.

Why? Why did they want to know more? It was because they had a sense that their first listen had only permitted them to scratch the surface of the poem's great reservoir of meaning. There was more hidden below the surface, much, much more that was available only to those who made the effort to look up the archaic words, analyze the subtle changes in the refrains, dissect the metaphorical language, etc., etc.

Which brings me to yet another thread in my rumination. A priest-friend recently posted about his reading during a spiritual retreat. He had juxtaposed a comment from the liturgical reformers following the Second Vatican Council--that there was a desire to simplify the liturgy, and to make it more comprehensible to ordinary folks--with a statement from the Council of Trent--that there is nothing superfluous to the Holy Mass in the Roman Rite, that is, the form now called the extraordinary form.

When I teach the high school sacraments course, we look at the confiteor side-by-side as this prayer is recited in the ordinary and extraordinary forms. It's a great example of the attempt at simplification in the ordinary form. Not only are the mentions of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Michael the Archangel, and Saints Peter and Paul removed in the new, revised version, it's also said only once. In the older form, on the other hand, first the priest recites the confiteor, and then the servers, who add ad te, Pater, as they speak their confiteor also to the priest.

Within this single prayer, therefore, it is clear that there are many things that have been stripped away. And of course, it's just a single prayer. Looking at the two forms of the Holy Mass side-by-side shows clearly that the Novus Ordo is dramatically stripped down, simplified, ... shorn of so many subtleties of language, of gesture, and of visual imagery.

In other words, to bring these threads of my ruminations together, it's like a poem turned into prose. Yes, yes: that's what the poem means. Yes, yes, Jesus Christ is made fully present in both forms. But anybody who has listened to a poem and been enchanted by the mystery of its flow of language, its rhythm, and the way it builds to a crescendo, knows there's so much more.

The prose explanation is all so ordinary, so humdrum, so lacking in originality and freshness.  ...So banal.

So, too, the ordinary form of the Mass.

I'm led to suspect that this is what the Council of Trent was getting at with its insistence that there is nothing superfluous to the Roman Rite. I also suspect that this is why so many young folks these days say they're bored with Mass at their Novus Ordo parihes and stop coming as soon as they're no longer forced to come. I also suspect that this is why so many of the other young folks who continue to go to church look for the most reverent liturgy they can find, in whatever form is readily available to them.

To borrow a line from Joshua, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. ...Mainly at the Traditional Latin Mass, that is. I pray that my own boys will work their way through any initial frustration with the extraordinary form just as my literature students work their way through great poems. It's all in Latin, it's too long, it's too complicated, it's archaic and outdated. No, not at all. Just as it is with good poetry, there's meaning at every level of understanding of the Holy Mass that will keep it always fresh, always new to the believer, captivating ordinary folks and great theologians alike. There's nothing superfluous to it at all.

Eulogy for my grandfather, David Crawford

Delivered at St. Paul's United Methodist Church, Stevens Point, Wisconsin

August 13th, 2018

But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that fall asleep; that ye sorrow not, even as the rest, who have no hope.

We must read what St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians very carefully. Is St. Paul saying that Christians should not be sad at the death of another Christian? Is he saying that our supernatural hope that those who have fallen asleep in Christ will rise like Him, should cancel out our natural tears?

I think that St. Paul understood human nature better than that; if we read more closely we see that we ought not to sorrow in the manner of those who have no hope. So even if we're confident of a life after death, even if we're sure of the joys of heaven, we sorrow nevertheless, and rightly, because we're human, and because our beloved who have been taken from us, however temporarily, are precisely that, beloved to us.

But the question then remains: how does our sorrow differ, as Christians who have hope, at the death of our grandfather, our father, our brother, our brother-in-law, our friend and fellow faithful church-goer, our husband? I think that Grandpa Crawford—that's who he was to me, and so that's how I'll refer to him—had a notion. 

When he came home from the hospital the Sunday before last, I was blessed to visit together with my wife Rosemary and our five young boys. Grandpa's bed was set up in the living room where his recliner ordinarily would be. He was lucid and at peace, finishing up a visit with my brother Jamie and his wife Nikki. Of all things, he was overjoyed to be eating a Jimmy John's sub after the liquid diet restrictions of his last hospital stay. After I spent some time talking with Grandpa, I finally brought in my family. All the boys ranged round Great-Grandpa Crawford's bedside, their faces somber, their gazes downturned.

Propped up in the bed, Grandpa looked at them hesitantly and then said hoarsely, “Smile, smile!” Ever the skeptics, the boys weren't convinced. We had told them that their Great-Grandpa was dying, and kids naturally know that death pierces the mysterious veil between the here and the hereafter and is therefore a solemn thing. But Grandpa wanted it, and so I tickled the baby and got him to laugh, and suddenly there were sheepish smiles all around, the widest, perhaps, being on Grandpa's own tired face. Then boys began to be boys and to push and shove a little, just as it is reported that we Klein boys did once upon a time in that very living room. I remember being counseled more than once not to knock down Grandma and Grandpa's immaculately decorated Christmas tree, nor to disturb the countless bunnies and other more fragile, carefully placed knick-knacks.

We Klein grandchildren never fight anymore, of course. In adulthood, we've all turned out to be perfect angels. Smile, smile. Even in the midst of your tears, you can smile.

But then there are the words of the Preacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem, which Grandpa himself chose for this funeral, and which must therefore be touched upon. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher; vanity of vanities, all is vanity. Like with St. Paul, the well known opening phrase from the Book of Ecclesiastes needs to be read very carefully. Is Qoheleth, the Preacher, saying that all the memories that my siblings and I have of our grandfather, all the things that we did with him, all the things we made with him and treasure and hold dear, the things that cause us to smile even in the midst of our tears— are all these things vain, and empty? Well, no; of course they're not. But then how are we to understand Qoheleth and his vanity of vanities?

I hope that I'm not stealing my brother Jamie's fire if he decides to speak, but a few days ago he told me that the olfactory sense—that is, our sense of smell—is more closely linked to memory than the other senses, and that his strongest memory of Grandpa Crawford is the smell of fresh-cut wood.

That came as no surprise to me. I don't know how many hours my younger siblings and I spent down in Grandpa's basement workshop turning his scrapwood into swords and guns and other weapons. That's what boys make, but I think I remember Johanna and Gabrielle joining Stephen, Jamie, Oliver and me down there before I aged out of those activities. It may have been years ago, but I can still smell the sweet sawdust from working with the bandsaw under Grandpa's careful eye. Equally, I can smell the smokey-sweet scent of burning firewood from our many camping trips—Copper Falls, Rock Island at the very tip of Door County's peninsula, the Badlands of South Dakota and Yellowstone National Park together with Oliver before my senior year of high school. Others of my siblings ventured to the Grand Canyon or rafting on the Colorado River.

These memories were not, are not, and never will be, in vain, whether they're based on the olfactory sense alone or all five senses working in concert. That word vanity, or vain, at its root means empty. The point is, the memories would indeed be vain if all they were were experiences for the sake of experience that would pass away with the one who experienced them. But these are memories because they're filled full to the brim with our Grandfather, who, with Grandma, helped to make our childhood the adventure that it was.

The vanities of this world—the wooden swords and other toys created in Grandpa's workshop under his watchful eye, even the many paintings and sculptures which he so laboriously and carefully created and the countless photographs he took and meticulously catalogued, even the wonders of God's own creation like the geysers of Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon in all its majesty which we gazed upon for the first time in his company—are vanities because they will all pass away, rot, decay, crumble into dust. With Grandpa's death there will be no more grilled cheese sandwiches, no more bisquik pancakes on the griddle, no more camping trips. These things have passed away. Even Desmet's townhall, which looked so solid and permanent when Grandpa built it for us twenty years ago, is now showing its age.

But the memories Grandpa made with us in these places and doing these things are not empty because they are filled with Grandpa. They are not the principalities or creatures—creatures being an old fashioned way of saying created things—that St. Paul writes about in his Letter to the Romans: impermanent created things that have the potential to distract us from thinking about ultimate things, particularly the hereafter. These memories are instead firm links in a chain that binds to Grandpa, who has pierced the veil into the hereafter. They have the potential to inspire us with the hope that St. Paul writes about to the Thessalonians: that someday we will grab hold of that chain and, using St. Paul's language, be caught together with him into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, to be ever with the Lord, and with all those whom we loved during our short earthly time with them.

Although I, for one, have learned from Grandpa about what it means to be a father and a husband, maybe even someday a grandfather, I'm not here to canonize him. But Grandpa was the Lord's faithful servant. In my last conversation with him on Sunday, he said that his biggest hope for the funeral was that the entire family would be gathered in church to pray together. And here we are: Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics, all of us seekers, all of us praying together because Grandpa Crawford wanted it.

My favorite image of God comes from the poet Francis Thompson, for years an opium addict very far from being a perfect servant of the Lord. In one poem Thompson describes how he fled Lord, whom he calls the “Hound of Heaven,” 

 “down the nights and down the days;
...down the arches of the years;
...down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the midst of tears.” 

Throughout the poem, the Lord gradually takes vain, earthly things way from Thompson because

they prevented him from recognizing that the Lord is all that really matters. I'm thinking about how the Lord gradually took things from Grandpa as well: His failing health and his inability to travel frustrated him. Remarkably, the Lord never took away his artistic abilities. In my last visit, I marveled at the output of his last weeks and even days, at the painting he did for Grandma for their 64^th wedding anniversary a few weeks ago because he couldn't leave the house to buy her a card, at the beautiful painting displayed here in the sanctuary, which my mother finished for him under his careful watch.

And at the end of Thompson's poem, the Lord had taken from him all earthly things. But when all was seemingly lost for ever, all his abilities, all the things and the people he had loved in life, the Lord turned to him with these words: 

“All which thy child's mistake Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home: Rise, clasp My hand, and come!”

For his part, Grandpa Crawford has risen and clasped the Lord's hand and gone home with Him. Pray God that each of us, linked by that sturdy chain of our memories of him and of everybody whom we love who has gone before us, may someday also be caught up into the clouds. Until then, smile. Even in the midst of your tears, smile.

The Church, the Death Penalty, and a Further Muddying of the Waters

"Pope Changes Catholic Teaching to Make Death Penalty 'Inadmissible'." So runs the headline of Time Magazine's article about the revision Pope Francis has ordered to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 227. The Holy Father's new formulation reads as follows, in full:

Recourse to the death penalty on the part of legitimate authority, following a fair trial, was long considered an appropriate response to the gravity of certain crimes and an acceptable, albeit extreme, means of safeguarding the common good.

Today, however, there is an increasing awareness that the dignity of the person is not lost even after the commission of very serious crimes. In addition, a new understanding has emerged of the significance of penal sanctions imposed by the state. Lastly, more effective systems of detention have been developed, which ensure the due protection of citizens but, at the same time, do not definitively deprive the guilty of the possibility of redemption.

Consequently, the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that “the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person”,^[1] and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.

_______________________

^[1] Francis, Address to Participants in the Meeting organized by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, 11 October 2017: L’Osservatore Romano, 13 October 2017, 5.

So, what are my thoughts? Far be it from me to strive for dissent, or for the "cafeteria Catholicism" of picking and choosing teachings that I like. Far be it from me to deny the "inviolability and dignity of the person." Far be it from me, even, to deny that the death penalty is abhorrent and to be eliminated whenever possible.

Yet, how can the Holy Father state unilaterally that the death penalty is "inadmissible"? It may be that there are fewer and fewer cases where it is the only way to safeguard the common good. Let's even entertain the hypothetical that there are presently no cases where it is the only way to safeguard the common good. Even then, the blanket statement that the death penalty is inadmissible would hamstring people in possible future instances where it may again be the sole means to safeguard the common good.

On the one hand, I'm totally on board with the new formulation's application in wealthy, first-world countries like the United States. I can't imagine a single instance in our country where the death penalty is presently a morally legitimate option. But the Catechism is not written solely for the faithful in wealthy countries, but for the faithful worldwide, and for both our present generation and future ones. Ironically, the explanatory note of Cardinal Ladaria, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, that the Catechism's new formulation will "encourage the creation of conditions that do allow for the elimination of the death penalty" hints that there actually exist where the formulation does not yet apply! How is it exactly that the universal teaching of the Church does not apply universally? The problem here runs deeper than ham-handed headlines in secular publications.

What the new formulation and its grand unveiling has accomplished is further to cement in the minds of the faithful the falsehood that Church teaching can change. What was true for previous generations is apparently no longer true for ours. Which is hogwash and baloney. While it's true that circumstances change, and while I'd agree that the teachings in particular of Pope St. John Paul II have given us a deeper understanding of the dignity of all human persons, at least hypothetically there may be present and future instances where the death penalty is the sole means of safeguarding the common good.

Does all of this make me a dissenter? Pray God that it only makes me a dissenter from a poorly written formulation of the Church's perennial teaching. Catechism formulations come and go; some are clearer articulations, others not so much. But the Church's teaching is perennial; it does not, it cannot, change.