A reader struggles with a sense of loneliness in the Church

Last updated on: August 26, 2016 at 9:22 am by Mark Shea

A reader struggles with a sense of loneliness in the Church 2016-08-26T09:22:39-07:00 Mark Shea

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He writes:

I just came across your “honest and heartfelt exchange with a friend who feels l have changed” — on Patheos. It resonates, thank you. In many ways this has been my experience as well. So I wanted to write a short note to encourage you.

Our parish here in Alberta is very conservative politically. Although most of us here in Canada (certainly me) would look on the Trump phenomena with great dismay, many of the other issues you mention come up again and again — for example, the suspicion of Pope Francis… and so on.

Recently I read a book co-written by Cardinal Muller and Gustavo Guitierrez (On the Side of the Poor, published about 3 years ago). But who do I talk to about this? No one.

If I do, it will likely be my good friend in the US, lives in Vermont, like me a “missionary kid” — we knew each other years ago in Ecuador. But he is now an atheist. Over the last five or six years we’ve exchanged about a letter a week, delving into everything about faith and life and the universe. When I read about your correspondence with this (‘lefty’) friend from Brooklyn, I thought right away of my good friend and pen pal.

My trip to Guatemala was financed by another pen pal — my cousin, agnostic. Again, about 500 letters exchanged over the last five years. Faith, God, social justice.

So, it’s pretty lonely sometimes!

I hear you. St. John Chrysostom says that if you do not see Christ in the beggar you will not find him in the chalice. The gospel, especially Luke, urges us to see the world through the eyes of the beaten, the losers, the weak, the failures, and the shamed. Jesus takes their part in a peculiar way. He turns ideas of patronage on their heads. Instead of the worldly approach of sucking up to Medicis, Rockefellers, Republican donor bases and Clinton Foundations to live off the largesse of the rich, Jesus tells bizarre parables about dishonest stewards dumped by their patrons who lighten the debts of the poor and then concludes “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations.” (Lk 16:9). He offers strange investment strategies like “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” (Lk 14:12–14).

And the saints take him up on it. St. Lawrence brings out all the human debris of Rome–hookers, winos, beggars, and failures of every sort–and declares them the treasures of the Church. St. John Chrysostom add to the remarks above the shocking observation that the rich exist for the sake of the poor, but the poor exist for the salvation of the rich.

That is a stunning reversal of patronage: the notion that the rich should get down on their knees and lick the feet of the poor lest, in their prayers, the poor condemn them before God Almighty. The idea that, in the Kingdom, God sees in the poor his special favorites and entrusts to them the verdict of heaven or hell. Yet what else are we to glean from the parable of the sheep and the goats, in which Jesus announces that the reason the poor have such terrifying power is that he is present in each one of them? What else do we make of such terrifying stories as Lazarus and the Rich Man? Dives’ casual neglect of the beggar Lazarus is, no doubt, couched in all the normal crap we always say in order to neglect the poor (“He is not the ‘deserving poor’. He is lazy. Job Creators can’t be expected to contradict the Invisible Hand.” The usual excuses.) But the message is really clear: you should have used the goods you were given to help Lazarus when you had ’em, because that why you were given them. Dorothy Day is discovered to just be stating plain fact when she declares that the gospel takes away–forever–the right to distinguish between the deserving and undeserving poor. We rediscover that “The man who will not work, shall not eat” is not written in Paul’ first epistle to the Republicans, but to the Christians of Thessalonica who sought to neglect their call to do good works to the poor by sky-gazing for the Second Coming. But with respect to those outside the Household of Faith, the gospel command is simply and indiscriminate: “Give to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who would borrow from you.” (Mt 5:42). Period. No exceptions.

In the US, there is almost a complete schism between our Eucharistic piety and our piety toward the poor. One is seen as “conservative” and the other as “liberal” or even radical. For instance, your mention of the book by Gutierrez and Muller (and my mention of your mention) will make you a marked man in right wing circles. “Typical left wing crap from FrancisChurch!” is the cry. But here’s the thing: Muller was made Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, not by Francis, but by God’s Rottweiler himself: Pope Benedict XVI.

That’s because the ridiculous notion that love of orthodoxy and love of the poor are opposites is a nonsense schism in the gospel, like asking which blade on the scissors does the cutting. If you reject the one, you will sooner or later reject the other. We have to find a way to recover and reunite both, not pit them against each other.

I don’t know how to do that. But talking about it is a good start. You do well to try, even if it does mean having to write to faraway people to do it. I’m sorry it causes you suffering. But know that your heart is in the right place and there are a growing number of people who are listening to Pope Francis and noodling this problem. It’s actually a hopeful time. Because Francis is making the issue unignorable, to the consternation of Dives, but the joy of the Holy Spirit.

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