School Auction
Thank you to everyone who organized and attended the Assumption Catholic School auction last Saturday. It takes a huge team to pull off something like that, and it would not have been successful had not a whole slew of generous people from all of our county churches come out in support. Thank you!
Two Corrections
I would like to correct/comment on two things, based on feedback about two recent Pastor’s Notes.
Regarding Christian vs. Muslim Immigration (Note): My point was that we are having a far easier time than Europe with our immigration because most of our immigrants are Western and Christian, whereas most of Europe’s immigrants are non-Western and non-Christian. And I expressed a preference for Latin American immigrants because they share so many of our values. I also made a note about how opposition to Latin American immigration can sometimes look a lot like the opposition to Italian and Irish immigration, which was explicitly anti-Catholic.
The feedback and counterpoint was that my hesitancy to favor Muslim immigrants is exactly the same in structure and reasoning as the argument against Catholic immigrants. That is, in both cases we have an internal list of what American values are, and we make an argument that a certain class of people will struggle (and may fail) to adopt those necessary American values. In a previous generation, those values were necessarily Protestant, in my commentary they were necessarily Christian and/or Western, but in both cases we are drawing an arbitrary line of exclusion.
My response is that I agree with the critique. I am not arguing that we should exclude all immigrants who do not share a specific set of values, but I am arguing that it is easier for us to absorb larger numbers of immigrants who share our values, so insofar as we have quotas, those quotas should be larger for Latin American countries than for non-Christian countries. However, the counterpoint still stands – I have decided that American values are inherently Christian values, and my logic is no better than those who would further narrow that claim to Protestant values. I cannot escape this critique.
My only argument in response is that, for a nation to be a nation, it needs a shared identity on which its unity is based. And democratic nations will set their shared identity democratically. Because I believe that Jesus is the savior of the world and that that his model of life is the sole and perfect model of human flourishing, I think it is best for the world and for our nation that it should act based on Christian modes of thought, even while we respect individual citizens’ rights to free exercise of religion. And insofar as I have any power as an American citizen to affect our national identity, including in advocating for certain immigration policies over others, I am going to advocate for policies that help us to be more Christian.
Others will disagree with me and draw the line in different places. Some will still draw the line around Protestant Christianity. Others will say that religion should have no part at all in our national identity (though, I would counter, morality has to come from somewhere, and militantly atheistic countries do not have the best moral track record). This line-drawing is what James Davison Hunter calls “boundary work” in his book “Democracy and Solidarity” (link). If you want to read American history through the lens of constantly redrawing these lines, I highly recommend this book.
Regarding attending Protestant Churches (Note): I was very rushed in writing my Pastor’s Note last week and should have provided more nuance in my ebullient recommendation to hang out with Evangelical Christians and attend their churches. I was rightly called out on this.
First, we should always ground ourselves in the teachings of the Church, and the lodestar on the topic of relations between Christians is Pope St. John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint. Anything I say that diverges from this document ought to be ignored.
Second, the feedback that I received was that it is imprudent to encourage Catholics to attend Evangelical churches when it is an open secret that one of the largest identifiable groups in Evangelical churches is fallen away Catholics. Many Catholics who are struggling in their faith, and especially Catholics who do not understand the profoundly divine nature of the Eucharist, find the warmth and energy of Evangelical churches to be more fulfilling. By giving a full-throated encouragement to attend these churches, I may very well be giving someone the push that will ultimately result in their leaving the Catholic faith.
I agree with this point and it is well-received. In agreeing, it is not that I would want to “gatekeep” other churches or hide them from our parishioners out of jealousy (which begins to look very cult-like). It is instead the same principle that parents use with children – I want to make sure people are well formed in the values that I believe are true before exposing them to values or experiences that I think are flawed. In this case, I have an obligation to make sure my parishioners are well-formed in Catholic doctrine, history, and prayer practices before pushing them into environments where Catholic beliefs might be challenged or opposed.
So allow me to modify my point – if you are struggling in your faith, or if you feel like you have little grounding in the doctrinal arguments for Catholicism vis-a-vis Protestantism, I would encourage you to double down on the Catholic faith, to participate in “Catechism in a Year”, and to join a Catholic small group. The best thing you can do for your soul is to feel solid in your faith.
However, if you are well-formed in your faith, as I was when I started hanging out with and praying with the Protestants at my college, then growing relationships amongst Christians is essential and I would still encourage you to do it. I think it would be silly to attend a Protestant church alone (which is what my hastily written column implied), but I think it is hugely important to be willing to attend church with a Protestant friend, especially if they are willing to return the favor and attend Mass with you. What we are looking for is relationships in Christ with other Christians, and if you are solid enough in your Catholic faith, then the next step might be to develop some of those relationships.
I will end by quoting Paragraph 22 of Ut Unum Sint:
Along the ecumenical path to unity, pride of place certainly belongs to common prayer, the prayerful union of those who gather together around Christ himself. If Christians, despite their divisions, can grow ever more united in common prayer around Christ, they will grow in the awareness of how little divides them in comparison to what unites them. If they meet more often and more regularly before Christ in prayer, they will be able to gain the courage to face all the painful human reality of their divisions, and they will find themselves together once more in that community of the Church which Christ constantly builds up in the Holy Spirit, in spite of all weaknesses and human limitations.
Fr. Moore 