April 27, 2025
Dear Friends,
In the Gospel of John, chapter 16 verse 2 and following, Jesus teaches that “in my Father’s house there are many dwelling places, if there were not would I tell you I am going to prepare a place for you and if I go and prepare a place for you I will come back again and take you to myself so that where I am you also may be.”
In other words, Jesus teaches us that there are many ways of being a follower of Jesus Christ, many dwelling places, the conformity and uniformity that people of my age thought was “practicing” Catholicism, quite frequently had nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus Christ.
That approach to what “practicing” Catholic meant came into play in the 12th century and is, obviously, and finally, loosening the vise grip on Catholic identity as Pope Francis had tried to lead us.
I also believe that Christian churches of all kinds preferred a competition with other Christian/Catholic Churches that was based on numbers, numbers of dollars, numbers of members, numbers, numbers and more numbers.
Naturally, then, they like to deal with more believable and measurable matters than the resurrection of Christ, more tangible, more easily understood stuff, like bingos and raffles and schools and athletic teams and fish fry’s rather than the resurrection, and those kinds of things as fun as they can be are not what Jesus taught us to be about, they can be means to the response to the call of Jesus to follow him but more often than not they become the sum and substance of Catholic life which has resulted in a very significant tragic loss of place and purpose of Catholicism in human lives..
Most self-identified Christian religions including Catholicism historically have obscured and confused the mystery of resurrection with what they call, “last judgement” which in my opinion was a political and not spiritual tool that was used to intimidate and berate and humiliate people with the intent to create codependent relationships with clericalism and clerics in order to modify and codify people’s behavior to conform to cultural and political values that are often diametrically opposed to Gospel teaching of Christ.
Our task as followers of Jesus is to touch people’s hearts with understanding, hospitality, and consolation as Pope Francis so deliberately tried to do. As I write these words for the wind comes the words that the good pope has died. RIP, good man.
To be sure there are a few stories in the New Testament that predict judgement scenarios, but they never actually happen in the Biblical texts, and when criteria is mentioned in the Biblical texts that criteria have everything to do with how we treat one another with no mention at all of what is typically proposed by Christian churches that focus on sexual, gender, and gynecological issues that Jesus never talked about, although they would have been at least as apparent and visible as they are today.
In my own experience of nearly 80 years, I have found being a Catholic to be very interesting, very exciting and fulfilling, at times, extremely frustrating and disappointing at other times, but, most importantly, very fluid and always changing because I believe my Catholic Faith is an encounter with a human being not a “club” or organization or a brand name that I have adopted.
I have come to believe that the essence of what Christ taught and envisioned in his ministry was a meeting of persons, always and everywhere, an encounter, with the essential human mystery carried in the body, mind, heart, and soul of another one just like me and just like you at the core of our being.
When I was young, I did not think that way,
I kept the rules and broke the rules like everyone else, as “the rules” were what we were taught was the religion but gradually as I have aged, I learned that we are all, every one of us, on the way to somewhere other than where we are now.
Many call that “place” heaven and the only way to heaven is through the death and resurrection of Christ
If we can help one another out, ease a burden or two, laugh, smile, and see the beauty of the present moment that is set before us, we are on our way to heaven whatever that may be, I believe that is enough for me and I hope, maybe, for you.
In my experience, the reason we have so much sadness, so much violence, so much anger and hatred and greed is because too many people have never had their hearts touched with consolation and understanding and mercy and love by another person who saw and understood them as a fellow traveler on the way.
There are a small but significant number of people, priests, nuns, bishops among them, very much opposed to and unhappy with Pope Francis, who have turned or are turning their whole identity, the entirety of who they believe themselves to be, into a rigid, arduous, almost painful to watch, American version of Catholicism that wants strict and inflexible ideas about the essential identity of peoples as to genders, especially, women in relationship to men, race, ethnicity, etc. focused and locked in on notions of a “last judgment”.
In general, this condition, found in forms of Christianity other than Catholicism, affects younger people, often, facilitated by movements, virtual and in real time, designed to sequester these, in my opinion troubled folks, damaged by the excesses of expectations and a frustrated quest for happiness, into groups of like people isolated from more diverse and less restricted people with a subtlety that, often, blends their version of Catholicism and Christianity with a strong sense of nationalistic exceptionalism.
There is a special emphasis in these movements on the need to be excessively scrupulous in regard to sexuality and externally hyper-pious.
This rigorous interpretation of the “practice” of the Catholic faith is deeply rooted in imitation and not the result of a maturity of the whole human person. This identity rigidity is setting some of these more fragile people on the road to emotional and mental issues as they grow through full adulthood inclining them to intolerant stances toward others, negating the joy and mercy and consolation that is at the heart of what I believe Jesus Christ brought to bear on the pain of the world.
I think deep in their hearts and souls that they feel themselves to be deficient and believe that they alone can make up the deficiencies as if the death and resurrection of Christ had never happened.
Some of these folks in the Catholic Church are alarmed by what they perceive to be an absence of belief in the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist.
More alarming and concerning to me is what I perceive to be the absence of belief in the real presence of themselves in their own lives.
Peace,
Father Niblick