Posted on 04/09/2006 8:50:19 AM PDT by maryz
This Holy Week may be a good time for Cardinal Sean O’Malley to finally learn that humility is defined less by what you wear on your feet than by whose feet you’re willing to wash.
Not that the symbolic value of a prince of the church wearing sandals and a mendicant’s robe should go unrecognized. However, his having to pretty much be dragged kicking and screaming to the altar to wash the feet of women last Holy Thursday, may tell a truer story.
As the Capuchin cardinal’s spiritual ancestor, Francis of Assisi, undoubtedly knew, symbols have little value if they don’t represent things of greater substance.
Francis understood that humility, in the Christian sense, means understanding that everyone is made in the image of God and is, therefore, deserving of respect.
There was another bishop in town Tuesday night, one whose life of service and social concern proclaims that he understands that concept.
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton came to the Paulist Center on Park Street to talk about the church and homosexuality.
And, of all the things he said in a 90-minute discussion with the packed-to-the-top-of-the-balcony crowd, the most important was that bishops need to learn to “listen before they speak.”
Gumbleton is a humble man who has, indeed, during a life of caring, learned to listen. He came to the Paulist Center to talk to and about people who had been wounded by their church.
The question that leaps to the fore, of course, is why, if Boston has its own archbishop, did a priest have to come from Detroit so that these troubled people would have someone willing to hear them?
Where was Cardinal Sean? Why wasn’t he the one to bring comfort?
Hadn’t he heard that when Christians speak of God’s love, the modifier is invariably “unconditional”?
I was at the Paulist Center a year ago when the “One Man, One Woman” protesters were surrounding the State House, spewing hatred to all who would listen.
The archbishop may not have openly encouraged the hatred, but he certainly fertilized the field in which it was sown.
Suddenly, at the chapel a half-block from the demonstration, there was the sound of a door being flung open and an angry voice shouting, “This is all your fault. I hold you responsible for this.”
I looked back at the entrance of the chapel to see a well-dressed man – certainly not, I thought, the sort of person you’d expect would make a habit of interrupting public gatherings.
I wondered what kind of hurt might have provoked him?
Moments later a dozen or so button-wearing protesters who had come to Mass from their demonstration went up to Communion. I wondered if they had even a clue of how incongruous that seemed.
Probably not.
Their archbishop had encouraged the belief that gay people were threats to their beliefs.
That archbishop, now a cardinal, is about to lead his people into Holy Week.
And, once again, with un-Christlike reluctance, he will probably be forced to humble himself by washing the feet of women on Holy Thursday.
and, meanwhile, an elderly man called “Gumby” – who, by the way, will never, ever be a cardinal – quietly and humbly made himself available to Cardinal Sean’s flock and introduced them to a real shepherd.
Denis M. Hurley is a member of the Herald staff.
AS if O'Malley didn't have enough to contend with, what with the infamous Paulist Center, the local Jesuits, VOTF, etc., he has to have Gumbleton coming to Boston too? (Not to mention a flock that contains far too many Denis M. Hurleys!)
Of course, the ever-so-"humble" Bishop Gumbleton is spewing away at John F. Kerry's beloved Paulist Center for the sole purpose of making trouble for the cardinal archbishop of Boston. The only "unconditional" love these people have is love for themselves.
"Hadn’t he heard that when Christians speak of God’s love, the modifier is invariably “unconditional”?"
I'd still avoid the wide gate if I were you...
Given the article's author's name, shouldn't it be a "hurling alert"? Denis M. makes one hurl one's lunch.
I think the author has forgotten that homosexuality is a BEHAVIOR, not an inanimate characteristic, such as physical appearance or where you were born.
Sin is sin, regardless of whether a person does so compulsively or not. The virtue of Christian humility is being twisted here because Christian humility means acknowledging your sins(That your behavior misses the mark of God's expectations).
It doesn't mean acting like a bunch of cantankerous children if the Church refuses to sanctify your sins.
For argument's sake, should the Church bless adultery if the adulterer does so compulsively. I think that's the homosexual argument. (I am compulively homosexual and can't change my compulsion, therefore you should tell me I'm normal.)
I find it amazing there are so many weak-minded columnists out there who abandon the pretensions to rationality by embracing homosexuality as right and normal. To hell with the argument from emotion.
>> Gumbleton is a humble man <<
Why is it so humble to think you know more than 2,000 years of tradition, your pope, and the bishop whose diocese you are intruding on?
If anything, men such as Gumbleton are arrogant beyond all reason.
"Where was Cardinal Sean?"
I dunno, reading about Jay-Cee, and his homeboys, Rocky, Andy, Tommy, Phil, Little J, J-Money, Barnie, and the gang?
*BARF!*
His name is Archbishop Sean Cardinal O'Malley, but you can call him, "His Excellency," if you must refer to him.
By the way, one very distressing thing I note:
The Boston Herald was initially popularized as an answer to the liberal and screechingly anti-Catholic Boston Globe... but it seems like lately the Herald has become pretty much Satan's CentCom...
There is much in what you say . . . perhaps teaming up with the Paulist Center to do so?
Didn't C.S. Lewis write somewhere of moderns (and he wrote a while back!) who picture God as a kindly, if doddering, grandpa type, who nods and smiles and murmurs, "As long as the young people are enjoying themselves."
Big time!
I gather the Globe is losing subscribers . . . if the Herald is planning to pick up those people, they might note that there's a reason they dropped the Globe -- and columns like this are part of it!
Especially here, where I firmly believe his little "stories" -- of the man yelling in and the protesters -- are made up of whole cloth. The man yelling is unclear and pointless. And it's hard to picture practicing Catholics willing to demonstrate against gay marriage who are somehow unaware that the Paulist Center is on the other side and, in any case, is not the place to go for a Catholic Mass.
Yup! I remember that one...It is from "Mere Chritianity," isn't it?
My favorite is when he talks about art and writing that portray the angels as Victorian wimpy, androgenous things that seem to convey, "There, there.." instead of the great archangels who appear to prostate humans and say, "Fear not."
I like the angels being about me, but I think I would also fall on my face if one appeared before me...( -;
"Francis understood that humility, in the Christian sense, means understanding that everyone is made in the image of God and is, therefore, deserving of respect."
The greatest humility is obeying God when the fact of that obedience is causing us pain and humilitation, heartache and grief.
When being anything at all, from an adulterer, to a pedophile, to a thief, a miser, a homosexual, a pornographer, a gossip, or a zoophile, a covetous, grasping person, a liar, or every other thing within us that cannot be changed because of what we are turns from their deep-rooted desires and illicit acts and obeys this God, this Jesus who demands obedience to His Will and Commandments, that is humility.
Your comments on this are right on, but they do not exhaust the staggering wrongness of this sentence.
One of the nuns we had in high school argued that humility is strongly related to truth, i.e., we all had a lot to be humble about.
(Note that the writer's idea of who "deserves" respect does not extend to the protesters against gay marriage!)
Well, here's some good news:
I checked the top 50 newspapers of 2005 and of 1995. One would think that the Boston area would be a very good place for a newspaper to be: Scandals have repeatedly rocked the Boston Globe, placing it in the top ten fastest shrinking circulations in America, losing 69,000 customers, or about 14% of its circulation. Metro West's launch flopped, and the Worcester Gazette has been fading, too, even though the area has seen population growth for the first time in a while.
But as bad as it for those papers, the Boston Herald has been devestated. It's circulation crashed an unprecedented 22%.
Oh, and by the way, this demise of the newspaper industry buzz? It's only striking the giant, major-city newspapers.
The little guys are doing just fine.
"One of the nuns we had in high school argued that humility is strongly related to truth, i.e., we all had a lot to be humble about."
I think the idea of truth would exhaust the list. If one has the ability to see themselves as God them and be truly repentent, that is truth.
Unfortunately, Satan is also the Father of Lies.
How is it that these men can love the sinner and embrace the sin at the same time?
From a psychological viewpoint, I'd have to say projection and that projection negates the truth.
One the one hand, Cardinal O'Malley is seen doing the right thing here with respect to foot washing, and I say "Good for him!"
On the other hand, the background noise of this story underscores what is wrong with nearly all of our bishops. With few exceptions, American bishops are a timorous lot, even in their own dioceses. They would rather suffer outrageous insults and disrespect at the hands of heretics and apostates masquerading as Catholics than deal head-on with the underlying issues those "Catholics" harp on for photo-op bludgeoning of the bishops themselves and the Church in general. They'll play Caspar Milquetoast with these creatures at places like the Paulist Center even while they play hardball with faithful Catholics they can rely upon to be meek and obedient!
The Paulist Center exists in the Archdiocese of Boston at the pleasure of the Cardinal. He can order them out if he wishes. The gay mariage crowd, the women's ordination coven, and the rest alluded to in the article can be dealt with by the Cardinal in the same way that Bishop Bruskewitz has dealt with his local variety in Lincoln, NE (you know what *that* means!). Reporters like Hurley can be dealt with by the Cardinal through an insistence on proper Catholic catechesis from the pulpits of his parishes, so that whining drivel like Hurley inflicts on us can no longer come from sheer ignorance of the Faith. If the likes of Hurley aren't available for that retroactive catechesis due to lack of attendance at Mass, then their comments can be effectively dismissed as irrelevant by the bishop.
It's really not that complicated! The bishops of this country - and the West in general - simply need to "grow a set" and get down to the business of truly pastoring their flocks, rather than keeping one eye constantly peeled on opinion polls created by, and slanted toward, a secular mindset.
While I feel for the Cardinal in this instance (and readers here on FR should know that I'm no big fan of his!), he brought a lot of the abuse on himself by letting the abusers act with impunity while he licks their feet. Throw them out, Cardinal! Do yourself - and us! - a gigantic favor!
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