Pope, Scholar... and Saint!

John Paul II's ski-jacket, now a relic,
a gift of the Vatican to our students.

I woke up this morning to a text message that John Paul II was just declared saint. People are already asking me if Pope John Paul II High School will be need to renamed. It usually takes fifty, one hundred, two hundred years to become a saint. Who would have guessed just eleven years ago when our school was founded, with JPII still pope, that we'd have to have a serious discussion about that so quickly?

But such is the soaring figure of our namesake.

History will chronicle JPII as one of the most significant world figures of the 20th century. There's a lot of reasons for that: his influence in helping Europe shed off communism, his prolific writings and scholarship, his ecumenical and inter-faith emphases, his role in reinvigorating the faith for millions of Catholics around the world. George Weigel, the principal biographer to JPII in Witness to Hope, lectured at our school in 2010 about the enduring influence of JPII on the Church and world, which I've summarized here.

But to understand the "why" of his influence, look no further than this prophetic remark someone made about Karol Wojtyla when cardinals elected him pope in 1978:  “They picked a man not from Poland but from Galilee.” 

He returned the papacy back to its Scriptural roots--more pastor than monarch--traveling to over 100 foreign countries during his papacy, always to hundreds of thousands of people.  He connected with people on a scale that we haven’t seen in our lifetimes—literally millions of people from all over the world came to Rome for his funeral, in what NBC news said then was the “human event of our generation.”

His example and his writings have been a great inspiration to us at JPII. He loved young people.  He started World Youth Days, which were attended by hundreds of thousands of teens wherever they were hosted, and his consistent message to them was to have the courage to seek greatness in their lives, to not give in to mediocrity, to make Christ known to others, and to make the world more human. 

It’s a great challenge, and a great honor, to be the headmaster of a school that tries to live up to the example of its namesake, a saint! 

Where Angels Fear to Tread

Ken Burns, the historical documentary film maker, once said: "It is the great arrogance of the present to forget the intelligence of the past." Are we so “enlightened” and our ancestors so "bigoted" that we should move swiftly forward, certain of our own moral rectitude, in re-defining the most basic unit of our society? Both humility and prudence suggest caution, lest through the lens of "present-itis" we judge all other societies and cultures as deficient to our own.

Let us be open to new paradigms and new possibilities, but let us also exercise prudence and deliberation. The problem with navigating our vessels through the powerful currents of contemporary opinion is they are pulled downstream at the same rate as everyone else's vessels, making it impossible for us to detect the true distance and speed of our travels.  We need reference points alongside the river’s banks, outside of the current, to measure how far and how fast we’re moving.

This, it seems to me, is the value of the tradition of our Church. We are quick to marginalize the Church’s claims as “historically conditioned" and "anachronistic", but like the “pot calling the kettle black”, our instant, casual dismissiveness of the Church's claims reveals how beholden we are to the conditioning of the present day. Might there be room for self-doubt when Scripture is so unequivocal in defining homosexual acts as sinful? Should there be reason for pause that up until 1973, the American Psychiatric Association labeled homosexuality a mental disorder? Does the fact that more than 90% of countries worldwide do not sanctioned gay marriage suggest we move with less self-certainty?

Our reflexive reaction to “Tradition” shouldn’t be that of contempt. In his book Orthodoxy, G.K Chesterton reminds us that tradition represents the established wisdom of our ancestors against the vicissitudes of what’s faddish, a “democracy of the dead,” (which) “refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.” We do well to respect such wisdom, even if science or other disciplines compel us to stretch beyond our previously held views.

My vote would be that homosexuality becomes a matter of settled science before normalizing it in our marriage laws. Is homosexuality a matter of physiology? Psychology? Nature? Nurture? As much as this issue has been politicized, it's very difficult to separate out the science and the posturing (for a remarkably balanced presentation on what the science says and doesn't say, see the article "Same Sex Science"). Can “mother-hood” or “father-hood” be replicated among homosexual partners for the psychic wellbeing of their adopted children? These questions matter, I think, but there is no scientific consensus as to their answers.

There is a broader, more philosophic question as well: If the legal definition of marriage is no longer rooted in the natural law complementarity of male and female but is instead re-contextualized as a subjective, private matter between couples, what right does government have to prohibit other marital “forms,” even if those forms happen to be (currently) repugnant to our public sensibilities?

Let us step ahead here delicately. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Twenty-Seven

On the occasion of my grandparent’s 50^th anniversary many years ago, my family gathered with my aunts, uncles and cousins for a meal to celebrate.  My grandfather, an eloquent speaker, said two things about my grandmother that I haven’t forgotten. 

The first he said with a smile: “ I know the secret for a happy marriage—just take this advice. Your grandmother and I made a pact fifty years ago: that she would make the many small decisions, and I would make the few big decisions.  Fifty years later, I am happy to report that arrangement has worked very well.  Of course, I am still waiting to make my first big decision. “

The second was straight from the heart:  “I met Virginia almost fifty one years ago, fell in love, got married, and have been falling in love ever since. “

On June 14 Diane and I will celebrate our 27^th anniversary, having raised four children, the youngest of which graduated from high school last weekend. We met in August as first year teachers at Montgomery Catholic High School in 1985—she a biology and Math teacher, and I, a theology and English teacher. Within months, we fell in love and married that June.

I’ve been falling in love with her ever since.

Fr. Bevans was right, though. When he presided over our marriage, he said that marrying someone is like buying a house. On the one hand, it’s your house.  But in a very real way, it’s not yet your house, as there is still a mortgage. Over years of growing together, stumbling, raising kids, cheering at ball games, worrying, laughing--through periods of joy and sorr0w, romance and distance--we’ve come to better understand this “already but not yet” quality to the vows we made with such confidence 27 years ago.

I’m looking forward to the next 27.