Category: Clear thinking, words, and communication

Multiform Mission

A few weeks ago I met an American Catholic priest who had grown up Presbyterian. When he decided to enter the Catholic Church, he joined the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. He is the first diocesan priest of the missionary Syro-Malabar diocese of Rajkot in India’s Gujarat state.
Perhaps you might be thinking, “Shouldn’t a Presbyterian who wants to become a Catholic join the Roman Catholic Church? How can he join the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church?”
You may even have a more subtle question in mind, “Why does the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church have a missionary diocese? Isn’t missionary work the job of the Roman Catholic Church?”
Even though “missionary work” has a fairly modern ring to it, it refers to the perennial outreach of the church — to spread the Good News throughout the world, to all places, peoples, and times.
From the days when the apostles traveled from Iberia to India, Christians have sought to share the good they possess with those who do not know of it. Sometimes this has a political dimension as well. When “Christian” countries promoted the spread of Christianity, it often included colonial expansion.
Ancient Persian resistance to Christianity, the imperial state religion, was, in part, resistance to the Byzantine state. When Spain and Portugal settled the New World, conquest and conversion went hand in hand.
European colonialism brought Christianity to many parts of Africa, but it is only in our day that African Christianity is beginning to lose its European associations.

Indians still think of Christianity as a Western religion because of the British Raj — and the Portuguese before them — even though St. Thomas brought the Gospel to India in the first century, before it reached Britain.
There is still a little bit of that European colonial mentality clouding thinking about the mission of the church and about its work of evangelization.
That modern colonial expansion was begun by Western European countries, traditionally Roman Catholic, does not mean missionary outreach is an exclusive prerogative of the Roman Catholic Church.
Every part of the one church of Christ has an obligation to spread the faith. The Catholic family of churches includes the Western and 21 Eastern churches. Just as there are many churches, there are many missionary works. We each try to share what we have and know best.
The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in Rome supports the work of the church in “mission countries” — but, with the possible exceptions of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and India, the support is usually perceived as support for the outreach of the Roman Catholic Church.
So, it is understandable to be surprised to hear about an American Presbyterian who decided to become a Syro-Malabar Catholic missionary priest. His choice, and his life, challenges our thinking.
The Gospel is not constrained by any one country — or branch of the Church.


(An earlier version
published in
CNEWA World, 29:5, September 2003)

Already But Not Yet

Many years ago Cardinal Avery Dulles, S.J. wrote a landmark book about a complex topic, the theology of Church. Translated into many languages, Models of the Church stimulated profound thinking about the nature of the Church.
Cardinal Dulles suggested that better to appreciate the profound theological reality and mystery of the Church, we draw on analogies afforded by our experience — utilizing a variety of approaches or models to describe different aspects of the Church.
His book proposed five models for understanding the Church: the Church as institution, as mystical communion, as sacrament, as herald, and as servant. Each of these leads to a different emphasis in the quest for Church unity.
Concern for the institutional aspect of Church tends to see unity in very juridical terms. Historically, this was defined as the subordination of all the faithful to one and the same teaching authority, especially the Roman Pontiff.
The community model of Church situates unity more in the heart — an interior union of mutual charity leading to a communion of friends — while the sacramental model of Church places a high emphasis on holiness. The Church must be, in the word of Vatican II, “a sign and instrument, that is, of communion with God and of unity among all men.”
From the point of view of heralding the Gospel, it is solidarity in preaching the Word of God that lies at the heart of the unity of the Church. The Church as servant implies that it is the common witness of charity and selfless love that is the core of Church unity.

How much Church unity already exists and how much does not yet exist?
The Pope’s visit to Damascus, where he was warmly received by the Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, and Melkite Greek Catholics was a good case in point.
If unity means a uniformity of ecclesiastical discipline, liturgy, and customs, then unity will never exist.
If unity means mutual love, expressions of brotherhood, and sense of being one great family, then unity already exists.
If unity means sharing one faith and praying with one voice to the one Father of us all, then unity already exists.
If unity means being united in common service to the Christian community and to the wider world of belief and unbelief outside it, then unity already exists.
If unity means persevering together in the quest for reconciliation, justice, peace, and solidarity, then unity already exists.
If unity means accepting that the Pope has a unique and special role at the service of the whole Church, then unity almost exists.
But if unity means agreeing on the practical, structural forms for the exercise of the Pope’s special role of primacy, then unity does not yet exist.
We’re long since past getting to know one another, meeting each other’s family, courtship, and even engagement. Oh, to set the time and place of the wedding soon!


(Published in
CNEWA World, 27:5, September 2001)

God Bless — Bless God

English is a curious language. Often it has two kinds of words for the same thing. One kind of word comes from Latin by way of Norman French; the other, from Anglo-Saxon.
For example, you can “surrender” or “give up” — you can “descend” or “come down” — you can “circumvent” or “go around.”
I wish there was a Latinate word that corresponds to “bless”. “Bless” comes from the Old English word “bledsian,” meaning to consecrate (with blood), and that’s not always what we mean by it.
Too bad there is no English word like “benedict” derived from the Latin word to bless, “benedicere”. “Benedicere” is a combination of “bene” meaning “well” and “dicere” meaning “to speak”. The Latin word to bless means to “speak well.”
We usually think of a blessing as a spiritual good that we receive from God, but actually it refers to our praising God.
In the Book of Daniel, the three young men in the fiery furnace glorified and blessed God:

Bless the Lord, all you works of the Lord, praise and exalt him above all forever.
Angels of the Lord, bless the Lord . . .
You heavens, bless the Lord . . .
All you waters above the heavens, bless the Lord . . .
All you hosts of the Lord, bless the Lord . . .
Sun and moon, bless the Lord . . .
Stars of heaven, bless the Lord . . .
Every shower and dew, bless the Lord . . .

All you winds, bless the Lord . . .
Fire and heat, bless the Lord . . .
Frost and chill, bless the Lord . . .
Ice and show, bless the Lord . . .
Nights and days, bless the Lord . . .
Light and darkness, bless the Lord . . .
Lightnings and clouds, bless the Lord . . .
Let the earth bless the Lord . . .
Mountains and hills, bless the Lord . . .
Everything growing from the earth, bless the Lord . . .
You springs, bless the Lord . . .
Seas and rivers, bless the Lord . . .
You dolphins and all water creatures, bless the Lord . . .
All you birds of the air, bless the Lord . . .
All you beasts, wild and tame, bless the Lord . . .
Servants of the Lord, bless the Lord, praise and exalt him above all forever.

Simply by being as the Lord intends­, all creation blesses the Lord. We bless the Lord the same way. Our lives and our actions speak louder than words.
If we let the Creator’s design show forth clearly and unobscured in our lives — if we order our lives always to seek his will rather than our own — if we “not so much seek to be loved as to love” — if we “love one another as I love you,” then we let our lives “speak well” of the Lord.
You servant of the Lord, bless the Lord, praise and exalt him above all forever!


(Published in
Catholic Near East, 27:2, March 2001)

Sacred Cows

There are 500 whimsically decorated, life-size sculptures of cows scattered all about New York City this summer — but, good New Yorker that I am, I take it in stride and barely notice them
That’s probably how the real cows that still wander about Indian cities are treated. Although in the Hindu tradition they are venerated as sacred, for the most part people do their best to ignore them, even prodding them gently out of the way when they block passage.
We all have our sacred cows, figuratively speaking. Sometimes they’re people — sometimes, ideas or plans — sometimes they’re policies or programs — sometimes, structures or institutions.
Lots of families have one. Usually it’s someone who’s just plain eccentric, but everyone patiently tolerates the eccentricities and, as occasions warrant, pretends that they’re not even there.
Occasionally it’s a more serious matter. A family member has a personal problem, maybe alcohol abuse. There doesn’t seem to be much anyone can do about it. So, the rest of the family has learned to turn a blind eye and live as though the problem — and the person with the problem — isn’t really there.
Usually the policy works, until the problem gets so much in our way that we have to change our course to get around it or gently try to nudge it out of the way.
A favorite idea can become a sacred cow, too. Whether it’s out of blindness, laziness, or fear, often we let certain uncritical assumptions drift through our minds and hearts, impeding our clear thinking and fully living out the life we aspire to.

Politics has it share of sacred cows. Sometimes millions, even billions, are spent on unrealistic and foolish projects that are the perpetual favorites of certain interests — who often don’t even realize the damage they are doing.
Some policies seem to get in the way of justice and the common good, but no one dares to abolish them. For example, the United Nations’ embargo of Iraq isn’t achieving its original geopolitical objective, but in some political circles it’s sacrosanct. As the popular refrain says, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
Even the Church has its own share of sacred cows. I’ve been present at professional discussions where the canon law of the Church is held in such veneration — even if it isn’t apt to the situation it is trying to address — that some canonists would rather adjust the reality to fit the law than vice-versa.
The Pope himself doesn’t want the papal office to fall into this category. He has repeatedly asked Orthodox and Catholic leaders to help him find new ways of exercising his special Petrine ministry. He doesn’t want to become an obstacle on the way to Christian unity.
When Moses came down the mountain, he found the people, in desperation, imaging the Lord as a golden calf. He destroyed it; it was an obstacle on the way to the invisible God.
Holy cow! Maybe I have one too.


(Published in
Catholic Near East, 26:5, September 2000)

Doggone It

The new puppy in our house was driving me crazy! I mean, I love her when she’s cute and cuddly. It’s fun when she leaps on my bed in the morning to lick my nose. But, how do I stop her from leaping all over everybody who comes into the house? And, how do I teach her that there are certain things she must do outside, not inside?
I’m a little out of practice — I haven’t had a dog around in years. I bought a book. I bought another. I tried to follow the instructions about how to teach her what to do. Nothing! No results at all! Dumb dog? or, dumb me?
A friend of mine who is a dog trainer came to give the puppy some lessons. They were really lessons for both of us. In fact, they were mostly lessons for me! He had to teach me how to teach the dog.
It was like magic. Somehow, he told her what to do, and in just a few minutes she was doing it! He really knew how to communicate with her in a way she could understand.
It took him longer to tell me what to do. Besides needing more time, he certainly needed more words!
What I’ve learned from my puppy is this: If I think I’m telling her what to do and she doesn’t do it, then it’s probably not her fault — it’s probably mine for not knowing how to communicate effectively with her.
I guess we all do similar things far more often than we realize. We think we’re explaining something very clearly or telling someone what to do, and we’re disappointed when they don’t seem to understand or seem not to follow our instructions.

That dog trainer and my puppy may be helping me to become a better priest too. If I’m trying to teach or preach the word of God and it doesn’t seem to come across — well, maybe that’s not the fault of my hearers or a lack of God’s grace. I just may be speaking a language they don’t understand.
The Church is spread through many lands and many peoples. The one message has to be articulated and uttered in a thousand different ways. The gestures and the words, the ceremonies and the traditions that speak movingly to one people may mean little to another.
A message that touches the hearts and will of one generation may hardly be noticed by the next.
What’s the use of eloquence of words and elegance of traditions if they’re not intelligible to the people who hear and experience them?
Is there something wrong nowadays? Is something lacking in this generation? Is there less generosity, less concern, less faith, less care, and less love than there used to be? Why don’t they understand?
Maybe I should loan you my puppy to help you out. She’d challenge you to learn to speak in a way that can be understood.
I bet St. Paul would have gotten along well with her. He knew all about communicating effectively. His motto was: I have become all things to all.


(Published in
Catholic Near East, 25:5, September 1999)

Standing in the Other Believer’s Shoes

In 1990, the Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies in Rome published an interesting yet unassuming book by Father Robert Caspar and a group of Christians living in Tunisia. Entitled, Trying to Answer Questions, it offered a novel approach to responding to certain questions Muslims raise about aspects of Christian faith and life. The following is based in part upon the very creative work of that book.

Understanding God

In the countries of the Middle East, when Christians make the sign of the cross, before saying “Amen,” they always add the words “one God.” They do this to make clear to the Muslims among whom they live that Christians truly believe in one God.
At the heart of Islam is the frequent and public profession of monotheism, or belief in one God. “There is no god but God” begins almost every Muslim prayer. Most Muslims misunderstand Christian references to God as Father, Son, and Spirit as a profession of polytheism; they seriously question if Christians are really believers.
Muslims are used to using the words “father” and “son” in their primary meaning as describing human relationships flowing from sexual love and procreation – they have no tradition of using them analogously, with spiritual meanings, as Christians do.
Although Muslims prayerfully recite many names and attributes for the one God, “Father” is not one of them. What Christians call “The Lord’s Prayer” is truly that – a distinctive way of talking to and thinking about God that was taught to us by Jesus.
The holy book of Islam, the Qur’an, blames Christians for speaking of three in connection with God and in some places seems to consider the three to be God, Jesus, and Mary. Perhaps this reflects the Muslims’ rejection of some early and obscure Christian heresy.
Christians reassure Muslims of their own monotheism when they recite the Nicean Creed, which begins, “We believe in one God…,” and when they add the words “one God” to the sign of the cross.
When Christians try to explain what they mean by the Trinity, they usually employ the ancient Greek philosophical vocabulary of “person”, “substance”, and “nature” – the words used in the dogmatic definitions of the Trinity. Muslim religious culture, unlike Christian, has not grown historically out of the Greco-Roman world; for Muslims these words have no clear meaning. Another difficulty is that these technical theological terms have radically different ordinary meanings in modern-day usage.
In the past Baghdad’s Christian Arabs searched for metaphors that would explain the Trinity to Muslims. One metaphor often used was “fire”. Fire is one substance, yet at the same time it is heat, flame, and light.
All words and images are inadequate to convey the mystery of God, but we still have to try as best we can.

Understanding Jesus

The first major sanctuary built by Islam, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, has an elaborate, formal inscription in classical Arabic set in mosaic around its inner walls. It says in part “O you People of the Book, overstep not bounds in your religion, and of God speak only the truth. The Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, is only an apostle of God, and his Word which he conveyed into Mary, and a Spirit proceeding from him. Believe therefore in God and his apostles, and say not Three. It will be better for you. God is only one God. Far be it from his glory that he should have a son.”
Clearly this is also a charge to the devout Muslim not to accept the distinctive teachings of Christians about God and Jesus. Yet, ironically, it refers to Jesus as the Messiah (the Christ) and as the Word of God.
Islam holds Jesus in high esteem, but does not see Jesus as Christianity does. The Qur’an has many references to Jesus. Many accord with Christian belief – that Jesus was foretold by John the Baptist, was born of a virgin, Mary, worked miracles, was rejected by his own people and will come again at the end of time.
Other references to Jesus in the Qur’an are not accepted by Christians – that Jesus was not killed but miraculously spared by God, that Jesus announced the coming of Muhammad and that Jesus denied that he ever called himself God.
For Muslims, Jesus has an outstanding place among the prophets, second only to that of Muhammad. But, unlike Mary, Jesus does not have a great role to play in the religious and devotional life of Muslims.
Perhaps this is because, from the Muslim point of view, the followers of Jesus have exaggerated his life, committed blasphemy by divinizing him, and done terrible things to Muslims over the centuries under the banner of Jesus’ cross.
Since the absolute transcendence of God is a core belief and teaching of Islam, the Christian assertion that Jesus is both true man and true God is contradictory, unintelligible, and repugnant to Muslims.
Here too, Christians are so used to professing their faith that Jesus is “true God and true man” that they don’t realize how baffling the juxtaposition of these words may sound to those who do not share their faith.
Historically, the followers of Jesus came to this insight of faith with the aid of the Holy Spirit. After Jesus’ resurrection his disciples understood that the Jesus whom they had known and loved was Savior and Lord.
Muslims err if they think that Christians profess faith in the deification of a man, Jesus; Christians believe that God himself became man out of love. This is the mystery of the Incarnation.
Some early Christian Arabs used an analogy to explain Jesus. Muslims believe that the Word of God is eternal in God and was revealed in scripture – the holy Qur’an. Christians believe that the Word of God is eternal in God and was revealed in a human being – Jesus the Christ. The Eternal Word became not a book, but a man.

Understanding the Cross

In his first letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul boldly proclaimed: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God . . . we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews, and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
Of course these words were written about 600 years before the birth of Islam, but they apply to Muslims, for whom Christ crucified is indeed a stumbling block and foolishness.
It is inconceivable for them that God would allow one of his prophets to be killed. All the stories of the prophets, in the Islamic tradition, follow the same pattern: the prophet is sent to a nation and is rejected by it, except for a few; people want to kill the prophet, but he is miraculously saved by God.
The Qur’an itself formally denies that Jesus was really crucified; it states “They [the Jews] did not kill him; they did not crucify him; but they had the impression of doing so.” Muslim tradition is not clear as to how this was achieved, but it firmly holds that God took Jesus up to heaven out of the reach of his enemies and that he will come again at the end of time.
The good Muslim is somewhat like one of the downcast disciples on the road to Emmaus, except that the Muslim is so overwhelmed by the notion of the death of Jesus that he rejects the very fact of it.
The faith of Jesus’ disciples was restored by a recollection of the words of the Hebrew scriptures and the powerful presence of the Lord. The followers of Jesus, strengthened by the resurrection, found rich and varied ways to interpret the meaning of his death on the cross.
The New Testament depicts Jesus as the suffering servant spoken of by the prophet Isaiah; Jesus is the paschal lamb offered in sacrifice for our salvation; Jesus’ blood seals the new covenant between God and the new Israel; Jesus makes the great sin-offering of his life in atonement for his people.
Later Christian theology advanced the notions of Jesus’ paying the penalty of sin to redeem us and Jesus substituting himself in punishment for sinful humankind.
All of this tradition is relatively unknown to devout Muslims. Unless they have the opportunity to learn more about the Jesus not only of the Qur’an but of the Gospels, unless they come to a deep understanding of the dynamics of obedience and love that prompted the Lord to give even his life for his friends, unless they are guided by the Spirit into an understanding of the mystery of the resurrection, their very faith in the power and providence of the one God cannot help but prompt them to recoil from the Christian proclamation of the cross.


(Published in
Catholic Near East, 24:5, September 1998)

The Insanity of War

Insanity [from the Latin insanus, from the Latin in, not, + sanus, whole] 1. The state of being insane; mental derangement or unsoundness; lunacy; madness; dementia. 2. A defect or weakness of mind that makes a person incapable of understanding the nature of particular acts or legal actions. 3. Extreme folly

I first visited Eritrea in 1989 during its 30-year war for independence from Ethiopia. At that time I could visit only the Eritrean capitol of Asmara. The Ethiopians held the city, and it wasn’t possible to go outside it into the rebel-held areas.
The long civil war ended in 1991 with the overthrow of the Ethiopian Marxist dictatorship by joint revolutionary forces in Eritrea and Ethiopia. Two years later Eritrea received its independence.
This May, I finally was able to see more of Eritrea than the city of Asmara. We traveled by jeep down from the cool highlands, first northwest to Keren, then southwest to Agordat and Barentu, and finally south to the hot and dusty lowland town of Dukambia.
Most of the few narrow and bumpy paved roads date from the Italian colonial period. Only part of our journey was on asphalt; most of the trip was over rough, washboard-surfaced dirt roads or tracks in the countryside.
Some areas are remote from the capitol not only in space but in time. Many of these rural folk live and work as their ancestors did centuries ago.
How strange it was to see poor farmers scratching a living from their dusty, semi-arid land alongside rusting hulks of tanks, heavy trucks and field weapons, wrecked and abandoned along the margins of the road.

What madness to have deployed these massive and expensive instruments of war among simple people whose lives were so remote from the issues of the conflict.
Thanks be to God, I thought, at last there is peace, reconstruction, and development in this shattered, weakened land.
A few days after we crossed into Ethiopia, however, the border was closed and a new war broke out.
Unbelievable! Until then the leaders of the two governments seemed to have had a cordial relationship. What were the reasons for renewing war? Ostensibly an old dispute about the exact position of the frontier. Actually, nobody knows.
Within days bombs were falling in both countries, sometimes seemingly at random. Small children died at school in Mekele a few weeks after our visit there.
What an insane game is sometimes played by the wielders of political power. They move their powerful and deadly toys across the board of life, casually wiping out living, breathing human pieces like the pawns they have become.
How long and hard we work to build lives child by child, family by family. How easily and quickly they are destroyed.
From the insanity, lunacy, madness, and folly of war, deliver us, O Lord!


(Published in
Catholic Near East, 24:4, July 1998)

Intercultural Communication

Forty years ago, Francis Cardinal Spellman, then Archbishop of New York, responded to the great influx of Puerto Ricans into his diocese. He made a radical decision — to send half of his newly ordained priests to Puerto Rico for the summer, to prepare them better for ministry at home.
They studied conversational Spanish all day for eight weeks. Weekends, they were sent to help out in parishes and practice what they had learned.
The most important lessons they learned were about the nature of culture and cultural differences.
Every culture has it own customs, rules, and sense of what is right and wrong. The challenge for these young priests was not only to speak the Spanish language, but also to be sensitive to the cultural differences between Americans and Puerto Ricans.
They had to learn how to communicate, in the fullest sense of the word, across the barrier of cultural difference. Only to speak the language was not enough.
For example, here’s a typical scene in a city like New York:
The teacher, Mrs. Jones, may be reprimanding little Juan. “Did you do it?,” she says. “Look me in the eye and tell me the truth.” Juan hangs his head and looks at the ground. “Aha,” thinks Mrs. Jones, “he’s guilty for sure.”
Not at all! For Juan, to look a superior in the eyes is disrespectful. Proper behavior for him is to look down to the ground out of respect for the teacher.
You may speak the person’s language very well, but if you don’t know the nuances of his or her culture, you may well misunderstand what is being said or done.

Perhaps inadequate intercultural communication has a lot to do with the stymied peace process in the Holy Land.
For example, when speaking with a Palestinian Arab it is important to be respectful as he understands it. In the Arab culture, a polite person speaks with elaborate courtesy and indirection. Although there is a word for “no” in Arabic, “no” is usually communicated by how weakly one says “God willing”.
Ordinary greetings are very expressive. An Arab man normally greets another Arab man by embracing him and kissing him on both cheeks. A recent photo of Yasser Arafat embracing a Hamas leader doesn’t mean friendship or endorsement of his position. It’s mere politeness — it doesn’t mean anything more than a handshake does for many people in the West.
Israeli Jews are usually far more informal than Arabs. Those who come from Europe and North America are used to speaking very bluntly and openly. To speak strongly and sometimes aggressively is normal for them — for one speaker to interrupt another is not considered bad form or necessarily impolite.
Often what is esteemed in one culture — e.g., blunt speech — can be offensive in another.
In Israel and Palestine, there are many people who are bilingual, speaking both Hebrew and Arabic. Unfortunately, they may be using the right words, but really not communicating effectively at all.


(Published in
Catholic Near East, 23:6, November 1997)