Soulful Muse

If only I could do it again, it’d be much different from the first time.  The first time I was drowsy from the early morning hour until recess when I perked up and then drowsy throughout the afternoon from lunch, and then I went home.  This went on for eight years.

Grade school.  Those formative years that somehow formed me in spite of myself.  I could say the same for high school and college but for different reasons.

If I returned now?  Now, I’d awake sharpened with my No. 2 pencil and iPad in tow, only without the backpack.  (I refuse to carry a backpack, too heavy at my age.)  I’d have my homework completed and double spaced.  I’d wear a nice suit and tie.  I’d have a healthy lunch prepared.  I’d sit in front.  I would not gossip about the class “geek” or the hero-quarterback.  I’d be silent waiting to absorb what the teacher carefully prepared for me that day. I wouldn’t mind sitting in a small, cramp desk with no ink well but I’ll be able to fit underneath it in case of a nuclear attack. (How was a desk supposed to be protect me from a nuclear attack?!)

Would this all be an act to impress her?  No, that was the first time around, this time I’m serious about this education stuff.  My grade school nuns had me pegged as an “empty vessel” waiting to be filled even though my spout was not very open. (see “drowsy” above.)  This second time my vessel is already filled, sometimes overflowing, and I want to make sense of it all.

Is education wasted on the youth?  I guess it is, in spite of what might sift through to get them going in life but my second time around would be challenging, cleansing and assimilating to my 62 years.

Now, when I raise my hand it is no longer to go to the bathroom to kill time but to ask a haunting question looking for life clues.  I no longer need to impress the teacher, I need her to impress upon me how education integrates facts and knowledge into a synthesis that can refill and refine this aging vessel.

Yes, I would bring an apple to school only to nourish and not make her think better of me than the rest.  I want her to survive another day to smooth out my rough edges of how history can be distorted and misused, how the U.S. empire is different from Rome’s (perhaps a leap for grade school education, but it’s worth a try!), what is important in life and what needs to be labeled relative.

After school, I’d dutifully go home (my own house since my parents are heavenly) and lay out the day’s assignments that need my attention.  I would delight in this second time challenge and I would luxuriate in the task before me that calls for critical thinking and discernment.

The following day (different suit, of course) I’d proudly present my carefully prepared analysis to my grade school teacher who would softly but firmly tear it apart piece by piece.  The first time around I would have walked home wounded scared to show my parents.  This second time around I would return home and eagerly start it all over again.

(a funeral sermon for a 94 year old named Hank)

I don’t like saying “goodbye.” For whatever reason it just seems awkward to me. I know that I’ll see these folks again so perhaps the “goodbye” stands as a “thank you” for the time spent together.

Women, I suspect, have an easy time with departures. There’s a new conversation that begins at the exiting door after they’ve said “it’s time to leave” in the living room. Those conversations can extend for long periods of time. Just a name unmentioned before and everyone need to be caught up in the her latest happenings. Just say “goodbye,” I say.

I had a wedding with over 200 people over the weekend and after dinner decided to discreetly leave but only saw a few key people around. I “thanked” them to their surprise that I was not staying longer. A final look around for the newly married couple was futile and I exited. The next day I wondered if I should have stayed longer for the “thank you”/”goodbyes” but I like that someone may say, “Oh, he left awhile ago.”

So, if you invite me to your home for supper and go to another room, please do not be surprised when you return and find me gone. I had a nice time and did not want to say “goodbye” only to hear, “oh, don’t go, stay awhile longer.”

And so it is with death. We don’t say “goodbye” even if we had the rare opportunity to say that word to someone we love. Saying that “goodbye,” I think, is really a way of saying that I’m here with you now and I want you to know that.

I bet if you read a social worker’s report or doctors’ notes on Hank it would list feelings like “withdrawn,” “quiet,” “keeps to himself” as though they are not human qualities and need to be rectified through talk or cured through pills. You see, for Hank, he never said “goodbye” to Isabelle. It wasn’t going to happen and it did not happen. I’d guess he felt the same about his first wife but Isabelle and Hank are the ones that I got to know. Even in Isabelle’s confusion, Hank was always beaming to be with her and take her, as often as possible, to play darts in the morning. When Isabelle left this world, she never left the world of Hank. She remained within and around him throughout his last years.

“Goodbye?” Ugh. The five of us kids have our parents and grandparents stuff surrounding our respective homes. A nicknack on this mantle, a vase in that bathroom, embroidered table cloths that once covered Thanksgiving meals. (A robber can have the flatscreen but not the vase!) The Church offers memorial cards, Mass intentions, (angels in our curio cabinets), joining a purgatorial club (I wouldn’t suggest that way, by the way), cemetery plots needing flowers throughout the year along with holiday cemetery Masses. (I guess I’m not the only way who doesn’t say “goodbye.”)

The social worker’s report may have reported that Hank is failing in completing the five necessary steps of recovery following a death or tragedy. There’s five of them and I have a hunch that Hank was stopped by the first one: denial. And you just can’t beat denial in our culture because if you deny that you’re in denial then you’re in denial. (Just try convincing a counselor otherwise!) The popular spectrum of the five is first denial with number five being acceptance. I think that Hank wavered between number one to number five often and then devolved from five back to one, but not because of those clinical words but because he just simply would not say “goodbye.” She was too much a part of his life to say that word.

To return to my singular yet dual meaning word, I imagine Hank said “thank you” a lot to both his wives and to the long life that he lived but I do not think he ever said “goodbye,” after all, he’s a guy. I bet we all say “thank you” more than that other word. Good for us. I believe our faith calls us to say “thank you” more than once daily but never to say that other word.

And there’s another guy, the Big Guy in heaven who I believe sings the old Beatles’ song to both Hank and to everyone He greets, “I don’t know why you say ‘goodbye,’ I say, ‘hello'”.

A friend of mine talks about her daughter’s work in Dubai, United Arab.
Her daughter lives where the tallest building in the world resides. It reaches up 2,722 ft. with 58 elevators, 900 apartment homes, 304 hotel rooms and 2,957 parking spaces. I read it was based on a design by Wisconsin’s own Frank Lloyd Wright design for Chicago that was never built and constructed by a South Korea company.

The interesting thing that she told me though is that the building has a movement, either way, of some five feet because you see a building that huge needs some room to stretch and maneuver in order to stand and withstand its height. Rigid and firm does not make it for structures and it does not make for us humans as well.

Today we honor two “pillars” of the Christian church, Peter and Paul (or is it Paul and Peter?). Note the word “pillar.” Strong and secure, pillars are meant to last forever.

But like the heat and strong winds of Dubai, this steel structure needs some room to bend, buoy and manage itself. Five feet, in both directions, is quite a stretch for a structure that size, don’t you think?

In our strong and true opinions, how do we secure ourselves? We think to ourselves, “If I talk the loudest, then they will hear me and listen,” or “I can’t compromise on anything or else my cause will be lost.”

Like a steel structure thousand of miles away to us in our small Chapel – something is about to crack and not be able to sustain itself…unless we give at least “five feet” to each other.

The current social issues are always before us and we quickly take our corners with our ultimate and absolute truth. (Often times based on what we hear from friends without doing our own homework but that’s a different sermon.) We hold firm, “never give an inch” because that would be mean weakness, compromise, “selling out” or misrepresenting, in our case, the Catholic Church.

Those “pillars” we honor today, Peter and Paul (or is it Paul and Peter?) held firm beliefs for our Christian Church. Please note that I did not say “Catholic” because they are pillars of Lutherans, United Church of Christ, Methodist and how many other Christian churches.

Paul knew the Christ (in other words he knew the “faith” of Jesus but not the man. Peter knew the “man” Jesus and was learning the “faith”.) Both had the gifts of inclusion and negotiation. Both knew that the “steel structure” of their faith needed at least five feet, give or take.

Paul learned that lesson through his amazing story of killing before teaching; traveling from town to town and working with hundreds of different views and opinions and perceptions and experiences; and all the time trying to piece them together. That’s at least “five feet.”

Peter learned that lesson through his words, he brilliantly acknowledges Jesus as the Son of God and then tells Jesus he may want to back off a bit because of the risks involved. He does the same by the fire with the Roman guards. Jesus asks Peter three times for his love and for each of those times Peter denies he knows him to the guards. That’s “five feet” the other way.

Both learned that the words “absolute” and “truth” do not always go together. There is always that grey (in religion) and that five feet (huge, big steel buildings.)

The beauty of this day is not in its solution but its challenge to each of us. The certainty of our beliefs needs a little breathing room in order for us to live among those who do not believe what we believe. The quest for “truth” is always and at least “five feet” to the right and then “five feet” to the left.

That’s not political, that’s practical. That’s the feast we honor today, Peter and Paul or it is Paul and Peter?

The good news of the gospel is intended to speak to everyone, every time in every and any place.

That’s quite a tall order for a bunch of words placed together to form a paragraph on a page. But what happens if those words are divinely inspired.? Can those words then live up to the high expectation of speaking to everyone, every time in every and any place?

To all those here today who have lost loved ones and feel lonely from time to time…

When Jesus heard of the death of John the Baptist,
he withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself.

To all those here today who are fearful or anxious about dying and death…

his heart was moved with pity for them, and he cured their sick.

To all those here today who tend to dwell on their sin instead of God’s grace…

Jesus said to them, “There is no need for them to go away;
give them some food yourselves.”

To all those here today who feel their memories fading and their minds weakening…

They all ate and were satisfied,
and they picked up the fragments left over—
twelve wicker baskets full.

To all those here today who feel isolated, abandoned by their children or their friends…

Those who ate were about five thousand men,
not counting women and children.

To all those here today who would rather be “banished children of Eve” and “mourn and weep” every chance they can get…

They all ate and were satisfied,

To all those who feel they have nothing left in their lives…

give them some food yourselves.”
But they said to him,
“Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.”

To all of us here today who are looking for hope and joy this day and every day of our lives…

Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven,
he said the blessing, broke the loaves,
and gave them to the disciples,
who in turn gave them to the crowds.

I guess the good news of the gospel does speak to everyone, in every time and in every place.

The brick pavers surrounding the Eiffel Tower were made in the small town of Patton, Pa. The city of Patton was at one time the largest manufacturer of bricks in the world. A young novitiate from Patton would walk on his hometown pavers many times throughout his life. He would make his solemn profession as a Benedictine monk a little more than an hour away from post-war Paris in 1949 at the Solesmes Benedictine Abbey. He would take the name Rembert.

That was the beginning of a long and circuitous road for this future prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, Rembert Weakland. His passage would be flecked with accomplishment, controversy, disappointment and self-doubt. There would be times of great exhilaration, deep despair and loneliness. But one thing was indisputable from the very beginning: Weakland was a very gifted and holy man with a shining future in the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1977, Pope Paul VI elevated Weakland to archbishop of Milwaukee. At the time, many of the Catholic faithful were confused by the choice of Weakland, given his reputation as a church intellectual. Most thought it would be a only few years before he was given a red cap signifying him a cardinal of the church and moved on. That might have been in the back of his mind, too.

He was a cultural misfit in Milwaukee, and in his early tenure he was seen as a bit aloof by some. The Milwaukee Archdiocese, for lack of a better description, is a blue-collar, conservative Catholic community, and he was a progressive in the church. In his 2009 biography, he acknowledged his lack of comfort and feeling of isolation when he relocated to a town best known for beer, bowling and the TV show “Laverne & Shirley.”

His views were consistent with most American Catholics. Weakland believed that to stay relevant with the faithful, the church needed to evolve after Vatican II. The issues facing the American church were not yet germane to Catholics in other parts of the world. The perplexity was to evolve but to stay one with the worldwide Catholic community and the Vatican, a difficult balance to achieve.

Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago was an ally, but Weakland’s voice in the church soon would be cut short with the death of Pope Paul VI. The decades-long leadership of the more conservative Pope John Paul II changed the welcome mat message for his voice in the Vatican. Weakland and the Holy See didn’t always have a harmonious relationship, so he began to use his pulpit as a bully pulpit to address the issues confronting a restless American faithful.

It wasn’t that Weakland’s views were controversial in most American dioceses, but rather that the Holy See moved at a slower pace. Weakland felt an urgency that was not shared or endorsed by the Vatican. These were the issues many American Catholic families were dealing with daily. Rome’s strategy was avoidance. The Holy See’s attitude was the intellectual equivalent to former first lady Nancy Reagan telling people to “just say no” to drugs. American life was a bit more complicated than a simple admonition and exercise of willpower.

Weakland took it upon himself to address issues such as abortion, greater roles for women in the church, social and economic justice, homosexuality, AIDS, sex education, clerical pedophilia and feminism. He acknowledged that a person could, perhaps, reconcile his or her pro-choice views and still be a good Catholic. Or that he would consider ordaining a married man, who was worthy, into the priesthood because of a shortage of priests. He wanted expanded roles for women in the church and held out the possibility of ordination of women when the Vatican was still opposed to children serving as altar girls alongside altar boys. The innocuous little things he endured, such as criticisms about the use of altar girls, made no sense to most American Catholics. And he held out the possibility that ordaining women might lead to “a more intelligent and compassionate church.”

Weakland always disliked being typecast as a liberal or conservative, but over the years he came to accept that his voice would conflict at times with the Curia in Rome. The church’s hierarchy was more in tune with the doctrinal orthodoxy, and he would be cast as a more liberal voice in the church. He would ostracize the tactics of the pro-life movements and then was labeled pro-choice, which he is not. After celebrating a “Respect Life” Mass, he was pilloried for commenting afterward: “Such a difficult group to preach to,” “Such hard faces,” “Such surety,” “No smiles,” “No openness to any other point of view. They have no joy in being Catholic or part of a church.” He went on to say that many dislike the narrowness, lack of compassion and lack of civility of the pro-life movement.

The archbishop’s renovation of the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist (my parish) was also subjected to unfair criticism. His detractors finally had a symbolic but tangible issue to voice objection. The real motivator was the archbishop’s past pronouncements on topics on which they disagreed with him. But now the critics had what they considered an abomination of a renovated cathedral so they all could join in and scorn his destructive ways. It backfired.

It was during that time that Weakland sought my help with the naysayers, and I gladly provided it. His fault-finders called it a pagan temple, but upon its completion few people argue with the restored magnificence of the cathedral. In the years since its completion, I’ve yet to meet anyone who hasn’t commented on its beauty.

Weakland’s personal issues came to light in May 2002, when he paid off a male lover on the advice of legal counsel. Weakland also came out of the closet. And we learned that he followed established protocol of moving sexually abusive priests to other parishes once a psychological exam was completed. He acknowledged that he, like many of his brethren, was wrong to do so and asked for forgiveness. Many have concluded that there will never be, nor can there be, closure for those who have been abused by a priest regardless of compensation, apologies and pleas for forgiveness. And maybe that’s the church’s cross to bear.

The crowded Saturday evening Mass at St. John a few days after Weakland’s transgressions were made public was filled with people whose expressions went from disbelief, betrayal and sadness to even anger. Father Mike said Mass and spoke briefly about what we all knew to be true: Our archbishop had sinned, and it was a whopper as sins go. People cried, parishioners hugged each other and strangers lined the back of the cathedral in tears; the sadness was palpable. It was a career-ending blow to the archbishop, and he quickly retired.

In truth, Milwaukee has blundered by not turning to Weakland’s sagacious counsel in many circumstances in which he could have provided guidance. We seem to have exiled him. Is it because we are uncomfortable with the sin — or the sinner?

The archbishop’s sins should be treated with empathy and forgiveness; he, like all of us, is a fallible person. You see when you cut through all the doctrine and church politics that being Catholic with a capital C is about forgiveness. It’s really not any more complicated than that one word. God’s forgiveness is greater than any sin any of us can commit.

The societal matters that Weakland was at the forefront of addressing 25 years ago are the same issues and questions that Pope Francis has been raising during the past 16 months.

And Archbishop Emeritus Rembert George Weakland still lives in Milwaukee. Maybe we should call him.

Todd Robert Murphy is a newspaper columnist for Conley Media Group and a member of The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. Email toddrobertmurphy@gmail.com