Kneading Faith
By Fran Lavelle

”For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

Church leadership hears the same often bleak news about the state of religion in our country. According to the most recent PEW Research study, 28 percent of adults in the United States are religiously unaffiliated. The religiously unaffiliated are also known as nones.

The decline in membership is being felt across the spectrum of Christian denominations. The questions this reality begs are many but chief among them is simply – why? Why are folks leaving organized religion? According to the PEW study:

The reason “nones” give most often for not having a religion is that they question religious teachings: 60% say doubt about these teachings is an extremely or very important reason why they are nonreligious. In addition, 32% cite a lack of belief in God or any other higher power. Altogether, 67% cite skepticism or nonbelief (or some combination of both) as a key factor in why they are nonreligious.

Meanwhile, 47% of “nones” say their dislike of religious organizations is an extremely or very important reason they are nonreligious. And 30% cite bad experiences with religious people. Altogether, 55% of “nones” mention religious organizations or religious people (or both) as key reasons for being nonreligious.

About four-in-ten “nones” attribute their lack of religiousness to not having a need for religion in their lives. And 12% say they don’t have time for religion. Altogether, 44% cite a lack of need or a lack of time (or both) as reasons for why they are not religious.

I have been working on the Pastoral Reimagining process for the diocese for the last year. Enveloped in this process is a desire to dream. It is important to dream but it is equally important to anchor our dreams in reality. This process for me has done both. The question posed by many of our parishes and missions is how do we reach out to the “nones” that once identified as Catholic? What are the areas of church life that need to be examined and reimagined?

The diocesan process for the Synod on Synodality identified unity and healing as the greatest need in our parishes. I refer to it as finding our way back to one another. Like any relationship some people have moved on feeling like they no longer need the church. Other folks have told me that they “took a break” for going to Mass and didn’t really miss anything. The challenge in all of this is not be defensive and assign blame on those who no longer worship with us. The difficult thing to do is look at who we are as a community and ask how we can be more welcoming and inviting. This is not to say that there needs to be a cheesy welcome to visitors like it’s their first time on a cruise ship, but a reinforcement of everything we do from the time people arrive in the parking lot until the time they get in their cars to leave they have been surrounded by the love of Christ manifested in how they were treated when they were with us.

We have a tendency to dismiss the missing. Statements like, “if they only believed this” or “if they were more that” diminish our responsibility to understanding why people leave in the first place. Many of those who have left said that once they were gone no one called or wrote to see how they were doing. One of my former college students told me after she left college and moved to a large city, “no one noticed when I was there, and no one noticed when I was gone.”

Catholics are creatures of habit. Most families sit within a two-pew area every week. The other members of this noted pew seating chart know when someone is not there. How can we respectfully reach out without seeming nosey? One of my friends at St. Joseph in Starkville lets me know when she is out of town, so my Mom doesn’t worry about her. Likewise, when Mom is not at Mass several church members “drop by the pew” on the way out and ask, “How’s Momma?”

It not only makes me realize how much they care about her, but it also makes me realize how easy it is to make the effort to let people know that their presence matters.

As Lent continues and Holy week approaches, who do we need to ask, ‘How’s Momma?”

(Fran Lavelle is the Director of Faith Formation for the Diocese of Jackson.)

GUEST COLUMN
By Dr. Greg Popcak

Lent is a time of reparation – a season of sorrow for sins committed and expressions of a sincere desire to reform our lives. But what does it mean to be sorry? What are the components of real remorse?

Whether we are expressing sorrow to God, a spouse, family member or friend, it can be hard to say, “I’m sorry.” It can be even harder to say it well. Sometimes, when people say that they are sorry to us, we can feel like there is something missing. Often, it’s because there is. But what?

As we express our sorrow to God this Lent for the ways that our lives do not reflect his plan for us, it can be important to make sure our “I’m sorrys” have all the components of sincere remorse. Researchers note that good apologies involve three ingredients: empathy, restitution and objective criteria.

When people offer a sincere apology rooted not in obligation but genuine remorse, they tend to express a real emotional understanding of how their actions hurt us. “I am so sorry for doing that. I never meant to treat you that way. I know how badly you were hurt. Please forgive me.”

The truly remorseful person doesn’t make excuses or tell the person they hurt that they were “just kidding,” or that the wounded party needs to get a thicker skin or a better sense of humor. They understand the impact of their actions and they let you know that they feel your pain.

When we express our sorrow to God this Lent, are we going through the motions of repentance, or are we allowing ourselves to express genuine sorrow for the pain God feels when we reject his attempts to love us and make us whole?

When people offer a sincere apology, they don’t just “say the magic words.” They offer a plan for making things right again. Or, if they don’t know what to do to make it right, they ask you what you need them to do to heal the hurt their actions caused. They say things like, “The next time I feel that angry about something, I’m going to do this instead of that,” or, “I really want to make this right. What can I do to earn your trust again?”

Restitution isn’t about asking people to jump through hoops for the sake of watching them dance. It is about committing to the process of reconciliation – healing the wounds our actions caused.

When we confess our sins this Lent, have we put some time into how we would handle similar problem situations differently in the future? Hearing the words “I absolve you” is just the beginning. How will we let the grace of that absolution compel us to heal the wounds our actions have caused those we love, and how can we make sure to avoid those problem behaviors the next time we are tempted to go down a similar path?

Truly sorrowful people don’t hide out behind the belief that “the real problem” is that others are expecting too much of them. If we are truly sorry, we recognize that the person we hurt had an objective right to expect more from us.

How often do others apologize to us in ways that make us feel strangely ashamed for daring to expect them to be faithful, trustworthy or respectful? How often do the apologies others offer sound like, “I’m sorry, but don’t you think you’re being a little controlling/sensitive/judgmental/ needy/demanding/unfair?”

The person offering a sincere apology acknowledges that anyone in a similar situation would be reasonable to expect what you are asking of them. “You’re absolutely right to expect more of me. I’m really sorry I let you down.”

In our relationship with God, how often do we think that the real problem is that he is just asking for entirely too much. Sure, we’re sorry for what we did, but the real problem is that he expects us to be saints. Saints, I tell you! Can you believe it?!? How ridiculous is that?!?

As we conclude Lent, will we continue to pay lip service to the idea that God wants great things for us, or will we embrace the fact that every day he is calling us into deeper union with him and greater perfection in his grace?

Whether we are expressing remorse to God or others, being sorry isn’t, ultimately, about making ourselves seem pitiful enough or appearing pathetic enough to make the other person feel bad and let us off the hook.

Apologizing is about picking up our cross and embracing the hard work that comes with changing our behavior – not so that we can jump through some spiritual hoop but so that we can participate more effectively in the healing process that allows us to achieve our ultimate destiny: loving union with God.

(Dr. Greg Popcak is an author and the director of www.CatholicCounselors.com.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

God behaves in the psalms in ways that God is not allowed to behave in theology.
That quip comes from Sebastian Moore and should be highlighted at a time when fewer people want to use the psalms in prayer because they feel offended by what they sometimes find there. More and more, we see people resisting the psalms as a way to pray (or desire to sanitize them) because the psalms speak of murder, revenge, anger, violence, war-making, and patriarchy.

Some ask, how can I pray with words that are full of hatred, anger, violence, speak of the glories of war, and of crushing one’s enemies in the name of God? For others, the objection is to a patriarchal coloring in the psalms – where the divine is masculine and the masculine is too-much deified. For yet others, the offense is aesthetic. Their objection: “They’re bad poetry!”

Perhaps the psalms aren’t great poetry and undeniably do smack of violence, war, hatred of one’s enemies, and the desire for vengeance, all in the name of God. Admittedly, they’re also patriarchal in character. But does that make them a bad language for prayer? Let me suggest something to the contrary.

One of the classical definitions of prayer says “prayer is lifting mind and heart to God.” Simple, clear, accurate. I suggest that the actual problem is that we seldom actually do this when we pray. Rather than lifting up to God what is actually on our minds and in our hearts, we tend to treat God as someone from whom we need to hide the real truth of our thoughts and feelings. Instead of pouring out mind and heart, we tell God what we think God wants to hear – not murderous thoughts, desire for vengeance, or our disappointment with God.

But expressing those feelings is the whole point. What makes the psalms particularly apt for prayer is that they do not hide the truth from God but express the whole gamut of our actual feelings. They give an honest voice to what’s actually going on in our minds and hearts.

Sometimes we feel good and our spontaneous impulse is to speak words of praise and gratitude, and the psalms give us that voice. They speak of God’s goodness in everything – love, friends, faith, health, food, wine, enjoyment. But we don’t always feel that way. Our lives also have their cold, lonely seasons when disappointment and bitterness simmer or rage under the surface. The psalms give us honest voice where we can open up all those simmering feelings to God. Also, there are times when we are filled with the sense of our own inadequacy, with the fact that we cannot measure up to the trust and love that’s given us. Again, the psalms give us voice for this, asking God to be merciful and to soften our hearts, wash us clean, and give us a new start.

As well, there are times when we feel bitterly disappointed with God and need some way to express this. The psalms give us voice for this (“Why are you so silent?” “Why are you so far from me?”) even as they make us aware that God is not afraid of our anger and bitterness; but, like a loving parent, only wants us to come and talk about it. The psalms are a privileged vehicle for prayer because they lift the full range of our thoughts and feelings to God.

However, there are a number of reasons why we struggle with that. First, because our age tends to eschew metaphor and taken literally, some of the images in the psalms are offensive. Second, we tend to be in denial about our actual feelings. It’s hard to admit that we feel some of the things we sometimes feel – grandiosity, sexual obsessions, jealousies, bitterness, paranoia, murderous thoughts, disappointment with God, doubts in our faith. Too often our prayer belies our actual thoughts and feelings. It tells God what we think God wants to hear. The psalms are more honest.

To pray with full honesty is a challenge. Kathleen Norris puts it this way: If you pray regularly “there is no way you can do it right. You are not always going to sit up straight, let alone think holy thoughts. You’re not going to wear your best clothes but whatever isn’t in the dirty clothes basket. You come to the Bible’s great `book of praise’ through all the moods and conditions of life, and while you feel like hell, you sing anyway. To your surprise, you find that the psalms do not deny your true feelings but allow you to reflect them, right in front of God and everyone.”

Feel-good aphorisms that express how we think we ought to feel are no substitute for the earthy realism of the psalms which express how sometimes we actually do feel. Anyone who would lift mind and heart to God without ever mentioning feelings of bitterness, jealousy, vengeance, hatred, and war, should write slogans for greeting cards and not be anyone’s spiritual advisor.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

GUEST COLUMN
By Jaymie Stuart Wolfe

”What are you giving up for Lent?” For many Catholics, the question appears almost automatically – and even before the last box of Christmas decorations has been packed up and stowed away. As someone who spent most of my life in that category and with that crowd, I think it’s because Lent can feel a lot like a competition, a 40-day spiritual marathon with winners and losers.

Every Ash Wednesday, it seemed to me, the church threw personal holiness down like a gauntlet. The point, I thought, was to accept the challenge and do everything in my power to excel in achieving it. My naturally competitive nature means that I have always been more than willing to take up just about any challenge. Living the faith was no exception.

That’s one reason why I figured that the more demanding and strenuous Lent was, the better. It was a matter of simple logic. If fasting on Fridays demonstrated my love for God, then fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays would do so even more. If praying one novena was good, two or three had to be even more beneficial. Whenever I heard about someone else’s sacrifice, I’d up the ante for myself. If someone was giving up coffee, I’d commit to drinking only water. When someone I knew gave up chocolate (and there was always someone who did), I’d attempt to give up sweets of any kind. There were years I even put pebbles or toothpicks in the soles of my shoes for the season. Nothing was too much for me.

And that was the problem. In doing all those things, I failed to grasp the point of Lenten penitential practices and disciplines. I didn’t realize that because nothing was too much, nothing would ever be enough. Rather than accepting my weaknesses, I tried to live my spiritual life beyond my means and the measure of my strength. And those efforts never produced the fruit of repentance in my life. Instead, they left me exhausted and puffed up. Eventually, I finally recognized that intensifying penitential practices in preparation for Easter isn’t about spiritual bootstrapping or one-upmanship. As a result, I decided to give up giving up things for Lent.

So, for more than a decade now, I’ve been letting God choose what I give up for Lent. And he has chosen some real doozies. The things God has invited me to sacrifice have challenged me at a much deeper level because they call for more faith than I can muster on my own. This approach has made a real difference in what I gain from Lenten practices because God knows what I need better than I do. He is happy to show me all the things I have allowed to take his place. And he is more than willing to reveal the pantheon of idols in my heart, especially when I am convinced that I have none.

The truth is that the crosses I used to choose – even the most difficult ones – were still within my control, simply because I was the one who chose them. Sometimes, they required significant discipline on my part, but they also fueled my pride. In contrast, moving across the country, facing a health scare or losing financial security pulls the ground out from under me. And that’s the only way I can truly know what I’ve been standing on all along.

God understands precisely what it will take to make each one of us rely on him, to accept his grace and to trust him more completely.

As St. Francis de Sales wrote, “The everlasting God has in his wisdom foreseen from eternity the cross that he now presents to you as a gift of his inmost heart. This cross he now sends you he has considered with his all-knowing eyes, understood with his divine mind, tested with his wise justice, warmed with loving arms, and weighed with his own hands to see that it is not one inch too large nor one ounce too heavy for you. He has blessed it with his holy name, anointed it with his grace, perfumed it with his consolation, taken one last glance at you and your courage, and then sent it to you from heaven, a special greeting from God to you, an alms of the all-merciful love of God.”

(Jaymie Stuart Wolfe is a sinner, Catholic convert, freelance writer and editor, musician, speaker, pet-aholic, wife and mom of eight grown children, loving life in New Orleans.)

WALKING WITH MIGRANTS
By Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio

January was National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month, leading up to the Feb. 8 feast of St. Josephine Bakhita. St. Josephine Bakhita was a young southern Sudanese girl who was kidnapped and sold into slavery. She eventually was bought by an Italian diplomat and taken to Venice, where she encountered the Catholic faith.

Her story is an interesting one, since escaping from slavery was not an easy task even in Italy during the 19th century, yet Josephine persevered and became a Canossian sister. She was canonized by St. John Paul II, who in his homily said, “We find a shining advocate of genuine emancipation.” Josephine has become the patron saint of those enslaved and trafficked, as well as one venerated by African American Catholics in the United States and also the patron saint of Sudan.

Human trafficking, often referred to as a modern form of slavery, involves using force, fraud or coercion to make someone provide labor or engage in sexual activities against their will. Migrants are particularly vulnerable to trafficking because, in their desperation, they may resort to paying a smuggler to arrange transportation to their destination.

Exploiting this vulnerability, smugglers may then traffic migrants for labor or sex. The hazards migrants encounter during their difficult journeys can expose them to trafficking, regardless of whether they have used a smuggler before.

Even though those who are smuggled might initially consent and pay a fee for transportation to their desired country, some soon find themselves recruited or lured into situations of sexual exploitation, forced labor or indentured servitude – whether it happens before, during or after their migration journey. Trafficked individuals are frequently deceived with promises of a good job and a better life or, like St. Bakhita, kidnapped.

Awareness of the problem is a critical tool to combat the crime of human trafficking, which is a worldwide problem. Due to the underreported nature of the crime, it is difficult to gather accurate statistics of those trafficked and exploited. Nevertheless, the Global Slavery Index reports that at any given moment there are nearly 50 million people living in a situation of modern slavery. Estimates show there are about 1 million people living in situations of slavery in the United States.

The bimonthly newsletter put out by the anti-trafficking office of the U.S. bishops’ conference titled “Hidden in Plain Sight,” highlights how often we fail to see trafficking situations in our own communities. Hidden in plain sight is the best way to describe this reality, as they are sometimes hidden in nail salons, massage parlors or in sectors of the entertainment industry.

Awareness, prevention and detection are effective tools to eliminate human trafficking from our midst. How important it is that we keep watch for any signs of those who may be ill-treated in their workplaces, understand what might constitute a human trafficking situation and then report it to the proper authorities who can then intervene.

It is admirable that many female religious orders have dedicated much of their resources, both personnel and financial, to combating this terrible scourge on our world society. Most of those trafficked are women, but young and middle-aged men are among those trafficked.

A Prayer to St. Josephine Bakhita
St. Josephine Bakhita, you were sold into slavery as a child and endured untold hardship and suffering.
Once liberated from your physical enslavement, you found proper redemption in your encounter with Christ and his church.
O, St. Bakhita, assist all those trapped in a state of slavery; Intercede with God on their behalf so that they will be released from their chains of captivity.
Those whom man enslaves, let God set free.
Provide comfort to survivors of slavery and let them look to you as an example of hope and faith. Help all survivors find healing from their wounds. We ask for your prayers and intercessions for those enslaved among us. Amen.

(Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio is the retired bishop of the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York. He writes the column “Walking With Migrants” for The Tablet and OSV News.)