Kneading Faith
By Fran Lavelle

If you have followed the pontificate of Pope Francis, you know that he is deeply rooted in his Jesuit formation. Foundational to a Jesuit’s formation is understanding the role of discernment in the life of the church and of all of God’s people. In the past few years, he has written three timely documents that invite the faithful to reflect on the role of the church in the world today. Christus Vivit is an Apostolic Exhortation “to young people and to the people of God” written in summation of the Synod on Young People. Fratelli Tutti, an encyclical letter, is written on fraternity and social friendship. And Let Us Dream, an inspired blueprint for a better future for all especially considering the devastating impact of the pandemic on the poor.

In all three documents he builds on the foundation of his deep appreciation for discernment, accompaniment and authentic listening. His current call for a Synod on Synodality: Communion, Participation and Mission finds kinship in the Jesuit practice of See, Act, Judge. This process is a method of intentionally seeing an issue and stopping to reflect on it before acting. It is a different way of articulating Thomas Aquinas’ description of prudence.

So, what’s a Synod you ask? Vatican II established a Synod of Bishops, described in the 1983 Code of Canon Law as a group of bishops selected from different regions of the world who are called to address a particular issue. For example, a synod may be called to consider questions pertaining to the activity of the church in the world. Since the mid-1960s when the Synod of Bishops was established, there have been invoked some thirty synods. Many have gone unnoticed. Pope Francis has, however, given new life to the Synod of Bishops by considering questions pertaining to the young church, families, the Amazon and other timely issues.

Pope Francis will begin the Synod the weekend of Oct. 9-10 with an opening session and a Mass. Bishop Kopacz will open the Synod in the diocese of Jackson with a Mass on Sunday, Oct. 24. Phase one of the synod on synodality is the diocesan phase that begins this month and will conclude in April 2022. In the diocesan phase we will collect input from local parishes, lay movements, religious institutions, schools, universities, ecumenical communities and other groups. The bishop then must synthesize that data into a 10-page report by April 2022 for submission to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The diocese will publish the document that is sent to the USCCB in early May to help form and inform parish leaders as they plan for the future. The USCCBs summary of the country’s work will be sent to the Vatican. Those summaries will be used to help create a working document that will be the start of discussions during continental synod meetings that will run from September 2022-March 2023.

Central to understanding what the Synod is, is recognizing what it is not. It is not a pastoral planning process, nor is it a free for all gripe session. It is an opportunity for the people of God to pray together and ask of ourselves as individuals and within our church community where we are being called in our journey together. It provides a moment in time for the universal church to look at the greatest issues facing God’s holy people and asking how are we to respond as we embody the Gospel.

The USCCBs handbook in preparation for the synod describes the synodal journey as an experience of “authentic listening and discernment on the path of becoming the church that God calls us to be.” It goes on to state that, “The Synodal Process is first and foremost a spiritual process. It is not a mechanical data-gathering exercise or a series of meetings and debates. Synodal listening is oriented towards discernment.” It is our role as diocesan leaders to call forth through prayer and discernment where the Holy Spirit is leading us.

The Pope’s desire to graciously hear from all demographics, all ages, all people is indicative of his belief that the workings of the church is not a clandestine process that happens behind closed doors. Pope Francis is asking for church leaders to open wide their arms, ears and the hearts to hear the prophetic voice of God’s people. Cardinal Mario Grech said it so well, “The Second Vatican Council teaches that the People of God participate in the prophetic office of Christ. Therefore, we must listen to the People of God, and this means going out to the local churches.”
Begin praying now for wisdom and understanding. Begin praying now for a renewed fervor for the hearts and minds of people everywhere to be led back to the heart and mission of Christ. When your parish gathers to listen to one another, may you be fortified with the knowledge that your voice matters.

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

THEOLOGY AT THE MOVIES
By James Tomek, Ph.D

Two recent “lifeboat” movies on the TCM channel (Turner Classic Movie) brought me back to my SpringHill College ethics classes under Father Fred Gunti, the moral theologian of the department. Which film would he choose to analyze? The more famous one – the 1944 Lifeboat, an Alfred Hitchcock film, dramatized the experiences of nine people as they faced the new possibilities of living with very limited supply of basic needs, and with a moral question of what to do upon the chance arrival of the Nazi Captain of the submarine that torpedoed their Merchant Marine ship. The other survival film, and Father Gunti’s choice, is Richard Sale’s 1956 Abandon Ship about what to do with an overcrowded lifeboat.

Hitchcock’s Lifeboat is an excellent study of how people reveal themselves when put in an extraordinary “lifeboat” position. While they do resort to mob violence against the Nazi captain, their actions can be justified. The other film is morally complex. After an ocean liner hits a mine, there are 27 survivors converging on a lifeboat equipped for 9 to 13 people. Half the survivors have to stay in the water. Do we sacrifice some people for the benefit of others? I will focus on this film and expand the notion of “lifeboat ethics,” an issue studied in Father Fred Gunti’s class on social ethics.

Abandon Ship takes on the heavier moral issue of what to do in an overcrowded world. The executive officer of the sunken ship, Alec Holmes (Tyrone Power), is in charge of the boat and, at first, alternates those in the water with those in the boat, trying to save everyone. As conditions worsen, the ocean liner’s wounded engineer, Frank McKinley (Lloyd Nolan), advises Holmes that he needs to “evict” at least half the passengers, if the rest hope to make it to safety. Holmes resists for a while and then finally decides to save as many people as he can by “jettisoning” the weakest, since the strong are needed to row. The other ship’s officer on board Bill McKinley (Stephen Boyd), refuses to obey Holmes’ orders. As he goes overboard with a sick woman, he tells Holmes, “You have the wrong boy.”

Holmes becomes more and more ruthless as he chooses which expendable members are to be put over the side. He is ready to sacrifice himself when he becomes wounded, but a rescue ship arrives with the film’s epilogue, telling us that Holmes was convicted of murder, but was sentenced to only six months, due to the extenuating circumstances. The film was based on a true story of 1841 where seventeen members of a crowded lifeboat were sacrificed when their ship hit an iceberg.

Father Gunti might ask: What are the rights of those in the boat? Those in the water?

What is the moral thing to do? Can we enunciate some principles? Some relevant questions?

Do the ones in the boat have first rights? Do we save the weak first? Do we want optimum chances for the most people?

Or he may open the lifeboat to the world metaphor. The ocean liner is the world. The lifeboats are the rich nations. The people in the water are from the poor nations – boats that have sunk. What moralists call the Tragedy of the Commons – the air and water are like a “well” from which the whole world can share. If left uncontrolled, it will run out. Technology speeds up use. Immigration creates the commons – a cheap labor supply that will eventually cause supplies to dry up.

Carrying capacity is an issue. The land on the Earth is like a pasture. Each pasture has an ideal carrying capacity. Disaster occurs when carrying capacity is ignored. Further complications arise from the changes in climate and the vast unevenness of rainfall and the increase in powerful storms that destroy areas, especially where the poorer of our populations live.

Father Gunti would probably use the concept of proportionality to help guide our responses. We analyze the situation, delineating and then weighing the possible goods and evils of an action. The decision – do we use the greater proportion of what is the best good? or the least evil? If it is just a lifeboat, I think we have to keep as many people alive for as long as possible. The “religious” individual response, I hope, would be to volunteer to die. The “ethic” response would be to weigh the pluses and minuses of whom should be accepted and turned away. Wow! As a metaphor of the overcrowded world, we need bio-ethical studies to help us use the Earth in a conservative manner. This would take a central world authority on the line of the United Nations or a World Bank.

Father Tom Lalor, a SpringHill graduate of their theology Master of Arts program, suggested to me to follow in his path, which I gratefully did. His favorite teacher was Father Fred Gunti whom he called an excellent moral theologian who could break down issues and rebuild them with positive answers.

We are in an overcrowded world of immigration issues with real people suffering. The climate problems that we are having have also affected the rise in immigration. If the solution is that we jettison all the poor, I hope that I can say, like the Stephen Boyd character in Abandon Ship, “you have the wrong boy.” We need to find better solutions. This is where we need Father Gunti.

(James Tomek is a retired language and literature professor at Delta State University who is currently a Lay Ecclesial Minister at Sacred Heart in Rosedale and also active in RCIA at Our Lady of Victories in Cleveland.)

Our 2nd Annual Homegrown Harvest Festival was certainly festive. I am so grateful for the support from across the diocese that the Department of Vocations received. We had over 30 sponsors of the event as well as many other individuals and businesses who gave in different ways to make sure that we were able to reach our fundraising goal. My deadline for this article was just 48 hours after the event and we are still tabulating our final numbers, but it looks like over $80,000 was raised to support our seminarians and our promotional events for this year.

 I was confident that this event would be a great time, and it was. It was a great time because it brought together so many stakeholders who all care about the same thing: the future of the church. This is why I wanted to have this event in the first place. There are so many ways that the People of God in Jackson generously support the church, but I do think that vocations can help to invigorate the faithful in a special way. Saturday was a testament to that.

I would like to thank in this space several people who made the event a success. Bishop Kopacz has been a great support to my department and has helped me a great deal simply by encouraging me to think outside the box. He is a big reason we had a successful event. The details were handled by our outstanding Diocesan Stewardship and Development Department led by Rebecca Harris and Julia Williams. Rhonda Bowden of St. Jude Pearl was the coordinator of our silent auction and did a fantastic job. The people of St. Paul Catholic Church in Flowood and their Pastor Father Gerry Hurley were so gracious to allow us to host the event at their parish. Our seminarians came up from south Louisiana to help in several different ways, and I think those in attendance really enjoyed getting to speak with them and getting to know them better.

All in all, our first in person vocations fundraiser in some time checked all the boxes I hoped it would. Most importantly, I think it was a visual reminder to all of us that God is working in the lives of young men and women in our diocese and there are many, many people who are praying that the Lord will send more laborers into the field of our parishes, schools and missions. Thank you for your support and prayers, and please continue to pray that the Lord will bring forth a fruitful, homegrown harvest of young priests to serve us in the generations to come.

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

We need to pray even when that seems the most lifeless thing to do. That’s a counsel from Michael J. Buckley with which we need to challenge ourselves daily. In the face of real life, prayer can often seem like the most lifeless thing to do. What difference does prayer make?

I will pray for you! Please keep me in prayer! Know that you have my prayers! We use those expressions all the time. I suspect not a day goes by that most of us do not promise to pray for someone. However, do we really believe our prayers make a difference? Do we really believe that our prayers can stop a pandemic, ease tensions within our communities, erase centuries-long misunderstandings among various religious denominations, cure someone dying of a terminal disease, bring our children back to church, or help someone forgive us? What can prayer do in the face of our own helplessness in a situation?

Jesus said there are certain demons that can only be cast out by prayer and fasting. I suspect that we find that easier to believe literally, in terms of an evil spirit being cast out of a person, than we believe that our prayer can cast out the more earthily demons of hatred, injustice, misunderstanding, division, war, racism, nationalism, bigotry, and bodily and mental illness. These are the real demons that beset our lives and even though we ask for God’s help in prayer, we don’t often do it with a lot of confidence that our prayers will make a difference. How can they?

The long history of Judaism and Christianity has taught us that God is not in the easy habit of positively interfering in nature and human life, at least not in ways that we can see. Miracles do happen, perhaps by the millions in ways that we cannot perceive. But, if we cannot see miracles, how are they real?

Reality has different modalities. There is the empirical and there is the mystical. Both are real, though both are not equally observable as an action of God in history. If a dead body rises from its grave (the Resurrection) or if a race of people walks dry shod through the Red Sea (the Exodus) that is clearly an intervention of God in our world, but if some world leader has a change of heart and is suddenly more sympathetic to the poor, how do we know what prompted that? Likewise, for everything else for which we pray. What inspired the insight that led to the discovery of a vaccine for the pandemic? Pure chance? A touch from above? You can ask that same question vis-à-vis most anything else we pray about, from the world situation to our personal health. What is the source of an inspiration, a restoration to health, a melting of a bitterness, a change of heart, a correct decision, or a chance meeting with someone that becomes a grace for the rest of your life? Pure chance, simple luck, or a conspiracy of accidents? Or does God’s grace and guidance positively touch you because of prayer, someone else’s or your own?

Central to our faith as Christians, is the belief that we are all part of one mystical body, the Body of Christ. This is not a metaphor. This body is a living organism, just as real as a physical body. Inside of a physical body, as we know, all parts influence each other, for good and for bad. Healthy enzymes help the whole body to retain its health and unhealthy viruses work at sickening the whole body. If this is true, and it is, then there is no such thing as a truly private action. Everything we do, even in our thoughts, influences others and thus our thoughts and actions are either health-giving enzymes or harmful viruses affecting others. Our prayers are health-giving enzymes affecting the whole body, particularly the persons and events to which we direct them. This is a doctrine of faith, not wishful thinking.

Earlier in her life, Dorothy Day was cynical about Therese of Lisieux (The Little Flower) believing that her isolation in a tiny convent and her mystical “little way” (which professed that our smallest actions affect the events of the whole world) was pious naiveté. Later, as Dorothy gave herself over to symbolic actions for justice and peace that in effect seemed to change very little in real life, she adopted Therese as her patron saint. What Dorothy had come to realize through her experience was that her small and seemingly pragmatically useless actions for justice and peace, were not useless at all. Small though they were, they helped open up some space, tiny at first, which slowly grew into something larger and more influential. By slipping some tiny enzymes into the body of the world, Dorothy Day eventually helped create a little more health in the world.

Prayer is a sneaky, hidden antibiotic – needed precisely when it seems most useless.

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