The New Year, The Old Year

I am writing this on the last day of 2020. You are reading it on the second day of 2021. Do you feel different? Are you relieved? Hopeful? Joyful, even? I wish that for you and for all of us. No more darkness covering the earth.  Meanwhile, I am finding many lists that try to describe 2020.

America highlights “The Top Five U.S. Catholic Newsmakers of 2020” and four you might expect: Barrett, Barr, Biden, and Fauci. The fifth I didn’t expect at all: Kobe Bryant, who had “Psalm XXVII” as one of his tattoos. James Keane writes, “The opening lines of Psalm 27 are ‘[God] is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? /[God] is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?’ It was the responsorial psalm on Jan. 26, 2020, the day Mr. Bryant died in a helicopter crash just hours after attending Mass.” That touches me, though Keane does not ignore the troubling parts of Bryant’s history.

Commonweal profiles someone I would put on that list: Cardinal Wilton Gregory. He is a Black leader in a Black city. His location in Washington, DC, makes his courage all the more necessary, and he showed it during the Black Lives Matter protests and the resultant political posturing in early June. Less publicized was his critique of his predecessors. Katie Daniels quotes him on CNN: “It’s not about the structures of the Church, it’s about the mistakes, the awful bad judgments that the Church made in not focusing on the people that had been harmed…We were so intent on caring about the clerics, priests, or bishops, that we did not see that the biggest pain to be endured was endured by the people that were hurt.”

The National Catholic Reporter has three lists of popular stories in 2020. Top of the most frequently read opinion and commentary list, most appropriately, is Fr. Bryan N. Massingale’s essay on white privilege. It was powerful in its moment and it remains so now. Massingale concludes with what can be an end-of-year examination of conscience. How have I changed and not changed in response to the killings of Black people this year?

The rest of the list, after the bizarre #2 by Fr. Thomas Reese about the baptism formula, is political, and reveals the strong leadership of Heidi Schlumpf, the new executive editor. Their takes on Dolan, John Paul II, the Knights of Columbus, AOC, and so many more may have excited the liberal Catholic vote. Near the end is Reese’s Ascension reflection on whether you’d prefer to have Jesus or the Spirit around today. What a question! I like it because I always say that it’s the Spirit acting in the Church that makes change like women’s ordination possible. Reese is as theological as I am political in his support of the Spirit.

NCR’s list of the most frequently read news stories online includes three on COVID-19 and five on church politics. Most surprising is again #2, about the “night that broke clean Catholic comedian” Jim Gaffigan. I read it; probably you did. And I’m not characterizing #1 as church political, only because I want to write about Pope Benedict’s intervention into the priestly celibacy question after the Amazon synod. In a book he supposedly co-authored with Cardinal Sarah, he strongly supports continuing celibacy, but his intervention was seen as highly inappropriate for a retired pope.

There’s a very different tone to the NCR’s Global Sisters Report list of stories that readers spent the most time with. That slightly different criterion puts more complex stories on the list. For example, Sr. Ilia Delio on Fratelli Tutti shows up twice, #4, “The modern vision of Pope Francis in a medieval church,” and #7, “Papal dreams or Vatican diversion?” In the latter, Delio is sympathetic to the Pope’s intention to build “human solidarity,” but asks “how does he tell the world what it needs to do when he spearheads an institution grounded in patriarchy, hierarchy and ontological differences?” This article is shorter, which must have caused its lower position in the countdown by the criteria used by GSR.

Three articles on COVID-19 make the list, as do two on sister matters and one on Dolan. There are two on ministry, another topic clearly missing on the other lists. #3 is on help to migrant workers in Goa and #9 is the third article on her ministry to transgender people by Sr. Luisa Derouen, “Truth and Transgender Lives.” These sisters face opposition, the first from employers and local people, the second from church authorities. Yet sisters carry on.

Well, are you tired yet? Glad 2020 is behind you? That’s certainly the feeling engendered by Reese’s article today, which grinchily reflects on the year.

Rather, I find hope and a focus for action in Matt Kappadakunnel’s piece on the true face of Jesus. “I was shocked to see an image of Jesus who looked like me.” This East Asian Indian Eastern Rite Catholic describes his experiences of isolation and difference in American churches, and calls for change. “For many Catholics of color, worship spaces that exclusively use white images to portray our faith contribute to the white supremacist undercurrents in the American church.” He concludes with suggestions about how to eliminate the “whitewashing” that has been so damaging to so many. “Including practices from communities like mine can also challenge white Catholics, especially those from a privileged socioeconomic class, to understand that dismantling privilege and supremacy are paramount to our Catholic faith. The presence of the real Jesus in our parishes and our homes is long overdue.”

Happy New Year!