"YOU JUST CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP" #21

 

I REMEMBER BEING THERE WITH HIM FOR FIVE WEEKS

1971-1976

In the previous two blogposts, I reflected on my five trips to Taize, France. We prayed several times a day for five days each week. I remember seeing Brother Roger many times during those days. Even now, I can see him sitting with the other Brothers of his community in the concrete Reconciliation Church as I heard him give his "reflections" in French and listened to the simultaneous English translator. I can imagine the horror of the 2,500 young people as they witnessed him being stabbed in the throat in front of them.    

Brother Roger

Ecumenical Leader, Age 90

Dies After Being Stabbed in the Throat

in the Presence of 2,500 Young People

 

New York Times

Marlise Simons

Aug. 18, 2005

Brother Roger, the Swiss Protestant theologian who in 1940 founded a community of monks in Taizé, in eastern France, that became a worldwide ecumenical movement, died there on Tuesday. He was 90.

Brother Roger was stabbed in the throat during an evening service in his church by a woman who was attending the ceremony. He died almost immediately.

With his group of monks -- including Lutheran, Anglican, Evangelical, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox members -- he sought to create greater unity among Christian churches, but his focus above all was to awaken spirituality among the young people in Europe who were growing up in a secular world.

Before the fall of Communism, he and his group had quietly created prayer circles among Catholics in Poland and Hungary and Protestants in East Germany that proved influential during protests in those countries. The Taizé prayer groups with their message of peace and conciliation eventually also reached into the United States -- he has followers in New York -- as well as Canada, Brazil, South Korea and elsewhere.

He became well known as both a mystic and a realist, a man with a humble personal style who was able to attract tens of thousands of followers. He also became a driving force behind the annual World Youth Day, being held this week in Cologne, Germany.

The Taizé center and Brother Roger drew tens of thousands of pilgrims a year. Although he was seen by many as a guru, he preferred to use the phrase, "My brothers and I want to be seen as people who listen, never as spiritual masters."

The French police said yesterday that they had taken into custody a 36-year-old woman from Romania who admitted to stabbing the monk with a knife she bought a day earlier. The woman, whose name was withheld, is to undergo psychiatric examination, the police said.

Religious and political leaders across Europe, many of whom had met Brother Roger, reacted with shock to his violent death.

Pope Benedict XVI, who knew Brother Roger personally, said at his summer residence in Castel Gandolfo yesterday that the "sad and terrifying" news "strikes me even more because just yesterday I received a very moving and very friendly letter from him."

The archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the head of the Church of England, said, "Brother Roger was one of the best-loved Christian leaders of our time."

Brother Roger was born Roger Schutz on May 12, 1915, in Provence, a small town in Switzerland, the son of a Swiss Calvinist pastor and a French Protestant mother. After studying theology at the University of Lausanne, he and a group of friends concluded that it might be possible to avert war in Europe if Christians could unite. He left in 1940 for the Burgundy region, where he bought a house in the village of Taizé, not far from the Roman Catholic Abbey of Cluny. He and a small group of theologians and friends gathered there and, among themselves, took monastic vows.

During World War II, even before the group became known as a community, the monks hid refugees, including Jews and resistance fighters. Although they were forced to leave by the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, the community moved to Geneva and quietly grew. There Brother Roger and other theologians first set out their principles: "to pursue joy, simplicity and compassion. "They were able to return to Taizé in 1944.

Although Brother Roger once said they only wanted to be a community of 15, the Taizé group now includes close to 100 monks from more than 20 countries. Its following grew rapidly during the 1980's and 90's, above all because of his special appeal to young people.

As his health became more frail and he began using a wheelchair, he named Brother Alois, a German Roman Catholic, to succeed him. The Taizé community said on its Web site yesterday that Brother Alois had taken charge.

Brother Roger shunned doctrine, and he and his fellow monks developed chants that merged the meditative prayers of Christian religions.

Part of his appeal may have been his dislike of formal preaching, while encouraging a spiritual quest as a common endeavor. During a Taizé gathering in Paris in 1995, he spoke to more than 100,000 young people who were sitting or lying on the floor of an exhibition hall, amid backpacks and a sea of candles. "We have come here to search," he said, "or to go on searching through silence and prayer, to get in touch with our inner life. Christ always said, Do not worry, give yourself.”

 

OUR NEED FOR CONNECTON

      

Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains

on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me.

John 15

A couple of years ago, I read a story about neighbors finding the decomposed body of a man, still sitting in his recliner. He had been dead for over a year and the TV was still on!  After that, I read about a forty year old woman in a busy London neighborhood who was found in her apartment. She had been dead for two years. We even had a cranky old priest in this diocese, a few years back, who had been dead in his apartment for several weeks before anyone found him. I once had a funeral for an old woman, who had been dead for several weeks before neighbors started smelling the odor coming from her house. What was most sad was that her mentally challenged son was still living with her and did not want them to come and get her. I have a picture clipping  in my homily  files of a woman who was found struck by a car out on the interstate. It shows her laid out in a funeral home here in Louisville. No one showed up for her visitation, except for the one solitary stranger in the photo who had read about her in the newspaper and showed up to say a prayer.

In an era of advanced communication technologies, in which it appears that no one ever has a thought without having to call someone and talk about it, it seems implausible that the number of solitary deaths have been on the rise in countries like ours. Alienation, dubbed the "great emotional sickness of our era" by an Italian filmmaker, remains a disease that even email, cell phones and online networking has been powerless to remedy.

Some experts are even suggesting that our social bonds may be breaking down, not in spite of these new technologies, but because of them. A decade or so ago, when many of us started to go online, Apple, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard and Intel funded a research project to study the psychological and social effects of using the Internet. While most first-time users went online for social purposes, the studies revealed the beginning of a steep decline in social activities beyond the net and increases in depression and loneliness. While magazines like Fortune and Business Week boasted the virtues of "interactive" sites such as MySpace and YouTube, most of its users were found to be joining fewer clubs, talking less in-person and physically hanging out less often with friends.  Even critics of the studies seem to agree that there is more interaction, but less and less of it is in person. You don't have to read the study, all you have to do is sit on my porch and see how many young couples walk down the sidewalk, hand-in-hand, while talking to someone else on a cell phone! The strangest thing I ever saw in this regard, was a young woman at a traffic light near my house, talking on two cell phones at the same time!

When I worked at Saint Meinrad Seminary a few years back, I had a coffee shop built to get seminarians out of their rooms and off their computers so they could talk to each other directly.  The problem, of course, is not the technology itself, but the fact that it discourages us from actually sitting and relating, face to face, with real people! What a world! We talk a lot more, communicate a lot less and find ourselves even more desperate for human intimacy and connection.

Nowhere is the hunger for connection more obvious than in the church. The Courier-Journal had another story, a few years back, about how struggling Protestant congregations look to change and grow.  Many of us are familiar with our own recent history of parish closings, downsizing, twinning and merging. As a priest who has spent a lot of time reaching out, listening to and preaching to "marginal" or "non-practicing" Catholics, I know that sometimes our Church seems to believe that all we need to do is publish new catechisms and canon law books and people will know "the truth" and come back to church. People aren't looking for information about God! They want to experience God. They want to feel connected to God. Information leaves them bored and uninterested. Experiences of God, the ultimate experience any human being can ever have,  leaves them breathless and connected.

It was the sterility of organized religion in the face of a rapacious appetite for spiritual experience  that gave birth to the "new age movement."  Because organized religion had lost its ability to satisfy this appetite for spiritual experience, many simply gave up on religion altogether, while others began to explore an individualistic spirituality outside the boundaries of organized religion. These are the people who proudly claim to be "spiritual, but not religious." In the words of our hero at Bellarmine University, Thomas Merton, "they only trust their own visions, their inner voices. They identify the will of God with anything that makes them feel a sweet, warm inner glow. The sweeter and the warmer the feeling, the more convinced they become of their own infallibility.  The truth, then, becomes whatever they feel that it is in their own hearts! There is no outside corrective."

Religion has two sides: an exoteric side and an esoteric side. The exoteric side of religion is concerned with the externals of religion, while the esoteric side of religion is concerned with what happens inside believers.  Because organized religion has become overly focused, and still is in many ways, on the organizational aspect of religion, we have lost touch with the experiential aspect of religion.  We need both, because our faith is not only private, but also communal. We need organized religion to keep our faith from becoming just a matter of what we personally feel, but we need personal experiences of God to give organized religion a heart.  When these two sides of religion are separated, the "crazies always take over the asylum." 

Just as a branch cannot sustain itself, without being connected to the main trunk, we cannot be sustained spiritually as Christians apart from the Church. Christianity is not, has not been, nor will ever be, a personal religion, but a communal religion. Let us never forget that the "original sin" was the denial of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, that we are inter-dependent, not independent.  We need each other. We cannot go it alone.       

P.S: I JUST FOUND THIS IN THE NEWS 

5-22-2025

Harvard University researchers have made a startling discovery: loneliness can be just as deadly as smoking.

Both loneliness and smoking impact levels of a blood-clotting protein, which could lead to severe health risks.

Feeling isolated doesn't just affect mental well-being; it has profound physical consequences too. The study highlights the importance of maintaining social connections for overall health.

Just like quitting smoking can improve your health, fostering friendships and social bonds can be a lifesaving measure. So, make sure to reach out and connect with others – your health depends on it!

WITH FAITH, ONE CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS

Every year I start a new journal, with a new theme, to record the events of my ministry. This year, I pasted the image above on the cover of my new 2025 journal.  I had just committed to a new project to build and furnish a new church in Kenya. Since I had organized several projects before, I was starting to believe that I had exhausted my own available resources, as well as those I thought I could raise from my friends and acquaintances. I thought it might help me stay focused on the possibilities that only faith can produce.

Here it is May, half-way through the new year, and this newest project is almost completely funded - a new stone, fully furnished, St. Veronica Church in rural Kenya in west Africa thanks to a few generous benefactors and some of my retirement funds! I am so very close to the finish line now! I am only $8,450 away from finally finishing this entire project - inside and out. I believe that even this last amount will show up somehow because Jesus was right, "With faith, even mountains can be moved!"  Just like the poor parishioners of St. Veronica Parish in Kenya, I consider this project a "miracle" as well!  This "miracle" will serve to remind me throughout 2025 "Not to be moved by how impossible things look!" 

CLAIM THE NAME, YES, BUT MAKE SURE YOU CAN .........

This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

John 13

The topic of “love” comes up so often in the gospels, that I find myself repeating myself sometimes.  However, some of this is so “basic” that it is worth repeating.  

Some recent studies tell us that around 70% of Americans claim to be "Christian," but that only a small minority let their understanding of "Christianity" affect their everyday life. According to recent reports, despite 70% claiming the Christian faith, in reality only a tiny minority of American adults (6%) demonstrate a consistent understanding and application of biblical principles. In other words, only 6% seriously put basic Christian principles into practice . 

In response to these statistics, some of those who are most vocal about claiming the title "Christian" are making "Christianity" synonymous with bigotry, meanness, hate and repression. I reject this current brand of Christianity called “Christian Nationalism.” I, for one, am not about to join their crusade! I am not as angry at such religious narrowness, which would have us believe that they are the only true Christians, as I am angry at the rest of us who are letting them get away with it! I consider myself a person trying his best to be a "Christian,” but I do not share their agendas nor their religious arrogance. After twelve years in the seminary and fifty-five years of preaching the gospel, I refuse to let them dismiss me and claim that only people who think “like them" are "truly Christian!” I not only object, I simply refuse to let them get away with it!!

How will people know that we are disciples of Jesus? The gospel answer is that it is our love for one another that will make us stand out in the community as "Jesus-like!" Yet, the facts reveal that some self-professed "Christians" can be just as nasty, just as hateful and just as selfish as everybody else! As the famous Gandhi once said, “I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Just look at the public behavior of men and women who self-righteously proclaim they are "Christian" but engage in rhetoric that is intolerably un-Christian and language that would be profoundly offensive in any authentic Christian community. Venomous hate is now preached daily under the banner of reclaiming our "Christian culture!" The same people who scream "family values" are teaching a whole generation that it is OK, and even funny, to encourage vicious personal assaults on people who think differently from them. They spewed personal assaults on Pope Francis and now they have even started their personal assaults on our new Pope Leo. I do not understand them at all! I have voted for both political parties and I have prayed for both conservative and liberal Popes. Can you imagine the future of our church if individual members only respected Popes they "liked?" Well, we are already there! Nastiness and meanness are epidemic in our culture, even in so-called "Christian" communities.

“This is how they will know you for my disciples: your love for one another” What does it mean "to love?" It means living out the ways, works and words of compassion. By doing that, we will leave God's signature on the church and the world. It's really millions of little things, done out of love by millions of Christians, that will transform this world, not the mean-spirited actions and hateful words of "wolves in sheep's clothing!" Christians are called to respectfully resist such mean-spirited behaviors and hateful words, even when those deeds and words come from the enemies of Christianity. Did Jesus not tell us explicitly to "love your enemies" and "do good to those who hate you?" 

Let me give you three simple examples of what I think it means “to love.” I have used all three of them before, in this very pulpit, but I think they are worth repeating. The first example came in the mail when I was pastor of our Cathedral. It was a "thank you note" from a someone whom we had been helped from our community service fund to which parishioners generously contributed. It was addressed to all of us. "Dear Members of Assumption. Even though I don't attend your church, you didn't try to force me into your beliefs on the grounds that I needed your help. I know now that there is still unconditional love left in our world." This note was signed by a woman and her children.

The second example came from my mother. When we were growing up in the country with seven kids in the family, food was never wasted. When we had fried chicken, my mother even fried the chicken back and ate it herself. I grew up believing my mother loved chicken backs. I was much older before it dawned on me -- she wanted us to have the best parts. She was willing to take what was left over, out of love for us.

The third example occurred one Friday when I had the opportunity to go to the Islamic Center on River Road. The Muslim community invited some of us from the Cathedral Heritage Foundation for lunch and to attend a Muslim prayer service. We were reverenced and respected and welcomed. We had reached out to include them in our inter-faith Thanksgiving and rededication celebrations. They reached out to us in return with a loving gesture of their own.

“This is how they will know you for my disciples: your love for one another” My friends, this is the very heart of our religion. this is what it means to be a true Christian. This must be present in every Christian's life or else all of his or her religious practice is for naught! This is not an optional activity. This is essential for discipleship. Often, religious people confuse loving someone else with approving or agreeing with everything they do. How ridiculous! How dangerous! Why can't we help another person for their good, and not for what we get out of it, as we did for that struggling single mother? Why can't we freely and quietly “give each other the best pieces of chicken” sometimes, as my mother did, instead of always competing for the best? I have always considered myself as “Consciously Christian, deliberately Catholic and unapologetically ecumenical and interfaith” Why can't we be good, strong and faithful Catholic Christians and at the same time have a curiosity about, and have a reverent respect for people who practice a different religion? This is what it means to love one another. This is our trademark as Christians, as disciples of Jesus. This is the heart of the matter.

Religious militants are very frustrated these days with the complexity and contradictions in our world and they feel they must change it by whatever means necessary, even by brutal force, until it conforms to their vision of God's plan. Religious militants need an enemy, someone to hate. They often do it by picking and choosing their preferred religious teachings, usually based on some obscure and misinterpreted Scripture passages that serve their needs and justify their goals, and ignoring those which challenge them! This kind of insanity is being passed off as religion these days in many of the world's religions, including our own!

During these confusing times, let us go back not to some imagined “good old days,” but to the basics of Christianity. Lived Christianity is what will attract people to our faith, not forced conformity. Lived Christianity is about small loving gestures in thought, word and deed by millions of disciples. Lived Christianity, not another Christian "crusade," will transform the world. Don't let misguided religious zealots seduce you with some hate-filled brand of religion. Christianity is, and always has been, about "unconditional love." Those of us who know this must respectfully and firmly disagree with those who spew venomous hate and call it “saving” Christianity!