Two events of recent days have scandalized me. Both were symbolic gestures and included the exchange of platitudes but also created an ambiguity about the Church’s teaching that is stretched to obfuscation.
The first symbolic event was when the pope sent a new nuncio of Venezuela. In case you don’t pay attention to Latin American dictators, there was a presidential election in Venezuela that almost everyone but the victors considers fraudulent.
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The novelist and journalist Jaime Bayly commented on the new nuncio and said he was very disappointed in what the Vatican has done. When the whole world is concerned about the electoral fraud and the repression that has followed it, when there are people filling the streets with protest about the legitimacy of the government of a man who is undeniably a throwback to the military regimes of the past in Latin America, when Maduro has appeared to be isolated in the corrupt practices of a failed state, the pope decides to send his ambassador to shake hands with Maduro.
Bayly, who is a man who pulls no punches, as the cliché goes, emphasized the smiling archbishop who very submissively presented his credentials to a very happy Maduro. “Why now?” asked Bayly, “What was the haste to get the nuncio presented when Venezuela has been without a nuncio for three years.” When Maduro would most profit from a papal gesture of recognition, the Vatican came through for the dictator. The clip of the happy archbishop and Maduro is not just embarrassing, it is scandalous. What was the point, asked Bayly, except to say that Maduro has power and will apparently maintain it and we are his friend.
The second scandalous event was Cardinal Cupich’s invocation at the Democratic National Convention. The prayer was a very wordy batch of political pablum that made me remember Proverbs 10:19, “In the multitude of words, sin is not lacking.” If you think I exaggerate, see for yourself.
We praise you, O God of all creation. Quicken in us a resolve to protect your handiwork. You are the source of every blessing that graces our lives and our nation.
I’m sure God has heard almost an infinite number of prayers, but the “quickening of resolve to protect your handiwork” must have thrown off even some of the angels. “Where is he going with this?” was probably their response.
We pray that you help us to truly understand and answer the sacred call of citizenship. We are a nation composed of every people and culture, united not by ties of blood, but by the profound aspirations of life, freedom, justice, and unbound hope. These aspirations are why our forebears saw America as a beacon of hope. And, with your steady guidance, Lord, may we remain so today.
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The cardinal is giving a history lesson to the Almighty here; I would think the Good Lord knows what kind of nation we are and about the forebears, etc. Was His Eminence dipping into an anthology of political rhetoric for his vocabulary for the prayer? “The sacred call of citizenship” sounds like political discourse more than disciple language. The cardinal wants America to continue to be a beacon of hope. He could have quoted Pope Pius XII, like Ronald Reagan did, but he probably thought that would be too je ne sais quoi.
In every generation, we are called to renew these aspirations, to re-weave the fabric of America. We do so when we live out the virtues that dwell in our hearts, but also when we confront our failures to root out ongoing injustices in our national life, especially those created by moral blindness and fear of the other.
The cardinal now sees the election in terms of a shift of generations? A project he compares to re-weaving a fabric. He tells God that we do this knitting when “we live out the virtues that dwell in our hearts,” making it seem that the potential for goodness is the same as a virtue. But His Eminence also wants God to recognize that we knit America together by “confronting our failures to root out ongoing injustices in our national life, especially (emphasis added because it seems logically egregious) those created by moral blindness and fear of the other.” This might be code language because ongoing injustices not created by moral blindness, etc., are hard to imagine.
