Cardinal's Column 6/6/04

At the threshold of the apostles: the pilgrimage to Rome

Last week, the auxiliary bishops of the Archdiocese and I went to Rome to pray at the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul and to visit Peter’s successor and the bishops who assist him in the Roman Curia. Every diocesan bishop makes this visit every five years (called an ad limina visit from the Latin word for threshold) and presents a report on the state of his diocese.

There have been Catholic bishops for 2,000 years. In Rome, a bishop gets a sense of the historical roots of his vocation and is personally renewed in finding himself in a long line of pastors reaching back to Christ himself. In Rome, anyone can get a sense of how the Church is founded on persons. The Church is founded on Christ himself, first of all, as cornerstone and head, and then on those he appointed to govern in his name and with his authority, the apostles and their successors. The foundation of our faith is not a book, although the Bible is an essential and divinely inspired witness to what God has done and desires of us in turn; nor is it a set of laws, although the commands of God show the way to salvation. The foundation of our faith is the one whom God sent, his Son who has a name, Jesus, the Word of life who could be heard, seen and touched (1 John 1,1). Faith is a personal response to this Lord who died to save us.

Among the persons Jesus gathered around himself before his death and resurrection were the Twelve Apostles. Jesus chose one of them, Peter, to be their head. He is the rock which gives stability to the Church, the one who confirms the faith of the others. With authority from Christ, he teaches, decides, protects the Church from error. In Peter’s successor, the Church’s unity in every age has a visible face, a personal face.

With Peter, the Church links Paul, the great preacher and missionary who was also martyred for the faith in Rome. Paul was called by Christ after the Lord’s resurrection and was told by the risen Christ that his disciples were now his very body. From the time of their martyrdom, the bodies of Saints Peter and Paul have been venerated by Christians as symbols of the Church’s unity in faith. The great church buildings erected over their tombs have drawn millions of pilgrims over many centuries. Last week, they drew the bishops of the States of Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana.

We began our pilgrimage with Mass in St. Peter’s basilica at the altar of the Chair of St. Peter. After Mass at the altar, we went in a body to the crypt and recited the Apostles’ Creed at the tomb of St. Peter, praying also for the Pope, for our dioceses and for our country. A few days later, we celebrated Mass at the basilica of St. Paul. We were accompanied throughout our visit by 160 of the faithful of Chicago, who had come on a parallel pilgrimage of prayer and support. Their presence was a very personal reminder of the pastoral responsibilities we were bringing to the Holy See. Their prayers brought us back to the reason for the Church’s existence: to bring Christ’s grace to the peoples of the whole world.

Pope John Paul II has used the ad limina visits of bishops as a means of personal contact to strengthen the unity of the Church. He makes them a personal expression of his “care for all the Churches.” It is always easy to speak with him about Chicago, which he remembers fondly. When the Pope addressed us collectively, he spoke about the teaching mission of the bishop, for bishops are to be “heralds of the Gospel and teachers of the faith.” John Paul II told us that “responsibility for the truth demands of the Church a forthright and credible witness to the deposit of faith.” The Pope spoke of the agnosticism and skepticism that does not believe the human intellect can come to truth, especially in matters of religion, and he mentioned other obstacles to accepting the truths of faith today. Moving from the bishops’ personal charge in the Church, the Holy Father said: “Now is above all the hour of the lay faithful who, by their specific vocation to shape the secular world in accordance with the Gospel are called to carry forward the Church’s prophetic mission by evangelizing the various spheres of family, social, professional cultural life.”

The Pope spoke of the Church’s mission to address the important issues affecting the life of our country, bringing the light of the Gospel to “controversial social questions such as respect for human life, problems of justice and peace, immigration, the defense of family values and the sanctity of marriage.” He called this contribution “a significant service to the common good in a democracy.”

I responded to the Holy Father’s address to us with a few reflections on the Church’s mission here today, and these will be printed separately from this column. The fact is that many today do not see the Church’s teaching as a contribution to the common good and that it is often extremely difficult to use the media to even say what the Church teaches, let alone to get a fair hearing. A case in point greeted me as soon as I stepped off the plane on my return to Chicago. Several years ago, members of a movement called the Rainbow Sash began to present themselves for Holy Communion while wearing a sash indicating they do not accept the Church’s teaching on the objective immorality of homosexual genital relations. The policy of the U.S. Bishops’ conference, a policy I did not invent, was to refuse Communion to anyone who used its reception as an occasion to protest against the Church’s teaching. The point here is the nature of Holy Communion as an act of faith, not homosexuality or homosexually oriented people as such.

The media insists on reporting this story as a conflict between people. It’s not. No one wants to refuse to give Communion; it’s a painful thing to do. The policy, however, is about the worship of God, which is not to be instrumentalized or manipulated by any group. The Church protects the sacraments. The Sunday Missalettes give the conditions for receiving Communion. The basic criterion is always unity in faith and in moral discipline. This unity is presupposed, no questions asked, unless someone gives a clear sign at the moment of coming to Communion that he or she is not in communion of faith.

Living for a week in a city and country free of the contention that now marks almost every element of the Church’s life here, relieved for a short time of the pain of having facts distorted and our most sacred realities demeaned and disdained day after day, I sense ever more deeply how Christ has been betrayed by our sins. I am encouraged always, however, by the deep faith of so many of those I meet from day to day and by the faithful witness of the Holy Father, whom I commend to your prayers.

In this country, it is hard to be Catholic, for suspicion and even hatred of the Church run deep in our history; outside of this country, it’s hard to be American, for suspicion and resentment of the United States have run deep for many decades. Perhaps this is not so much tragic as it is a reminder that believers have here no lasting city, that we are not supposed to be at home in this world. In the end, Christ will save the Church he makes his own. In the meantime, however, it is a great tragedy for our country that our popular media do little to help us understand in any depth why we are suspect in the eyes of so many others; this lack of understanding of others, coupled with their lack of understanding of who we really are because they have their own distortions to deal with, can only destroy us sooner rather than later. The media’s frequent difficulty in presenting Catholicism, which is not an American invention and has been historically the “other” within this country, demonstrates the difficulty they seem to have with anything that falls outside of a very narrow framework of interpretation. But that’s another set of reflections. God bless you.