Today is Trinity Sunday, the last day of the Easter Season,
according to the Catholic liturgical calendar. I went to Mass today, and when I
received Communion, I thought of my mother. I have my reasons.
I was an altar boy at St. Ignatius Loyola Catholic Church,
in Hicksville, Long Island, NY, starting in the fifth grade. I also attended
the parochial school there through eighth grade and was very proud of how well
I knew all the rules about being Catholic: The Seven Sacraments. The Six
Holydays of Obligation. The Three Theological Virtues. The Six Laws of the
Church. I had a particular fascination with the Six Laws of the Church. These
told us unambiguously what we had to do and how we had to act to be a good
Catholic, and violating any of them would be a Mortal Sin. Unless forgiven in
the sacrament of Penance, a.k.a, Confession, a Mortal Sin would send us
straight to Hell upon death.
Since St. Ignatius was a big parish and had about 10 Masses
every Sunday, I was frequently on the altar in the Sunday rotation. For
convenience, my mom would attend the Mass I was serving and would bring my
younger brothers and sister with us. One year, as we entered Lent, I noticed
that my mother had not been receiving Communion at Sunday Mass. A few weeks
before Easter I asked her about it, and she said that she usually forgot about not eating for an hour before Communion so she couldn’t receive. Okay, I thought, but Church
Law #4 was starting to weigh on me: “It
is the obligation of every Catholic to receive the Sacrament of the Most Holy
Eucharist at least once a year
during the Easter Season, that is, the time between the First Sunday of Lent
and Trinity Sunday.” It began to dawn on me that my mom had not received
Communion during the Easter Season, and time was running out!
I started to keep
track. Palm Sunday came and went. Palms yes, Communion no. Easter? Bonnets and
chocolate bunnies, but no Eucharist. The post-Easter Sundays marched on, and
mom still had not received. Ascension Thursday? No. Pentecost Sunday? No! Finally,
her last chance: Trinity Sunday.
I was serving on the
altar that day. I went through the motions of bringing the priest water, wine,
and hosts, washing his hands in preparation for the Consecration, ringing the
bells at the elevation of bread and wine and their transubstantiation into the
Body and Blood of Christ, but my mind was on my mom. I kept glancing at her,
sitting in the front row, off to the right, thinking of how I did not want her
to go to Hell. Sure, she could go to Confession later, but why take the chance?
What if we were in a car accident on the way home, and we all got killed? She would
be sucked into Hades, and I would never see her again, for all Eternity.
And yes, I am Irish
Catholic.
When the priest
finished the Canon, I went and did the only thing I could do, what, I felt, any
kid would do to save his mother from the fires of Hell. I slipped into the
sacristy, snuck out into the church, and tiptoed up to my mom in the first pew.
Words cannot describe the look of astonishment on her face as I said to her in
a fierce whisper, “You have GOT to receive Communion today!” Astonishment
quickly became embarrassment became anger as she hissed, “Kenneth Arthur Haller,
Junior, get back up on the altar right now.” “But mom…” I implored. “NOW!” she
growled through clenched teeth. I did, trailed by the whispers and giggles of
my siblings. Did she receive, much to my relief? Or did she sit there, and
lecture me later about her reasons being her reasons? I’ll come back to that.
I am very lucky to
have grown up in the Catholic Church in the 1960’s in the immediate post-Vatican II
period. This was a time of renewal and change, of introspection and
discernment, of being challenged by the Church and by God to look within to
ask, Who do you want me to be, Lord? Although St. Ignatius was a parish in a white
middle class suburb of Long Island, we were taught that God calls us to reach
out to the poor, the sick, the hungry, the outcast. This call resonated deeply
within me.
At the same time, I
also saw the world beyond Hicksville, NY, through The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Most importantly, as I
watched the civil rights movement blossom in the South, I saw African-Americans
being attacked, beaten, and jailed, and I couldn’t believe that people were
being treated this way because of the way they were born, the color of their
skin. While this might have seemed so very far from the white middle-class
suburb where I was growing up, at this point in my life, I was just beginning
to realize that there were things about me, about the way I was born, about the
way I was beginning to like boys in a way I should like girls, things that, if
people found out about them, I knew I would be treated the same way. I knew then
what it was to be an outcast.
Discerning my path in life over years and through my
personal experience and my religious faith, I finally accepted that my calling
was to became a pediatrician, to take care of the most vulnerable, children,
and to spend my life and my career in poor communities caring for those who were
also outcasts.
I am not a
recovering Catholic. I am not an ex-Catholic. I am, for better or worse, a
Catholic, and I really cannot see that ever changing. I am also gay. I always
have been, I always will be, and I am who God intended me to be. As you can
imagine, that makes being Catholic…well, complex. But then being Catholic has
always been – or should always be – complex.
For me, then, being Catholic and being gay are not opposing
forces pulling me apart but synergistic energies that call me to a single
purpose – to serve God’s people on earth with the gifts God has given me.
The Institutional Church, of course, does not always see it
that way. Members of the Hierarchy have called me “intrinsically disordered,”
and that’s when they’re being kind of nice. But that’s the thing: The Body of
Christ has always been about so much more than a bunch of old guys in black and
scarlet robes.
Some years ago I had an epiphany at Mass one day at
College Church on the campus of Saint Louis University. It was during a period
in my life when – because of some new, astoundingly hurtful statement out of
Rome about gay people – I was really questioning whether I still could call the
Church my home. At this particular Mass, the Old Testament readings included one
from Genesis: the story of God giving Moses the Ten Commandments. The second one
was from Leviticus. I can’t remember what that one was about, but since
Leviticus is like the Ten Commandments on steroids – it comprises about 500
“Thou Shalt Nots” about things like shellfish and the many, many circumstances
under which one should NOT to have sex – I know that it was telling us not to
do a lot of things.
The Gospel reading, however, was from Matthew 22. Jesus is asked, “Teacher,
which is the greatest commandment?” Jesus replies, “‘Love the Lord your God
with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all
your strength.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love
your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two
commandments.”
Well, as a Catholic and as a pediatrician, I thought, that’s
interesting. I had been taught in those Religion classes at St. Ignatius –
where I learned those Six Laws of the Church – that, before the birth of Jesus,
God treated His people as a father treats His children. Viewed in that context,
the Old Testament God is not unlike a father who has to tell His kids what to
do and not do, whether it makes sense to them or not. His people, like young children,
are in what Jean Piaget, the pioneering Swiss developmental psychologist,
called the Realm of Concrete Operations. Kids at this stage are unable to think
ahead to the long-term consequences of their actions so parents have to give
them very concrete instructions. Any parent knows how often they have had
to say to their kids, “DON’T stick your finger in a light socket! DON’T run out
in traffic! DON’T jump off the roof! Why? Because I SAID SO!”
But what happens when your kids get older? You can actually
have conversations with them. You can reason with them. You can teach them to
look into their heart. If they come to you with a dilemma to ask what they
should do, you can turn it back to them and say, “What do you think you should
do?” and if you raised them right, if you taught them consistently by holding yourself
to the moral and ethical precepts you espoused, then they will give you the
answer that you would have given them. They have now entered Piaget’s Realm of
Formal Operations where they can make decisions based on a consciousness of
long-term consequences and a deep sense of empathy.
Jesus, then, is the fulfillment of God’s Covenant to bring
His people to maturity. This maturity and wisdom is what Jesus is appealing to
in his reply to his questioner in Matthew. He is saying that if, in your
dealings with others, you honor that which created you and you act toward
others as you would have them act toward you, you have become the person I
hoped you would be.
One of the other things that I was taught at Saint Ignatius
is that Divine Truth is revealed to every member of the Body of Christ equally
if we are open to it. Jesus tells us this in Matthew. So what I have
experienced as love and intimacy, seeing the face of God in the person I love
and who has loved me, is as revelatory of God’s grace as the latest encyclical
from the Pope. I have received so much from the Church, but I have also given
so much to the Church. So as difficult, as complex, as it is sometimes for me to
be Catholic, I cannot imagine not being a Catholic. But of course, I also cannot
imagine the Catholic Church without me in it.
One more thing: As a pediatrician and medical school
professor, I spend a good part of my day teaching residents and medical
students how to be doctors. They have spent a great deal of time and energy
reading, memorizing, and learning rules, numbers, and concepts. My job is to
reinforce their learning but also to give them a real life context. I can’t
tell you how many times I have had a student give me a presentation of a
patient complete with history, labs, and X-ray findings leading to an
assessment and plan of care, and yet when I ask, “So how does the patient
look?” I get a blank stare. “I haven’t had a chance to look at her.” “Okay,” I
say, “let’s go do that.” Once we actually do that,
in a good number of cases, the assessment and plan no longer make sense. All the
chart data in the world cannot substitute for the wealth and complexity of
information derived from actually looking at the patient.
Which brings me back to my mother, her decision not to
receive Communion that day, and my fear of Eternal Damnation for her. When I
was up on that altar, having checked off “No Communion” on her heavenly
scorecard week after week, I never looked at HER. I never considered that a
just and loving God never would send this woman who had lived this life and
made these sacrifices to Hell on a technicality. Back then, I thought as a
child, I spoke as a child. I just knew the Laws, and that was all that
mattered. But as Jesus said, laws are made for Man, not Man for the law.
So, finally, did my mother receive Communion that day or not?
Honestly, I don’t remember. It was over forty years ago, after all. And
ultimately, it really doesn’t matter, does it? What does matter is the
important lesson she taught me that day, one that I am still learning: We all
have free will, and we are all finally responsible for our own salvation. How
that works out is up to each of us. But I also showed my mom, in my own weird, childish, Catholic-nerd way, how much I loved her.
Win-win…
