This Christmas, I had the unique opportunity of celebrating the northernmost midnight Mass in the entire world.  The US Space Force has a tiny base in northwest Greenland, not far from the geomagnetic north pole, strategically placed for space surveillance, satellite control, and early missile detection.  Since there’s only a few hundred people stationed there, the base is billeted for only one chaplain – and it’s always a Protestant given the scarcity of Catholic chaplains and the need to station them at larger bases.  Nevertheless, twice a year, for Christmas and Easter, they manage to find a Catholic chaplain with no parochial responsibilities and task him to cover Catholic services for those holidays.  Given my current assignment teaching at the Air Force Chaplain Corps College – and thus not running a Catholic parish on a base somewhere, like most Catholic chaplains – the lot fell to me.

Those who know me well know that I love cold weather, snow, remote locations, and tend to avoid sunlight!  Check, check, check, and check – Greenland in December has it all!  The average temperature for my three weeks there was -20˚  F, we got some snow (though not as much as I wanted), the next nearest inhabited location is an Inuit village 65 miles away, and the sun didn’t come up for the entire time I was there – literally pitch black even at 12 noon!  And I would go back in a heartbeat.  On top of all that, I got to see the Northern Lights and plenty of Arctic wildlife, including musk ox with horns that look like pigtails, cute little foxes that follow you for food scraps, and carnivorous bunny rabbits that travel in herds.  Oh, and there are polar bears too, which, incidentally, are also carnivorous.  I didn’t see any of them, however, except in a 1950s painting in the chapel of a very Nordic Madonna and Child playing with one as dazed Airmen kneel off on the side in safe reverence.  But no spiders or snakes anywhere on the island!

Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to see my family for Christmas, I took a full week of leave to go back home to Washington, DC, for Thanksgiving.  Not wanting to waste an opportunity to help keep my nieces and nephews well-behaved during the holiday season, I sat down at the kids table on Thanksgiving and explained to them that I was going to the North Pole for Christmas to help St. Nick and that he would, inevitably, ask me about their behavior over the past year.  That got their attention real quick.  I explained how Santa Claus’s real name was St. Nicholas and how he was a bishop many centuries ago but then retired and was put in charge of distributing Christmas gifts.  Then my nephew Landon – who is young enough to still believe in Santa but old enough to ask thoughtful, probing questions – actually asked me:  “if Santa’s a bishop then why does he need you up there??”  I froze, stunned, but tried to not look thrown off.  Then it came to me:  “well, duhhh, because he’ll be dropping off presents on Christmas Eve and needs someone else to cover the midnight Mass for the elves!”  Landon squinted slightly, looked around, and said, “ok, that makes sense.”  Santa would live another day.

When it came time for midnight Mass, I wasn’t sure how many people to expect.  I was only getting a handful of people for the Sunday Masses over the previous two weeks, but with it being Christmas, I assumed I’d get a few more.  But then again, I did schedule it for midnight and didn’t do that 4 pm Canon Law cop-out that more and more people seem to prefer.  To my surprise, we had about 50 people show up, including several Danish contractors who help run the dining facility, gym, and lodging.  I preached on how we, as Catholics, like to see meaning in everything – a truly sacramentalized worldview – and how, in some cultures, people would stay awake all Christmas Eve in hymns and prayer, awaiting the sunlight, and seeing in its rising a symbol of Christ as the Light of the World (John 8:12) shattering not just the physical darkness of night but the metaphorical darkness of eternal death due to our sin. As the Christmas song “O Holy Night” recounts, “long lay the world, in sin and error pining, till He appeared and the soul felt its worth.”

For us, however, there would be no sunrise for several more weeks – we would have to find other ways to spread the Light of the World.  I pointed out how the moon, providentially, was almost full, and the noticeable difference its light made when walking outside.  But actually – as all Space Force nerds know – the moon doesn’t have its own light…it is simply reflecting the light of the sun.  Perhaps we, I encouraged, could be like the moon by simply reflecting the light of the Son in the midst of so much darkness, physical or otherwise.  I noted how Mary is often depicted in art as standing on a crescent moon precisely because she reflects the light of her Son, always pointing us back to Him and never making it about herself.  In order to do this, we – like Mary – would need to keep ourselves directed towards the Son, in relationship with Him.  Nemo dat quod non habet.

In the High Arctic, where all time zones converge, during this midnight Mass where it’s always midnight, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the truly universal dimension of the incarnation of a God Who shatters our darkness by His merciful condescension.  He, Who by setting “the stars in their courses” (Judges 5:20), would thereby deprive us of any physical light for another month has, nonetheless, “leapt down from Heaven from [His] royal throne” (Wisdom 18:15) and revealed Himself as light.  It would be up to us to reflect that light, even after the sun eventually rises.  This universal dimension of Christmas was further exemplified during our closing hymn.  We didn’t have enough hymnals (a good problem to have!), and so I decided to pick a song that I figured everyone would know:  “Joy to the World.”  I must share that I had chills run down my spine when, standing at the foot of the Altar after giving the final blessing and joining in the closing hymn, I could hear out of my right ear, where the Danish contingent was standing, Handel’s familiar tune being sung in what I could only assume was Danish, perfectly in sync with everyone else singing in English.  The lyrics of the second verse particularly hit home for me as we were called to repeat – or reflect – the joy of this light.  “Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns / Let men their songs employ / while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains / repeat the sounding joy / repeat the sounding joy / repeat, repeat the sounding joy!”

Providentially, it was on the vigil of Epiphany that my tour ended and I boarded a jet back to the States.  I kept vigil at the left window, and after about an hour into the flight, I saw sunlight for the first time in weeks.  Admittedly, it was a bit of an emotional experience for me. The Light of the World had indeed come, but like the Magi of old, I had to continue in darkness for the 12 days of Christmas until I should see it for myself.  I, too, had a star to follow…the base chapel has a 6-pointed star permanently attached to the top of the steeple, and as I would navigate unknown roads in perpetual darkness, it always helped me find my way to the chapel where a commemorative manger was displayed inside.  In the midst of perpetual darkness, it allowed me to stay oriented towards the Light of the World and hopefully, in turn, reflect that light to others. For those who remain in darkness – physical, spiritual, or both – my prayer is that a saving faith in the Light of the World may carry them safely home.

These last nine days of our 50-day Paschal Season have a special, mystifying, doctrinally-rich character that can’t be overlooked by the serious believer.  Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ rose from the dead 40 days ago on Easter Sunday, He made various appearances to His disciples in His risen body, He performed miracles, and then, on the 40th day, He ascended back to His native Heaven, taking our weak human nature with Him in its glorified form ¹. He – fully God and fully man – is now seated – in His human body – at the right hand of the Father. Throughout the Gospels, we hear Him tell His disciples that He eventually needs to return to the Father so that They (the Father and the Son) ² can send the Holy Spirit upon us (Jn 15:26; Jn 16:28; and elsewhere).  He anticipates their sorrow at His impending lack of physical presence but comforts them with the promise that His physical absence is actually good for them since it enables Him to be more present to them than He is able to be in His natural form (Jn 14:16-20; Jn 16:5-7).  Paradoxically, Christ physically returns to Heaven in order to be more physically present on Earth.

After the Ascension, we hear that the disciples, gathered around Mary, obediently await in Jerusalem and pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:3-5, 14), Who eventually shows up nine days later on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, the 50^th day after Passover.  The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity appears over them as tongues of fire, empowering them to preach in such a way that all of their listeners hear them in their own respective language (Acts 2:1-6) ³. These nine days of intense prayer would come to set the pattern of prayer known as a “novena,” which now exist throughout Catholic piety ⁴. As an aside, this is why I am generally opposed to the transference of the Feast of the Ascension to the Sunday after Ascension Thursday since, among other things, it makes the original novena no longer a novena ⁵.

Enter Justin Bieber.

A few days ago, during this nine-day waiting period between the Ascension and Pentecost, I heard Justin Bieber’s song “Ghost” for the first time.  It apparently came out over a year ago so I’m not sure how I hadn’t heard it before, but we’ll chalk it up to my exemplary priestly detachment from the world ⁶. Putting’s its catchy beat aside, I found myself really struck by the lyrics, especially in light of what I was in the midst of liturgically re-living, awaiting the gift of the Holy Spirit while attempting to connect with the feelings of sorrow and uncertainty that the disciples must have felt after the Ascension.  Now, in case it needs to be said, I do not think that the Biebs had any of this in mind when he penned this hymn, but who knows.  Interestingly enough, however, it turns out that there has been no small debate online about its meaning.  The so-called “Jelena” theorists argue that it’s obviously about his breakup with Selena Gomez, although Justin himself eventually revealed that it was about loss in general, especially in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the beautiful things about art, however, is that there can be many interpretations, even ones that are totally unintended by the artist or even antithetical to what the artist intended.  So, without further ado, I’d like to offer yet another interpretation of this song from a Catholic liturgical perspective.  Of course, not all of the lyrics fit with this interpretation, and so I won’t go line by line, but here’s what jumped out to me.

“If I can’t be close to you / I’ll settle for the ghost of you.”  This is the beginning of the refrain, and immediately made me think of the role of the Holy Spirit – traditionally referred to in English as the “Holy Ghost.”  Sharing the same single divinity of God the Father and God the Son, one of “jobs” of God the Holy Spirit is to continue to make present God the Son (Jesus Christ), throughout all times and all spaces ⁷.  This is why all liturgical worship is “to” the Father, “through” the Son, “in” the Holy Spirit.   So, without getting too deep into Trinitarian theology and potentially falling into heresy ⁸, it is somewhat safe to say that the “ghost” of Christ is Christ Himself ⁹. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, and Christ is God.  This being the case, how often do we fall into the trap of thinking that Christ’s sacramental presence is somehow less-than?  How often do we think that we have to “settle” for His sacramental presence as if it’s not as good as being physically close to Christ?  We may find ourselves daydreaming to be as close to Christ as was St. John the Apostle when he literally laid his head on Christ’s chest at the last supper (Jn 13:23).  How often do we fall into the trap of thinking that Christ was somehow more present then than He is now?  As the Second Vatican Council reminded us, Christ is present to us in various “modes”:  in the Scriptures proclaimed, in the congregation assembled, in the person of the priest, etc., but His highest mode of presence is when He is really present in the Eucharist, hence the term “Real Presence.”  And this leads to the next lyric that popped out to me…

“If you can’t be next to me / your memory is ecstasy.”  At His last supper – which took place in the context of a Jewish Passover Seder meal – Christ prayed the traditional Haggadah prayers over the unleavened bread and grape wine, but then He added something new:  “this is My body” and “this is the cup of My blood.”  Immediately thereafter, He commanded His twelve apostles to “do this in memory of Me,” at once establishing both the Eucharist and the ministerial priesthood (Mt 26:26-29; Mk 14:22-25; Lk 22:19-20; 1 Cor 11:23-25).  That is, those twelve apostles were thus commanded and thereby empowered to do what Christ had just done Himself.  To this day, we see the phrase “In Remembrance of Me” smattered about ecclesiastical art – Catholic and Protestant alike – although it has come to mean different things since the Protestant reformation.  Speaking broadly, Protestants believe that the Mass (which they have since renamed “Holy Communion” or “The Lord’s Supper”) is simply a remembrance of what Christ did, whereas Catholics believe that, at the Mass, we not only remember what Christ did but, through the power of the Holy Spirt invoked by the ministerial priesthood, we actually re-live it.  For Catholics, when we hear the priest say “this is My body,” we are not simply reading from the Bible and hearing what Christ said at the Last Supper, we are made present to the Last Supper itself, hearing Christ Himself speak those words for the very first time.  I often like to point out that the Mass is not simply a “representation” of what happened at the last supper but rather a “re-presentation.”  And it’s not just what happened at the last supper; in the Mass, we are made present to the entire paschal mystery:  the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ.  As you can tell, a lot hinges on what is meant by “remembering” Christ and doing things in His “memory.”  When we look at the original Greek, the word that Christ used for “remembrance” is “anamnesis” (1 Cor 11:24) ¹⁰, which carries with it something much stronger than just remembering.  In Catholic sacramentology, anamnesis is a type of sacred remembering that actually makes present that which is being remembered.  It is a type of entering into the thing being remembered such that we are present when it originally happened ¹¹. Now, back to the Biebs, when he says “your memory is ecstasy,” something entirely deeper is understood when we apply that to Christ’s paschal mystery.  His “memory” is indeed ecstasy because it’s not just a memory of Him that we draw to mind, but rather He Himself Who draws near to us by our sacred remembering.  Not only that, but He has promised to be made present to us as often as we “do this in memory of Me,” truly placing Himself at our beck and call.  Can we lean on His chest and have Him “next to me” as St. John the Apostle did at the Last Supper?  No, but we can have Him just as present to us and experience the same ecstasy.

Those are the main two lyrics that popped out to me during my own sacramental re-living of the first novena, but arguably there are even more lyrics that could be interpreted along Christian lines:

“I miss you more than life.”  We hear our boy Justin repeat this phrase over and over again, clearly capturing the emotion of loss.  As I noted in the beginning, however, Christ knew that His disciples would feel a sense of loss when He finally left them at the Ascension, and that’s precisely why He went out of His way to tell them not to be sorry.  Nevertheless, even if we were to grant that the disciples intellectually understood what Christ had told them about His return via the sacraments, we can still appreciate the emotion of loss that they would have inevitably felt.  Mature Christians, however, don’t just acknowledge their feelings – as important as that first step is – they must then be able and willing to subject those feelings to their intellect and ask the difficult question of whether or not those are logical feelings.  In this case, there is no reason to get caught up in the emotion of loss, however strong it may be, knowing that Christ comes to us every day in multiple ways.

“Young blood thinks there’s always tomorrow.”  While the young are arguably more likely than the old to think that they’ll have more time, I’ve had to counsel plenty of older people to not assume that they’ll have more time to do various things that they have been meaning to get around to or have been putting off (e.g., forgiving someone, asking someone for forgiveness, asking Someone for forgiveness, telling someone they love them, etc.).  Sacred Scripture warns us clearly not to make such a foolish assumption (James 4:13-15; Proverbs 27:1).

“I’d leave it all behind if I could follow.”  But you can follow!  Following Christ is not just for a select few – it’s for all Christians!  Yes, we are all called to follow Him in different ways, but no one is not called to follow Him, as if following Him were an offer given to only some.  Here’s the catch, however…in order to follow Him, you must first be willing to leave it all behind.  Jesus Christ tells us quite pointedly, “Whoever comes to Me and does not hate ¹² father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be My disciple.  Whoever does not carry the cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple.” (Lk 14:26-27).

So that’s a Catholic Christian reading of “Ghost” by Justin Bieber.  Again, I doubt that Justin Bieber intended any of this, but who knows and who cares.  May we recognize that tomorrow is not guaranteed to us, that we are all called to follow Christ despite the cost, and that He Himself accompanies us on that journey through liturgical anamnesis.

As a bi-ritual Catholic priest currently serving as an active duty military chaplain, I have become increasingly convinced that Catholics need to stop calling themselves “Roman Catholic” and stick with just “Catholic.”  For starters, most people – Catholic and otherwise – do not use the term “Roman” properly, and often tend to use it in ways that end up suggesting something inaccurate or confusing.  On top of that, Catholics’ continued use of ritual and/or ecclesial prefixes obscure the unified front that the world needs, and further serves to give certain malicious non-Catholics the opportunity to disguise their denominations as truly Catholic.

Let’s begin with some etymology.  Yes, the term “Catholic” comes from the Greek “καθολική” (“katholikí”) which means “universal,” but as the one, holy, catholic (universal), and apostolic Church founded by our blessed Lord began to be splintered, it sadly became necessary to distinguish among Christians.  Those who remained in union with the pope started using the term “catholic” as a proper adjective, and overtime this came to be written with a capital “C” just like any other proper adjective (e.g., American, Shakespearian, Victorian, etc.).  The Catholic Church was still catholic (universal), but it was no longer the case that the universal Church was all Catholic.  That is, there began to be such things as Christians who belonged to the universal Church by virtue of their valid baptism but who were not Catholic.  Some will argue – and they are technically correct – that anyone who has a valid baptism is a member of the big “C” Catholic Church even if they profess to be a member of a Protestant or an Orthodox denomination.  There is only one baptism, they correctly point out, and so there is no such thing as a Protestant baptism or an Orthodox baptism, and that all the baptized are members of the Church, the big “C” Catholic Church, whether or not they think they are.  On a canonical level, there are additional qualifications that could be made in terms of whether or not a baptized person is bound to those laws of a merely-ecclesiastical origin, and so in that limited sense there is, in fact, such a thing as a Protestant baptism or an Orthodox baptism as something distinct from a Catholic baptism, but that quibble is not the point here.  The point is that the capitalized term “Catholic” came to indicate whether or not someone submitted to the pope, plain and simple (that which such submission requires/does not require could be debated elsewhere).

Now let’s look at “Roman.”  Some want to suggest that this term is simply meant to indicate the origin of Catholicism, and that “Roman Catholic” is thus completely synonymous with the definition of “Catholic” as explained above.  In this way, such people use, for instance, the hideously wrong and horribly confusing term “Eastern rite Roman Catholics” to describe the so-called Uniates.  In their mind, this is the best way to describe those Eastern rite Christians who are in union with the pope.  After all, we want to stress their union with the pope, and since the pope lives in Rome, and is the Bishop of Rome, and heads the “Roman Catholic Church” (another incorrect term, as I will argue below), why not be as specific as possible by calling them “Eastern rite Roman Catholics”?  The problem, however, is that the proper adjective “Catholic” already includes the qualification of being in union with the pope, as demonstrated above, and thus the use of the additional term “Roman” is unnecessary.  But not only would the use of the term “Roman” be unnecessary in this situation, it’s also wrong, and that’s because the term “Roman” is only meant to indicate the liturgical rite.  And good luck telling an Eastern rite Catholic that she’s Roman!  They are all very proud to be united with the pope – especially those whose ancestors remained in union with Rome when the rest of the East broke off – but there is nothing about them which is Roman, especially not after the de-Latinization process begun by Pope Leo XIII in 1894.

As we can discern from a quick study of Canon Law and liturgical books, there are both “Churches” and “rites” within the Catholic Church.  The Catholic Church consists of 24 autonomous (i.e., “sui iuris”) Churches:  the Albanian Church; the Armenian Church; the Belarusian Church; the Bulgarian Church; the Chaldean Church; the Coptic Church; the Church of Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro; the Ethiopian Church; the Eritrean Church; the Greek Church; the Hungarian Church; the Italo-Albanian Church; the Latin Church; the Macedonian Church; the Maronite Church; the Melkite Church; the Romanian Church; the Russian Church; the Ruthenian Church; the Slovak Church; the Syrian Church; the Syro-Malabar Church; the Syro-Malankara Church; and the Ukrainian Church.  Since the pope is the head of the Catholic Church as a whole, he is thus ultimately responsible for all 24 of these particular Churches, although each of them has their own head, all of whom submit to the pope and thereby remain truly Catholic (fun fact:  the pope is the head of the sui iuris Latin Church as well as the head of the Catholic Church as a unified whole).  In addition to the category of sui iuris Church, there is also the category of rite, including, but not limited, to:  the Alexandrian rite; the Ambrosian rite the Antiochian (West Syrian) rite; the Armenian rite; the Byzantine rite; the Chaldean (East Syrian) rite; the Mozarabic rite; and the Roman rite.  In a few circumstances, one will note that there are some Churches which have the exact same name as the rite they celebrate.

The heart of my first reason for dropping the term “Roman” lies in this distinction between Churches and rites.  Why is it so important to indicate what liturgical rite we happen to celebrate when identifying our religion?  And if we want to be more specific than just “Catholic,” wouldn’t it follow logically that we identify with the particular Church to which we are ascribed before identifying with the rite we celebrate?  After all, Churches have such things as hierarchies and laws; rites do not.  Perhaps the reason why some Catholics identify themselves by their rite and others by their Church is because they are trying to be as descriptive as possible.  That is, in the West, a Church is more encompassing than a rite, whereas in the East, a rite is more encompassing than a Church.  For instance, in the Latin Church alone one can find the Roman rite, the Ambrosian rite, the Mozarabic rite, as well as several other rites that came out of either a religious order or a certain territory.  In the East however, we see that the Byzantine rite, for instance, is the only rite only celebrated by 14 of the 24 Churches, and that the Alexandrian rite is the only rite celebrated by another 3 of the 24.  Maybe this is why one finds people introducing themselves as “Roman Catholic” or “Ukrainian Catholic” but never as “Latin Catholic” or “Alexandrian Catholic.”  We tend to want to use modifiers that will describe us as particularly as possible, and so in the West that means identifying with a rite – not a sui iuris Church – whereas in the East that means identifying with a sui iuris Church – not a rite.  In the East, it is common to remove confusion by referring to both one’s rite and Church, such as “Ukrainian Byzantine” versus “Ruthenian Byzantine.”  Additionally, the term “Greek” is sometimes used synonymously with “Byzantine,” given that the Byzantine rite came out of the Greek-speaking Byzantine Empire, and so one will also see such terms as “The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church” to distinguish it from the Roman rite Latin Catholic dioceses that also exist in Ukraine (the latter are Roman rite Ukrainians of the sui iuris Latin Church, whereas the former are Byzantine rite Ukrainians of the sui iuris Ukrainian Church).

As one can see, therefore, it is incorrect to use terms like “Latin rite,”  “Roman Catholic Church,” or “Byzantine Catholic Church” since we are thereby defining a rite by a Church or a Church by a rite.  There is no such thing as the “Latin rite,” but rather the Latin Church in which the Roman rite is predominately – though not exclusively – celebrated.  As an aside, since the Latin Church is the only Western Church in the group of 24 Churches, “Latin” may correctly be used in place of “Western,” and so we can speak of the Western Church versus the 23 Eastern Churches, but we cannot speak of the Western rite since there are many Western rites.  Interestingly enough, some Orthodox jurisdictions are doing their own sort of Anglicanorum Cœtibus by establishing “Western rite Orthodox” parishes for those Protestants that don’t want to be Protestant but also don’t want to be Catholic.  In this way, they can receive valid sacraments via their union with an Orthodox Church, while clinging to their familiar liturgy and standing fast in their rejection of the papacy.  Given everything I’ve said though, I would argue that they should really be calling themselves “Roman rite Orthodox,” but I have a feeling that they would never do that, as accurate as it would be.

The second of my two reasons why we need to stop calling ourselves “Roman Catholic” is because there are some non-Catholics out there who take advantage of this by seeing in it an opportunity to disguise their own denomination.  I’ve run in to plenty of high-church Protestants who will call themselves big “C” Catholic, falsely explaining that “oh I’m Catholic, I’m just not Roman Catholic.”  Whenever I hear that, I tell them that they’ve gotten it backwards:  they are Roman, they’re just not Catholic.  The rite that they celebrate is a degraded version of the Roman rite since, after all, that was the liturgy being used by the Protestant reformers when they stopped submitting to the pope and thus stopped being Catholic.  In England, for instance, the day after the Supremacy Act passed declaring King Henry VIII as the head of the Church in England, the liturgy celebrated by those newly-schismatic bishops and priests was indeed still the Roman rite, it was just being celebrated by people who were no longer Catholic.  As Protestantism continued to splinter, their worship services became less and less recognizable with the Roman Rite, but to be fair, the Roman rite Mass is the liturgy from which their own services morphed.

The other problem here is that our continued use of the term “Roman Catholic” gives a certain license to some of those same Protestants to found separate denominations called “Lutheran Catholic,” “Anglican Catholic,” “American Catholic,” “Liberal Catholic,” etc.  To a third party, I imagine it seems quite logical to see those terms all listed next to each other on a Google or Wikipedia search and assume that they’re all branches of the Catholic Church when in fact they are all forms of Protestantism since they refuse to submit to the pope.  This does damage to the Catholic Church, however, because now third parties may easily come to think that we believe things which we do not.  To conclude, I would suggest that we quit identifying ourselves by either our rite or our sui iuris Church and instead just present a unified, papacy-affirming front by calling ourselves simply “Catholic.”  All of those other modifiers only serve to allow for confusion and introduce unnecessary distinctions to a world that needs to hear a single, solid, Catholic voice.  As we chaplains are required to do in the military whenever we want to conduct a worship service, Bible study, or prayer group, let’s practice “truth in advertising,” and let’s keep it simple.  For my part, I will continue to politely correct my Protestant chaplain friends whenever they refer to me or my brother priests as “Roman Catholic.”  I’m just “Catholic,” thanks.

In light of all the media attention currently being given to Pope Francis’ visit to the States, I, as the token Catholic student in the doctoral program of an ecumenical seminary, feel a certain need to address that which I know many of my brother cohorts are wondering about how we Catholics view and treat the pope (and any other bishop or priest, for that matter).  Fortunately, the author of one of our textbooks does a good job of fairly describing his – and doubtless many other Protestants’ – confusion in this area.  J.R. Woodward describes his experience attending one of Pope John Paul II’s weekly audiences in Rome, and it is worth quoting at length:

What struck me most was the atmosphere.  I couldn’t help but compare the picture that was in front of me with the picture of Jesus at the Last Supper and his walk toward the cross.  Before my eyes was a man dressed in a white robe with a literal crown on his head.  To his left and right were men dressed in bright red, the cardinals.  People kissed the pope’s ring.  Pope John Paul II, in my estimation, did some amazing things in his life.  But this picture puzzled me.  (It is likely that I am ignorant of the symbolism.)  As I was taking in this scene, the picture of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet came to mind.  I then started to think about how much of Jesus’ ministry was involved in subverting the status quo in religious and political world of his day.  As a result he was stripped of his dignity.  On his way to the cross, he didn’t wear a crown bedecked with jewels but a crown of thorns.  They didn’t kiss his ring but spat in his face.  The contrast remains with me.  Sometimes I wonder, “What system is at work here?”

(Woodward, 2012, p. 92, emphasis his)

I, for one, definitely appreciate Woodward’s honesty, as well as his own admission that perhaps he was missing some of the symbolism, as he called it.  Further, I would submit that the answer to his confusion, if we could call it that, lies precisely in the Catholic Christian theology behind this symbolism.

At the heart of this theology are two seemingly-opposing truths.  On the one hand, Jesus Christ “emptied Himself” (Phil 2:7), becoming a poor, weak, susceptible human being Who, as He Himself said, “came not to be served, but to serve” (Mt 20:28).  On the other hand, we correctly profess Him to be not just a great prophet, teacher, healer, exorcist, etc., but indeed the long-awaited Christ and, oh by the way, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the eternal Son and Word of God, and God Himself.  Catholic sacramentology reflects this paradox in its teaching that, in baptism for instance, we become sons and daughters of God through our ontological configuration to the one Son of God, and yet we remain the weak, sinful human beings that we’ve always been.  In ordination, a lowly man (who has already been made a member of the body of Christ through his baptism) is “moved” from his place in the body of Christ to the head, so much so that we talk about ordination as configuring a man such that, in certain circumstances (like consecrating the Eucharist, absolving sin, etc.), he is now capable of acting “in persona Christi Capitis” (“in the person of Christ the Head” of His body, the Church).  To be clear, I don’t expect any of my Protestant brothers and sisters to agree with this theology, and the point of writing this brief reflection is not at all to try to convert any of them or to poke holes in their own theologies of baptism, ordination, or any of the other sacraments.  I bring up Catholic sacramentology only because I believe that it explains the apparent disconnect that Woodward described above.

Let me get personal and practical.  When I look at myself, I see two things:  myself and Jesus Christ.  Now, all baptized Christians should be able to say this about themselves, but Catholic theology pushes it further than just “I can see Jesus in my life” or “I know that Jesus is working in me.”  According to Catholic sacramentology, when I, as a priest, act in the person of Christ the Head, it is not so much that I am acting on behalf of Christ, or that I am acting with His authority; rather, it is that Jesus Christ Himself is acting, and I am simply the instrument through whom He acts.  This is why the rubrics of our rituals require the priest to put on certain vestments, to “clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 13:14), and as a priest who believes this theology with every fiber of my being, I want to make sure that Jesus Christ looks good, that He looks like the God and King that He is when He deigns to act through me or any other cleric.  In one sense, it is precisely because He was often not treated the way He should have been while He was here on earth that we should treat Him that way now.  As my parishioners can attest, when I save up money (after paying my bills and giving my tithe of course), I don’t spend it on new cars or electronics, I spend it on vestments!  Christ Himself defended the sinful woman who spent 300 days of wages on making Him look (and smell) good, even going as far as to rebuke the soon-to-be-betrayer Judas who pretended to care about the poor by suggesting that the money should have been spent on them (the full story can be found in Mt 26, Mk 14, and Jn 12).  Jesus commands us to take care of the poor, and yet He also allows us to spend our money on Him too.  Of course, we can’t do one and not the other, but the fact that Jesus even allows us to spend money on Him at all means that He recognizes his own dignity as God and King.  This is why I get so frustrated sometimes with some of my brother priests who are unwilling to spare any funds to have nice liturgical items on the grounds that Jesus was humble.  Yes, Jesus was humble, but as C. S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity, “true humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less.”  Jesus knew very well His dignity, He allowed us to honor it, and yet He didn’t get caught up in how great He was but rather in serving others.

Another thing to which my parishioners can attest is that when I am not acting in the person of Christ, I tend to be pretty plain.  I usually sport my cassock (the plain black robe that priests traditionally wear as their street clothes, sometimes referred to as a “habit”) with my sandals, and usually just a t-shirt and shorts underneath.  I clean my cassock every few months, but I don’t mind it getting dirty, sweat-stained, smelly, etc., because it serves as a reminder to me of that humility that I am to exhibit as a follower of Christ.  When I’m not acting in the person of Christ the Sovereign, I need to be acting in the person of Christ the Servant, who did get down and dirty, and who dressed very plainly and unassumingly.  It’s not two Christs; it’s one Christ Who is both Sovereign and Servant, Who commands us to take of the poor and yet also allows us to spend money on Him.

Ultimately, however, I think that the confusion that Woodward experienced in Rome lies in the blending on these two roles.  To get personal and practical again, sometimes I’m just “John Reutemann, sinner extraordinaire,” other times I’m Jesus Christ, and so the difficulty is finding that middle ground of being “Father John Reutemann.”  I imagine that the pope struggles with this as well.  Like me, he is deeply aware of his own sinfulness, and yet also like me, he is deeply aware of the dignity of his office, not just as a priest, but in his case as a bishop and the pope as well.  While there are a few times when it is clear that a priest is acting in one role and not the other (both of which I described above), most of the time he’s just walking around in that middle ground.  When Woodward saw Pope John Paul II making his way through the crowds after his weekly audience, it’s safe to say that the pope was not, at that very moment, celebrating some sacrament or otherwise acting in the person of Christ, and yet there is still a dignity attached to the office that he has received even when he’s not directly exercising it.  Hence Woodward saw him wearing a special hat (not exactly a crown, as Woodward recounts), being surrounded by courtiers (which is, in a sense, part of what cardinals are), and having his ring kissed by those around him.  Those of us following Pope Francis’ activities in the States this week have seen a lot of these kinds of things as well.  We’ve seen him with many layers of beautiful vestments on to celebrate Mass, in which Christ Himself speaks through him to consecrate the Eucharist, but we’ve also seen him in his simple white robe, walking through crowds and giving speeches.  Nevertheless, in all situations, both when he was acting in the person of Christ and when he was not, people were reverencing his person, either by bowing to him, reaching out to touch “even the hem of his garment,” and kissing his ring.  As an aside, all bishops receive a ring as part of their ordination rite as a symbol of their configuration to Christ, Who is the Bridegroom of the Church, and while it’s not part of a priest’s ordination rite, many priests wear a simple wedding band for this same reason.  Some people want to just dismiss such courtesies and reverences as merely the result of the Vatican being its own country, or as throwbacks to an era long past in which nobles wore nice clothing and passed among their vassals to receive their obeisance.  That’s really not it though; it goes much, much deeper.

As just a priest, I often experience similar acts of reverence by God’s holy people, and speaking from the receiving end, I can say that it is a very fine line to walk.  An ancient tradition that has survived in only a few cultures nowadays is the kissing of a priest’s hands, often after receiving a blessing or absolution, as means of reverencing God’s great gift of the Priesthood, since it is, after all, the very means by which He continues to make Himself bodily present through all times and spaces.  To someone who doesn’t know that a priest’s hands are anointed with chrism (a blessed perfumed olive oil) during the rite of ordination, this kissing may seem at least odd if not downright clerical.  Even more contested is the very term of address used for priests, especially given Christ’s command to call no one “father” (Mt 23:9).  It’s true that Paul called himself “father” on numerous occasions (e.g., 1 Cor 4:15, Philem 1:10, etc.), but the apparent contradiction is not so easily undone.  For Catholics, calling a priest “father” is not due to some skillful proof-texting but due to a recognition that he has the capacity to act in the person of the Father, which again goes back to the undeserved gift that priests receive in their ordination.  Priests do well to remind themselves that these reverences are not directed to them, but to Jesus Christ Who works in particular ways through them.  When it comes to experiencing these reverences, I remember being on the giving end, too, once when a random bishop I met in France actually jerked away his hand when I tried to kiss his ring upon meeting him and shaking his hand.  I remember thinking to myself, “does this guy really think it’s about him?!”  In that bishop’s defense, I’m sure he thought he was being humble, but in reality he was not only not being humble (remember Lewis’ definition above), he was depriving me of an opportunity to reverence the person of Jesus Christ in his person.

This is one of the beautiful things about the Catholic sacramentology of ordination:  it makes the Priesthood not about the individual priest.  I, or that bishop in France, or Pope Francis himself do not need to be particularly talented, gifted, skilled, or even subjectively holy.  The Priesthood works because it is always the same Jesus Christ working through the individual priest.  Yes, it’s nice when we run into a priest, bishop, or pope who is a really good preacher, or a great administrator, or a holy and prayerful man, but at the end of the day, all of those things could be absent and Jesus Christ will still work through that person due to their ordination, and Jesus Christ should still be reverenced in their persons due to their ordination, even if we don’t especially like the individual or even when they lack those other qualifications.  This is why, I would submit, a proper understanding of Catholic sacramentology is necessary to understand why priests, bishops, and popes are treated the way they are, and why such treatment is perfectly in line with the call that we’ve all received to emulate the humility of Christ, Who knew well who and what He was.  May each of us, layman and cleric alike, have that same true humility that doesn’t get caught up in ourselves but that does remind us of who and what we are, and of the dignity that we have through our reception of the sacraments.  May we never fail to reverence that dignity in each other, and we may we always strive to live up to that dignity in ourselves despite our own brokenness.