On September 20, 2018, as part of the STMās 10th anniversary celebration, alumnus and “”³¾±š°ł¾±³¦²¹Ģżmagazine editor at large James Martin, S.J., M.Div. ā98, Th.M. ā99, returned to Boston College to give the inaugural Daniel J. Harrington, S.J., lectureānamed for his late mentor and STM professor.
In his lecture, Martin paid tribute to Fr. Harrington and shared stories from his own life to illustrate the seven most helpful lessons on ministering he learned as a Jesuit.
In Danās NT 101 class, a student once asked a memorable question about one of Jesusās miracles. The student stood up, which was a surprise. No one stood in class to ask a question. He said, āFr. Harrington, with what we know about Jesusās identity as the Second Person of the Trinity, and his relationship to the Father and the Spirit, and the hypostatic union of his two natures, when he is performing this particular miracle, what is going through his mind in terms of his self-conception as the Son of God?ā
And Dan said, āWe have no idea.ā
When it comes to ministry, you wonāt know everything. You study hard, you take your work seriously, and you give yourself fully to your ministry. But you know that youāre not going to be able to answer every question, solve every problem, meet every ministerial challengeāor, for scholars, know everything about your field. In pastoral ministry, you may not know what to say to someone who has lost a job, contracted an illness, or had a death in the family. Itās important to take pastoral counseling courses, as I did at Weston, to learn the ābest practicesā for accompanying people, but you canāt know what to say or do at every turn.
Thatās when you are called to remember who called you to ministry: God. And, more to the point, God putĢżyouĢżthere in front of the person in needānot Pope Francis, not Mother Teresa, not Jean Vanier, not Helen Prejean, C.S.J., not Dan Harrington. And not a know-it-all either. God put you in this place at this time before this person, which means God wants you there, with all your strengths and weaknesses. Trust that.
From 1992 to 1994, I worked with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Kenya. My assignment was helping East African refugees start small businesses to support themselves and their families. We sponsored dozens of income-generating activities, from a Ugandan womenās tailoring group, to a Rwandese bakery, to two Ethiopian restaurants, both named The Blue Nile. In time, we opened a small shop in Nairobi to market refugee-made handicrafts. It was the most enjoyable and fulfilling ministry Iāve ever had. But after a while, I started to burn out. I was helping to run the shop and oversee the small businesses, visiting refugees at their homes in the slums, helping them to deal with health problems, landlord problems, legal problems, fear, hunger, depression, loneliness.
One day I said to my spiritual director, a Jesuit named George Drury [ā45, M.A.ā46, M.S.ā49], āI donāt know how I can do all of this!ā And he responded, āWho says you have to do it all?ā And I said, āWell, itās what Jesus would do. Heād help all these people.ā And George said, āWell, maybe, but I have news for you: youāre not Jesus.ā
Here we need to remember something about Jesusās ministry: Jesus didnāt cure everyone in Galilee and Judea. In his public ministry, Jesus dealt with the people in front of him, as we are to do. That doesnāt mean you donāt work for structural change. But it does mean that you canāt do everything.
One of my more unusual ministries was at Ground Zero in the days and weeks following the September 11 attacks in 2001 in New York City. I was working atĢżAmericaĢżin New York, and on September 13 I made my way down to a place called Chelsea Piers, on the West Side, where rescue operations were being staged. I ran into a police officer who asked me, āDo you want to go down there?ā I said, āYes,ā and suddenly I was headed to Ground Zero. In the backseat of the car with me was a psychologist, and I said to him, āDo you have any advice?ā He replied, āHave you ever dealt with trauma victims?ā And I said, āNo,ā somewhat terrified. And he said, āJust listen.ā
When we arrived at Ground Zero, the police officer wished us good luck. We got out of the car and there was the scene familiar to most Americans from the news reports: the ruined towers, the smoldering buildings, the ash, the paper, the debris. It was, as you can imagine, overwhelming.
Someone said, āThe morgue is over there.ā I knew myself well enough, and knew my limitations well enough, to know that I couldnāt work in the morgue. I couldnāt do that. So I stood there on the papers and the ash and tried to think of what I could do. And I realized I could minister to the firefighters and EMTs and policemen. I could listen to them. Let them grieve. Accompany them. I would have been paralyzed if Iād thought I had to do everything at Ground Zero. Instead, I did what I could: the ministry of presence, as we used to say at Weston. Along with my Jesuit brothers, I worked there for several days and then weeks.
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Recently Iāve been learning a great deal about what I consider a new ministry for me, outreach to LGBTQ Catholics. Last year I wrote a book calledĢżBuilding a Bridge, about how the Church can more compassionately reach out to LGBTQ people. A few months after the book was published, I was invited to the 2018 IgnatianQ conference at Loyola University Maryland. It is an annual gathering of student representatives from the LGBTQ groups at all 28 U.S. Jesuit colleges and universities. The conference organizers had asked me to speak, and I started off by saying that I didnāt know everything about LGBTQ ministry, something that was made abundantly clear to me over the course of the weekend. I found myself having to learn new language, a new tone, and a new appreciation for their lives. My experience can be summed up as my telling them, āGod loves you,ā and them saying, āYeah, we know!ā
During the IgnatianQ conference, the confession that I was still learning seemed to make the students more open to teaching me. At one point in my talk, I mentioned ātransgenderism,ā and a hand shot up. āFather, Iām not an ism,ā said the student. āOkay,ā I said, āWhat should I say, ātransgender experienceā?ā They snapped their fingers appreciatively. You can always learn something new.
Building a BridgeĢżwas essentially an invitation to dialogue and prayer and an encouragement for the institutional Church to treat LGBTQ Catholics with ārespect, compassion, and sensitivity,ā three virtues mentioned by theĢżCatechism of the Catholic ChurchĢżin dealing with āhomosexual persons.ā At the same time, the book invited the LGBTQ Catholic community to treat the institutional Church with those virtues, even though, I should point out, the onus is on the Church to reach out to the LGBTQ person, because it is the Church that has made LGBTQ people feel marginalized, not the other way around.
I thought the bookāwhich was just 160 pagesāwas pretty mild. It was rooted in the Gospels, based on the catechism, and had the approval of my Jesuit provincial, as well as the encouragement of the Jesuit superior general, and the endorsement of several cardinals, archbishops, and bishops. But I underestimated the strong reactions, both positive and negative.
To be clear, the vast majority of Catholics, both the hierarchy and the people in the pews, welcomed the book. And at first it was the positive reactions that astounded me. One of the early talks I gave was in Boston, at St. Cecilia Church in the Back Bay, which has a flourishing LGBTQ ministry. The talk was scheduled for a weekday night; I had just spoken at the parish a few months before and figured that attendance would be low. But some 700 people turned out, it was standing-room-only, and I signed books for three hours. Afterward people burst into tears, hugged me, and told me their storiesāLGBTQ Catholics and their parents and grandparents.
The strong negative reactions also caught me by surprise. A few days after the book was published, I started to get attacked on far-right religious websites by commentators who called me, and I quote, āheretic,ā āapostate,ā āsodomite,ā āhomosexualist,ā āfairy,ā āpansy,ā āfalse priest,ā āwolf in sheepās clothing,ā and āheresiarch.ā Then came attacks from Catholic commentators and columnists and a few bishops, including one bishop in a diocese not far from here who, halfway through his critique in the diocesan newspaper, admitted that he hadnāt read my book.
Several talks I had been invited to give were cancelled: by the Theological College of the Catholic University of America; by CAFOD (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development), the U.K. equivalent of Catholic Relief Services; by the Order of the Holy Sepulcher; and by a Catholic parish in New Jersey. Each of these talks was cancelled because of online petitions and telephone campaigns targeting the sponsoring parish or group. And each talk was scheduled to focus on the 2014 book that precededĢżBuilding a Bridge, which was a life of Christ entitledĢżJesus: A Pilgrimage.
Then came pushback from the other side. Cardinal Blase Cupich [H ā15], the archbishop of Chicago, invited me to give two lectures during Holy Week at Holy Name Cathedral; and other cardinals and bishops spoke up to endorse the book and offer invitations. In August of 2018, at the Vaticanās invitation, I gave a talk at the World Meeting of Families in Dublin. The Vatican proposed my topic and the title (āShowing Welcome and Respect in Our Parishes to LGBTQ People and Their Familiesā) and vetted and approved the text. But partially in response to that talk, Archbishop Carlo Maria ViganĆ², the former Vatican nuncio to the United States, denounced me for ācorrupt[ing] youthā in a letter published in Rome as the World Meeting neared an endāthe same letter in which he more famously accused the pope of covering up clerical sexual abuse.
What does all of that have to do with ministry? Just this: Remember the story of the āRejection at Nazarethā in the Gospels (Mark 6:1ā6; Matthew 13:54ā58; and Luke 4:16ā30)? Notice how Jesus is treated after he proclaims his identity as the Messiah. Initially, the people of Nazareth, his hometown, praise him; then they turn on him, try to drive him away, and make ready to throw him off a cliff. But he āpasses through their midst.ā Once when I was on retreat, I asked Jesus, āHow were you able to do this? I certainly couldnāt stand up before people who I think would reject me.ā And the answer I heard in prayer was, āMust everyone like you?ā
Simply because you face opposition in ministry doesnāt mean youāre doing the right thing. As my novice director used to say, āIf people disagree with you, it may just mean that youāre wrong.ā But if you are ministering in Jesusās name, you will inevitably face opposition and perhaps even persecution.
What can keep you going? First, the knowledge that Jesus went through this too. Second, the trust that if youāre doing the right thing, Jesus is with you. Third, some good old-fashioned Jesuit ādetachmentā or āindifference,ā to use the words of St. Ignatius Loyola, the Jesuit founder (another way of speaking about an interior freedom). Whenever I see attacks on myself that are clearly cruel and not at all constructive, I repeat a helpful mantra: āWho cares?ā Freeing yourself of the need to be liked will free you for ālife in the Spirit,ā as Dan liked to say.
In my 30 years as a Jesuit Iāve met hundreds, maybe thousands of people who minister in Jesusās nameāscholars and writers and editors, pastors and pastoral associates, bishops and priests, sisters and brothers, spiritual directors and counselors, social justice activists and peacemakers, college and university administrators, high school presidents and teachers, and on and on. And, very occasionally, among these people I notice something. A few of them are cruel. Not often but enough that it registers. Theyāre short-tempered with their staff, denigrate others, and are, to use a word that needs to be recovered in our theological vocabulary, mean.
There are always excuses. Everyone who is mean has an excuse: exhaustion, stress, overwork. And, in those cases, I remember Dan Harrington: always busy, probably tired, and yet always kind. Iāve started to think of Christian ministry in terms of what might be called the āasceticism of kindness.ā Iām not saying I always achieve that goalāask anyone who knows meābut itās a good goal nonetheless.
These are difficult times in the Church. Historically difficult. And it can be hard to be a Catholic, let alone minister as one. But remember: At your baptism God called you into the Church by name. And in your ministry God made a further call. When things get tough for me, I think of Peter and Andrew, and James and John, and Mary Magdalene, and all those disciples Jesus called at the beginning of his ministry in Galileeāthe āGalilean Springtime.ā After the Resurrection, and the Ascension, when Jesusās time on earth was over, these people faced tremendous difficulties, even martyrdom.
And Iām sure that, at the worst times, they thought back to the original call, by the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and remembered who called them.
āLecture text excerpted from the fall 2018 issue ofĢżBoston College Magazine.