Day 1 begins, and three griefs and anxieties of this age

 I write from a bus to New York City, where I will meet the other Fellows and the FASPE staff to begin our program!  Tonight we open with a social event, and tomorrow the academic programming begins.

In addition to learning with my peers, I look forward to tomorrow’s Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Victory in Manhattan’s financial district.  The first time I encountered Our Lady of Victory was as the patroness of my family’s parish in Davenport, Iowa.  She has also turned her eyes of mercy toward many a sport team of mine, although perhaps not according to our narrow ideas of victory!  Cardinal Spellman founded this parish in Manhattan and is quoted on its war memorial.  The parish was devastated by the attacks on September 11, 2001.  Far more than the outcome of athletic events, their experience of such violence presses us to seek and encounter the truth of Christ’s victory, his mercy, which is beyond tallies and even beyond earthly life.

FASPE has invited us participants to reflect on how to integrate the realities we will encounter, into our lives as religious leaders and professionals.  This has got me asking what issues today are most urgent for Christians and people of good will.  As previously noted, the Vatican II document  Gaudium et Spes says how to locate these issues:

The joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ (section 1).

These are three griefs and anxieties of our age that have been on my mind and heart:

(1) Economy and the environment.  The issues of absurdly high levels of consumption, environmental degradation, and objectification of human beings are related to one another, and currently in such a way that is causing irreversible climate change.  The Church, not simply as an institution but as a body of 1.2 billion members, has immense economic power that we express through our habits of investment, purchasing, and labor.  How can we use this power ethically?

(2) Sexuality.  Our sexuality brings with it a capacity for self-giving relationship, as well as for pain, that is unmatched in human experience.  Because we are embodied, social beings, our relationship to our sexuality has real power to allow us to express our love (our desire for the good of another and others), share the profoundest joy, wound and be wounded, and become enslaved.  It is beautiful and dangerous, and the way we treat our sexuality has effects that cannot be confined to either a private or a public sphere.  Signs that we are not giving one another the fullness of respect and love include: rape and domestic violence, use of pornography, sex trafficking, abortion, divorce, use of artificial contraception, and more.  How can we use this power ethically?

(3) Communications and marginalized people.  I list this because it is a new issue that deserves our reflection.  When many of us use devices that allow us to select who we communicate with, how will we continue to encounter and love the people who carry the death of Christ in their bodies, who are lonely, have disabilities, are poor?