Category Archives: Articles

Disconcerting Discovery

A discovery about another person, a friend of some four years’ standing, has shaken my world view and has provoked in me ongoing spiritual reflection. All during the time of our friendship I never suspected a fact about this woman that inevitably changes my understanding of who she is.

Rachel is the mother of a young adopted son and we have often talked about her experiences in raising him. At other times, I have had occasion to congratulate her on the excellent dishes she cooks and serves to students and graduate members of the organization where she works. I especially love the delicious desserts she concocts, deep dish apple pie above all.

The occasion on which I made the discovery about my friend was a visit to my favorite bookstore. There, on the table of newly published works, was a book with a handsome full-page photo of Rachel and a brief essay written by her about her life. In this account, she reveals a fact that staggered my imagination. That revelation is that she used to be a man.

I had read about other people making the same change but this instance was different. This had happened with a person whom I knew quite well. She has not been among my closest friends but nonetheless we have conversed often, sometimes about serious issues.

Rachel does not allude to her transformation in an indirect way. Rather, in the essay about her experience, she writes openly: “I was going through a transition – from male to female.  .  . I was born male.”

Presumably, many Americans brought up in a religious tradition will find it hard to accept this kind of personal transformation. It may go against the ideas of fixed gender that they learned at home and found confirmed in the Bible, the catechism, or other authoritative teaching. Other people, too, those steeped in the traditions of our culture, may be inclined to look with disdain on those who have changed their gender.

My own religious tradition has great difficulty coping with gender change. With its strict rules about sexuality, the Catholic Church would seem to have little sympathy with what my friend has done. The continuance of the same gender identity, male and female, is such a given in the teachings of the church that it is hard to imagine the institution approving of sex change.

For people raised and schooled as I was, it can require a new flexibility to accept changes that go against the grain of long accepted ideas. Until recent years, it never occurred to me that a person could change genders. Now, however, I am once again confronted with the need to dig deeply into myself and once more change ideas and feelings.

Whatever one’s views of gender change’s legitimacy, Rachel deserves respect and admiration for her courage. It could not have been easy for her to undergo the physical and mental changes necessary for a sex change. Even now, as she understatedly describes it, “I’m in the in-between space. And the in-between space is not always a comfortable thing.”

She has had to overcome misunderstanding and hostility on the part of people associated with her. At least one person, a co-worker, apparently considered it part of his religious duty to oppose what she was doing.

This fact emerges from her reference to problems that forced her to leave her previous job. “I was harassed about all kinds of different things, especially by one man who was a born-again Christian. It was brutal and I was actually frightened.”

Ironically for one who professes belief in Christ, this man’s conduct places him seriously at odds with the example and teaching of Jesus who so often reached out his hands to those people who had been marginalized by others.

For Jesus, human differences were no reason for shunning or looking down upon people pushed to the margins of his society. Though Rachel is not a social outcast, she clearly has suffered from being rejected by some other people.

Besides Jesus, one can take further inspiration from the great-souled people of our lifetime, people like Mother Teresa who accepted others as precious human beings, whatever their circumstances. Hers seems to me a fine model for coping spiritually with unexpected changes that we encounter, especially those that upset the views we have held for much of our lives.

Richard Griffin

Pedestrians in America

“A pedestrian in the U.S. is someone walking to his car.” This wry definition comes from Dean Kamen, the inventor of the Segway.  Its humor rests on the assumption that hardly any Americans do much walking, an assumption that evidence suggests is solid.

By contrast, a whopping 46 percent of all trips in the Netherlands are non-motorized. That means the Dutch do an awful lot of bike riding. Almost surely, they do a fair amount of walking too. Of course, theirs is a geographically small country without hills with a much more homogeneous citizenry than ours.

Transportation experts hold out no hope for us Americans changing our ways anytime soon. Those who assembled this September at MIT’s AgeLab, from around the country and a dozen other nations, agreed that most of us will remain dependant on the automobile. After all, we are a huge nation in which fully three fourths of us live in suburbs or rural areas, most of which places lack adequate public transportation.

People like me, urban dwellers who can walk to all our public services and do, are anomalies in American society. Planning for elders who live elsewhere cannot, I’m afraid, take us as models. Even if they want to walk, most Americans cannot get where they want to go simply by using their feet. And most often few alternative modes of transportation will get them to their planned destination.

So the question most professionals in the field of transportation ask is: How can we better provide for the safety of older automobile drivers and others? On various fronts they continue to explore ways of ensuring safer driving better adapted to the special needs of many elders. All are agreed that a whole lot can be done.

About the present situation there is widespread consensus on several points. First, drivers over age 65 are involved in fewer accidents, per capita, than are those younger. The instances of horrible events such as this past summer’s catastrophe in Santa Monica where ten people were killed by an elderly Californian who had lost control of his car are comparatively rare. Secondly, when older drivers do get into accidents their chances of being seriously injured or killed are much higher than those of younger drivers.

Contrary to popular impression, when older people experience disability they do not take public transportation even where it is available. Instead, they first give up using public transportation, then they abandon walking. That is because the easiest thing they can do is to drive or be a passenger.

There is also wide agreement that testing older drivers for their competence on the road does not work when it is made mandatory. Better are systems that target applicants for licenses who are considered at higher risk. Perhaps the best way to test such drivers is by giving them a personal guide who can help determine if they are still capable of safe driving.

Besides aiming to improve drivers’ capability behind the wheel, researchers envision changes in the automobiles they drive. Older drivers use seat belts more that those younger but there are different kinds of seat belts that could be introduced. A belt that fits over the torso with an X shape might give greater protection and so could a Y-shaped belt.

The third area that bears improvement is the roadway. Electronic systems that warn of collisions, for example, could prove beneficial although they can be tricky to rely on. Installing traffic calming modifications at sites where major roads cross such as raised and gritty surfaces can slow down traffic.

Much more could be done to protect drivers, improve vehicles, and modify roadways than we have seen up introduced up to now. With the arrival of the Baby Boomers into beginning old age, all drivers will presumably profit from technological enhancements that can be expected.

The changes talked about now should benefit everybody. An Irish geriatrician at the MIT event, Desmond O’Neill of Trinity College, quoted a two-line rule of thumb for planners.

“If you design for the old, you include the young.

If you design for the young, you exclude the old.”

Dr. O’Neill also cautioned against making decisions full of ageist assumptions about elderly people. Most older drivers, after all, perform well on the road. Many take the initiative when they realize the need to modify their driving habits. They deserve respect rather than coercive action to deprive them of the transportation that can severely cramp their lifestyle.

Though I myself do not feel entirely reconciled to the dominance of the automobile and judge alternative forms of transportation as eminently desirable, I also welcome technology being applied to make the driving experience considerably better for those committed to cars than it is now.

If the pros who took part in the AgeLab conference are a reliable sample of planners, it looks as if there is a whole lot that can be done.

Richard Griffin

Liturgy Document Anniversary

December marks an anniversary that is special in my life and in the lives of many others who share my religious tradition. This month, 40 years ago, the Second Vatican Council made major changes in the liturgy of the Mass, intended to have a major impact on the spiritual life of Catholics worldwide.

The document on the liturgy carried the date December 4, 1963 and was the first of 16 major statements published by the council. Its emergence qualified as big news at the time and it was featured in many major newspapers of the world.

Most Catholics of a certain age will remember growing up in the days before the council, when Latin was the language of the liturgy. The Eucharist or Mass, as we called it, and the other sacraments were all performed in that ancient tongue no longer spoken, even by the Italians who had originated it. Latin had long since become a dead language except for its use by the Church.

But language was only one of the liturgical changes made by the Catholic bishops of the world when assembled in Rome for the council. They also restored parts of the liturgy, such as communion under the form of wine as well as bread, and removed other parts that did not belong to the classical structure of the Mass.

In doing so, the bishops wanted to bring this public prayer of the church closer to the people. Translating the ancient texts into the languages used in daily life by the residents of each country made the words of the Mass immediately intelligible. No longer would worshippers have to use prayer books, as was the widespread custom previously. Nor would they be so likely to say the rosary during Mass.

The priest who presided at Mass was now expected to face the people rather than to have his back toward them. This served as another sign of a more active role for the laity in the official worship of the church. Their character as the people of God received new emphasis and they were encouraged to make the responses and to sing hymns with enthusiasm.

The council also highlighted the importance of the Bible in the liturgy and in the lives of Catholics. Up until that time, biblical texts had received less importance than they deserved but Vatican II said “Sacred scripture is of the greatest importance in the celebration of the liturgy.” In his homily during the Mass, the priest was urged to emphasize the teachings of the Bible, and laypeople were exhorted to read the sacred books more often.

It took years for the liturgical changes to be fully implemented in Catholic parishes. Not all the clergy and members of the laity welcomed the abandonment of the old ways. Some felt that the church was caving in to the fashions of the age, and the loss of the Latin language especially was mourned in some quarters.

Other critics regretted the loss of what they regarded as the aura of sacred mystery created by the rites they had grown up with.  The language of the liturgy may not have been so intelligible but there was an atmosphere of reverent silence that, they feared, was disappearing from Catholic churches.

However, with the passage of decades, the liturgical changes have come to seem normal in the lives of most Catholics who come to Mass. They find spiritual nourishment in the rites that have become familiar to them. The experience of Sunday Mass strikes me, for one, as altogether more accessible than it used to be.

Father Joseph Champlin, rector of the Immaculate Conception cathedral, in Syracuse, New York, is a priest who took a lead role in implementing the liturgical changes in his diocese. When I asked him his view of this history, he called it “a wonderful development for the church in the United States.”

He feels enthusiastic about the current Catholic way of worship and thinks that problems with the church cannot be blamed on the liturgy. He points to the tension between the horizontal (people oriented) and vertical (God oriented) aspects of the liturgy and recognizes that people can differ about whether one or the other is receiving too much emphasis.

For the vast majority of church members, the liturgy is proving effective, he believes, thus vindicating the wisdom behind the actions of the Second Vatican Council 40 years ago.

Richard Griffin

Capuano Speaks

“George Bush is brilliant; he’s sitting in the White House with less than one-half of the vote.” This tribute to the president comes from a member of Congress who agrees with hardly any one of Bush’s policies. That congressman is Michael Capuano, a Democrat who represents the Eighth Congressional District of Massachusetts.

Two weeks ago Representative Capuano spoke and fielded questions from some 100 interested constituents. As the words quoted above indicate, he readily acknowledges the president’s political skills and sees the Democratic Part badly outmaneuvered. He sees his party too often more interested in “being right” than in winning elections.

Capuano locates the source of his difficulties more with fellow Democrats than with Republicans. “My problem is with us,” he explains, because members of his party so often choose to adopt a pure position, as for instance on gun control, rather than one that will win success at the polls.

However, the Republicans who currently control the Congress also trouble him. Speaking of their efforts to pass their agenda he goes so far as to say: “This is a jihad of the right wing.” He does not hate these leaders; rather, he admires their skill in winning seats in the House and Senate from a national electorate that polls show to be evenly divided between the parties.

But, if these Republicans continue to control both houses of Congress and George Bush gets elected to a second term, Capuano foresees disaster for his own priorities. “Every issue my constituents care about is under attack,” he says. “It’s going to make the last four years look like kindergarten” he adds. “They will do everything they can to destroy our programs.”

For fear people think him simply anti-Republican in general, this congressman points out his admiration of the Massachusetts Republicans who flourished when he was a young man. He cites Frank Sargent, John Volpe, and others who represented a Republican tradition very different from that of Tom DeLay, Bill Frist and other leaders of the Congress now. He regrets seeing the few progressive Republicans being marginalized in their own party.

The last straw came for him when a proposal was made when “they tried to take away overtime pay.” According to him, legislation was introduced into the House to abolish overtime in certain circumstances and, to his shock, the proposal got 204 votes. He regards such legislation as un-American.

He also worries about the Medicare bill that would provide some coverage of prescription drugs for older Americans. “Within 10 or 15 years,” he warns, “the entire Medicare system would be gone.” The proposed legislation, still in conference committee, would set up competing health private health programs that could undermine Medicare as we have known it. (As of this writing AARP has endorsed the bill, much to the distress of the legislation’s critics among whom I count myself.)

To him, the leaders of Congress have become wilier than previously. “They have given up direct assaults,” he says. Instead, they cleverly insert what they want in bills that have good things too. One of his biggest complaints is the way so many moves increase the federal deficit because “every penny of the deficit comes out of the Social Security Trust Fund.”

During the course of the hour-and-a-half meeting, Capuano offered his views on many other issues. Of the so-called partial birth abortion act recently passed with much hoopla, he says “not a single abortion will be prevented” by this legislation.

This congressman has developed such low expectations as to say: “I think it’s a successful Congressional year when nothing happens.” He is convinced that the American public wants stalemate at the present time and, given the way things are, he welcomes it himself. The alternative is bad things happening.

This former mayor of Somerville says: “I am proud to be a hard-nosed politician.”  He does not shy away from a description of himself that many Americans would judge unfavorably.

You may wonder why this columnist is writing about the political views of a congressman speaking to members of his district. My rationale for doing so is my belief in the importance of older people staying in touch with issues of local, national, and international significance. I took the session with Mike Capuano as a sobering lesson in civics.

Some people, I realize, think later life is a time for standing aside from politics and devoting oneself to travel, leisure, reading, spirituality and other such interests. I cast a vote in favor of all of the above, but I also feel concern about the legacy we are leaving to our children and grandchildren, and their descendants.

Frankly, I feel anxious about the directions in which our country has been heading. My spirituality pushes me toward an active concern for the wellbeing of our fellow citizens and for the world community. For me, at least, advancing age cannot be used as an excuse for throwing up one’s hands and disavowing involvement in the issues that shape the world we ourselves live in and, one day, will pass on to others.

Richard Griffin

Visiting Birthplace

Have you ever had the experience of visiting the house where you grew up?  Or, better yet, the house in which you were born?

Most normal people, of course, were born in a hospital but no one has ever accused me of being normal. Though a product of the 20th century, I take my place with Abraham Lincoln and millions of other American worthies of previous centuries, in entering the world within the confines of a domestic structure.

The house I was born in stands at 4 Smith Street (I have changed the name), in Peabody, Massachusetts, a place I stopped by to look at recently. The first thing I noticed was a disturbing absence: there is no plaque on the side of the house to commemorate the event. What further must I do to become distinguished enough to deserve my name on a blue oval sign?

I also noticed how small everything looked. That is what people are always said to think when they return to their first house after many years away. Things appear to have shrunk, to have contracted.

Home turns out not to correspond with your imagination of it. The ceilings are not so high, the rooms so spacious, or the yard so sweeping. My birthplace definitely did not look grand enough to have produced me.

On arriving there, I walked around the side of the house, looking for signs of my past. But there were more fences and gates than used to be there. I could not see into a neighbor’s yard that I wanted to check out.  The driveway did stir one association: there my father and I were playing catch in the brilliant sunlight. But was it only the photo of this event I remembered, not the actual being there?

It was a dream that drew me to the house. I dreamt about the back porch of the house and about the people next door. My grandmother and aunt, who lived upstairs at number 4, were friendly with the next door neighbors and I wanted to stir up memories of their going back and forth between houses. But a gate barred my access to that part of the house and I did not want to disturb the current householders.

I fantasized about those neighbors catching sight of me, however, imagining them welcoming me warmly to my ancestral home. But, on sober reflection, I knew better: they might even have called the cops and accused me of trespassing. The pieties of past associations may have had no place at all in their hearts.

So my visit on a warm Sunday afternoon turned out unsatisfactory. The place that occupies such a warm spot in my heart seemed uninviting and almost drab.  No one cared about my being there and the place did not speak to me as my dream had indicated it would.

On further reflection, however, the visit does now say something. It stirs spiritual values that continue to loom large in my life.

Above all, that house is the place where I received the gift of life, a gift that I continue to give thanks for. And I love and appreciate my parents, many years after their deaths. My grandmother and aunt who lived upstairs and cherished my arrival also still excite in me warm affection.

It was from that house that I was taken to church for my baptism. There my father’s uncle poured water over my head and, with the Spirit’s action, drew me into the soul’s life that continues today. It would be my introduction to a spirituality that expresses the deepest meaning of my life.

That house first put me in touch with other members of my extended family and to the life of the city where I was born. My maternal grandfather, dead long before my birth, was a presence there. Born in Ireland, he came to the port of Boston where he was only 12 years old. Then he joined other family members in Peabody, went to work in a leather factory, and became successful enough that, when he died, he owned another such factory.

Perhaps the experience of dropping by my birthplace proved the old adage “you can’t go home again.” However, for me it also proved a spiritual encounter with a past rich in meaning and filled with people of grace.

Richard Griffin

The Fateful Day 40 Years Ago

Where were you on November 22, 1963?  Perhaps you are too young to remember that fateful day; maybe you were not even born yet. But for those of us now relatively aged, the event that happened forty years ago this week remains seared on our psyches.

That, of course, was the infamous day on which John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The graphic events that inexorably unfolded in Dallas that day have long since become part of American history. Like so many others of a certain seniority, I long ago internalized the dreadful sequence of happenings connected with this death.

For a time, however, I thought the wrong man had been shot. I had spent that day in Liverpool, sent off from my monastic retreat in Northern Wales on a mission to a parish church. On arriving back home to St. Beuno’s College in St. Asaph, I was greeted in the corridor by a colleague who asked if I had heard the news. In reply to my ignorance he announced: “Kennedy has been shot.”

For me it was a shock to think that my spiritual director, Father Kennedy, had been killed. Why would anyone wish to shoot such an inoffensive and loving man, I wondered? This English Jesuit priest seemed not to have any enemies at all, much less someone who would kill him.

When I realized my mistake, I began to grieve for the American president with whom I had most identified. Jack Kennedy was not much older than I and came from the same Boston Irish Catholic background as I. My father had known his father well enough for him and my mother to be invited to Jack’s wedding in 1953. Besides, Jack Kennedy struck me as a thoroughly attractive man, handsome, articulate, a person of style and, I believed, substance.

In the days after his death, by way of special permission I was allowed to watch television along with my colleagues at St. Beuno’s. We saw dramatic scenes of the  events leading up to the state funeral and felt the range of emotions that Americans at home were then feeling. Horror, pity, sorrow, fear and other feelings flooded my heart. I also felt some frustration at being so far away from home when events of such importance were taking place there.

My Jesuit colleagues at St. Beuno’s had come largely from European countries for a year of spiritual training in Wales. Natives of France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, along with some half dozen natives of England, they formed an international community along with a few of us Americans.

The grief that they all felt at the death of Kennedy moved me deeply. It was as if they had lost a friend, this American president with whom they had identified as a person who expressed many of their ideals. The experience of loss bound us together as a more closely knit community, united in an uncommon loss. They, too, could weep that an American hero had been struck down in the prime of his life.

Jack Kennedy had been formed in part by his own experience of Europe. In addition to saying “Ich bin ein Berliner,” with some justification he could have said he was an Englishman or a Frenchman. During some of his growing up years he lived in London and his first –  – highly critical –  –  book was called “While England Slept.” His frequent trips to the continent gave him a familiarity with other European countries.

His wife Jacqueline was well known for her love of French language and culture. On a state visit to France, her husband proudly identified himself as the man who had brought Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris.

St. Beuno’s was located at the margins of this European world. But it was in a climate of solidarity and ancient national friendships that we watched the news together. I realized more intensely that week than ever that we belonged to an international religious order, brothers who had suffered a common loss.  

Until the last few years I still found it too painful to watch television replays of the awful events of that November 40 years ago. The loss that we suffered as a nation continued to stir melancholy feelings in me.  But time has its way of healing and I no longer feel the sting so intensely now. From the vantage point of four decades’ distance the assassination does not stir the same pain in me that it did for so long..

Of course, I still regret the wounds inflicted on us all by the assassin. His deadly action robbed us of a leader who gave hope to much of the world. The emotional impact  may have grown weaker with the passage of so many years, but his terrible death continues to reverberate in my memory as one of the most searing public events of my lifetime.

Richard Griffin

Two Little Words

How can two short words provoke such controversy far and wide across America?  The phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance has become the subject of a national debate that will soon reach a climax with a decision by the Supreme Court. The court will rule on whether or not it is a violation of the First Amendment to have public school teachers lead students in reciting the pledge when it includes those two words.

The Pledge of Allegiance was first used in public schools in 1892 and did not contain the now disputed phrase. Nor during all of my years as a public school student, did these words  form part of the pledge. My schoolmates and I simply said “one nation, indivisible, with freedom and justice for all.”

It was in 1954 that the Congress at the request of President Eisenhower, added “under God”. He took his cue from a Catholic fraternal organization, the Knights of Columbus that lobbied for the change as a blow against communism. Eisenhower was glad to endorse their effort because the world seemed dangerously poised for possible nuclear war.

In October 2002, President Bush signed legislation confirming the use of these words as part of the pledge. For good measure he also approved the motto “in God we trust” on United States currency.

Though belief in God has always loomed large in my life, the explicit mention of God in this statement of allegiance to our country has from the beginning seemed to me an outside intrusion. I have never felt the need to include it among the words that express a commitment to the United States.

As a believer in God I am in good company: nine out of every ten Americans share this belief, polls show. Michael Newdow, however, is not among them. Newdow, a resident of the Sacramento, California area, has sued his local public school district, on the grounds that his son should not be exposed to the formula. The father professes himself an atheist and does not want his son to be indoctrinated with any religious beliefs.

It may be worth recalling an earlier Supreme Court ruling in 1943 that said students could not be required to say the Pledge of Allegiance at all. However, in practice, almost everybody, of whatever age, finds it difficult to resist group action, especially when it is endorsed by authority. To be the only one not saying the pledge when all around you are reciting the words makes most of us feel very uncomfortable.

I approach the issue with mixed feelings. On the one side, I appreciate our country’s history of honoring God publicly and praising the Creator for the blessings we enjoy. What has been termed “civil religion” seems to me valuable in itself and a glue that helps bind us together as one people.

And yet, the separation of church and state holds great importance for me and those of my Catholic tradition, as it does for those of other faiths. We all benefit from the constitutionally guaranteed freedom to practice our religion. The law protects us from governmental interference so long as we are not doing anything that infringes on the rights of others.

Ultimately, it seems to me not of great importance whether the phrase “under God” remains part of the pledge of allegiance or not. I can argue both ways but, whatever happens, people of faith are not going to lose that faith or grow up without it simply because of two words found in the formula.

What remains of greater importance is the quality of one’s love of God and country. Patriotism cannot be allowed to become a substitute for God and made into a religion. To make of the Pledge of Allegiance a statement of ultimate concern would be to violate the spiritual traditions that most Americans believe in.

With or without the phrase “under God,” the pledge raises vital questions for those who recite it.

Can we love God as one who is for all people, no matter their skin color, economic condition, or country of origin? And can we love our own country, not because it is rich and powerful or because it allegedly acts with more altruism than other nations, but rather because we keep alive the hope of achieving liberty and justice for all?

Richard Griffin