“My heart is broken.” These words from an elderly woman shown on a television news program represent the feelings of many people whose parish churches face closing.

A priest who is an official of the Archdiocese of Boston simply says of such a closing: “It’s a death.”

The decision of the archdiocese to shut the doors of some 60 churches has made Catholics in many areas weep. Some of their pastors who must move out for another assignment, or perhaps retirement, also feel the loss. Among them, a few have tearfully said they also feel a rejection of their ministry.

Incidentally, one of the churches to be phased out is Our Lady of Mercy in Belmont, the parish where I received my first communion. The memory of this event, happening when I was seven years old, has given me a lasting emotional tie to a building that will soon be given over to the wrecking ball.

In contacting parishioners for this column, I had hoped that they would talk about the connections between their parish church and their spiritual life. Some of them did speak to that subject but only in passing. Instead I discovered that most of them were preoccupied with other issues, so much so that it was hard for them to talk about anything else.

Almost inevitably, to some parishioners the closings are connected with the sexual abuse scandals that have plagued the Archdiocese of Boston. Despite official denials, many people believe that the closings would not have otherwise taken place.

Asked about the closings, one longtime parishioner says: “My honest opinion is that none of it would have happened were it not for the abuse cases. The whole thing boils down to this: they have to absorb the cost of abuse cases that happened 40 years ago.”

On a more personal level, he confides his feelings about his own parish: “I’m very disenchanted. I’ve been in this church since 1947, my kids were baptized there, my parents were buried there. Where am I going to be buried?”

His ultimate feeling is one of resignation: “I’m still hurt but you’ve got to roll with it; the archbishop has made the decision.”

This parishioner’s wife adds: “Our pastor was devastated and angry. They told him to get over it.”

Another man has been connected to his parish his whole life, 74 years. “It means a lot to me that it’s closed. I’m sorry because it’s a warm church, it’s been the spiritual side of my life.”

Yet this same man goes on to insist “I’ve got my own faith and that is not going to be changed by the closing. Spiritually, the church is the same.”

A friend who lives in a suburb northwest of Boston says the people there do not much care which parish they go to: “They don’t have the same attachment that people in the inner cities have.”  He, too, sees a tight connection between the parish closings and the sexual abuse scandals.

Not everyone agrees, however, that the closings should not have happened. Ann Smith, whose parish will be closed, says: “I think people have to get behind this and support it. As badly as I feel, something has to be done.”

This comes from a person who received her first communion and confirmation in her current parish church and was also married there. But she admires the archbishop and realizes that his is not an easy task. Having attended several cluster meetings during the planning period, she sees more clearly why the decisions had to be made.

A lawyer who attends church in the Gloucester area does not agree. He goes so far as to call the closings “church-sponsored iconoclasm.” With this phrase he regrets that the archdiocese is tearing down so many valued structures.

My findings suggest that the official church has a larger problem, a crisis of confidence on the part of not a few members. Had I spoken to Haitians, African-Americans and other Catholic minority communities, I suspect their reactions to the closing of parishes might have been even more negative.

Perhaps the Archdiocese needs a more thorough process if it expects to bring its people along with its plans.

Richard Griffin

News clips of demonstrations against the marriages of gay and lesbian people frequently show signs condemning supporters of such marriages to hell. One such sign pronounces the awful judgment: “God hates homosexuals.”

I have substituted the word “homosexuals” for another word that I consider too vulgar to be printed here. It is with some reluctance that I avoid that word because it offers a perfect example of the abuse that gay and lesbian people sometimes have to endure.

Though I like to believe that the people indulging in such abuse do not belong to my faith, I know better. Some of my fellow Catholics, in their zeal to defend marriage as they have known it, have often hurled reproaches against those whose sexuality differs from theirs. I deeply regret their actions, and hope they will come to see that this way of defending marriage is not Christian.   

Gay Catholics who have been on the receiving end of insults, abuse, and hatred from people who regard themselves as loyal members of the church can tell you how painful it is to meet rejection from those who profess the same faith. These abusers apparently see no contradiction between their professed love for Jesus and their ill treatment of brothers and sisters whose sexual drives are different from their own.

Not a few Catholics, as well as many others, feel apprehensive about the milestone event that took place in Massachusetts last week. From now on, unless the legality of marriages between members of the same gender is overturned by the voters two years from now, same-sex marriages will remain legal in the Commonwealth.

I am aware, of course, that this event, hailed as another breakthrough in civil rights, is decried in other quarters as a violation of God’s law.

The latter view is that of the official Catholic Church. Both the Vatican and American bishops have condemned same-sex marriage, seeing it as weakening heterosexual marriage and providing an inappropriate setting for the raising of children. In a statement released last week, Sean O’Malley, the Archbishop of Boston, began by saying “It is with deep sadness that we will realize this Monday the creation of same-sex marriages.”

To his credit, however, the archbishop went beyond this beginning and urged “that our sadness at what has happened should not lead us into anger against or vilification of any group of people, especially our homosexual brothers and sisters.” Further, he reminds Catholics that “our task as Christ’s disciples is to build a civilization of love. We must see each person as an irreplaceable gift from God.”

Archbishop O’Malley’s statement followed by a day another issued by a group of more than 100 prominent Catholics. After taking note of the “considerable controversy” about the legalization of gay marriages, these leaders have called attention to a pastoral message issued 18 years ago by the American Catholic bishops to parents of homosexual children.

In that message, the bishops said: “The teachings of the church make it clear that the fundamental human rights of homosexual persons must be defended and all of us must strive to eliminate any forms of injustice, oppression, or violence against them.”

The Massachusetts Catholic laity and clergy finish their own brief statement by saying: “We call on all of our brothers and sisters in the Commonwealth to treat same sex couples with respect and to do no harm to them or their families. We urge a respectful discourse and dialogue among all people.”

I have talked to two Catholic pastors who worked on the statement. Father Robert Bullock acted because of his alarm at “the rancor and anger and the language being used toward homosexual people.” He calls such behavior “reprehensible” and sees the statement as a corrective to such attitudes.

Father Walter Cuenin, for his part, says: “As a faith community, we need to find ways to dialogue with one another with respect.” With regard to the alienating effect of hateful actions toward them, he adds: “Gay people belong in the church” and he wants to make sure they are not rejected.

My hope is that this statement of Catholic laity and clergy will help ensure peace based on mutual respect among members of the faith community and all people of good will. Whatever our position on gay marriage, it is vital for us to treat one another with love.

Richard Griffin

“A long life makes me feel nearer truth, yet it won’t go into words, so how can I convey it: I can’t, and I want to. I want to tell people approaching and perhaps fearing age that it is a time of discovery. If they say – of what? I can only answer, ‘We must each find out for ourselves, otherwise it won’t be discovery.’”

“You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done, which may take some time, you are fierce with reality. When at last age has assembled you together, will it not be easy to let it all go, lived, balanced, over?”

These two quotations come from Florida Scott-Maxwell, a woman who successively was a short story writer, a playwright, and psychologist. Her words here come from a small book of reflections, “The Measure of My Days,”   published in 1968 when she was 85 years old.

I frequently distribute these quotations to audiences to whom I have spoken about growing old because I consider them full of wisdom. This woman at a time of physical decline gives expression to the beauty found in the search for truth and in its discovery at the last.

The search for truth cannot be put into words, the writer says, nor can the spirituality that supports it. In talking about truth, she reveals something vital about later life that most people who have not yet arrived there know nothing about. This well-kept secret is that old age is a time of and for discovery.

American culture is notoriously dubious about the value of later life and makes us fearful about approaching it. Too often, it is seen in almost exclusively negative terms: decline, disintegration, death.

A woman who is nervously approaching her 50th birthday gave expression to this conventional view in the New York Times Magazine, two Sundays ago. Daphne Merkin wrote: “All I can see in front of me is a decades-long campaign of vigilantly keeping the forces of decrepitude at bay.”  If this is truly all she can see, then she remains terribly ignorant about the experience of Florida Scott-Maxwell and huge numbers of other older people.

Were you to listen to attitudes like Ms. Merkin’s, you would never realize that advancing age can be the best time for development of the soul. If you truly care about your soul, you can be like an explorer of a new world, the inner world marked by breakthroughs into the light.

In the second quotation, I love the phrase “fierce with reality.” This is a kind of fierceness that endows human life with a special value. To judge by her writing, that is what Florida Scott-Maxwell had as she moved into her middle 80s and eventually into her 90s.

She speaks of coming to possess “all you have been or done,” a mysterious interior work of reviewing life and embracing its precious parts. In doing this, we draw from the events of our life the value that has lain hidden in them. At least, this is the way I interpret what the author is talking about but I am confident meditation on her words can produce further meaning.

Notice that she calls attention to the need for time. An interior agenda of this kind cannot be rushed. It will probably take years to accomplish this spiritual task. We will have to resist the typically American approach whereby everything has to be accomplished ASAP and devote much leisure time to this exploration.

The writer sees it as a task of assembling ourselves, putting ourselves together spiritually in a new way, piece by piece as if in a jigsaw puzzle, until we have become a new whole. Obviously, in thinking this way, we are forced to use imagery to describe spiritual realities that cannot otherwise be grasped at all.

Then we are prepared to let it all go. When the interior work is accomplished we become no longer resistant to surrendering ourselves to God or the light, or ultimate reality. In this view, there is a time for everything and this is the time for final gift of ourselves.

Scott-Maxwell speaks of the final surrender as “easy.” Surely it will not be that way for everybody. However, doing the interior work would seem to be the ideal preparation for whatever may come.

Richard Griffin

John Dominic Crossan is a biblical scholar who has written 20 books and has lectured widely on Jesus and his times. In delivering three talks last week to an alumni group at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, he proved to be a crowd-pleasing speaker with a creative message. How that message squares with the mainline Christian understanding of Jesus’ mission is a basic question that remains after the lectures are over.

Crossan, for 19 years a Catholic monk and then a professor at De Paul University, used his first lecture to present Jesus as a resident of an Israel dominated by the Roman Empire. This situation gives a sharp edge to Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom of God. The Romans regarded their empire as supreme, and their emperor as a god. In proclaiming another kingdom, Jesus put himself in mortal danger.

In a view diametrically opposed to the Roman one, Jesus points to “what things are like when God rules the world.” Beyond that, using terms that Crossan finds “stunningly original and creative,” Jesus proclaims that the kingdom of God has already begun. Those who accept this reality adopt a new set of values, and place themselves in opposition to the power-holders of this world. For Jesus and his followers, the world of the power-holders is patently unjust.

This injustice is to be remedied, not by armed struggle, but rather by conversion to the God of justice. The world of restored justice and order is symbolized in Jesus’ image of a banquet at which all sorts and conditions of people will come together and share food.

This vision implies that God has come to “clean up the mess” caused by the injustice of the world, and has put his creation back in order.

This restoration is a process that Jesus shares with his followers. Jesus intends for those who accept the Kingdom to take an active part in sharing food and other gifts with others. The story of the loaves and fishes, in which Jesus miraculously feeds five thousand people, offers a powerful example. Jesus’ followers take an active part in helping to feed those who want to eat; for Jesus, this participation is vital.

However important this task, Crossan claims that the Church wants nothing to do with it. For him, this refusal means that the Church fails in the basic mission that Jesus expects it to fulfill.

In his second lecture, Crossan focused on the passion and death of Jesus. Almost inevitably, the speaker devoted considerable time to Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion of the Christ.” He has many criticisms to make of the film, the most important of them bearing on Gibson’s theology.

In theological terms, the main problem of the film, for Crossan, is its vision of God — a view that suggests that God wants to punish Jesus as severely as possible in order to make up for the sins of human beings.

Gibson has bought into what Crossan calls the “substitutionary atonement” explanation of the passion that focuses on suffering rather than sacrifice. But Crossan asks: Do we have to accept this as the best theological position? The speaker’s answer is no because, for him, this view implies a monstrous idea of God.

In his final lecture, Crossan directed his attention to the Resurrection of Jesus. In focusing on the scriptural accounts, he emphasized that they should be read in a pre-Enlightenment perspective, before that 18th century change of outlook brought us the scientific way of looking at things.

Crossan does not attempt to define what the Resurrection of Jesus is; but he suggests that its significance lies in the Kingdom. The Easter events show God becoming the power that cleans up the injustices of this world. Crossan sees the appearances of the risen Christ as parables about God’s power.

For me, Crossan’s presentation, though filled with the sparkle of a master speaker, failed to satisfy theological curiosity. His treatment of the Resurrection, especially, fell flat, detailing all the things it is not while offering little of what it is.

To call this central tenet of Christian faith “a metaphor that God has become the clean up of the world” seems to me flat and banal. It makes me long for a definition of Easter that comes closer to those that have excited Christians through the ages.

Richard Griffin

For Christians, the Easter season is a celebration of new life. In practice, it can often feel like a springtime festival. This year, for our family, it was not. The sudden death of Joanne, at the beginning of Holy Week, confronted us in a new way with the sorrow of Good Friday and the promise of the Resurrection.

The wife of my youngest brother, Joanne was beloved by everybody in our extended family. As we gathered for her funeral, we realized that all 13 of her nieces and nephews were there, some from long distances and agendas crowded with workplace appointments. Three generations of our family also came, along with many friends, neighbors and colleagues.

The funeral liturgy, with its ancient texts, managed to capture some of Joanne’s buoyant spirit and gifts of personality. One nephew read from chapter 31 in the Book of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible. There, the writer speaks of the ideal woman, one filled with wisdom, practical know-how, love of her husband and children, and reverence for God.

This text is about 2500 years old, and society has been profoundly transformed in the interim. But the “valiant woman” of Proverbs can still be found in our own day.

Joanne, whose Thanksgiving dinners were legendary, and who could create Halloween costumes on five minutes’ notice, was surely a cousin of the biblical wife who rises early, provides food for her household, and puts her hand to the distaff and the spindle.

Joanne’s radiant presence was evoked for us in the verses: “Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come.” And, like her predecessor, Joanne was loved and honored by her family: “Her children rose up and called her blessed; her husband, too, and he praises her.”

Joanne’s niece read from the First Letter of John, which teaches that “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God and God in them.” One family historian claims that the same passage was read at Joanne’s wedding 30 years ago. In any case, it was appropriate then and now.  Her love embraced her immediate family and reached beyond, to her nonagenarian aunts and to the children at the local school who were struggling with learning disabilities.  

The third reading was the most challenging: the passage in the Gospel of John in which Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. When the dead man comes forth from the tomb wrapped in linen bands, Jesus says: “Unbind him, and let him go.”

For the pastor commenting on this passage, and for many of us present, Jesus’ words suggest that, like Lazarus, the human soul is liberated, set free, beyond the grave. Our childhood catechisms took this approach almost as a matter of course. But when we are confronted by the sudden loss of one we love, nothing about our belief is routine.

In preparation for Easter Sunday this year, I had taken as my own the view of an Orthodox theologian who emphasizes how radical the resurrection faith of Christians really is. It is not the same, he says, as believing philosophically in the immortality of the soul.

Instead, the Easter event whereby Jesus rises from the dead calls Christians to a faith in bodily rebirth comparable to the birth that begins our life on earth. Our emergence from the womb may be the experience that comes closest to the reality of Easter.

Confronted with the sudden death of Joanne, however, I felt challenged to find this meaning in our loss. I could not deny that she had gone from this world along with all of the gifts that belonged uniquely to her. I struggled to hold on to my faith in the promise of the Lord to bring her to life once more in an entirely new and unimaginable way.

As we continue to grieve for the loss of Joanne, I commit myself to this Easter faith more deeply. This faith goes beyond believing in the soul’s survival; it looks toward our rising as embodied human beings. Standing in the darkness of Easter morning, I look forward in hope to Joanne’s  rising as did the resurrected Christ in whom she believed.

Richard Griffin

My friend Richard Parker describes himself as a seventh-generation Episcopalian. This scholar, now in his late 50s, grew up in Southern California, the son of an Episcopal priest and pastor. In recent years, my friend has served as a member of the vestry at his place of worship, Christ Church in Cambridge.

Trained as an economist, Richard Parker lectures on public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. By contrast with many other academics, he takes a serious interest in religion, both for his personal life and for its role in the public sphere.

In a recent talk to churchgoers at Harvard, Prof. Parker shared his conviction that religion has long been and continues to be a powerful force for social justice in American life. Those who think otherwise are ignoring a prime fact of our history and national character, he believes.

Some people associate religion in America with backwardness on issues of race and prejudice. But this is plainly wrong. Dr. Parker considers religion as a strong progressive force, keeping America moving forward toward greater social justice and the ideal of equal rights for all.

Pollsters continue to be amazed by the extent of religious belief and practice among Americans. Some 90 percent say they believe in God, and fewer than one percent call themselves atheists. Not even Ireland approaches such figures.

Yet recent times have seen a steep decline in numbers of those belonging to the Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, and other mainline Protestant churches. This phenomenon has led some to call this the end of the Protestant era in America. However, for Prof. Parker, it is by no means the beginning of a post-religion era, only a time of realignments.  

Some Protestant churches may continue to decline, but other groups have flourished. Currently mainline Protestant churches form one-quarter of our overall religious population, evangelicals another quarter, Roman Catholics a quarter, with Jews, Muslims, and others filling out the whole. In all, an estimated 1500 to 1800 religious denominations can be found in America, exhibiting an astonishingly wide variety of belief and practice.

The religious scene changed notably in the 1960s with the candidacy of the Catholic John Kennedy. His campaign pushed into public view the question of how free he would be to make decisions over against the authority of his church. The solution made then by Kennedy and his advisors was to assert that his religion was a private matter that would never lead to any such conflict.

That was a mistaken solution, according to Richard Parker who believes that religion cannot be removed from the public square. In time, Kennedy’s election and service as president came to lessen prejudice against Catholics and to accord to them a full place in American life. Ultimately, something of the same would happen for Jews and others.

When the Moral Majority came along in the 1970s, new battles were fought in the name of religion. Religion became what Parker calls “a proxy for the debate about race and region that has been going on since the 18th century.” But this movement, a kind of replay of the Civil War, failed and the Moral Majority lost influence.

Prof. Parker judges that those religious groups which have opposed progress in race relations, gender issues, and inter-religious connections have not succeeded in their efforts to turn back the clock. By his reckoning, both the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition have fallen far short of their goals and must be judged failures.

The Moral Majority declared bankruptcy in 1978 after having failed in efforts to recruit conservative Catholics and Jews. For its part, the Christian Coalition has also come upon hard times financially. Ultimately, both proved to be regional movements rather than truly national organizations.

For those who espouse a progressive approach to politics, this speaker offers cheering words. To his mind, the struggle for racial justice and other social goods has been a great success. The forces of reaction can seem powerful but, he asserts, they have actually been in retreat for a long time.

Religion still matters, Dr. Parker asserts, and the mainline message of the American Protestant tradition has taken firm hold in our public life. “You can be both progressive and religious, as Americans have been for 300 years,” says this man of faith and of unabashed commitment to what he regards as progressive politics in keeping with the American spirit.

Richard Griffin

Reaching for images of Easter, the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins calls the risen Christ an “immortal diamond, a beacon, an eternal beam, a trumpet crash.” Sound and light impress him as best suggesting the splendor of the resurrection event.

Others among us think of the Resurrection as a new birth. I feel drawn back in memory to the only birth I have ever actually seen. When my daughter was born, I felt unique awe, mixed with intense joy, at her emergence from the womb to begin life in the world outside.

The Easter event marks the single most important moment in the Christian faith, the one that gives this faith its central meaning. According to the Gospel witnesses, Jesus has risen from the dead with a new life to be shared with all who believe and love.

“Open wide your hearts that they / Let in joy this Easter Day,” the same poet Hopkins tells members of the faith community. And worshippers raise their voices to sing: “Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia.”

My Greek Orthodox friend Theo is visiting Greece this week. There he will be celebrating Easter today and exchanging with fellow Christians the greeting “Christ is Risen / He is truly risen” as the Orthodox have done for many centuries.

My friend feels glad to be celebrating this feast day in Greece. There, he says, Christians commonly recognize it as the most important single day of the year. They realize that the rising of Jesus from the dead forms the center of the Christian faith.

Theo’s full name is Theoharis Theoharis, making him the only person I know who can introduce himself with only a single repeated word. I mention it here because his name also bears a religious meaning since the Greek from which it derives means “gift of God.” That fact may make him realize, more immediately than others, how his very being, like that of every human, comes as a charism from God’s hand.

Believing in Easter brings Christians into a faith more radical than even those deeply committed usually realize. The Orthodox priest John Garvey, writing in “Commonweal,” emphasizes how different it is to believe in the Resurrection from believing only in the immortality of the soul.

“To believe in resurrection,” he says, “means that just as there was no life before conception, there can be no life after death that is not given by God’s willing it to be so.”

And he continues even more radically: “We are putting ourselves completely into the hands of a God we cannot understand, except through trust –  -stepping over the edge of a cliff in the dark, hoping that the promised net will be there –  – that what we have been told, second-hand, will be true.”

This Easter faith is the gift of generations of Christians who came before us and passed it along. They were not bequeathing to us a smooth reconciliation with death, making it easy to accept the fact of dying. Rather, the believers in the Easter event were offering to their inheritors a religion that would confront them with the fact of all new life coming from God.

Again Father Garvey presses the point: “Christianity is not meant to reconcile us with death, but to see it for the horror it is. Jesus weeps at the tomb of Lazarus, and at Gethsemane he is filled with horror at what awaits him. This is a contrast with those forms of religion that console us with the idea that ‘death is just a part of life.’”

Easter means that death was not to have the last word; life would.

Easter 2004 comes into a world packed in many places with terror ready to explode without notice. The desecrations recently inflicted upon bodies already dead in Falluja reveal, in case we needed more evidence, the depths of madness to which human malice will take people.

The Easter faith shows a different way, a path of peace based on confidence in God’s desire for human beings to rise toward new life. Easter carries a promise of rebirth that remains open even now, in the conditions of our present life, and for an unimaginably bright future as well.

Richard Griffin