Courageous Kids and Popes

Introduction

Jesus’ authority

One Sabbath Jesus came to the town of Capernaum in Galilee and entered the synagogue there and began to teach. Scripture says, “The people admired him and his teaching, for he taught as one having authority and not as the Scribes and Pharisees“(Mk 1:21-22).

Quite descriptively Jesus tells us how they taught. With a long litany of woes he lashes out at them saying, “Woe to you Scribes (teachers of the Law) and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You place heavy burdens on people’s backs and you don’t lift a finger to help them. Woe to you Scribes (teachers of the Law) and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You prance around in the synagogues with your long flowing prayer shawls and with ostentatious phylacteries tied to your foreheads and wrists. Woe to you Scribes (teachers of the Law) and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like white-washed tombs that look so nice on the outside but inside are filled with dead men’s bones and rotting flesh. Woe to you Scribes (teachers of the Law) and you Pharisees, hypocrites! You are scrupulous in paying tithes on mint, cumin, and dill, but all the while you neglect the weightier matters of the Law, like justice, compassion, and honesty“ (Mt 23:13-36). That’s how they taught.

The authority of his words

Jesus, on the other hand, teaches with authority. He tells us a powerful parable about selfishness. Once upon a time there was a rich man who dressed in fine purple robes and ate splendidly everyday, while outside his gate lay a poor beggar named Lazarus begging for the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs were licking his sores. Both men eventually died, and the selfish rich man was buried in Hades, while Lazarus was carried to the bosom of Abraham (Lk 16: 19-31).

He tells us another powerful parable about the waywardness of all our human journeys. Once upon a time, there was a father who had two sons, and the younger said to his father, “Give me my share of the inheritance. I’m getting out of here and am going off on my own.” Off he goes to a foreign land where he squanderers his money on pleasure and prostitutes. When the prodigal son hits bottom both of money and especially of meaning, the wayward son returns to his senses, and says, “I am going back to the house of my father, and I shall say to him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and thee. I am not worthy to be called your son. Take me back simply as one of your hired hands.” But the father, prodigal with forgiveness, orders a fine robe for his son, leathern sandals for his feet and a ring for his finger. Then he orders the fatted calf to be slain and a banquet be held to celebrate, because a brother and a son who was lost has now been found (Lk 15:1-32.).

Jesus tells us that mother of all his parables—the parable of the Good Samaritan. It’s a parable about morality’s heights and immorality’s depths. Once upon a time a man going from Jerusalem to Jericho was waylaid by robbers and left half-dead. Along came a Jewish priest who saw the poor man dying by the wayside but passed him by. Along came a Levite (a temple assistant). He too saw the poor man, did nothing and passed him by. My gosh! How immoral can one get! Then along came a despised Samaritan. He stopped and poured the oil of compassion into the poor man’s wounds, hoisted him unto his beast of burden and hurried him off to the nearest inn where he dug deeply into his pockets to pay for the man’s care and cure. My gosh! How much moral than that can one get!

The authority of his deeds

Jesus taught with authority not only by his words but also by his deeds—by who he was and what he did. When he rescued the frightened woman caught in adultery from the prurient old men who caught her and were poised to stone her to death, he taught us (Jn 8:1-11). When he cured the blind man from Jericho sitting by the wayside begging not only for alms but also for eyes to see, he taught us (Mk 10: 46‑52). He taught us when he placed the healing of a poor woman bent over for 18 years before the observance of the Sabbath, protesting to the Scribes and Pharisees that if one may lead an ox to water or pull it out of a ditch on the Sabbath, then he on the Sabbath may also cure this daughter of Abraham afflicted for 18 years (Lk 10:13-17).

When he rescued a bridal party from running out of good spirits by changing gallons of water into wine for them, he taught us (Jn 2: 1-12). Jesus taught us when he endorsed all little people of all times by praising a wisp of a widow whom he saw casting her mighty mite of two pennies into the temple treasury, declaring that she had given more than all the others (Mk 12:41-44) When Jesus criticized the Scribes and Pharisees, the religious leaders of his day, because he thought that religion was so important that it was worthwhile criticizing, he taught us (Mt 23:13-36).

The authority of an ordinary Joe

We are all teachers. The clergy are teachers. The laity are teachers. Parents for sure are teachers. Like Jesus we powerfully teach not so much by what we say but especially by who we are and what we do.

Through e-mail I received this story about Jerry Quinn. Hear how powerfully he teaches us. He’s 53 years old and owns a bar and restaurant in Boston. In the morning newspaper one day he reads about the plight of Franklin Piedra, a 33 year old Ecuadorian, suffering from chronic kidney failure. His mother wants to give him one of her kidneys. The transplant would cost at least 100,000 dollars, and she has no health insurance.  The Ecuadorian Consulate suggests that he go home and die. Jerry Quinn has a better idea.  “I’m not a very wealthy guy,” he said. “I’m comfortably off, but I got this thing in my life—you can use only one car, you can use only one kitchen, you can use only bathroom, you can only eat so much. That’s my theory of life. So what more do I need?”

Quinn was saving his money for a major down payment on a two-bedroom apartment in a suburban part of Boston with a river view and all. But now another thought keeps popping up, and he can’t get rid of it. He calls the reporter at the New York Post who wrote the story. He says he wants to help. She asks, “How much do you want to donate—a hundred bucks? A thousand bucks?”  He replies, “I’d like to do the whole thing! The whole 100,000 dollars!” Piedra and Quinn finally met. Said Quinn, “He hugged me and kissed me and told me I was an angel. As I thanked him I could feel the shivers going up and down my back.”

The article doesn’t say a word about Quinn being a good Catholic, as good Irishmen are known to be. He might be a “roaming Catholic” as many are these days. He might even be some kind of a rounder. I don’t know. But no doubt about it, he powerfully taught us not by anything he said but by who he was and what he did.

The authority of a pope

Listen to the story of another man who powerfully teaches us. He’s not an ordinary Joe like Quinn but a pope—Benedict XVI. As Fr. Joseph Ratzinger he was a very close friend of Fr. Hans Küng, a Swiss German Catholic theologian. Both taught at the famous Catholic University of Tübingen in Germany during the 1960s. In fact, it was Fr. Küng who urged the university to hire Fr. Ratzinger. Both served as theological experts for the German bishops at Vatican II. At Tübingen they had a standing weekly dinner appointment on Thursday evenings to discuss a journal they edited together.

But with time they parted company both physically and especially theologically. Küng, in fact, eventually became Cardinal Ratizinger’s archenemy and nemesis. In 1979, Pope John Paul II stripped Küng of the right to teach Catholic theology because he challenged Roman Catholic teaching about papal infallibility. It was known that Ratizinger, as a member of the German Bishops’ conference, played an important role in that revocation. From that time on Küng was a staunch critic of Ratzinger’s (the future pope’s) doctrinal positions and his methods of reining in the church.

The animosity between the two grew to a high pitch. When another German Catholic theologian at odds with Ratizinger, a man by the name of Johann Baptist Metz, celebrated his 70^th birthday in 1997 with a symposium, Archbishop Ratzinger was on the program. As it turned out, the two men actually spoke rather fondly of one another. That infuriated Küng and he bitterly remarked, “It is astonishing and a deep scandal that Metz would offer that Grand Inquisitor a forum. He is the chief authority of the Inquisitorial office. It ‘s like having a general conversation about human rights with the head of the KGB!”

The deposed German theologian repeatedly requested a meeting with his predecessor Pope John Paul II who never responded. Shortly after Ratzinger’s election as Benedict XVI, the deposed German theologian, Küng, requested a meeting with the new German Pope. Küng tells us that Benedict responded almost immediately. A date was set when he would be in a more relaxed setting at his summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, a few miles south of Rome. On Sept. 24^th 2005, shortly after his election on April 19, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI graciously met with his archenemy.

During a four-hour session that stretched over dinner, the two men essentially agreed to disagree on doctrinal matters. Back home in Germany, Küng said, “The things we have in common are more fundamental. We both are Christians, both priests in the service of the church, and we have personal respect for one another.” He also said his meeting with Benedict was “very joyful,” with “no reproaches or polemics.” It was a “sign of mutual respect” and “a step forward.”

To the dismay of some Vatican peers, Pope Benedict courageously broke bread with a nemesis who tells him he’s not as infallible as he thinks he is. What powerful teaching for a very divided church in terrible need of healing! What powerful teaching not by words (not by motu proprio or papal bull or encyclical) but by who he, Benedict, is and what he did.

The authority of a kid

We are all teachers. The clergy are teachers. The laity are teachers. Parents for sure are teachers. Yes, even kids are teachers. During the Christmas season up in Milwaukee every year we tell ourselves an exceptional story of a young kid. The story began on the 6^th of December 1984--feast of jolly old St. Nick, famous for his gift-giving. That day a bus driver, whom everyone liked and called Kojac, was going west on Wisconsin Ave. It was about 3:30 in the afternoon and it was only l0 degrees above zero. A tattered and torn woman entered. She was pregnant, and she had no shoes on her feet! Mind you, 10 degrees outside and she had no shoes on her feet. School was out, and the bus was full of high school kids, and they were all making fun of her.

The bus pulled up to 124^th and Bluemound Road. A kid stepped up to the front and was ready to get off. He was about fourteen years old -- just that perfect age when kids supposedly have no brains in their heads and are utterly selfish. "And then I saw the darnest thing I had ever seen in my life,” said the bus driver. "The darnest thing! This kid had his shoes in his hands, and his feet were bare! And he says to this woman: `Here, M’am, you need them more than I do!' I cried," said the big strapping bus driver. "I cried, and so did the woman!"

Well, the barefoot boy stepped off the bus into the winter cold and Kojac wiped away the tears and off he drove his bus. But the story came back to life the next morning. The bus driver was on his route as usual, and he arrived at 124^th and Bluemound Road where the lad (Francis was his name) got off the day before. And there stood the boy again! Kojac dashed out and pulled him close to his bus where he captured this story with his camera. After the snapshot, big Kojac got back into his bus, pulled out a long green handkerchief, blew his nose, wiped away the tears, and said, "That's Francis. He got me again!"

The next day, Saturday, December 8^th, the snapshot and story of big Kojac and little Francis was spread over the front page of the Milwaukee Journal. The following morning, Sunday, December 9^th, the story went forth by UPI to the entire nation to be read and seen by all. Even President Reagan read the story and sent the boy a letter of thanks. By Sunday, hundreds and hundreds of others were joyfully weeping with Kojac over their cups of coffee and the Sunday newspaper. Some years later the story even became a chapter in a book entitled Courageous Kids.

Conclusion

Courageous kids and popes

Yes, even kids can powerfully teach, as little Francis taught big Kojac and the tattered and torn woman and brought both to tears. He touched the whole nation and even the President of the United States. He courageously touched all his peers making fun of the poor woman. He taught not by any words he spoke but by everything he was and did.

Words are basically cheap; they don’t cost much. Deeds are costly. They cost Quinn $100,000. They cost the kid who gave away his shoes the jeers of his peers demanding blue-jean conformity from him. But his deed got him written up in a book entitled Courageous Kids. Words like “Love your enemy” are cheap. Deeds are costly. In Vaticanesque culture it takes a lot of courage for a pope to eat humble pie by breaking bread with an archenemy who tells him he’s not as infallible as he thinks he is. If that event is, indeed, a “step forward,” if it augurs a brave new path, it could get Benedict XVI written up in a book entitled Courageous Popes.