Viewpoint
Wounded from family fight over a cathedral
By JEFF DIETRICH
We have climbed to the top of his
towers. We have occupied his bulldozer and thwarted his groundbreaking, and,
according to some insider sources, robbed the newly finished Cathedral of Our
Lady of the Angels of $10 million in donations. We have gone to jail, walked
picket lines, disturbed star-studded brunches. We have been put on probation,
threatened with fines, had our arms twisted by private security guards, been
scolded by the deputy district attorney, praised by the city’s leading
rabbi, and secretly endowed with $10,000 by a local Catholic bishop.
We have even had a few fights among ourselves about how this thing
should go. And I am glad our opposition to the cathedral is over. It has not
been a fight like any other fight we have ever had, not like fighting with
bureaucrats or police or corporate or government entities.
Fighting with the church is more like fighting with your family.
Part of the reason that I find myself in opposition to Cardinal Roger Mahony is
because he symbolizes blatant patriarchy and I, like many others in my
generation, have a few “father issues.”
I can’t stand the guy! I find him pretentious, pompous,
authoritarian, overeager to manipulate the gospels for purposes of fundraising
and civic boosterism. And I suspect that he has similar feelings, finding me
pretentious, self-righteous, reflexively anti-authoritarian and overeager to
manipulate the gospels for purposes of embarrassing the father figure.
Despite all of my built-in rancor at hierarchy and father figures,
as well as my shock and outright disgust at the current church sex scandal, I
still find myself thrown off balance by this intimate familial struggle. Not
unlike Jacob wrestling with the angel, I have been wounded in this
conflict.
Unlike other opponents who occupy distant seats of power, the
cardinal, though powerful, is available: His office has always been open to us;
he has come to the soup kitchen to say Mass; he has written to me in jail; he
greets us at church events and speaks glowingly of us in the press.
Now I do not for a minute delude myself into thinking this is
anything less than a calculated gesture. But it is still a reflection of the
intimate nature of the struggle. A bit too intimate for me, because to oppose
the church, one must reflect on the church more closely than one might
otherwise choose to do, causing me to ask how I can even belong to an
organization so at odds with my own vision. And further, in the intimate
embrace of this struggle, I am constantly forced to reflect upon my own
conflicted motivations and inner demons.
Some years ago in the midst of communal strife, Sr. Kathy, our
facilitator, told us that we must always remember that it is not flawed human
beings, but the Holy Spirit that calls communities together. And that each
community has a special gift to give to the church and to the world. It was
quite a bold insight for me at the time and it still is: that the Holy Spirit
had called us directly and specifically, and that God actually had a mission
for this tiny ragtag operation that couldn’t even pay its bills on
time.
Our community gives to the church, and to the world, a somewhat
dubious gift. Dubious in the sense that it is neither graciously appreciated
nor well received. It is the gift of prophecy.
Our vocation is to prophetically critique the world from the
perspective of the poorest of the poor. We are required by God and the Holy
Spirit and the suffering presence of the poor, daily and directly in our faces,
to ask of each and every project proposed by church, state or private
entrepreneur: “Will this relieve the hunger of the people in our soup
line? Will this project get a blanket, a pillow, a room for the night for our
friends who sleep on cardboard? Will this project provide a pair of shoes and a
clean pair of socks?” Basic needs that most projects, including the $195
million Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, do not ever satisfy, because most
projects begin from the top down, and the biblical vision is always from the
bottom up.
Even the cathedral is premised on this worldly assumption, which
presumes that the poor will be cared for once the wealthy have gotten an
expensive dose of aesthetic and religious adrenaline from cathedral
spirituality. And thus we continue to be perceived, like some of those
irascible guys in the Hebrew Scriptures, as unreasonable, outspoken and deeply
suspicious of grandiose architectural projects.
Like Jacob, I am wounded from this struggle. I walk slower now
because the pain makes me more aware that my strength is my weakness. I have
come to recognize not only the flaws of Mahony and all the church patriarchs,
but I have also begun to perceive my own flaws as well. I recognize that I am
compulsively drawn to combative situations with authority figures, that I seek
public adulation by positioning myself as the “Heroic Underdog-Advocate
for the Poor.”
I recognize that Mahony is not a bad person. I believe that he
desires to do God’s will and is fully convinced that building a cathedral
is the best way to do that. But he is also someone who is a functionary within
an enormous top-down institutional structure, a corporate executive who
sometimes makes spurious decisions in favor of the institutions that often do
not favor the poor or victims or the gospels.
And I believe that he needs to be harassed by the gifts and
prophetic questions of this community. I don’t delude myself into thinking
that we have too often troubled his conscience or his sleep. I assume we are
nothing more than pesky little mosquitoes to him. And I can only hope the
church has been infected with the holy prophetic gift of this community that
transcends my own flaws and brokenness, and unites me in conflict, opposition
and struggle in the same family with the cardinal.
Jeff Dietrich is a member of the Los Angeles Catholic
Worker.
National Catholic Reporter, October 4,
2002
|
