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Starting
Point Pondering the sublime dignity of all humans
By WILLIAM GRAHAM
Gathered in a university classroom,
considering the place of Christian social thought in the lives of individual
Christians, in the Body of Christ and in Chicago, a group of students
considered the proposal that direct involvement with the poor, among other
things, ought to make us cry out to God ever more urgently to show mercy to the
oppressed by changing the hearts of their oppressors.
One of the students, a police officer with over two decades
experience on the force, wondered aloud why we would pray for those
pieces of s***! He was invited by professor and fellow students to answer
the question himself.
He did so remarkably well, beginning by tracing the path of his
recent class work. His effort is of special note in that he made careful use of
both scripture and church documents in answering a question, crafting his own
developing opinion in light of those sources.
He immediately put aside his initial vulgarism, and began with
Gaudium et Spes, The Constitution on the Church in the Modern
World, which insists that the human person has sublime dignity. He noted
that the adjective sublime, which finds its roots in the Latin for high
or elevated, means (a) lofty, grand or exalted in thought, expression or
manner, or (b) of outstanding spiritual, intellectual or moral worth, and (c)
tending to inspire awe usually because of elevated quality (as of beauty,
nobility or grandeur) or transcendent excellence. If God has given that awesome
dignity to humankind, it has been given to each man and every woman. No one is
left out. Though some may choose to act in ways that seem not in keeping with
sublime dignity, the dignity is there by virtue of birth. Leo XII noted, in
Rerum Novarum, that the state cannot take away rights that humans have had
since before the state existed. If the state cannot take away ones human
rights, then one individual may not take away anothers rights either,
including human dignity and the respect that such dignity commands. Gods
gift of dignity, which can be squandered, must not be disrespected by any other
individual.
But in a follow-up, he was asked where the fathers of Vatican II
found their inspiration to craft such a document. Were they pointy-hatted
intellectuals or vestment-clad children of the 60s? Were their assertions
born in that moment or of reliable roots?
On a roll, the officer paused, flipped open his Bible, and made
specific reference to the creation stories in which God decides to make
humankind in the divine image, after which God saw everything that he had
made, and indeed, it was very good (Genesis 1:31).
Not yet ready to stop, he made reference then to Psalm 8, in which
the singer lauds God for having made humans a little lower than God, and
crowned them with glory and honor. You have given them dominion over the works
of your hands; you have put all things under their feet. Who can
disrespect such a creation?
How do hearts become hardened, and how does one become an
oppressor, and why? Who knows? But such hardness is an abomination in the eyes
of God, he asserted, pointing next to Psalm 95 in which God warns, Do not
harden your hearts. Psalm 95 says those whose hearts go
astray, and who do not regard Gods ways are to hear the warning:
They shall not enter my rest.
Christian charity calls the prayerful, suggested the officer, to
pray for those whose hearts are hard, asking that hearts of stone be changed by
Gods grace into hearts of flesh. Only then can the world be transformed
into the fullness of Gods reign. Thus there is urgency to the task and to
the prayer; we cannot delay even an hour or a day.
All of these scriptural considerations, he asserted, must have
been the inspiration of the great Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins when he
wrote of the Just One, who Acts in Gods eye what in Gods eye
he is --/Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,/Lovely in limbs, and
lovely in eyes not his.
With such an attitude both in prayer and in good works, the
officer said, overwhelming problems will seem more approachable. We will be
quickened both in hope and in perseverance to work for a transformed society.
And this, he concluded, is our role and our duty as members of the Body of
Christ. One cannot argue with such airtight logic or so inspired a
presentation.
Onward, then, and upward, with an officer as companion and
guide.
Fr. William C. Graham is working on a book titled Clothed
in Christ: A Spirituality for Lay Ministry, from which this excerpt is
taken. His e-mail address is NCRBkshelf@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, November 17,
2000
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