From the Editor's Desk

Seeing through others' eyes

Two stories in this week’s issue draw us beyond the borders of our presumptions and invite us to see things from another point of view. John Allen reports from Nigeria, ( see story) where he is doing research for his next book on megatrends within the church, and Susan C. Thomson interviews Sr. Clare Pratt, secretary general of the Society of the Sacred Heart ( see story).

Most of the world’s miseries could be eliminated, said Gandhi, “if people were to put on the shoes of their adversaries and understood their points of view.”

It can sound rather condescending to say that we Americans exist in a fairly isolated culture, particularly in this era of instant communications and global commerce. I think the point still holds rather well. Our globalization is done largely on our own terms as is our communicating. On the latter point, we say what we want to say and hear what we want to hear, which is another way of saying we fail to hear a great deal of what others are saying to us about how they perceive us.

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It is a point of view Pratt discovered in spending time outside the United States as head of an order with provinces in 44 countries, all of which she is required to visit. She has come to appreciate the “gifts and values and uniqueness” of other cultures while also arriving at an understanding of other countries’ perceptions of the United States as “unilateral, self-serving, abusive of the very human rights it proclaims.” That sounds harsh and it is difficult to square up that notion with the desire of so many to immigrate to the United States. They are competing realities, but they exist together because so much of our dealings with the rest of the world have little to do with the ideals we cherish here; they have much to do with how we can benefit.

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John Allen is quite good at seeing the point of view of others, particularly among the various parts of the Catholic church. For years he has been making the case that the most powerful forces that will shape the future of the church are gathering today in the global South. I can’t pretend to know what the explosion of membership in the church in areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America portends for the future. What is clear is that this is not the Catholicism of the triumphant, nor the Catholicism of empire. It is, instead, the church and the faith that grows out of grinding poverty and want, the faith that, we know, questions many of the presumptions of the West. We are heading into interesting times.

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Chris Curry, who once worked at NCR as layout editor, responded to my question of last week about why so many Jesuit schools have good basketball teams. Tradition may be a factor, wrote Curry, but his most persuasive case had to do with money. He cited an excerpt from a March 8 USA Today article about Marquette University and its head coach.

USA Today said: “Tom Crean got a new deal immediately after taking Dwyane Wade-led Marquette to the Final Four in 2003 [Wade has since become an NBA star], and while the private school isn’t obliged to release contract terms, tax forms show he was the university’s highest-paid employee in 2004-2005. He made almost $1.7 million. Next-highest was David Shrock, dean of the business school, at $262,171.” So that’s how they do it.

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The late Missouri Sen. Thomas F. Eagleton, perhaps fitting for a politician, found the way to have the final word, literally. As people were leaving his memorial Mass March 10 at St. Francis Xavier College Church at St. Louis University, they were handed a copy of a two-page “Farewell Address” that Eagleton had written nearly a year ago.

It contained memories of childhood and his time as a politician. Near the end, Eagleton, who described himself as “a Pope John XXIII and Archbishop John L. May [the late leader of the St. Louis archdiocese] Catholic,” wrote about the church.

“This may seem to be a strange topic to be raised by me,” he wrote, “but here we are in church and this is my final word. I do not pretend to be the world’s greatest Catholic. Nevertheless, I think the Catholic church is a vital part of American life, conscience and thought. Just as our Constitution is a remarkable, living code of governance and made relevant to the time in which we live, so too the doctrine of the Catholic church is a living code of moral behavior and belief, which must be relevant to the time in which we live. Its timeliness relies upon its capacity to adapt.”

-- Tom Roberts

National Catholic Reporter, March 30, 2007