Only something unthinkably bad could make Slate and National Catholic Register cover the same story in the same tone, featuring the very same image. It may be time to start thinking, \u2019cause that thing has happened. Now that a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School has claimed 27 lives, 20 of them belonging to children, media of all persuasions are touting St. Rose of Lima church as an oasis of sanity and hope.<\/p>\n
On December 14, only a few hours after the shootings, Slate\u2019s John Peters reports,<\/a> the church, which stands within walking distance of the school, was already full, with the crowd \u201cspilling over to the lawn.\u201d He goes on to relate the Mass in detail, from the opening hymn, \u201cBe Not Afraid,\u201d to highlights from the priest\u2019s homily. (One line, \u201cWe\u2019ve got 20 new angels today. I don\u2019t know about the six adults,\u201d gets a laugh.) The Register\u2019s Joseph Pronechen follows up the next day,<\/a> describing the continuing prayer vigil, which drew out-of-town visitors unknown to any of the victims. <\/p>\n Capping off both articles is the same photo from Getty\/Pool images: a man kneels in a pew at St. Rose\u2019s, clutching the bridge of his nose to dam up his tears. Other pictures from St. Rose, or of a generally religious flavor, are turning up all over the Internet. The Huffington Post is running a 139-photo slideshow,<\/a> where visitors can see St. Rose parishioners holding hands or candles, scrawling messages to the victims or kneeling before makeshift shrines. It includes a photo of two \u201cunidentified nuns,\u201d looking solemn and shell-shocked. <\/p>\n Not since 9\/11 and its aftermath has Christianity supplied the symbols and vocabulary to soothe and unify a broken-hearted nation. Then, the Christlike figure of FDNY chaplain Fr. Mychal Judge, carried by firefighters from the crash site,<\/a> gave human particularity to the heroism of hundreds. When workers found a 17-foot cross of steel beams<\/a> in the wreckage, New York City Mayor Giuliani ordered it placed on a pedestal. It\u2019s served as a memorial to the fallen ever since; in 2006, it was moved from a spot by St. Peter\u2019s Church to the National September 11th Memorial and Museum.<\/p>\n In that moment of crisis, those images formed part of an unofficial civil religion \u2014 Rousseau\u2019s term for a vaguely defined supernatural justification for broadly defined standards of good behavior. The 1942 film Mrs. Miniver<\/i> concludes with an Anglican priest celebrating Mass in a bombed-out church. To wartime audiences, liturgical Christianity served as a shorthand for everything that wasn\u2019t fascist. In the words of Franciscan friar Brian Jordan, the 9\/11 cross stood for \u201chope\u201d \u201cfaith\u201d and \u201chealing.\u201d Jordan of course found these qualities in a specific belief system, but by speaking so open-endedly, he seems to have been aiming at those who rejected that system in whole or part.<\/p>\n But even in that short time, a lot has changed. Less than six months after the Towers collapsed, the Boston Globe broke the story of predatory priests and enabling bishops. Drawing moral ammunition from these revelations, and from the 9\/11 hijackers\u2019 religious motives, a new wave of would-be secularizers has been fighting to drape all symbols of faith, no matter how ambiguous. Even the World Trade Center cross has come under attack. In 2011, a group called the American Atheists filed suit<\/a> to have it removed from the museum. For these folks, any religion is ipso-facto uncivil.<\/p>\n Over the same period the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has been working to make its message ever less ambiguous, even to the point of dissolving partnerships with charitable institutions that dispute Church doctrines. When the Leadership Conference of Civil and Human Rights backed Elena Kagan\u2019s nomination to the Supreme Court, the Bishops\u2019 Conference withdrew.<\/a> This past spring, the bishops announced a doctrinal assessment of the Girl Scouts.<\/a> (Okay, nobody called it that, but the term captures the white-glove stringency with which the investigation will likely proceed.) Just recently, Pope Benedict approved this line-drawing. According to his his motu proprio,<\/i><\/a> Catholic charities can no longer receive money from, or publicize the activities of, organizations that \u201cpursue ends contrary to the church\u2019s teaching.\u201d If the official Church was ever willing to join a broad-based love-fest, it\u2019s not anymore.<\/p>\n These past three years, mutual Church-World antagonism has gained a height unknown since Al Smith ran for president. When the secular media reported new (in the sense of previously unknown) incidents of priestly sex abuse, their Catholic counterparts complained of malicious ill-treatment.<\/a> They were by no means always wrong. When President Obama approved the contraception coverage mandate of the Affordable Care Act, along with its narrow conscience exemptions, the bishops condemned him as positively anti-Catholic.<\/a> In the run-up to their Fortnight for Freedom, their tone ranged from counter-revolutionary<\/a> to other-wordly.<\/a> In America, as it was, there just didn\u2019t seem to be much room left for the Catholic Church, as it <\/em>was.<\/p>\n Now, just a few weeks after elections that tended to favor contraceptive users, marriage minded gays and lesbians and the non-religious, the mourning rituals at St. Rose have placed Catholicism and its trappings in a positive light. To see pictures of grief-stricken Newtownians bowing their heads in prayer, and say, \u201cWhat superstitious sheep,\u201d would take one cold-hearted SOB. Shoot, it\u2019d take Bill Maher. No, if the media in general have an axe to grind with the Church, they\u2019ll have to grind it somewhere else.<\/p>\n At the same time, offering its grounds \u2014 and, in the construction of shrines, its symbols \u2014 as sops for human despair might be the one remaining act that allows the Church no opportunity to separate the wheat from the chaff. Imagine a priest buttonholing the guy in the Getty image and saying, \u201cHey, you \u2014 yeah you. Pound sand, fella. I saw that Facebook meme you posted in support of marriage equality. What? You want to be a wise guy with me? Okay, now youse can\u2019t leave.\u201d I can think offhand of a few Catholics who might enjoy the spectacle, but I have a hunch it\u2019s a satisfaction they\u2019ll have to defer for the time being.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unlikely that this ghastly episode will lead to a widespread religious revival. On the other hand it\u2019s perfectly possible that seeing or experiencing the Church\u2019s healing influence could bring a few lapsed Catholics home, or even carry some seekers through the door. The real question is: are we making a memory? Will these written and visual accounts of the Church at its least combative and least exclusionary embed themselves the the nation\u2019s consciousness as one of those march-on-Selma moments that people will sigh over even after alliances have broken down?<\/p>\n