In Chicago, the Church Wakes Up

I have been waiting for the longest time for the Church to wake up and be holy.

I was so tired of waiting for the Church to wake up and be holy. I know that, countless times in history, the Church hasn’t been faithful to Christ but has tried to be an empire or a lackey to empires instead. I know I don’t have any right to expect that my time in history will be different, but I wished it would be. I believe that when the Church behaves like the Body of Christ, the Church is Holy: really, truly holy, One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. But when she behaves like an earthly kingdom, she is wicked and commits atrocities, as earthly kingdoms do. I wanted to see the Church being holy, in my lifetime. And sometimes I have. But so often, particularly in the last ten years, I’ve seen the Church behave like nothing but an earthly kingdom.

The Church in America, for as long as I can remember, has been the lap dog of the Republican party. I don’t think being a Republican makes you a bad person. I, myself used to vote Republican, before Trump took the party over.  I can imagine a world where I might do it again, though not any time soon. But the Church does not have a political party. The Church is supposed to be Body of Christ. Where a political party becomes extremist and hurts the vulnerable, the Church has to side with the vulnerable against them. And she hasn’t.

I’ve watched the White Christian Nationalist movement eat up my country, relentlessly, in a push that didn’t begin with the MAGA movement. And I’ve waited and waited for the Church to wake up and say “this isn’t the Gospel. This is the opposite of the Gospel. This is anti-Christ.” But so often, the Church has been silent, or complicit, in the face of this anti-Christ movement. In fact, so many prominent Catholics have cheered and joined the White Christian Nationalist movement. There’s a White Christian Nationalist vice president who’s Catholic, and just looking at him makes me angry.

All I wanted was for the Church to wake up and denounce this wickedness.

I have been watching government-sponsored kidnappings and abuse all over the country.

ICE has been arresting citizens all over the country. They are brutally attacking adults and children. They are denying immigrants their due process, which everyone is entitled to have before they’re punished. This is not about enforcing the laws of the United States. This is illegal, lawless cruelty against anyone who looks too brown, and it’s a sin.

I’ve been especially afraid for Chicago, because I have a close friend in Chicago whose children are brown-skinned Mexican Americans. I am frightened every day about what might happen to them. I’m outraged on their behalf. Every day, I watch the news, and worry.

But these past several days have given me hope.

Over the weekend, I watched a cleric protesting at the Broadview ICE facility, in Chicago. People who spoke to the news were calling him a priest, but he’s actually a Protestant minister. He railed and harangued and wouldn’t be quiet. He stretched out his arms and called the prison guards to repentance, until the guards shot him in the head with a pepper ball. And I was in awe. His actions looked so holy. That looked like the Body of Christ, to me.

I watched another group of Protestant pastors praying outside the Broadview facility. They were holding an interfaith communion service in solidarity with the prisoners. A female cleric held up and blessed a loaf of plain old leavened bread that looked like it came from a bakery– not anything like the flat wafers at a Catholic Mass. It didn’t look anything like any Holy Communion I’ve ever received. I know their denomination doesn’t believe the dogmas that I do as a Catholic, about Holy Communion. If I were back in Columbus at the gorgeous old-fashioned parish with the communion rail and the altar servers in lace, and showed them a picture of that communion service, I’m sure they’d have sneered and called them heretics. But they were offering their prayer and their symbol of unity, in front of that terrible prison, to testify to the humanity of the prisoners inside. And again, I saw that they were holy. I saw the Body of Christ.

And then I saw the Catholics join in.

of course, there have been individual Catholics fighting their hardest against this injustice all along, and they should be commended. But this was the first time I, personally, saw anything like this protest.

Father Larry Dowling carried the beautiful ornate Monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament inside of it, just as priests did in Eucharistic processions at the church where I grew up. There were about two hundred other Catholics, priests and laity, with him. There were altar servers in lace. There were religious sisters in veils. They carried a processional canopy, and picket signs as well. They marched to the Broadview ICE facility, and asked to be let in, to bring Holy Communion to the prisoners. The guards turned them away.

“Father, forgive the ones who do not know what they are doing,” said Father Dowling.  “Have mercy on the souls of those who know exactly what they’re doing. Touch their hearts and transform them from stony hearts into fleshy, life-giving hearts. Only through, with and in God will hearts be changed!”