While religion plays a crucial role in my life, I am not trying to convert anyone by preaching. I am posting this article because I think it is a good indication why I am a active member of my parish, which is in turn active in my community.
No matter what we think, what we were taught or even what we fervently wish, there are too many corners in life that are simply not black and white.
Moving through each day and across the years is a little more complex than uttering "yes" or "no" or "maybe," so we spend an increasing amount of time living in the land of gray shadows, where judgments set in concrete can be difficult and sermons sometimes do not apply.
That's why -- when the call came -- the priest was not surprised. He did not hang up in shock or outrage, or dispatch the caller with condescending dismissal. The news had already moved on the oldest vessel of all, word of mouth, and the priest had half expected to hear from the man because the poor fellow had taken leave from his parish duties.
"I've got AIDS" he told the priest. "How are you doing?" the man asked. "Not too well," he replied. "I've called to ask a favor. I'd like you to say my funeral Mass."
Over a decade society has come to accept that AIDS can claim anyone: bankers, doctors, professors, journalists, football players, actors, musicians, firefighters, cops, teachers. The list is endless as is the appetite of the disease. Yet, for some bizarre reason, the idea of a priest living -- and dying -- with AIDS creates unearned anger among too many.
Part of that antagonism seems centered in the scorn, nearly a loose, unchecked contempt, that permeates too much of the gay-rights movement in it's dealing with the Catholic Church.
In some cases it's displayed as an embarrassingly bad case of heterophobia towards a religious institution that has prospered for 2,000 years largely because it adheres to doctrines, rules, and Canon Law. The church has positions on things such as homosexual marriage, celibacy, and women working as priests. It has a specific view on divisive issues such as abortion. It does not balk at defining morality and immorality with regard to items from urban poverty to child labor, from nuclear testing to movie dialogue. And none of it falls into any shades of gray. So, in one sense it must be easy to be Catholic because you have an idea of what's right and what's wrong according to the tenets of a religion.
Perhaps it is the rigidity that angers so many Catholics today, living in a lapsed world. And maybe it also explains why others seem mystified whenever the Church attempts to exert influence over it's members, as if this were not it's function in a crazy life where it's far easier to roll over and turn a blind eye that to stand up to issues like priests and AIDS.
"Did you offer to bring him back to the priesthood?" Cardinal Bernard Law was asked. "I did, " he answered. "And you offered to care for him in your own home?" "That's correct," he said. "When someone has AIDS, you don't say, 'How did you get it?' You say, 'What can I do to help?' " Cardinal Bernard Law was saying "this is the way we ought to lead our lives."
Cardinal Law was talking about the dying priest. The story involves a marvelous, living definition of the word "compassion" from a man who does not exactly walk around trying to attract attention. The story: When he was told one of his priest had AIDS, the Cardinal called and offer to restore him from his leave of absence. The as the man grew more ill, Cardinal Law called again this time with an offer: Come live with me where you will be cared for until death. "You do what you can to help."
The cardinal was talking just as he was finishing Mass with a priest visiting from Rwanda. The young priest had seen war in his native country claim the lives of his father and two brothers. His mother, two sisters and two living brothers are missing, while five other brothers are in refuge camps a long way from the Boston neighborhood where Cardinal Bernard Law, a priest himself, seems to be doing more than just preaching.
With a hand offered to the dying, even those with AIDS, he is an example of what it means to practice a faith in a world where judgments of black and white are a thing of the distant past.