When I received a call earlier this week from Chicago Catholic, the city’s diocesan news agency, they were seeking a quick comment on whether or not the US Jewish community was dealing with a clergy shortage, like the US Catholic community is. I explained that comparisons were tough because we are not centralized the way the Church is, but that by and large, we have plenty of rabbis, even as many of them seek rabbinates that differ from those of even a generation ago. Then it was my turn to ask the reporter a question of my own.
“Why,” I asked, “is this coming up now, as it has been a problem for the US Church for 20 years?” It was, I was told, because the Pope had been publicly encouraging young people to open themselves to religious callings, especially in a major address to the 50th Steubenville Summer Youth Conference.
I was curious to know more, and so my new friend on the phone shared a link with me, and invited me to share whatever further thoughts I might have. That is what I did.
I told him that what struck me was how I was both deeply moved by the Pope’s words, agreeing with so much of what he said, and how deeply I disagreed with one powerful word he used: That word was “only.” It didn’t exactly surprise me, but did genuinely concern me. Four letters that have a less-than-stellar record when used in the domain of faith.
For His Holiness to tell people that “Only the love of God can provide us with true and perfect joy”—and as His Holiness explained, “the love of God” means that we know that God loves us and that we love Him back (and he definitely means God as a him)—suggests an exclusivity that makes it pretty easy to see people as walking in darkness simply because they walk differently than we do.
Even if Pope Leo believes that to be true, as he likely does, too much harm has been done due to that belief for me not to beg him to drop the “only” from the formulation. The assumption that there is only one path to true and perfect joy, especially when one makes that claim in the name of God, or any other redemptive scheme be it religious or political, has a rather deadly track record in human history.
I apologized to my interlocutor if my words were disrespectful, which they were not meant to be, and I even explained that I appreciated the potential power of the “only.” After all, if there is only one way to be truly and perfectly joyful, we can feel that we have arrived and need to look no further. Not the worst feeling in the world.
And yet, since all great religious traditions are a function of someone thinking or feeling or intuiting that perhaps the status quo is not all there is, and that God might have more to offer us than the religious offerings already known to humanity at that time, I question taking the approach of “my way or the highway.” How, I asked, can we know all that God has in store for us and for the world? That assumption would have made it wrong to embrace the very Christian faith the Pope follows. Not to mention, the Rabbinic Judaism that contemporary Jews follow, which is quite different from the religious practice of Biblical Israel.
In fact, I find myself in a funny position because, as I already wrote, so much of the Pope’s address resonates deeply for me. The idea that God is the source of life and love that is bigger and deeper than anything else really is a source of hope and happiness for those of us who have that faith. That a test of how deeply we feel God’s love is how loving we are to others. That Saint Francis bids us to greet others accordingly is a reformulation of Hillel’s teaching in the Mishna, that we should greet all people with a pleasant countenance. And although it’s not always easy to do—I fail all too often—it is a wonderful goal to which we can all aspire.
So I am deeply grateful to Pope Leo for his wisdom, and even challenge myself to think about the wisdom of his using the “only.” After all, if the measure of his wisdom is simply the extent to which I disagree with it, I would be a rather poor and narrow student myself.
And while I am certainly no Pope Leo, I hope that just as I consider the potential value of statements like his, statements that begin with “only,” he and others who gravitate to that formulation will consider the potential cost to using that same word. That mutual consideration could unleash benefits that I think we all could use right now, and which I hope we all find.