On Saturday, October 25, Sister Carol Keehan delivered a motivating and challenging speech during our 50th Anniversary Celebration. If you have a few minutes, I encourage you to read and reflect on her remarks below.
“Thank you very much for the honor of speaking with you tonight on this great occasion. You are celebrating a wonderful service to the entire Church. When I looked at the focus of your institute and thought of how many lives have been touched by your students and graduates over the past 50 years, it struck me as incredible. My congratulations to Michael Garanzini, President and CEO of Loyola, to Brian Schmisek, your director and to the entire faculty and all the supporters of this wonderful Institute of Pastoral Studies.
Fifty years is an incredible accomplishment and a great anniversary. When these things come up, it is always a challenge to determine how to best celebrate and acknowledge this. I can tell you as someone who is looking at 100 years at an association next year, we are struggling to determine the best way to celebrate. And then I thought of you and what you have for celebrating your achievement. And I have to admit you have really pulled it off with pizazz. First of all, you have a new Pope whose obsession is pastoral care, whose focus is clearly the family and evangelizing people where they are because God loves them so much and welcomes them with mercy and we should do no less. If there was ever a moment in the sun for pastoral theology studies, this is your moment and I am so pleased that it is occurring on your 50th anniversary.
Your Institute was a wonderful response to the exhortations of Vatican II and the documents that came out of it. In addition, your early curriculum has continued to respond so well to changing needs and situations. You have assembled a stellar faculty that you should be so proud of. I am especially grateful as someone in health care to see the focus you are bringing to that important arena. We have a great need for well-prepared pastoral care staff and mission leaders. And that need is only going to get more significant in the foreseeable future. Thank you for taking this on in such a professional and credible way.
Now, I have delivered the good news. The challenging news that I have to deliver is that the world today has even greater needs than it did when you were founded 50 years ago. It is bloodier and more dysfunctional. Our world, whether we talk about our neighborhood, our country or our globe, is suffering so much. We could each recite a litany of the overwhelming issues that so often result in violence to self and others as well as the mental, physical and spiritual poverty that afflicts us all no matter where we live. Couple this with a media system and communication structure that not only saturate us but often drown out any alternative message.
The extreme polarization in almost any of our life systems, whether they be family, neighborhood, religions, civil society, government and even our Church, not only leave us drained and disillusioned but can obscure hope. We shudder to think of the impact of this on children.
Yet, we are a people confirmed in hope. A hope not based on a new product, technique or approach that will fix this, but a hope that based on the message and promises of Jesus Christ. Your program is a striking example of that – built on the eternal truths, not counseling techniques, pop psychology, etc. You do what you do because you believe in the dignity of each person no matter what externals obscure that. And you believe in redemption and the possibility to grow into greatness.
Our world at every level hungers to know and believe this. Just look at the response to our new Pope over the last 18 months. How many people who never talk to us about faith or religion, or if they did it was to lament the abuse scandal, now cannot stop quoting the Pope. He is suddenly everyone’s Pope and has been said so often, he hasn’t changed a single rule or theological truth. He has been pastoral.
You as an institute of pastoral theology understand his approach best, you realize the ultimate aim of theology is to pastor the people of God. You have developed such impressive programs to meet and accompany people where they are, in some of the toughest times of their lives.
You understand that there is no incompatibility between the immutable teachings of our faith and the most profound one of all of those teachings, the love and mercy God has for each of us. You also know well the need and power of accompaniment. The potential of grace to do great things in each of us, no matter where we start. Just look at history, St. Paul, St. Augustine, Jacques and Raissa Maritian, Dorothy Day to name only a few of great lovers of God who didn’t show much promise at one stage of their lives and even less orthodoxy. We continue to marvel at what Grace accomplished each of them. It is a core teaching of our faith that that Grace is still operative today.
The last three weeks have been very challenging and at the same time hopeful for many of us. When did a Synod ever get more attention? Listening to the deep concerns many bishops have for those who cannot receive communion, who feel rejected by their church, who long to follow their children up the aisle, and to married people who want their church to appreciate the beauty of married love, the challenges our cultures present today, their love for all their children and their pain at the way some are treated at times. The frank and open discussions about offering the welcome and mercy of God and not appearing to compromise important commandments of God and the wisdom of church teaching over the centuries was heartening in so many ways.
Unfortunately, in some instances these discussions appear to have been hijacked by some in the Church and the media, the loudest and most strident voices now seem to dominate the conversation. We cannot let this continue to be the case throughout this year as we journey to the October 2015 Synod.
That is where you come in, what a way to celebrate your 50th anniversary if you could focus your tremendous knowledge on both theology and pastoral theology to help the church at every level find a way forward, a way that allows “the God of surprises” to show us the best way to express and live out the profound compatibility of his Commandments and his welcoming mercy. You, of all groups of theologians, have the most potential to help the church be loyal to both of these immutable truths. Your exploration of this challenge during the coming year could be an enduring gift to the church.
You know how much families need the support of a robust faith life that includes sacramental participation and also how important it is to have such profound respect for marriage vows that living them fully and not tossing them aside at the first problem becomes a priority for couples and the Church as she accompanies them. You have the experience of working with couples who have incredibly beautiful marriages after working through hard issues.
You have also seen marriages that have no potential to survive as sacramental unions and often do great harm to the partners and their children.
I would say that probably no group of theologians more than those in pastoral theology knows better the importance of family and children for achieving happiness and the eternal salvation of the partners.
The sacredness of all families is clear from St. Paul’s words to the Ephesians, “this then is what I pray, kneeling before the father, from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural takes its name.” All families not just those that are models of virtue.
Exploring this and being a voice that genuinely respects both important values and finds a path as the Psalmist prays “that we may know Lord your way on earth” would be such a blessing for so many.
I cannot believe that it is impossible to do this. Commandments and truths of our faith are never threatened by God’s mercy. Being scandalized by Mercy unfortunately has been a problem for centuries. And it is never when we are closest to the heart of our God. I would also say I think it is dangerous to our own souls. It is one of the things that seemed to irritate Jesus most in the Gospels.
There is a French play that describes the last judgment and the virtuous and the condemned have been judged and each are in line waiting to go to their eternal rewards or damnation when suddenly a rumor starts to circulate that God has decided that all are to be saved and everyone is getting into heaven. At that point, the righteous start to complain, it’s not fair, they haven’t worked as hard, haven’t been as pure etc. and in that instant they are condemned.
It is safer to be on the side of Mercy.
You began 50 years ago in response to Vatican II and in particular to the document Gaudium et Spes, The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. As I reread this beautiful document, I was struck at how often it notes the church’s role in helping to read the signs of the times, the realities of our world today and how to help families fully live their faith in the midst of these.
I hope you will be incentivized to take up the challenge of helping our church at all levels find a way to be the instrument of God’s mercy and at the same time fully express its clear commitment to the sacred teachings that are so much a part of our faith today. You have so much to offer and I will pray you will share that with our Church.”