Featured on Where Peter Is on September 14, 2024

For the first time in almost a year, Pope Francis held a press conference aboard the papal airplane this past Friday. During the conference, he was asked to offer guidance to United States voters in the upcoming presidential election as they are “faced with a candidate who supports ending a pregnancy and another who wants to deport 11 million migrants.”

Pope Francis responded that both candidates “are against life: the one that throws out migrants and the one that kills children.” He added, “ I can’t decide; I’m not American and won’t go to vote there.”  went on to say, “One must vote. And one must choose the lesser evil. Which is the lesser evil? That lady or that gentleman? I don’t know; each person must think and decide according to their own conscience.” Here he reiterated Church teaching that, in a situation where both candidates hold views that are opposed to Catholic beliefs, each person must vote in accordance with his faithfully formed conscience.

He also emphasized the importance of voting and said, “In political morality, it is generally said that not voting is ugly, it’s not good.” (Courtney Mares’s article “Pope Francis: U.S. presidential election a choice between ‘the lesser evil’” offers a more detailed summary of the conference and highlights the other topics that Pope Francis addressed.)

While the Pope’s words are likely disappointing to supporters of both candidates who would have preferred a more direct endorsement, they follow the Church’s precedent of leaving the act of voting in the hands of the faithful. His words also align with the document of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on voting, Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, which highlights multiple issues that voters should consider when determining how to vote.  These include abortion, migration, the right to fair living wages, the right to join unions, euthanasia, racism, international relations, gun violence, climate change, protection of and support for the family, and limits of governmental power. Each of these issues falls under one of the interrelated categories of Human Dignity of the Person, The Common Good, Solidarity and Subsidiarity.

The document, which last underwent a major revision in 2015, also recognizes that voters “must consider not only candidates’ positions on these issues, but their character and integrity, as well.” This, too, is a very serious and often underappreciated consideration, which must be submitted to the prudence of an informed conscience.

In its new November 2023 introduction to the document, the USCCB suggests that the faithful should approach this election with the spirit of the Good Samaritan, who bound the wounds of his enemy thus forming social bonds and connections. The bishops admonish American Catholics to forego fear and hostility and to instead show mercy to one another while engaging in open and honest dialogue. They suggest that voters take time away from social media and news channels that tend to fuel anger and division. Instead, they ask voters to spend their time in prayer, service for others, adoration, reflection on the Bible and the study of Church teachings – all of which will help to strengthen and form conscience.

Fittingly, they close their introduction to the document with the following prayer:

“May God bless you as you consider and pray over these challenging decisions. May God bless our nation with true wisdom, peace, and mutual forgiveness, that we may decide together, through our democratic processes, to uphold the dignity of life and the common good.”

Featured on Where Peter Is on May 2, 2022

In the first part of this series, I shared my own story of miscarriage and infant loss, and how grieving those children brought me into contact with parents whose children died in very different circumstances. While the pro-whole-life movement addresses an array of issues, my experiences have taught me that there are specific things that we can and should be doing as a Church to address the needs of parents who are facing a terrifying diagnosis for their unborn child or pregnancy. 

We must be relational

We follow a relational Savior. While Jesus certainly gave sermons to large groups of people, many of the Gospel accounts involve very personal encounters with those around Him. The woman at the well and the story of Zaccheus (Luke 19:1-10) are perfect examples of this, but we also see it in the way that Jesus abided with His disciples and healed the sick who sought His help. Jesus was not someone who just made a declaration and moved on. Real, meaningful human interactions were important to Him. In fact, they were so important to Him that He touched an untouchable leper (Matthew 8:1-4) and took time out of a life-saving mission to speak to a chronically bleeding woman (Matthew 9:18-26). Even the Mass itself was born out of a dinner of fellowship (Luke 22:7-38). 

In the same way, the Church, as Christ’s representative on earth, must be a relational Church. We cannot just make pronouncements about what is right and wrong and expect people to follow us. Instead, we need to be able to identify with and understand those around us and engage with them in dialogue as we build relationships with them. As Pope Francis has said, “If there is one word that we should never tire of repeating, it is this: dialogue. We are called to promote a culture of dialogue by every possible means and thus rebuild the fabric of society.” 

In the case of abortion for medical reasons (abortions that are sought at the recommendation of a doctor due to severe prenatal diagnoses or grave risks to the lives of the mother or her baby), we can only foster these relationships by entering families’ profound grief and agony without judgment. Many parents grieve profoundly following abortion, even when apparently freely chosen, and this grief is often downplayed or dismissed. We must grieve with them for their children, just as Jesus wept with the crowd that gathered outside of Lazarus’s tomb. By connecting with families in this way, we not only witness to the dignity of their children’s lives, but we ourselves can become sensitive to the ways that our communication about abortion might trigger extremely painful emotions for others. We will also better understand the decisions parents face and be able to help them problem-solve for better solutions. We will be more able to gently identify and define any fundamental differences in the ways that we understand abortion so that everybody is able to “speak the same language” and true dialogue can occur. In short, we will become more empathic, which, rather than ceding ground, will make us more capable of love. Out of that love, meaningful relationships and dialogue become possible. 

Drawing near to families who face horrific diagnoses is essential if the Church is to have any moral authority. As Pope Francis said early in his papacy, “…the thing the Church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity.”

We must teach the whole truth

Our glorious and powerful Christian faith holds the answers to all our questions and is the balm for all of our wounds. But too often, we focus narrowly on the things that we “can” and “cannot” do and allow our faith to become something that is limiting rather than fulfilling and liberating. We lay a heavy legal burden on our neighbor’s shoulders when Jesus has said that His yoke is easy and light. Pope Francis recognizes this which is why he said in the same interview, “We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. The Gospel must be more simple, profound, and radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral consequences flow.” When we focus on making arguments about how abortion is wrong, we lose sight of the wonder of God’s right and holy plan – a plan for all lives to glorify Him and to be made beautiful through His redemptive love. 

When families face grave medical diagnoses for their unborn children, our communications with them should be lovingly Christ-centered and rooted in the confidence that Jesus offers the only answer to the pain they face. When Noemi died, I told my childhood pastor, “If Jesus’ salvation and Resurrection aren’t real, then I don’t think I can handle this.” For parents who are facing their child’s disability or imminent death, the words of St. Peter are profoundly true, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” (John 6:68) The Gospel provides families with the strength to face what seems impossible. It offers them the reassurance that their child’s suffering is not in vain. It gives them the comfort of a God who walks with them through their grief and who guides them on the paths they should take. Perhaps most significantly, it provides them with the hope that whatever life their child has will be meaningful, precious, and unending.

When we share the Good News with families who are suffering, we are offering them so much! We are revealing an infinitely good God who works all things together for good – even the nightmare that they are currently living. Rather than imposing our belief that abortion is wrong, we are sharing the joy of our Lord who guides us to all that is good and who gives the strength to entrust even our most vulnerable children to Him. 

The Christian faith is the foundation of the idea that the life of each child is, in the words of Pope Francis, “a gift that changes the history of a family…and this child needs to be welcomed, loved and cared for.”  It is also the well from which suffering families can draw the strength they need to embrace that life in all of its forms. St. Zelie Martin was keenly aware of this. It was only because of her faith that she was able to write:

When I closed the eyes of my dear children and buried them, I felt the sorrow indeed, but it has always been resigned sorrow. I did not regret the pain and cares I had borne for them. Several people said to me, ‘It would have been better if you had never had them,’ but I could not endure this sort of language. I did not think that the sufferings and anxieties could be weighed in the same scale with the eternal happiness of my children. Then they were not lost forever; life is short and full of miseries, and we shall find them again up yonder.

When we share Christ, we direct grieving families to the same means of choosing life that enabled St. Zelie to discount her own suffering in light of the heavenly joys of her children. 

We must all go through the “dark night”

While we know that God has unimaginable blessings in store for families that choose to give birth to children with serious medical conditions, we cannot deny that these families pay a heavy price when they choose to protect that child’s life. There is a huge emotional and physical toll on all members of the family. This emotional cost is compounded when families lack the resources to provide their infants with appropriate medical care – whether that care takes the form of life-sustaining treatments or the ability to have a peaceful, painless death. 

Additionally, the financial cost of having a child with severe medical issues is high, even when the babies do not live for long. While many families receive support from their communities and charities, funeral costs alone can overwhelm many families’ finances. My family experienced this firsthand, when we discovered that we had exhausted all of our savings within a month of our daughter’s death, despite the immense generosity of our family and community during that time. 

For families whose children survive but live with life-impacting disabilities, these costs grow exponentially and they last for the duration of many children’s lives. This is also the case for families of mothers who choose to sacrifice their own lives for that of their unborn child. These mothers leave behind a mother-less family that feels her absence in every imaginable way. Deciding to give birth is not the endpoint for these families, but the starting line; we need to be prepared to run the rest of the race with them through ongoing emotional, practical, and financial support. 

While some of the difficulties that these families face are unavoidable, many can and should be alleviated. Doing so demands we recognize that pro-life ministry to these families does not end with a successfully avoided abortion. Pope Francis describes the role that we must play thus: “The ministers of the Gospel must be people who can warm the hearts of the people, who walk through the dark night with them, who know how to dialogue and to descend themselves into their people’s night, into the darkness, but without getting lost.” When families see that they will not be alone if they birth their infant, no matter the cost, they are freed to choose life for their child, rather than feeling driven by fear to abortion. When they know that their child will be welcomed and integrated into their community, they are better able to welcome their child themselves. And when gravely ill mothers know that their family will be enveloped in the care of their communities, it is easier for them to say goodbye. 

As a Church, we can be instrumental in supporting these families in systemic ways: by advocating for universal and comprehensive health insurance, a living minimum wage, flexible work hours, quality childcare options, better access to mental health care, and paid family leave. We can also support them by promoting perinatal hospice and palliative care, bereavement resources for all family members, and programs that offer respite breaks for families that are providing round-the-clock care. However, we can also do it in smaller, more personal ways like ensuring that all areas of our churches and Catholic schools are truly handicap-accessible, with adequate facilities (including family restrooms and other areas) to address the needs of people with disabilities at all ages. We can do it by welcoming the “joyful noises” of all children, but especially those with disabilities, in our Masses. We can even support these families by promoting environments that protect their children’s health through vaccination and other basic public health measures. Additionally, those of us who are privileged to know families with medically fragile and disabled children can be intentional about reaching out to and including those families in our activities and lives. 

The benefits of living in relationship with families whose children face medical challenges and disabilities are manifold. Most relevantly, many families within our parishes have never encountered the kinds of disabilities that families face when their infants are given grave prenatal diagnoses. When these same families find themselves faced with such a diagnosis, they have no model for how to parent such children and no way to envision how their child might fit into and bless their families and communities. The more we make our churches places where the disabled and medically fragile are embraced, the more all of our families will be able to witness God’s work through these individuals and their families. We will be better and stronger communities and we will help families who face similar diagnoses to imagine the good that could be, rather than being trapped by the fear of their child’s needs. At the same time, we will create a space for families to communicate more freely about complex and difficult topics like end-of-life care and caregiver burn-out.

We must dream

There are many things that we, as a Church, can do to walk alongside families that are struggling with terrifying medical diagnoses in their children. However, if we are going to do so in a way that changes lives and hearts, we are going to have to be dreamers. Our society is not set up to allow children with severe disabilities and their families to thrive. The endless pursuit of progress and growth, even in our own spiritual lives, is not conducive to integrating children whose progress is often hard to see. Our drive to succeed keeps us from valuing the beauty of those whose energy is directed more towards day-to-day survival. The fast pace of our lives keeps us from savoring those who journey more slowly. Our belief that our possessions are things to be earned and deserved, prevents us from recognizing the blessing of uplifting one another. 

We must change. We must reorient ourselves towards the value of whole lives. We must become a place where the first is really last and the last truly comes first. We need to foster a world where those who suffer are embraced and supported and where hope is kindled. We must build bridges between one another and foster true, deep, impactful relationships that lead us to action. In short, we can do what Pope Francis calls us to in his book, Let Us Dream: “We can reorganize the way we live together in order better to choose what matters. We can work together to achieve it. We can learn what takes us forward, and what sets us back. We can choose.” 

If we want to help families that are wrestling with a serious prenatal diagnosis, we must choose to dream about what can be and keep on dreaming. 

Featured on Where Peter Is on April 27, 2022

Content Warning: This article includes personal stories of miscarriage and infant loss as well as discussions of abortion which may be difficult for some readers. 

I was a child the first time I heard the Christian band 2nd Chapter of Acts sing, “My God, they’re killing thousands. Killing thousands, without blinking an eye.” I still remember my horror when my mother explained what the lyrics referred to: that sometimes people kill babies before they are even born.

That was my introduction to abortion. As I grew, my lessons continued. Raised an evangelical Christian, I could have been the poster child for the pro-life movement. I helped gather items for baby showers at the pregnancy care center and I organized pro-life walks at my public high school. I engaged in lengthy debates with a close family member, whose nursing career had shown her the horrors of pre-Roe v. Wade botched abortions. In my spare time, I read books about abortion survivors and mothers who chose to fight for their sick infants’ lives at great cost to their own. My carefully crafted homeschool sexual education curriculum even involved a meeting with the director of our local pregnancy care center.

When, as a young adult I became Catholic, many would have assumed that I might become even more immersed in the pro-life movement. However, while the reality of abortion continued to upset me, I found myself becoming uneasy about some of the tactics that the pro-life community was using to fight the battle against it. At first, my concerns were theoretical. I reasoned that confronting a pregnant mother as she entered an abortion clinic was probably not terribly effective. Living in the city, I had plenty of opportunities to see how universally avoided and ignored any unsolicited “street preaching” was, and I began to suspect that protests at abortion clinics were met with similar responses. 

Later, my doubts became more personal. I began to see friends who had previously been open to Christianity turn away from it because of the often loveless presentation of pro-life arguments. I heard people who I care deeply about tell me that they could not believe in Christianity because of the hypocrisy they perceived in people who were pro-life. They were scandalized by Christians who professed to value an unborn baby but simultaneously devalued so many other lives (immigrant lives, Black lives, prisoners’ lives, and the lives of those living in poverty, for example). I watched as Catholics walked away from the Christian faith and I began to grieve as people I loved moved further and further from Christ, pushed away by zealous people who were so focused on the lives of the unborn that they had forgotten the precious souls of the born. 

While I was experiencing this growing unease about the pro-life movement’s methods, I lost one daughter at birth and another at 10 weeks gestation. Later, I found myself journeying alongside other bereaved parents, some of whom had made the heart-wrenching decision to terminate a medically compromised pregnancy that they had eagerly anticipated because they wanted to spare their child from future suffering. A common theme for these parents was their fear that even their closest family members would judge their decision harshly and without listening. As a result, many of them had never spoken openly of their losses prior to joining a confidential support group. Instead, they were grieving alone – sometimes for years. 

I sat with these parents who were desperately grieving the loss of their babies and remembered my own daughters’ vastly different deaths. I reflected on the times that I have worried that the first one, Noemi, suffered as she died. When we met to discuss her autopsy results with my doctor, I desperately asked him, “How long did it take for Noemi to lose consciousness without oxygen?” I needed him to say it took seconds, but he could not honestly give me the answer I sought. Instead, he quietly said, “Because she had not started breathing on her own yet, I really don’t know.” My maternal heart broke all over again. For weeks, I lay awake at night wondering if my baby knew to panic when she could not breathe, even though she had never taken a breath before. Was the fear of suffocation learned or instinctual? I worried that she must have experienced terrible pain as her lungs became so eaten by bacteria that they broke apart and adhered together again in all the wrong places. I felt so guilty that she had suffered all alone under a bright light while the NICU team broke her tiny ribs and stuck tubes in her sides to release the air escaping from her ruptured lungs. I grieved that my husband and I were not with her as she died, since my own blood pressure began crashing shortly after she was delivered. 

In contrast, I remembered the peaceful death that my miscarried baby, Marianka, must have had because of her Turner Syndrome. I thought about her passing away silently in the warm embrace of my womb, never knowing cold or panic. I was comforted to know that her little misshapen body never knew the pain of destruction; it simply could not function and grow in the way that it had been knitted together. I agreed with my doctor when she said, “It is a blessing it happened so early because usually it happens later with Turner Syndrome.” I smiled to think that Marianka was never alone–not for a moment. She went straight from safely inside her mother into the arms of God.

With these memories of my worries about my children’s suffering crowding my mind, I find I cannot blame parents who try to give their sick babies a quicker and more peaceful death, even if abortion may not actually provide such a death. Some of these parents face diagnoses that will make their child’s life extremely difficult, if not impossible. Others experience pregnancy complications that put their life or the life of their unborn child in grave danger. Often, doctors recommend the termination of their pregnancies as the only real option for them. When I consider what it must be like to find myself in such a situation, I realize that if I did not believe that God alone holds our lives in His hands, then I suspect that I too would choose to end my child’s life before he or she suffers. If I did not believe that God would redeem even our most terrible suffering, then I would give anything to limit my child’s pain. I understand these parents; I share their grief from losing a child. I am angry that Christians, who should be walking with these parents through their terrible suffering, are magnifying it by alienating and vilifying them as “murderers.”

For a long time, these experiences caused me to hesitate when someone asked me if I was pro-life. Even now, my convictions and my reflections on both my early experiences and my maternal ones still  make this a challenging question to answer. Instead of answering with a simple “yes” or “no,” I have begun to respond that I am “pro-whole-life.” By providing us with a “consistent ethic of life,” I believe that the whole-life approach offers a way out of the gridlock of pro-life versus pro-choice and towards a more meaningful dialogue that can protect the lives of the unborn while simultaneously caring for God’s precious children who have already been born.  

In the next installment of this series, I will explore some practical suggestions, rooted in our Catholic faith, for how we can offer support to families who have faced abortion decisions due to prenatal diagnosis.

Featured on Where Peter Is on January 4, 2022

Of all the decorations that we put out for Christmas, my favorite are my Nativity scenes. Over the years, I have collected many different portrayals of Christ’s birth – from paper cut-outs to nesting dolls – and each offers a different insight into Jesus’s arrival. While most of our scenes are completed on Christmas morning when the Jesus figures are placed in the mangers, our family’s main Nativity is finished right before we take it down on Epiphany. Our Wise Men arrive at the stable after making a journey through our house during Advent and Christmas. With two young children, their journey is almost as perilous as that of the real Magi, and I am always reminded of the real-life challenges that faced each of the people involved in the first Christmas story.

The beauty of Nativity scenes is that they offer us little visual oases amid our festive holiday chaos. When we choose to allow our eyes to rest on them and our minds to embrace them, they draw us towards the reason for our Christmas celebrations and help us to consider Christ’s birth in new and tangible ways. It is for this reason that Pope Francis has noted the importance of these “simple and wonderful” reminders of our faith. In 2019, he wrote that Nativity scenes are “a genuine way of communicating the Gospel, in a world that sometimes seems to be afraid to remember what Christmas really is, and erases the Christian signs, keeping only trivial and commercial images.” Pope Francis invites us to “pause before the nativity scene, because the tenderness of God speaks to us there. There we contemplate divine mercy, which became human flesh and is able to soften our gaze.” Considering the role that Pope Francis sees Nativity scenes playing in our faith, it is not surprising that, each year, the Vatican carefully selects one to display on St. Peter’s Square. Throughout Pope Francis’s Papacy, these yearly displays have served to highlight lessons that are near to his heart.

By Christmas of 2013, Pope Francis’s first Christmas as Pope, his teachings were already subtly influencing the Nativity scene on display in St. Peter’s square. Titled Francis 1223-2013, the scene was meant to remind the faithful of the saint who is credited with first using a Nativity scene to teach the Christian faith and whose name Pope Francis chose as his own: St. Francis of Assisi. Consequently, while that year’s Nativity scene was in many ways a traditional one from Naples, it included an emphasis on the humility of Christ who came to humble and ordinary people. Intermixed with the richly robed traditional figures were peasants dressed in poorer attire. A beggar even knelt before the foot of the Christ Child as a clear reminder that Jesus came for all of us and that He has a heart for the poor and the destitute, just like our current Pope and his namesake.

The Vatican Nativity of 2014 was donated by Verona and staged like an opera. This dramatic setting was meant to remind us that Jesus is God’s masterpiece given to the world. Yet even in this elaborate scene, which differs from the simplicity that Pope Francis often embraces, the youthful faces of Jesus’s parents remind viewers that God’s majesty came to very real, vulnerable people here on earth. Far from a masterpiece meant only for the world’s elite, Jesus was God’s opus for all people.

This idea of Christ coming humbly for each one of us was emphasized in the life-size nativity of 2015. The openness of the scene and the lifelike characteristics of its figures made viewers feel like they could walk into it and begin conversing with the shepherds or fall down in worship before the Christ Child that lay in the middle of a simple, everyday barn scene. In Pope Francis’s address thanking the people of Trento for the Nativity that year, he said that the scene reminds us that Christ “did not change history by performing an elaborate miracle. He came instead with total simplicity, humility, and meekness. God does not like grandiose revolutions of history’s powerful, and he does not use a magic wand to change situations. Instead, he makes himself small, he becomes a child, so as to attract us with love, to touch our hearts with his humble goodness; to unsettle, with his poverty, those who scramble to accumulate the false treasures of this world.”

In 2016, the Vatican Nativity took this message of Christ coming for all of us and sought to help those who saw it to apply it to their lives and actions. In the midst of growing nationalism throughout the world and the migrant crisis in Europe, the Nativity scene included a boat that Pope Francis said was a reminder of migrants who have died while journeying from Africa to Europe. He said, “The painful experience of these brothers and sisters reminds us of that baby Jesus, who could not find shelter, was born in a stable in Bethlehem and was later brought to Egypt to escape Herod’s threat.” One reporter noted that the message of love portrayed in this Nativity scene was emphasized by the homeless men and women who sat around St. Peter’s square waiting for a free hot shower or haircut through Pope Francis’ programs for the homeless.

Love for the least of these was central to the 2017 Nativity, which ensured that the point was truly driven home. My personal favorite of all the Nativity displays during Pope Francis’s papacy, this scene created quite a bit of controversy among people who felt that the message was too intense for Christmas. While the infant Jesus was at the center of the scene, the figures that surrounded the more traditional Christmas statues revealed another aspect of our Savior through the corporal works of mercy that they were performing. In one corner, a woman quenched her neighbor’s thirst. In another, a man offered clothes to a naked boy. At the bottom of the scene, with arms outstretched, a figure walked toward an invalid who was bandaged and flushed with fever. Next to them, someone visited a prisoner and, in a far corner, a young man provided burial for a dead body. The actions of these untraditional figures not only prodded viewers to do what Jesus called them to do, but they reminded them that the irresistible baby lying in a manger would grow up to be a man whose teachings demanded that we take up our cross daily, and who taught us that to truly serve Him, we must care for others. In many ways, the 2017 Vatican Nativity scene was a culmination of the teachings from the earlier Nativity scenes of Pope Francis’s Papacy.

Perhaps because of the clear message given in 2017, the Vatican Nativity Scene of 2018 shifted away from the social teachings that Pope Francis emphasizes and recentered on the nature of Jesus himself. The scene that year was carved from sand, which, like the temporal life on earth that Jesus embraced, lasts only a little while and then is gone. The nature of the sand reminded viewers both of Christ’s amazing victory in overcoming death and of the temporariness of life without Christ. Characteristically focused on Jesus’s willingness to sacrifice and to become one with humble humanity, Pope Francis said of the sand that it, “a poor material, recalls the simplicity, the smallness with which God reveals himself with the birth of Jesus and the precariousness of Bethlehem.”

In 2019, the Vatican Nativity scene drove home our need for such a generous Savior who joins us in our own precarious existence. Donated by people in the Northern Province of Trento, the scene included figures that were made to look like real people from the region, one of whom had recently died. The shepherds wore authentic clothes, some passed down through families and worn by real shepherds. The architecture also reflected the reality of the region where it was made, making it clear that the Christ Child came, not just to people long ago and in a far-off land, but to us here and now. While this is a powerful lesson, the wood from which the scene was made taught the greatest lesson: our need for this small child. The wood was taken from trees that had fallen during a severe storm that hit the region in 2019 and which was largely attributed to global warming. As a result, the image that the scene conveyed was literally that of our Savior being born into the midst of the environmental crisis that looms over us. In short, the Nativity scene showed that Christ’s birth brings the light of hope even into our darkest trials on this earth. That was a timely message for a world that was on the brink of plunging into a global Pandemic.

Amid the first dark pandemic winter surge, many looked to the 2020 Vatican Nativity for a similar message of hope and found it wanting. Unlike previous scenes, this one used modern art to portray Christ’s birth. The figures, which were made by students and teachers in the 1960s and 70s were donated from Castelli. Like large ceramic chess pieces, many viewers found them to be cold and strange while offering little comfort. However, for those who were willing to learn from that which unsettled them, the scene held important spiritual lessons. Some were overt, like the astronaut that was depicted as offering baby Jesus the moon or, in other words, offering him our scientific discoveries and humanity’s greatest accomplishments. In a year when scientists rushed to successfully create vaccines against Covid-19, this seemed particularly relevant and a reminder to give thanks for the gift God has given us through the medical community. Other lessons were more subtle. For example, the school where the figures were made during the last century was intended to “revive and modernize” what was once a thriving ceramic industry in the region of Castelli. Like Pope Francis’s book, Let Us Dream, the scene reminds us that, as the traditions and world around us change, we are faced with a choice: to dream about new ways of being in the world that will benefit all people or to cling to the old, failing ways of existing that have caused pain and suffering and will ultimately fail us. The scene challenges us to let Jesus break out of the boxes we often confine him in and to lead us to new and unexpected places, even when, like Abraham, we do not know where he is leading (Heb 11:8). It was, a message that the world desperately needed to hear, but fiercely resisted.

This year, the Vatican Nativity scene came from the Americas for the first time. Celebrating Peru’s 200^th anniversary of independence, the scene depicts Christ’s birth in the setting of Chopca, Peru. The infant Jesus is dressed in the traditional clothes of a baby. The magi come bringing native gifts like quinoa, corn, and potatoes. Instead of donkeys and sheep, the scene is filled with llamas, alpacas and even an Andean Condor. Yet the people are the most captivating part of the scene. Their brightly colored clothing, musical instruments, and joy-filled faces bring a smile to even the most COVID-weary. As Bishop Salcedo of Peru stated, he is constantly learning from the people’s joy and hope, and this is reflected in the Nativity scene on display in St. Peter’s square this year. By choosing to display this Nativity, the Vatican has allowed the people of Peru to teach the world the same valuable lesson that they daily teach their Bishop: that “despite the difficulties, such as the pandemic as well as other ‘pandemics,’ like poverty, corruption or the neglect of government authorities,” it is still possible to find joy and hope in Christ’s birth. In a world that has been repeatedly beaten down by sickness, injustice, environmental destruction, and tribalism, the message of this year’s Vatican Nativity is much needed: Christ has come to all people of all nations and He comes bearing great love and deep joy.

Note: I am working to consolidate all of my work into one location. This article and several that follow, were featured elsewhere and are not necessarily up-to-date with current information.

Featured on Where Peter Is December 20, 2021

“Most people are good,” I reassured my three-year-old son who was convinced that a stranger was about to harm me. Over the past few weeks, the toll that the pandemic has taken on his social-emotional development is becoming more apparent: since we taught him to keep away from people for most of his life, it was probably inevitable that he would start to fear them.

My statement was meant to soothe him and to begin to repair the damage that COVID-19 has wrought. However, even as it left my mouth, I began to wonder if I really believed it to be true. Certainly, I did not anticipate being injured by anyone that night, but considering everything that has happened recently in our world, our communities, and the Church, I wondered if I still believed that most people are good? So many of the people I once esteemed as models of faith – both lay and religious members of the Church – have done and supported things in the past few years that are totally opposite of what is good and right. If I hesitate to say that even those faith warriors are good, then who is? As I thought about this, I began to question if the belief in human goodness that I was imparting to my son aligns with what I believe as a Catholic. My journey through the penitential season of Advent and my reflections on my own sins also came into stark focus reminding me that I did not even consider myself to be good.

What we believe about the goodness of most people has a profound impact on the way we live and how we understand our relationship to God. When we believe that most people are not good, then we risk losing our motivation to be better. An example of such thinking appeared in an article about a July debate among members of the Ohio State Board of Education over a resolution to review its curriculum to ensure that racism and bias were adequately addressed. The resolution would also require Department of Education employees and contractors to receive implicit bias training. Board member Mike Toal commented on this training, which he had already received, saying, “I found it disturbing because I could never be that good. Being a Christian, I’ve learned over many, many years that none of us reach that level of purity.” Frankly, if people are bad and there is nothing we can do about it, then he is right to argue that such training is nothing more than disturbing because it simply reminds us of what cannot be. The same could be said of any number of efforts we make to improve ourselves and our world. This negative view of human nature leaves us in a helpless position spiritually as well. Without goodness, what is left for God to redeem?

On the other hand, the belief that people are good flies in the face of what we know about ourselves. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church correctly points out:

“What Revelation makes known to us is confirmed by our own experience. For when man looks into his own heart, he finds that he is drawn towards what is wrong and sunk in many evil ways from his good creator.” (CCC 401)

Of course, one must only glance at a few news articles to see that this is true. The idea that people are basically good leaves us vulnerable to many mistakes. The Catechism itself states that “ignorance of the fact that man has a wounded nature inclined to evil gives rise to serious errors in the areas of education, politics, social action, and morals” (CCC 407), and we see this borne out in our own world. Whenever we rely on the goodness of humanity, it invariably fails. The abuses of the trust placed in the goodness of Church leaders (as manifested in the sexual abuse scandals and mistreatment at Canadian residential schools for Indigenous children) are tragic examples of this within the Church. The refusal of many in the Church to comply with public health recommendations during the pandemic, even within our local parishes, is another.

Viewing humankind as simply good or bad is an incomplete understanding of human nature. It sets us up for errors in our thinking and way of life. However, the Church, in her wisdom, has offered us an alternative understanding of the state of humanity: the doctrine of original sin.

This doctrine begins with the creation story. The good God made people and since He is all good, His creation is also good. In a fundamental way, then, all people are good. However, through the sin of Adam and Eve, sin corrupted God’s creations. The Catechism is quick to point out that the way that this happens is a mystery, however, it describes our human condition after sin in this way:

“By yielding to the tempter, Adam and Eve committed a personal sin, but this sin affected the human nature that they would then transmit in a fallen state. It is a sin which will be transmitted by propagation to all mankind, that is by the transmission of a human nature deprived of original holiness and justice.” (CCC 404)

In other words, the goodness we all have by nature of our status as God’s creation is corrupted. Our Baptism cleanses us from our original sin, but “the consequences for nature, weakened and inclined to evil, persist” (CCC 405). As a result, even those of us who have been cleansed by the waters of Baptism are engaged in a spiritual battle of good and evil throughout our lives. Far from justifying us giving up and settling for our sinful state, it is our obligation as Christians to do everything we can to fight for the victory of good. Pope Francis’s challenging social teachings have made this clear throughout his papacy and I wonder if some of the resistance he has faced stems from a poor understanding of our fallen human nature.

The good news is that while the battle we face is fierce, we are not left to fight it alone. Instead, God Himself fights with us.

“The whole of man’s history has been the story of a dour combat with the powers of evil, stretching, so our Lord tells us, from the very dawn of history until the last day. Finding himself in the midst of the battlefield man has to struggle to do what is right, and it is at great cost to himself, and aided by God’s grace, that he succeeds in achieving his own inner integrity.” (CCC 409)

Ironically, it is by facing our own corrupted, fallen nature and our own daily battle with sin that we truly recognize our need for the Savior whose birth marks the end of this penitential season. For if I was wrong in what I told my son and our goodness has been corrupted, then what hope do we have? None save a Savior whose nature has not been similarly marred.

The glad tidings that the angels proclaimed on that first Christmas night were that the good Savior has come! As St Paul tells us: “So then, just as one trespass brought condemnation for all men, so also one act of righteousness brought justification and life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous” (Rom 5:18-19). The Catechism reminds us, “The doctrine of original sin is, so to speak, the ‘reverse side’ of the Good News that Jesus is the Savior of all men, that all need salvation and that salvation is offered to all through Christ” (CCC 389). That is wonderful news to us who, facing a world that is often so far from good, feel deep within our souls the longing for a Savior and the knowledge that He is our only hope.

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