In Memoriam: Carlos

A good friend and colleage of mine just died, Deacon Carlos Naranjo. Carlos was ordained a deacon in the most recent class, in the Archdiocese of Seattle. He discovered less than a year ago that he had cancer in his ribs. The cancer proceeded rather quickly, and though he fought with determination and hope, he died early on this past Sunday morning, January 7th.

I interviewed Carlos and his wife Martha at the time that they applied for the formation program. He was a Hispanic Catholic, and worked for Boeing. He was personally a pious man, very active with his spirituality and outreach to others. I gave them a good recommendation, and was not surprised when they were accepted for the program. I was also on the evalutation committee, and would up having his "case" assigned to me, for presentation to the whole committee and recommendation to the Archbishop. I was delighted that he was ordained.

After his ordination, I called him to ask him to apply as a chaplain at Children's hospital as a bi-lingual chaplain, with funding through our North Seattle Deanery. He took to this ministry like a duck to water... he was SO GOOD with families! He was serious about the ministry, so attentive to the families, and so deeply spiritual. He was far better with Spanish-speaking families than I could ever hope to be.

He planned to retire from Boeing this past summer, and hoped to become a full-time chaplain at Children's. I supported him in this... and pledged to find the money to support the ministry somehow.

But then he fell ill.

The cancer was first found in his ribs... a bad sign. I'm not a doctor, but everything I know about bone cancer is bad. But Carlos was as upbeat as he was gentle. He trusted that either he would beat the disease (which he did believe he would do) or it would still work out somehow. I was surprised, though, one afternoon... I came to his hospital after a surgery... which he told me that he didn't think he'd wake up from. When he saw me, he broke into soft tears... of gratitude. "I am so grateful to still be here," he said.

And yet now he's gone. I met today with his wife and sister... both named Martha, as coincidence would have it. I have the honor tomorrow evening of sharing prayer with 60-70 family members.

By what grace are we still here, and what is it that God has in store for us?

Saddam and the Death Penalty

I thoroughly enjoyed John Allen's All Things Catholic column this week in the National Catholic Reporter, which touched on Saddam Hussein and Catholic teaching on the death penalty. His commentary proposed the viewpoint that capital punishment may have reached the status, like war, of actions that might not be absolutely prohibited in every case, but seem to be, as a practical matter, "unambiguously wrong" in our day and age.

Allen refers to the Catechism, which states (#2266-7): "The traditional teaching of the Church has acknowledged as well-founded the right and duty of legitimate public authority to punish malefactors by means of penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime, not excluding, in cases of extreme gravity, the death penalty ... [But] If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives ... and the safety of persons, public authority should limit itself to such means." He then quotes various Vatican sources that have condemned the execution of Hussein.

However neither Allen nor any of his quoted sources refer to the fragility of public authority in Iraq, and the possibility that an "imprisoned-for-life" Hussein might not someday be freed to once again wreak his savage cruelty upon his political enemies. Vengeance is rightly cited as insufficient reason for the death penalty. But what about fear, which is certainly one of the driving forces within the current situation? Certainly during his reign, Hussein was one of the most feared of figures, not just in Iraq but in many areas of the world. Does public authority, weak as it is in Iraq, not have the right to protect its people from possible harm?

I'm surprised by my reaction to this one. I've always been against the death penalty, and did appreciate very much that Pope John Paul II spoke against the death penalty, even intervening successfully with the governor of Missouri several years ago on behalf of a condemned man, when he was visiting our country. When the Catechism was promulgated, I also appreciated its treatment of the death penalty as something very strictly limited. And in the US, since we do have the public capacity to safely incarcerate criminals for life, capital punishment seems to have no justification for any case that I can conceive of.

But I doubt that that capacity exists in Iraq, especially for someone like Saddam. And I think it's odd that I don't see/hear anyone recognizing this point.

Resolutions, Anyone?

I've never been much for New Year's resolutions. It always seemed to me that one should have a way of regularly reviewing one's life, so that making resolutions is really an ongoing process.

However, as I move into 2007, a lot of that ongoing personal review is converging to the resolution stage. So here, forthwith, are my resolutions for the coming year, partly personal and partly ministerial.

1. Get a cell phone. My wife Joan is cheering at this, over on the sidelines, but I've been avoiding this step for years. I already feel way too "over-available." But I'll just have to deal with it -- it's time to get with the rest of the world.

2. Change my "Brief Notes." I've been writing a "Brief Notes" column for the parish bulletin for at least 16 years now. I'll continue the column for a while, sporadically, but I'll be switching to other formats, and inviting others to take the space, more regularly.

3. Write more. I DO love to write, despite resolution #2, and I think I'm fairly decent at it. Hence, I've been experimenting with this blog. I'll probably also add a section on our parish web site for regular parish news.

4. Spend more time at Children's Hospital. After so many years there (23 and counting), it's really a part of who I am. But my time there has actually shrunk over the past few years. Partly that's a result of other people pitching in, and doing it well. But partly it's a result of other commitments. But I MISS this time! It's important to me... as is this next item.

5. Be more focused in the area of social justice. This has been a passion even before I got into the active ministry, but parish work in general is more "pastoral" in nature. Raising a family also has its own set of priorities. However... my youngest son is graduating from college this coming spring, and I find myself looking forward to a certain "freedom to take risks" that I haven't felt for a while. I'm not sure where this will lead me, but I AM sure that I want it to lead somewhere. Hence the need to keep focused.

Finally, two very personal resolutions.

6. Spend more time with the Lord. It's actually an occupational hazard, since being a "professional minister" means that you're always being called to lead a group in prayer, or to be a part of a liturgical service. But those are NOT substitutes for one's own personal prayer life, especially in the midst of personal changes.

7. Lose weight! Unfortunately, I feel I've hit a crisis point with this in my life. Injuring my knee a while back brought a change in my habits. I've been away from the daily running for over a year now, and I've gotten far heavier than is healthy for me.

That's certainly enough! Anyone else care to share a resolution or two?

The Holy Family, 2006

The feast of the Holy Family falls during the Christmas season, when most families are gathering together to celebrate during the Christmas holidays. It's a very natural feast, one that we should easily identify with. The following homily is a short one, one that is intended just to spark us to reflect upon our families,and how we share our faith within the family.


Good morning. It's really good to be with you again this morning. I know we have some guests here today, still in town for the Christmas season -- it's a pleasure to have you with us. The Christmas season is one that all of us can and do use to mark the seasons of our lives. We all have our childhood memories of this time; most of us here have memories of Christmas seasons with our own children; and some of us have memories of celebrating the Christmas season with our adult children and our grandchildren. (I've finally begun that last stage.) I remember several years when our children were very young, when we would always travel to Spokane for Christmas, because that's where Joan's parents live; and I have lots of fond memories of that time.

But I did not quite have such fond memories of the Feast of the Holy Family, when we always sat in a pew at Our Lady of Fatima church in Spokan, and listened to homilies about the Holy Family, and the different ways that we were called to be like the Holy Family. I usually felt that the picture painted about the Holy Family was just not believable. And we were also usually treated to that New Testament reading from Paul's letter to the Colossians that tells us that "wives should be subject to their husbands." That always set everybody on edge. In fact, you might have noticed that this same reading from Colossians is still an option for this Sunday, although we rarely use it here at St. Bridget.

Now, the reasons I bring that up is because I find that I do take a lot of comfort in today's gospel reading. In fact, the more I pondered this gospel, the more I liked it. First of all, this reading is the only passage in all of the four gospels that mentions anything at all about the "hidden" time of Jesus' life -- that period between the time Jesus was an infant and the time that he began his adult ministry...the only passage! And the picture given in this gospel is a little snapshot that feels refreshingly normal to me.

What do I mean by "normal"? Well, here we see a mother who was pretty worried about her lost 12-year-old son, naturally enough, and apparently also upset with him: "Why have you done this to us? Your father and I were looking everywhere for you, with great worry." And how does Jesus answer her? Well, it wasn't "Mom, Dad, boy am I glad to see you," or even, "I'm so sorry you were so worried. I just got separated from you, and figured that the Temple was the safest place to wait for you to find me." Instead, Jesus makes that odd remark, "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know I must be in my Father's house?" And then the gospel adds, "They did not understand what Jesus said to them." And as a parent, I wouldn't have understood it either. Pardon me for saying it, but that sounds pretty much like a typical miscommunication between a 12-year-old boy and his parents!

Obviously, this is Holy Family Sunday, not Perfect Family Sunday. And I'm sure that Mary and Joseph had a few more things to talk about with Jesus on the way home to Nazareth. But before we leave the text, there are two final sentences in the passage. "Jesus went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them." That means that despite how this passage might sound about Jesus' placing a higher priority on "his Father's house" or "his Father's work" than on the concerns of his parents, he nonetheless went home with them and was obedient to them.

I think that means pretty much exactly what it says. That means, I think, that he listened to both of his parents, that he learned from them, and that he followed their direction and counsel. I think that means also that Mary and Joseph (along with the Holy Spirit) were a primary source for his formation as an adult, even his spiritual formation. Mary and Joseph must have shared their faith with Jesus as he was growing up, and we know that they both did have active spiritual lives to share, even though we don't know that much about them. We only get tantalizing little glimpses of their lives. For instance, the scriptures portray Joseph as one who was very conscientious about following the Law. Matthew portrays him also as very attuned to the voice of the Holy Spirit, who spoke to Joseph not once or twice, but at least four times in his dreams, at critical moments in their lives. And Mary is very open and trusting of the Spirit; she makes her life available to God. She also apparently has a very contemplative side: our gospel today reminds us of how she pondered all of these events within her heart. Obviously, they both found ways of sharing their faith with the youthful Jesus, for our final sentence adds, as a result of his faithful listening to both of these influences, that "Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man."

I'd like to invite you, before this season is over, before the tree is taken down and all the ornaments put away, to take a few moments in contemplation of the Holy Family. How might Mary and Joseph have shared their faith with Jesus? And how did he listen, absorb, and grow from what he saw and heard from them?

They lived in another land, in another age, but in a lot of ways, they weren't so far different from our families. We all face our day-to-day concerns, large or small; but whatever they are, we all do have opportunities to share the ways that the Holy Spirit speaks to us: father or mother to son or daughter, one spouse to another, grandparents to grandchildren, or even children to their elders.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all of our families were "holy families"? All!

-- Denny Duffell