Emmanuel
In fact , those tempted to consign my kids to some lesser corner of the Church for failing to conform to a more standard version of external packaging might want to revisit the now-famous Holy Thursday photographs of Francis bending low to kiss the tattooed feet of a dozen inmates of Rome ’ s Rebibbia Prison . ( Looking carefully at these pictures , one is struck by how the pope treats the young law-breakers less as bit players in a novel , media-friendly reenactment of the Lord ’ s Supper than potential evangelists themselves induced to proclaim the Good News by virtue of their brush with authentic tenderness .)
They might also acknowledge the considerable latitude the Church has always extended its beloved saints on the matter of public hygiene , not to mention its seeming fascination with the goriest details of how many achieved martyrdom . ( No Death Metal band with which I ’ m familiar has ever taken stage carrying plates of their own eyeballs or breasts , their severed heads , as plaster likenesses of Saints Lucy and Agatha and Denis do respectively in many parish settings . Neither , I ’ m guessing , would any Death Mettler refuse a hot bath or a trip to the showers after a night of hardy body-slamming — though saints like the Egyptian Anthony the Abbot are reputed to have forgone bathing for a lifetime .)
Industrious , addiction-free , and clean of any criminal record , my son and daughter have never known the dehumanizing effects of real imprisonment . They are prisoners , nonetheless , of the myopia of youth and a simplistic view of religion that leads many today to dismiss as meaningless an entity as complex and richly appointed as the Church .
I am encouraged , nevertheless , by the fact that my son recently posted a note of thanks on his Facebook page for having been raised in a household where movies like The Mission or Romero were stable fare and that my daughter , for all her misgivings about the Catholic hierarchy ’ s treatment of women , still delights in the name Clare Frances , if not the biographies of the saints from which it was drawn .
I am only their natural father after all . And while I pride myself for having gifted them through the mystery of genetics with my own largely right-brained view of things , I know that the creative impulse running beneath even the “ deathy-est ” of their Death Metal tunes originates in the eternal Word that is life itself ( Jn 14:6 ).
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