Gases for Life, Bishop Healy, and why I need the law
The Tuesday Pillar Post
Pillar subscribers can listen to JD read this Pillar Post here: The Pillar TL;DR
Hey everybody,
One hundred and seventy one years ago today — on June 10, 1854 — an American man named James Healy was ordained a priest at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, France.
Healy was born on a cotton plantation in central Georgia; his father was an Irishman who’d become a wealthy planter in the rich Georgia soil. Healy was educated in Quaker schools in New York and New Jersey, he was apprenticed to a surveyor, before a bishop friend of his father’s saw to it that James was educated at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.
He was baptized there in 1844, became his class valedictorian, and entered seminary for the Diocese of Boston soon after graduation. He started studies in Montreal, and then did theology in Paris.
He became eventually the founder of a home for Civil War orphans. He was a cathedral rector, and then diocesan chancellor. He lobbied against legislation that would create a tax on Catholic churches in Massachusetts.
In 1875, he became the first Bishop of Portland, Maine — though the diocese then included both Maine and New Hampshire. With immigrants flowing into America, the diocesan population boomed, and Healy built 40 churches and 10 schools. He started 10 convents, two hospitals, and a college. He traveled the diocese by steamboat, horseback, train, and sometimes, apparently, by canoe.
He slowed down only two days before he died, taking ill in August 1900, after “an episcopal tour to some of the Catholic churches in eastern Maine,” according to the Boston Globe.
“Among laymen of all creeds Bishop Healy was a favorite,” the Boston Globe reported. “His labors and efforts for the advancement of religion and the welfare of the people of the state were well-known all over Maine, and merited for him the respect and friendship of men of all denominations and political bodies.”
“Bishop Healy desired to die in the harness,” the Globe said, “and his wish was gratified.”
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There was one fact about his life the Boston Globe didn’t mention. Bishop Healy rarely mentioned it either, though he didn’t deny it when he was asked or when it was raised.
The bishop had been born into slavery.
His mother was a mixed-race slave, purchased by his father, whom he referred to as his wife, and who bore him 10 children.
Healy is the only bishop in American history to be born a slave.
He was the first black priest to be incardinated in an American diocese, and the first black American to become a bishop. One of his brothers became the first black American Jesuit, and then the president of Georgetown. Another became the first black man to captain a U.S. government ship — a Revenue cutter, in the forerunner to the U.S. Coast Guard.
Healy was not outspoken about his race or his history, and, given the culture of the time, that is perhaps unsurprising. He was recorded on some public documents as white. But his experience clearly shaped him — he said often that he felt a call to “outsiders” and people living on the margins.
It would be fully 91 years after Healy’s consecration that another black American would become a bishop in the U.S.
Today, on the anniversary of his ordination, let’s pray for Bishop James Healy. May he enjoy the fullness of the beatific vision.
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Meanwhile, Mrs. Flynn and Pia Therese are at summer camp this week, so I’m pulling double duty: Working on some important news stories for The Pillar, and doing the minimal amount of parenting required to ensure that my sons appear moderately well-cared for by the time the girls get home.
Look how much fun Pia’s having:
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The news
The Church has faced severe persecution from the regime of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega in recent years, including the arrest and detention of several bishops, the seizure of Church property, and the exile of priests, bishops, and large groups of religious.
The ordination of transitional deacons on Saturday in Managau is being taken in Nicaragua as a goodwill gesture from Ortega to Pope Leo XIV — a small step in a country where the papal nuncio himself has been barred from the country.
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While the walking pilgrimages to the National Eucharistic Congress were big news last summer, this year’s iteration — a Congress-organized Eucharistic pilgrimage from Indianapolis to LA — has been less often in the headlines, with many Catholics off the route unaware that the pilgrimage was even taking place at all.
But things began to change last week, as it emerged that the pilgrimage was being followed by protestors, organized mostly by the Church of Wells — a Texas-based group which criticizes Eucharistic adoration as contrary to the Christian gospel.
Well, the protests have intensified over the past week or so, and protestors recently began harassing by name the walk’s “perpetual pilgrims” — the college-aged Catholics forming the core walking team of the pilgrimage.
But while acknowledging the harassment-by-name, National Eucharistic Congress organizers say that wasn’t the only factor in benching the pilgrims from Saturday and Sunday processions, and that they have confidence in the security measures put in place.
The Pillar’s reporting intern Jack Figge is in Texas now, and he’ll continue to bring you dispatches from the road.
The bishop is one of four in Germany to publicly criticize the German “synodal way,” and to reject a plan that would establish a national “synodal body” with some apparent power of governance over the Church in Germany.
“I do not want to hide the fact that after the many challenges, scandals, and unresolved conflicts, which were not lacking during my time as bishop, I feel an inner fatigue,” Bishop Gregor Hanke said Sunday, as he stepped down, asking only to be known as “Fr. Gregor.”
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Cardinal Pablo David is president of the Filipino bishops’ conference, and was named to the College of Cardinals just four months before the death of Pope Francis.
The cardinal — widely seen as theologically and pastorally aligned with Pope Francis, has been touted as an outside candidate in the conclave which elected Pope Leo XIV.
After that conclave, David sat down to talk with The Pillar about his view on artificial intelligence — seemingly quite different from that of Pope Leo — along with his take on the clerical abuse crisis, and the call of evangelization.
The cardinal — it’s not clear to me whether he’s a Pillar reader — is an interesting guy, and his views are widely unknown outside the Philippines. But given his influential leadership position in that country, Cardinal David will likely be shaping the Church in Asia for quite a while.
Here’s the cardinal on evangelization, dialogue, and synodality:
“Dialogue is two-way. It cannot be, ‘I will tell you what morality is.’ It’s, ‘I’d like to listen to you. Where are you coming from? Why do you believe this? And I will suspend my judgment about it, but I’d like to know why you think the way you think.’
And then for all you know, somewhere, somehow, you will be arriving at certain points of convergence while it’s becoming clearer what the points of divergence are.
And when there are points of divergence, it only means you have to carry on with the conversation. Don’t close the door. That’s what’s most important, said Pope Francis.”
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New Polish president Karol Nawrocki is widely expected to be part of a sea change in Eastern Europe, where in Poland tensions between Church and state have risen to levels not seen for decades. But what will that actually mean for the Church?
Luke Coppen breaks that down here.
Chaouqui, who was convicted in 2016 of leaking classified Vatican information, is also accused of giving false testimony herself during the trial by concealing the extent of her relationship and coordination with other figures involved when she was on the witness stand.
And all of this ties into Pillar reader Cardinal Angelo Becciu, because Chaouqui is a longtime nemesis of the cardinal, and is seemingly thought to have shaped testimony against him.
But other than that, what do you really know about the Augustinians?
If you’re like me, you probably didn’t know much about their spirituality, their apostolates, or their history.
So to fix that, Michelle La Rosa dove into the question: Who are the Augustinians, anyway?
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Young Catholics in the Diocese of Charlotte, North Carolina, have expressed enthusiasm after Bishop Michael Martin temporarily paused a policy that restricts the Traditional Latin Mass in the diocese.
Indeed, they told The Pillar they’re grateful their bishop listened to their concerns about the issue — even if they’re also clear that the pause is a reprieve, and not a reversal.
After major controversy, read what the people on the ground have to say.
The Vatican had been using a Rupnik image on the commemorative site for Monday’s Feast of Mary, Mother of the Church, as it has been doing for years to commemorate various liturgical feasts.
But this was the first time the phenomenon has happened in the Leonine pontificate. And after considerable pushback online and coverage in some corners of Catholic media — bam! The artwork was gone.
Readers of The Pillar know the contours here: Rupnik was a highly celebrated artist-of-a-certain-era who is accused of raping religious sisters, manipulating spiritual directees, and committing grotesque acts of control and abuse — while creating the tiled sanctuary murals for which he has become famous.
Rupnik’s case has been an up-and-down show of dysfunction and confusion for years, and the priest’s trial at the DDF, which took years to authorize, has been stalled for almost two years while the Vatican tries (for unclear reasons) to find judges to hear it.
Meanwhile, Rupnik’s art decorates some of the most well-known places in the Church’s life (even if it’s now being covered up in some) and the Vatican has continued to use his work with regularity, with communications prefect Paolo Ruffini defending the practice to a roomful of American journalists last summer.
Meanwhile, the alacrity with which the work came off the website this weekend is worth considering, because it points to a sobering reality.
Given that the artwork came off the website within a day or two of widespread objections being manifested last week — and given that similar outrage has never moved the needle on Rupnik before — it’s reasonable to ask why this time is different.
And the most likely answer, I’m afraid, is obvious. This time is different because Francis is not the pope. Apart from that, all other known factors remain the same.
Which means it’s probably time to state the obvious — the Vatican’s intransigence on displays of Rupnik’s art most probably was a determination of the pontiff himself.
Consider that Francis — though the champion of the “synodal listening” idea now in vogue in the Church — displayed a rather consistent approach to dealing with critics of his governance or his curia: To dig in.
When Francis was criticized early in his pontificate for his handling of Chilean Bishop Juan Barros — thought to have enabled and witnessed sexual abuse by a priest without intervening — the pontiff initially shrugged off the criticism, even from victims, and dug in on support for Barros, saying that “leftists” were manipulating critics.
When Bishop Oscar Zanchetta was first accused of possessing lewd images of seminarians on his phone, Francis accepted the idea that the whole thing was a “hack,” and even when Zanchetta’s diocesan leadership became untenable, the pontiff found a make-work job for him at the Vatican curia, and seemed to stand by his friend through even a criminal conviction, reportedly allowing Zanchetta to violate a court order by staying in Rome this spring, rather than go home to face his house arrest sentence.
And it was Francis who had the power, at least, to cut through some red tape and allow Rupnik to be tried for his allegedly abusive crimes years ago, instead of letting the entire case fester (and compound in complexity) until both public and internal pressure became just too much for the Roman curia to endure.
It was also Francis who dug in enough on criticisms of Traditionis custodes to see promulgated an instruction that significantly tightened the restrictions of the original motu proprio. It was Francis who tried digging in against criticisms of Fiducia supplicans until the confederation of African bishops made that impossible.
So is it reasonable to conclude that it was Francis who decided that Rupnik’s work could or would stay on the Vatican website? Well, there’s a new sheriff in town, one month into the job, and the Rupnik is gone. Take that for whatever it’s worth.
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We need the law
New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul is considering the prospect of signing into law soon a bill that will allow for assisted suicide — called medical aid in dying — for terminally ill people across the Empire State.
If she signs it, New York will be the twelfth U.S. state to follow Canada and several European countries in allowing doctors to help kill people, either because they suffer terminal illnesses or because they have incurable chronic diseases and disabilities.
In New York, the bill only allows doctors to kill people if they have six months or less to live. And that’s what advocates say makes the bill “responsible,” and “common sense.”
But everybody knows what happens next.
Laws like this begin with the premise that suffering is a terrible evil to be avoided at all costs. That’s their basic philosophic idea: that if we can’t beat suffering, we should avoid it, even unto death.
Because nobody likes to suffer, that premise is gussied up in the language of compassion and autonomy: That a society should be compassionate enough not to “force” people to suffer, and that we should respect “personal autonomy” enough to let sick people choose to avoid suffering.
But if suffering is so evil, it doesn’t take long to ask why only really, really sick and dying people get to avoid it. That’s why places with medical assistance in dying expand to people with chronic illnesses, disabilities, mental health problems, etc: because we should respect the autonomy of people like that to avoid suffering, too, that argument goes.
Eventually, the suffering expands to caretakers: Sick and disabled people are a burden, carrying for them weighs down an entire ecosystem of people, and those caretakers shouldn’t have to suffer either.
So — and the argument inevitably gets here — those caretakers should be able to make a decision on behalf of their charges, who shouldn’t have to suffer, that the pain and the anguish are too much, and something must be done.
Now, the whole time, doctors and psychologists are enlisted to give this stuff the veneer of professional medical credibility, but the professionals are in on the game, because they’ve accepted the basic premise too: That when a person suffers, there are cases in which it is better that he is dead.
Here’s the problem: Everyone who suffers an illness or a chronic condition or a disability has moments of real doubt, in which they begin to believe that their burdensome existence is so much a cross on their loved ones and caretakers that they ought to do something about it.
The law is meant, usually, to protect people in their worst moments, and from the decisions which might come with them — that’s why drinking and driving is a crime, and why it should be a crime for people to make you watch lengthy YouTubes in their presence, while they wait to see if you’ll laugh at the right parts.
But in this case — the case of these assisted suicide laws — the law allows someone’s worst moment to become an action plan. A person mired in self-doubt is affirmed in the idea that doing the decent thing means heading to the doctor’s office for a full medical workup, and then a carefully administered dose of hemlock.
And let me tell you something about caretakers.
As readers of The Pillar know, I have two children with Down syndrome. My son Max has other neurological problems as well, which leave him significantly disabled in ways different from the typical experience of Down syndrome.
Max is a gift to me — to us — and he evokes in us tenderness, joy, and real in-the-moment laughter and happiness for our family.
But he also needs near constant patience, and regular help with the things most 13-year-old boys can do on their own. Sometimes, especially when his medication isn’t right, he descends behaviorally for a while — he becomes unpredictable, short-tempered, and deeply unhappy.
All of that requires of us a great deal: emotionally, and physically, and spiritually.
In those moments, I think about the impact on my other kids of growing up with a brother who suffers as Max does. I think about the hardship his disability causes our whole family. And I confess, in my most down moments, I wonder if I’ve been fair to my other children to ask so much of them.
In faith, I know that Max’s suffering is a sanctifying cross for all of us, including him, and that it invites us to deeper communion with God himself. I sometimes get graces of real consolation, when I can see that happening for my children, or my virtuous wife.
I know long-term caregivers who seem never to have periods of doubt, or uncertainty. They have enviable faith. Mrs. Flynn is one of them. But I’ll tell you, when things are hard, I have periods of real darkness.