Truly Catholic - Radically Inclusive?

When sitting down to write this spiritual morsel, I was tempted to take the easy way out and simply talk about today’s saint, The patron saint of the Internet and computers today, St Isidore of Seville. Very appropiate for a blog -

http://catholicism.org/patron-saint-for-the-internet-isidore-of-seville.html

But we should always first be fed by the Word of God and so I will instead reflect on the readings we are given for today.

The word that comes out of the word of God, I think, is a word that has been haunting me all of this lent: Inclusion. 

Radical inclusion is Jesus’ way and seems to be central to the whole of Jesus’ message. So how could we, the Church, the Body of Christ, the People of God, have been getting it so wrong for so long? 

We love our exclusive systems, we create groups, the "in" groups and the "out" groups.  And we in the West seem to love them even more!  Yet all of Jesus’ messages seem to be aimed at those who are outside of the supposed "in" group. 

Throughout the Gospel it is more often the outsiders of the religious "in" Group who get Jesus' message first. The religious elite and those disciples chosen by Jesus Himself often seem the slowest to understand His message.  So being in the "in group" does not seem like much of an advantage and could even be seen as a positive disadvantage. 

This all sounds just a bit too radical for my sensibilities and yet that is what we have today.  We have one of the few examples of non-local healing in Jesus’ ministry.  There is no mention of any checklist of beliefs, no asking of whether the royal official is obeying moral laws, or even if he is in a first marriage. And there is certainly no hinting of if he has made a good confession of his sins or not.  It all seems rather irresponsible of Jesus.

But this message is continually repeated in Jesus’ ministry and is a message that I continue to hear spoken in many forms and yet do we truly listen?  I even heard it the other day in a Lady Gaga anthem for the outcast, her latest single:

I'm beautiful in my way

'cause god makes no mistakes

Whether life's disabilities

Left you outcast, bullied, or teased

Rejoice and love yourself today

'cause baby you were born this way

And each person in the world was born their way, and is just as much a child of God as we are, so deserves equal respect as we do.  I wonder how we managed to make such a radical message of inclusivity into such an exclusionary system of that which religion has become. We should consider that the vast majority of Jesus' healings and followers seem to be for, and come from, the excluded ones and maybe even the unworthy ones.

The problem with being an insider seems to be that we fight over the smaller truths that in the great scheme of God don’t matter that much, and we miss the bigger more universal truths.  But if we are to help bring about the ‘new earth’ of Isaiah, or truly live out being the Catholic Church (Catholic meaning Universal), we have to enact and fight for this radical inclusivity of Jesus in all aspects of our lives and in all aspects of society.  So I leave you with a number of questions that trouble and challenge me (for as a wise person said, ‘Jesus came to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable'.

Are there any more comfortable people than us in the supposed 1^st world?

Who do I exclude in my life, with my actions or words?

Can we call our society Christian and ourselves Catholic if we support any movement that excludes others, be they of a different faith, or immigrants, or different culture or any other group that we or others define?

For in the end who are we to judge who is worthy or not? 

The fact that someone has been made in God’s image gives them all the value they need to deserve my utmost and complete respect and love.

Happy reflecting.

Fr. Dominic Curran, Not completely ancient

Based at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral.