December
24, 2005
Christmas Without Father Duffy
By E.
J. Dionne Jr.
WASHINGTON -- Imagine
a pastor who begins his Christmas sermon with a Garrison Keillor
story about a priest serving a church called Our Lady of Perpetual
Responsibility.
The line goes over
well in a congregation that is acutely familiar with Catholic
guilt. And it follows an excellent rule for homilies: Get 'em
to laugh and you'll get 'em to listen. Since Proverbs teaches
us that ``a merry heart doeth good like a medicine,'' it's even
biblical.
Monsignor Tom Duffy,
who told that Keillor story in a Christmas sermon many years ago,
is a man with a very merry heart. He needed it to keep the peace
at our politically diverse parish, Blessed Sacrament, on the northern
edge of our nation's capital. This will be my first Christmas
in a long time without Father Duffy as my pastor -- he retired
this year at 79.
We are living through
a moment when the definition of ``Christian'' seems to come down
to which party you belong to, how you stand on a few hot-button
issues, and how willing you are to scream at retailers who wish
their customers ``Happy Holidays.'' Duffy represents a Christianity
that is more capacious and more demanding.
As a personal matter,
he combines good humor, intellectual curiosity, and a non-contrived
humility. Mary McGrory, my tough-minded late colleague who was
a member of our roomy parish, once described Duffy as ``kindness
itself'' and rightly said that he is ``not one of those autocratic,
bellowing prelates who rules with fear and the expectation of
total deference.'' He is dedicated to the simple but difficult
things prescribed in the Gospel: visiting the sick, comforting
the aggrieved, strengthening the faith of doubters, helping families,
lifting up the poor.
Do not for an instant
think he's some stereotypical liberal priest. Such a man wouldn't
survive in a parish that includes so many principled conservatives
along with its many devout liberals. Duffy was so successful at
maintaining warm relations among his parishioners on all sides
of politics that a friend once said he ``must either be very good
or very vague.'' When I mentioned this to Duffy one Sunday, he
replied, with a twinkle in his eye, ``Sometimes, I like to believe
I'm both.''
In truth, he's not
at all vague on the things that matter. Consider that Christmas
sermon. In Duffy's telling of the Keillor story, an imaginary
priest named Father Emil thunders at those in his prosperous congregation
``who have left what you were brought up with that was good, that
was true, and that was so beautiful beyond compare.''
``They were clever,''
Emil snarls about the apostates, ``and they learned how to rationalize
their indolence and their sadness as a rebellion against orthodoxy
and made it seem adventurous when in fact it was just their spirits
that had become dull.''
And then the priest
finally, grudgingly, gets around to tidings of comfort and joy
-- sort of. ``The Lord had come to earth to save us from dullness
of spirit,'' he says, ``and this is what the shepherds found in
one dazzling moment.''
Having offered this
challenge to his parishioners, Duffy promptly identified with
the people in the pews, not with his imaginary preacher. ``Christmas
isn't the moment for pointing the finger of shame,'' Duffy said.
``Unfortunately, we all suffer from the dullness of spirit that
Father Emil spoke about, that slowness to perceive the wonder
of God in our lives.'' But notice what Duffy has done here: He
challenged the members of his congregation to think hard about
their own dullness of spirit and to consider whether they take
seriously the dazzling point of the faith that they celebrate
every Christmas.
I dearly hope that
my children and their children will encounter priests with Duffy's
spirit. He was shaped by the moment of the two Johns -- Pope John
XXIII and John F. Kennedy. Duffy, who occasionally celebrated
Mass for JFK, recalled that era as an exciting time when Catholics
all over the world sensed new possibilities and when American
Catholics finally found themselves fully accepted in their democracy.
Across the Christian denominations, there was less defensive peevishness
and an opening to a theology of hope.
I'm grateful Tom
Duffy was willing to warn a Washington congregation full of us
aspiring and worldly folks against a ``dullness of spirit.'' He
offered us the Christ described in Luke's Gospel anointed ``to
preach good news to the poor ... to proclaim release to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those
who are oppressed.'' Every Christmas, I hope I'll remember what
Duffy preached.
©
2005, Washington Post Writers Group
