by Johnny Zokovitch
Not a day goes by in which someone I know raises with me a plea for hope. Every gathering I attend, it seems that a constituent element is the question, “Where do you find hope these days?” It is a reasonable inquiry in these dark days.
During the Q&A session at the recent 10th anniversary dinner for the Archdiocese of St. Louis Justice and Peace Commission, sure enough, the hope question came up. Our speaker, Jason Purnell, a professor at Washington University, started out by delineating the difference between hope and optimism. He talked about optimism as the idea that things will get better. But hope, hope he said, “has seen some things, been through some things.” Hope lived through Jim Crow. Hope saw lynchings. Hope knew slavery. Hope witnessed police brutality. Hope isn’t optimism; it isn’t the desire that things will get better. Purnell, a black man, said that because of where he came from and what his people have gone through, he has no business despairing. This is the ground from which his hope rises.
I was deeply moved by his answer, and especially his distinction between optimism and hope. It is my own feeling that most of the pleading which I hear is more accurately a lamenting of the loss of optimism about the way things are and about where we are headed. It’s rooted in a feeling of nostalgia, that once-upon-a-time things weren’t this bad. But hope, like our speaker pointed out, hope has seen some things. It has lived through time like this. And worse.
I found myself pondering this at a second gathering taking place this same week. A group of mainly older, mainly white men gathered together for the annual conference of the Association of US Catholic Priests (AUSCP). Like hope, these men have seen some things.
What defines this collection of Catholic priests is their deep and abiding commitment to see through and live out the promise of the Second Vatican Council that took place in the 1960s. Most are old enough to have been caught up in the initial excitement in the heady years following the council, when change was afoot in the Catholic Church and, as many of these men stated in various forums, fresh air was blowing throughout the Church, renewing it in ways that brought it closer to the spirit of Jesus.
But the years following that first decade or so of inspiration have been hard ones for those who welcomed the reforms that St. John XXIII had initiated – especially hard for those within the US Catholic Church. The intervening years have seen a concerted effort to roll back the Church’s social engagement with the world, narrowly defining issues of sexuality as primary in Catholic morality. Some of the Church’s liturgical reforms have been eroded as well, with efforts to reassert practices like the Latin Mass, challenging what our understanding of Eucharist is.
Most importantly for this group of priests has been the retrenchment of an idea of priesthood in younger priests (and taught in seminaries) that has more to do with status than service, more to do with power than solidarity.
And yet, the spirit of their gathering wasn’t doom and gloom. There was laughter in abundance, joy apparent in every gathering. And there was hope. Not because they were optimistic about things getting better, but because, like hope, these guys had seen some things.
They, like Fr. Gerry Kleba who was one of the Pope St. John XXIII Award recipients, accompanied men on death row and sat by their sides, holding their hands as they took their last breaths.
They prayed with families whose fathers had been detained and deported.
They were taught by and formed by women, especially women religious, who helped them to identify patriarchy and root it out within their own hearts and within their ministry.
They were silenced by their bishops because of the political stances they had taken or, even more likely, for their criticisms of the US Catholic hierarchy: arguing for the ordination of women, challenging the church’s teachings on homosexuality, and calling out for transparency by church leaders on the sexual abuse scandal.
They prophetically preached the nonviolence of Jesus during times of war and watched as parishioners walked out during their sermons.
They accompanied members of the LGBTQIA+ community and self-identified as members of that community, asserting the dignity of all God’s children and that love is love is love.
They organized or joined efforts to stop the genocide in Gaza, to abolish torture, to dismantle racism, to curb gun violence.
Mainly, what they had taken away from the lessons of Vatican II was that they were called to walk alongside the faithful – not in front of or separate from – but right there in the midst of their sisters and brothers in Christ.
Another award recipient, Bishop John Stowe, OFM Conv., bishop president of Pax Christi USA (seen at right with Fr. Gary Wiesmann), recalled the “moonlight speech” of Pope John XXIII, remarking on how this “placeholder” pope drew so intimately close to the gathered people of God, addressing them informally and tenderly, without notes, famously saying: “When you go back home, you will find your children: give them a hug and say, ‘This is a hug from the Pope.’ You will find some tears that need to be dried: speak a good word: ‘The Pope is with us, especially in times of sadness and bitterness.’”
These men had taken John XXIII as their model, working to draw close to the people they served.
They are not necessarily optimistic about the Church they love. Fr. John Heagle, another award recipient, said what all of them seem to understand from the battles of the past 40 years: “Ours is a Church in regress.”
Even as they acknowledge this reality, they carry on. Many of them are now in the twilight of their time here on earth. But they have no business despairing. Theirs is also a hope that has seen some things.
Johnny Zokovitch is the former executive director of Pax Christi USA. He currently serves on the board of the Pax Christi International Fund for Peace and is in pastoral leadership at St. Cronan Catholic Church in St. Louis. Read more from Johnny at https://johnnyzokovitch.substack.com/ and sign up there to receive his articles directly to your email inbox.