"In the end, we all fruit."

So I’m on Facebook the other day, chuckling at a photo, from a celebrity who once lived in a relocation camp as a young Japanese American in the 1940’s; clicking ‘confirm’ to a friend request from a young German man who I deeply respect, and reading the posts from my Israeli half-siblings as well as my other friends and family.

30 years ago it would have taken three weeks to get messages from any of those people, via Air Mail on thin blue pieces of paper that had to be carefully unsealed so as not to rip messages crammed margin-to-margin. I sure as hell wouldn’t have any from celebrities, like I see on my instantaneous Facebook news feed every day.  

68 years ago my uncle, who would be 86 this month, stormed the beaches at Normandy to fight ‘the damn Germans’, who threatened the free world through their might military machine. After he came home he married my aunt, who would be 82 this year, who descended from the damn Germans and spoke German as a 2nd-generation American. Irony. My little nephew’s great-great-grandparents dropped the ‘Von’ from their surname, to avoid retribution. Now Germans are our allies.

67 years ago this summer we dropped the A-bomb on the ancestors of that young Japanese American boy, nuking them into oblivion on two separate occasions, so they too, would cease to threaten the free world. Now all of our best electronics are manufactured by the former-derisively labeled “Japs”, and we've had AF bases there for decades.

More recently, about ten years ago I worked in a Baptist-church daycare, here in Texas, and was equally as derisively accused of being CATHOLIC. (To preface-- my religious upbringing was of an ecumenical sort, with predominant Presbyterian overtones. Our church celebrated the Seder [Passover meal] each year, we went to the Catholic and Episcopal churches for multi-denominational Thanksgiving services in which the Rabbi took part as well. As a youngish, suddenly-single mother in my early thirties,  I’d returned to the Episcopal church I’d attended sometimes as a teenager with a teenage Jonathan, to literally take sanctuary in tradition.)

I’d crossed myself in what I thought was an empty hallway in the daycare, feeling very vulnerable for a myriad of reasons. The acid-toned questioning from the Director still echoes in my head. 

“ Are you CATHOLIC? Someone saw you crossing yourself!” As if they’d seen me wearing a pentagram, or covering up a swastika tattoo, or drinking chicken's blood and burning black candles.

I icily informed her that if I was it was none of her business, and that it was against federal regulations to ask that of an employee. She shut down that line of questioning pretty quick.

Why must we fuss and fight among Christian denominations? We all descend from the same line…

All Christians, people who have surrendered their lives to Jesus on a specific occasion – not the people who dress up for Christmas and Easter and play church– are Catholic by faith heritage, just as we are also Jewish by faith heritage. The early church followed Jesus’ example by posting disciples as the leaders of the early Church.

Every Pope is the successor to Peter, the Rock of the Church. 

The Church recognizes great leaders of faith as saints, not angels. The saints were people who lived extraordinary lives in service to the Church. They are not idols, not prayed to, but examples of how to dedicate one’s life to Christ. I have often asked my friends to pray for me. Asking the saints to pray FOR us is no different. They were people, who are in heaven now, just like our grandparents and our own ancestors.

A humble girl in a hovel in the hills of Judea became the first disciple. God chose a blameless, innocent and virtuous woman to be the vessel for His incarnate Word. Mary, Mother of God, is not an angel, nor is she worshipped and idolized -- but rather fervently revered as the first disciple, the first Christian.

The Catholic Church preserved these stories of Mary, and Jesus, and the ancient tales of the Old Testament. Without this careful preservation and transition to print, we would have no Bible to speak of. The disciples, the bishops and the Popes, of the early Church recorded and preserved the writings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, James, Peter, Paul, and the others who were eye-witnesses to Christ and to the Acts of the Apostles. We know now them as St. Paul, St. Matthew, St. Peter, etc.

The saints. Not the little statues that folks think the crazy Catholics pray to every day, and mutter loftily, “We don’t need saints. We pray straight to God because of Jesus!” (I know they say this because I did. Often. ) Those statues are reminders of people who lived and died for Jesus. 

The Apostles, whose writings we throw at each other as holy spears proving our spiritual prowess, ARE  in the communion of saints.

Yes, indeed, we can pray straight to God -- but we wouldn’t know that save for their teachings of Christ and His saving grace. The teachings of the saints. 

Over the centuries, groups of people have attempted to stifle new schools of thought.

It’s human nature to try and proselytize others to our own way of thinking. We do it to this day! 'My church doesn't teach/approve/believe in that... you should come to MY church and learn the TRUTH. It's taught at MY church.' We only know what we've been taught, and when we stop learning, we stop growing...

The Catholic Church certainly is not blameless in scandal, greed, and genocide. My own maternal ancestors were the remnant of the 16^th century Huguenots, the Calvinists who for the most part fell to the Catholics as heretics. My own paternal ancestors were German, and quite possibly I had distant relatives who stayed in the Old Country and were part or prey of the Nazi regime. The Vatican has mass amounts of wealth. Priests have scarred countless men for life.

But things change. People change. The Germans and the Japanese are no longer our enemies. In my lifetime we’ve had two non-Italian Popes. The Catholic Church has also fed, sheltered, educated, and nurtured millions, as penance for their sins, if you will.

The Catholic Church is not blameless in abuse of power. She’s had her share of trespasses…but the Catholic Church is manned by men, who succumb to temptations of power and seduction and wealth.

Holy men are always greater targets of the enemy, as they have much farther to fall and make a greater mess upon impact.  Men fail. They abuse and oppress when led by deception. Other denominations have experienced abuses, too, scandalous and revolting. We all sin and fall short of the mark.

In my favorite movie, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding", a Greek Orthodox father comes to terms with his daughter marrying a non-Greek. Horrors! At the wedding, he admits, "I was thinking -- Portokalos, our name, mean orange. My daughter marry Ian Miller, whose name come from millos, which mean apple. So we have apples and oranges, and in the end, we all fruit." 

The catholic church, the universal Church, the one holy and apostolic Church, has never failed. It has produced fruit, despite storms, drought, and disease, and branched out into dozens of denominations.

In 2,000 years, the Message has continued to go out as commanded by Jesus Himself. (And as an aside, the Catholic church remains the only established church from the early days.)

If only we could stop squabbling as to the Proper Way, each claiming boldly, as if we were the only one, “THE LORD TOLD ME HIMSELF”, we might reach even more for the Kingdom.

Jesus never put Himself first. Even on Good Friday, with thorns pressing into His head, dragging a 200-pound cross drilling splinters into a beaten body.  He could have called all the angels in heaven to His aid. He put us first. Us. The rude, crude, and socially unacceptable inhabitants of this planet. 

All of us - past, present, and future.  

Maybe over the next two thousand years we’ll learn to be as selfless…