April 28, 2025 - Good Morning! It’s Monday, April 28.
Last Saturday, over a billion people watched the funeral service of Pope Francis. Perhaps you were one of them. I was. Hundreds of thousands lined the streets of Rome. A crowd of a quarter million gathered in St. Peter’s Square. Our president was in that crowd.
I was reminded of another president who came to my hometown of Houston on a Monday in September, 1960. Well, John F. Kennedy was running for president, the election just two short months away. On that autumn morning he spoke to a group of Baptist ministers at the Rice Hotel. My father was in that crowd.
Kennedy’s Catholic faith was a divisive issue. The question of who he would serve - America or the Vatican - was playing a significant part in the campaign. The eloquent speech he gave that day was later sent to over a half million ministers, and played a part in his narrow victory that November. How things have changed. Former President Biden and Vice President Vance are both practicing Catholics, and whatever you may think of these two men politically, their personal religious choices have seldom, if ever, become an issue.
In my Houston neighborhood, growing up, there were two major churches - my dad’s Baptist church and a Catholic church. They were about a mile apart, but the gulf between them, between their congregations, was much, much wider. In my teens I started dating a Catholic girl. There were more than a few conversations about that at my house, let me tell you! A few years later, my Houston college course on religion required me to interview a person of a different faith. I told my dad that I had set up a meeting with the neighborhood priest. I can still remember his look of concern as he gravely instructed me to “be careful over there.”
His concerns - and mine - proved to be unfounded. I received a warm welcome, and the priest patiently fielded the list of questions that I had prepared. As I left, I remember having the distinct impression that, even though there were doctrinal differences between our denominations, his personal faith was not that different from mine. I remember wishing that the Father and my father could just sit together and talk.
Generations later, we still live in a world where people are quick to denounce, and even demonize, those who have different beliefs. A world where people talk about people, talk past people - instead of talking to them, talking with them. Perhaps you’ve had the opportunity for a personal connection with someone from a different faith, a different ethnic group, a different political party. Invariably, once we see someone as a person, and not an ideology, we gain a fresh perspective.
Sometimes we need to just sit together and talk.
Meet you back here tomorrow,
David
cindertex50@yahoo.com
