We left Rome a week ago as part of what has been dubbed “The Monster Trip”…9 months away from Michigan…travelling to 20-something countries and trying to avoid thinking about what has happened to our country since the full-on onset of authoritarianism. At times on this trip we can see ourselves not returning to the US except for important family events, but that’s a Grumblings for another day.
I knew that in Rome, among the thousands of spectacles that constitute must-sees, I had only one thing I had to see. It wasn’t the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, etc. It wasn’t even St. Peter’s or the Vatican. It was one statue in a small alcove in St. Peter’s Basilica that I had to experience before I left the eternal city.
And it almost didn’t happen.
This year, 2025, is a Jubilee year for the Catholic Church, and hundreds of thousands (millions?) of Catholics are coming to Rome to celebrate and to renew their faith. With the election of the new pope coming earlier this year, crowds are apparently larger than usual. Our first attempt to get into St. Peter’s was thwarted by a papal audience that had the facility closed. The next day, the crowds were so huge, and the weather so hot, that we gave up trying to get in. I was ready to surrender and leave Rome without doing the one thing I really needed to do.
But my wife, as she often does, refused to allow me to wallow in self–pity and encouraged me to get up super early on our last day and do whatever it took to get in. And as I often do, I listened to her and made the trek into the city at the crack of dawn. There were crowds, but nothing I couldn’t handle, and I finally got in and was standing in front of The Pieta at last.
If you’re wondering, as my wife was, why I, a certified fallen Catholic, had to see this statue, you’re not alone. I was in that group of folks too. Just why was it so important to me?
My students in my AP European history classes are well aware of my obsession with this piece of art…so much so that three of them over the years have visited Rome and brought back postcards or photos of the statue as a gift to me.
The question of my obsession with this statue prompted a reliving of my relationship with the Catholic Church. The answer had to be there somewhere.
I was raised in an Italian Catholic family of ten (or is that redundant?) I don’t recall ever missing Sunday mass until I was at least 15. I attended Catholic school through eighth grade, had a beloved aunt who was a nun, was an altar boy who could recite the entire Mass in Latin, had terrific (non-sexual) relationships with a couple of priests, and even considered a run at seminary for high school. I did all the sacraments. I prayed. I strongly believed that the Catholic Church was mankind’s best hope.
And then college happened. If the only information you’re getting about any institution is from the institution itself, you’re likely to feel exactly as I did about the Church. This is just one more example of why we must find ways to look at ourselves from outside of ourselves. The raging debate about what constitutes American history under the encroaching wave of authoritarianism is just another example of the need to separate what the institution wants us to know from what we must know.
As a young, naive freshman at the University of Michigan I had teachers asking questions that no one had ever asked before. In particular, a teaching assistant named Daylin Butler, who had served in Vietnam, really shook my world about that war. At one time I planned on writing a book called “Daylin Butler Asks Too Many Questions” because he so rattled my world view.
The next year I took a Latin American history class, and this is when my faith in the Catholic Church began to crumble. As I studied the long historical relationship between the Church and the Spanish and Portuguese conquerors of the Americas, and then later the relationship between the Church and the land owners and the authoritarian regimes of the region, it became clear to me that the Church was not at all what it was supposed to be. There was a clear coalition of elites made up of the rich and the Church who acted in direct opposition to those the Church was supposed to be offering hope to. And it seemed pretty clear it was for financial gain.
When a group of priests in Latin America decided enough was enough and began teaching a new “liberation theology” I was intrigued. Finally, someone in the Church was actually advocating for the poor and the struggling masses. As you can imagine, that didn’t go over too well with the powers that be.
When Oscar Romero was assassinated in El Salvador during a mass in 1980, and when Pope John Paul II went to Latin America and silenced those pushing liberation theology because helping the poor was communist, I was done.
Add to this the abuse of young boys by Catholic priests, bishops, and cardinals over many decades (and probably a lot more) that was ignored and even enabled by the Church hierarchy who feared massive economic consequences if they admitted the abuse, there was no going back for me.
During the 1980’s and beyond, as pope after pope refused to lift the ban on contraception and condemned the use of condoms while MILLIONS worldwide were dying of AIDS, my contempt for the Church knew no limits.
I have been in a church a couple of times in 50 years, mostly for weddings and funerals. Each time someone in my group was worried that the walls would crumble if I entered.
So why then, after all this, did I have to see The Pieta?
Regardless of what the Church has done to the story of Jesus to manipulate folks and accumulate great wealth, that story is one worth knowing and remembering. Regardless of the veracity of the gospels or when exactly they were written, the lessons of Jesus Christ offer the world a simple, elegant and essential message that, if followed, would end so much human misery.
“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Your neighbors are black, Hispanic, gay, women, transgender, Asian, Jewish, queer, bi-sexual, brown, Native American, young, old, autistic, bed-ridden, mentally incapacitated, physically disabled, liberals, and yes even trump supporters (though in fairness if the trump supporters would take the “Love your neighbor” stuff even semi-seriously, there would be only a handful of trump supporters left.)
So while I don’t attend church services and I don’t care who the pope is, I still try to remember those five important works. And yes, I’m often a miserable failure at following that commandment.
The Pieta has always been the symbol of the price a brown-skinned Jewish guy paid for trying to teach us how to live. I have looked at pictures of that sculpture often in my life. I kept one on my desk at school.
On that last day in Rome I got to stand in front of that statue unsure of what emotions would emerge. Despite being jostled about a few times by people with cameras, I was going to stand there until I knew why I was there. Looking at Mary’s face as she holds her dead son in her arms drives home the sadness of that moment for all of us. Jesus was killed for preaching a message of love and tolerance…a message of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
In today’s world I imagine her sorrow is not directed at her personal loss, but rather at how awful people have been treated in her son’s name. The examples of people claiming to be Christian while slaughtering others, putting children in cages, denying basic human rights, preventing health care, treating women like property, driving away the homeless and the afflicted, etc. are too numerous to mention here. But I guess since these atrocities are committed in Jesus’ name, it’s fine. Everything’s fine.
Just know that on that hot June day in Rome, my faith in those five words was reinvigorated by the sadness in Mary’s eyes that Michelangelo was somehow able to capture in marble.
The Grumblings 
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