Lowering The Flag

As we were photographing Newtown’s famous flag this week as it flew at half-staff, a passerby stopped to ask the reason for this ceremonial honor. “Is it for the pope?” she asked. The answer was yes. “I didn’t realize Newtown was a Catholic town,” she commented before moving on.

While it is true that Newtown is mostly Catholic, with nearly half of its households belonging to St Rose Church, this comment reflects our once-common democratic predisposition to separate our religious lives from our political lives. If a great political leader had died last Sunday instead of a great religious leader, no one would question lowering the flag in respect. But it was the pope who died, and the question quickly came up.

These days, religion and politics are mixing it up pretty well. The pundits tell us that the religious right delivered the presidential election to George W. Bush last November, and the recent foray by the President and the Congress into the legal battle over the end of Terri Schiavo’s life apparently fit with the political social agenda of some religious conservatives. This trend toward blending faith with practical politics makes us a little apprehensive, but this week as we looked up at our town’s flag bending in the wind down among the tree branches, we knew this community gesture was exactly the right thing to do.

Pope John Paul II, the only pope people under 30 can remember, faced his share of controversy as head of the Roman Catholic Church. His unyielding resistance to change in church teachings on birth control, celibacy for priests, and the ordination of women put him at odds with a fundamental cultural shift in the west over the past 50 years and set up conflicts between church doctrine and personal beliefs for many American Catholics. Yet unlike modern day fundamentalism of every stripe, which pits conservative religious belief against modern social change, inciting personal animosities and outright conflict between adherents and apostates, Pope John Paul II, always a man of peace, was universally revered for his great compassion, humility, good humor, and absolute devotion to the plight of the poor, the sick, and the forgotten.

These Christ-like qualities transcend politics, social agendas, and religious divides. They always have. It is why the nonviolent legacies of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr, inspire the oppressed in every culture to act on principle against all odds. It is why the compassion of the late Mother Teresa and the living Dalai Lama steadfastly informs the conscience of the comfortable and bolsters the hope of the afflicted and dispossessed. These great souls are not just Catholic, or Hindu, or Protestant, or Buddhist. They are exemplars of what a human life should be. When they die, every person and every community should stop and reflect. Lowering the flag is the least we can do.