Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing.
Speaker 1: The Reverend Donna Scopper spends most days doing what any
Speaker 1: pastor does. She baptizes, she marries, she gives last rites.
Speaker 1: But she's famous for her more worldly work. Scopper is
Speaker 1: one of the most prominent members of the so called
Speaker 1: religious left. Are in the business of sinners, that's her
Speaker 1: on Fox News arguing with Bill O'Riley, That's that's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: We I'm just asking. She brings God fearlessly into the
Speaker 1: public sphere to counter religious conservatives with messengers like them.
Speaker 1: She says, no wonder nonbelievers are the fastest growing segment
Speaker 1: of American society. Scopper believes that the Christian God is
Speaker 1: not punishmentalist. She believes that Christian salvation is a joyous
Speaker 1: and universal liberation, and she came of age at the
Speaker 1: height of nineteen sixties radicalism, so she takes that liberation
Speaker 1: to the streets. She was trained by Saul Alinsky and
Speaker 1: has been arrested for civil disobedience, so, of course, her church,
Speaker 1: Judson Memorial in Greenwich Village welcomes sex workers, militant atheists,
Speaker 1: LGBT folk, and the undocumented, and not just for worship.
Speaker 1: It is a church. Plus, it's a church of around
Speaker 1: three hundred people who worship every Sunday and fairly traditional ways.
Speaker 1: And it's also a place where about people from the
Speaker 1: community come through a week, mostly undocumented people. Right now,
Speaker 1: a lot of sex workers Extinction Rebellion is meeting in
Speaker 1: the basement Occupy moved in for a couple of years.
Speaker 1: Is that kind of place. It's like the wee work
Speaker 1: of a radical left. Yes, And we try to throw
Speaker 1: them out as quickly as possible, do you yes, because
Speaker 1: we want to make room for the new and the next.
Speaker 1: That's our job. And one of you of a theory
Speaker 1: you mean, I wonder if you are the Feds across
Speaker 1: the park over by the restrooms there in the little building,
Speaker 1: they were for a while, and we spotted them and
Speaker 1: they stopped Our executive director and really the founder of
Speaker 1: the sanctuary movement in this era is a man named
Speaker 1: Robbie rug Beyer, who has a case in federal court
Speaker 1: because they've been harassing him forever. And they also picked
Speaker 1: up another man who was a leader, Jean Montraville, and
Speaker 1: deported him. Because they punish you for being an activist today.
Speaker 1: That's what it's come to under this administration. Well, before
Speaker 1: we get to the path you were on that led
Speaker 1: you to this kind of work. When you took over Judson,
Speaker 1: that was two thousand five. And were you in New
Speaker 1: York for several years prior to that? Are you arrived
Speaker 1: in New York right now? I was in Miami before that,
Speaker 1: in a Judson kind of church in Miami. And how
Speaker 1: would you describe the people who came to these facilities? Um?
Speaker 1: Always the outsiders, Always people who were uncertain about religion,
Speaker 1: uncertain about God, but had a strong sense of righteousness
Speaker 1: and spirit and wanted to make something happen. They weren't
Speaker 1: fooling around, and they knew they needed to be in
Speaker 1: community to do it. They needed I call it spiritual
Speaker 1: nurture for public capacity. They're just something that they're seeking.
Speaker 1: And our congregation is probably a third agnostic, a third atheist,
Speaker 1: and a third recovering Baptists. You know, people who know
Speaker 1: the hymns, know the prayers, love it, you know, need
Speaker 1: to go to church on Sunday. But really no, they
Speaker 1: don't really buy it. So I have to be very
Speaker 1: careful with God talk. Um, it's become dropping the G
Speaker 1: bomb I call it sometimes because everybody on the left
Speaker 1: is allergic to religion. Everybody on the left is allergic
Speaker 1: to God language. Do you think that's sad? I think
Speaker 1: it's stupid. Um, It's different than sad. It's a m
Speaker 1: of ignorance and prejudice. The left is not immune to
Speaker 1: ignorance and prejudice, unfortunately, if I've experienced that myself, Now,
Speaker 1: what was your childhood like in that way? My childhood
Speaker 1: was with the warm fundamentalists, the Missouri sind Lutherans. And
Speaker 1: I got God. I got God through Pastor Witty. I
Speaker 1: think I was six. My father was beating up my
Speaker 1: mother and I called Pastor Witty and he came in
Speaker 1: his black cassock and he said, Donald, stop that, don't
Speaker 1: do it anymore. So when I saw a Pastor Whitty
Speaker 1: show up, I said, I'm going to dedicate my life
Speaker 1: to keeping little girls safe. And I started baptizing my dolls.
Speaker 1: I started giving them communion, and both of my grandmother said, Donna,
Speaker 1: stop that, you can't be a pastor. It's only for boys.
Speaker 1: And I said, oh, no, no way, not if it's true,
Speaker 1: not if it's good. Right, So I fought my way
Speaker 1: into it. What did your father do for a living?
Speaker 1: He was a custodian in a garment factory. How many
Speaker 1: kids in the family. Three, I'm the oldest, and then
Speaker 1: my sisters three years younger, and my baby brother wasn't
Speaker 1: born when this happened. So they stayed together after I
Speaker 1: had another kid. They stayed together until she finally walked
Speaker 1: out on him. Um after my begging her to do it.
Speaker 1: What's the path from baptizing your dolls to becoming you?
Speaker 1: Go to you? You went to college in get nice
Speaker 1: Lutheran College. You know, feminism was just coming on, and
Speaker 1: I basically it's such a long story, but I got
Speaker 1: a scholarship to go to the University of Chicago Divinity
Speaker 1: School because my then husband, Bob Scopper, was avoiding the
Speaker 1: draft by getting a Rockefeller fellowship to go to seminary.
Speaker 1: That was one of the ways you could do it.
Speaker 1: And I called up the school and said, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm the one who ought to be going here, not him.
Speaker 1: Why don't you let me come to And they had
Speaker 1: just hired the first woman professor and her one of
Speaker 1: the conditions of her employment at this prestigious place was
Speaker 1: to say, I need three scholarships for three women. There
Speaker 1: are no women in this class. So they put me
Speaker 1: through to a woman named Peggy anne Way and I
Speaker 1: got a scholarship. Bob dropped out in a year, became
Speaker 1: very depressed by the moral dilemma he had faced because
Speaker 1: he knew he was it wasn't quite right. But he
Speaker 1: also couldn't go to Vietnam. He had a very low number.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you remember that time before. It's
Speaker 1: heavy for a lot of men. So I stuck. And
Speaker 1: then the Lutheran said, we don't know ordaine women. Are
Speaker 1: you crazy? And I said, well, no, I'm not. And
Speaker 1: they kept sending me back to seminary to get more
Speaker 1: courses in luther because they didn't know how to say
Speaker 1: the real issue is that we don't ordain women. So
Speaker 1: there was a big sinid out in Minneapolis, and I
Speaker 1: and two other women who were the first three prepared
Speaker 1: to be ordained by the Lutherans, ended up on the
Speaker 1: front page of the paper um and we were all
Speaker 1: then banished. They did ordain women, but they weren't going
Speaker 1: to ordain us because we were troublemakers. So I just
Speaker 1: switched to another denomination, the United Church of Christ, where
Speaker 1: I've been very happy and you were ordained when nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three in Tucson, Arizona, and they wouldn't allow the
Speaker 1: nuns who were parts of my friends. You know, ordination
Speaker 1: is a ceremony of laying on of hands, and I
Speaker 1: was appalled at the notion of all those men me
Speaker 1: kneeling down and then laying hands on that. I requested
Speaker 1: that my nuns women's group be allowed to also lay
Speaker 1: on hands, and the association the denomination said no. So
Speaker 1: we all bought pink underwear and wore the to the ordination,
Speaker 1: and when it was time for the laying on of hands,
Speaker 1: all the nuns came up, moved right to the front
Speaker 1: and laid on hand. There wasn't anything they can do
Speaker 1: about it. Judson had a Mass, that's Catholic Mass said
Speaker 1: by self ordained priests. Correct, Judson, we have we have
Speaker 1: five different congregations worshiping in the building. When are they um?
Speaker 1: There's a thing called lab Shool, which is an experimental
Speaker 1: Jewish congregation saying praxed Us, which is the Roman Catholic
Speaker 1: women who self ordained who worship another is a restoration
Speaker 1: Temple which is a queer people of color congregation which
Speaker 1: is very evangelical US. And then we had an organization
Speaker 1: called the Muslim Community Network for a while. What's the
Speaker 1: one you have mass for sex workers you tell me about. Yes,
Speaker 1: we do that, and also for opioid users, but they're episodic,
Speaker 1: they're not congregational. So the mass for sex workers are
Speaker 1: the people that what they're seeking as privacy, they want
Speaker 1: to be able to have COMPETENTI reality when they they
Speaker 1: wanted probably more space to organize than to pray. But
Speaker 1: we had Stormy Daniels people in a while back, which
Speaker 1: was really fun. She didn't come, but she sent things.
Speaker 1: We had Pleasure Sunday a while back. You know, we're
Speaker 1: trying to be on the edge and not be conceited
Speaker 1: about it and wants to find the people who are
Speaker 1: outside of religion and have them tell us who God is.
Speaker 1: We live in a time now. I never hear anybody
Speaker 1: talk about God. I never hear anybody talk about faith
Speaker 1: when you're read a dinner conversation. No, I don't need
Speaker 1: that to be some you know, obvious thing or very
Speaker 1: or very uh yeah, I mean, but it's like you
Speaker 1: never hear politicians talk about peace anymore, and I never
Speaker 1: hear people talk about God anymore. And yet I talked
Speaker 1: to God instantly. Most people do constantly. I mean, in
Speaker 1: my head, I'm saying, there going, but please let me
Speaker 1: get this right. Please, that wouldn't give me something that
Speaker 1: I want. Please let me just get through this without
Speaker 1: any problems. Call down me down, we will focus me.
Speaker 1: I would sit there. I wrote this in this book
Speaker 1: I wrote about my I wrote a book that was
Speaker 1: basically a screed against the California family law system. When
Speaker 1: I was going through my custody battle from my older daughter.
Speaker 1: I remember I would sit on up in a plane
Speaker 1: and I leaned my head against a window, and I
Speaker 1: would say, please let this trip with my daughter be pleasant.
Speaker 1: I don't want anything. The idea was I would just
Speaker 1: lean my head on a window of an airplane and say,
Speaker 1: please just let this weekend go well. Everybody just is happy.
Speaker 1: I said, let this weekend be normal. I wrote that
Speaker 1: in the book. Not that we're going to go have
Speaker 1: like some fizzy entertainment. Let it just be normal. We
Speaker 1: all just get along. Everybody's fairly happy. And every time
Speaker 1: I made that prayer, it happy and nice, I guess,
Speaker 1: because I was requesting something that was in line with
Speaker 1: what some other power wanted me to have in my life,
Speaker 1: but in line with the power's intention right in your lifetime.
Speaker 1: What do you attribute the I mean beyond you know,
Speaker 1: scandals and for the Catholics and stuff forth, and I
Speaker 1: know that their numbers are going down dramatically, what are
Speaker 1: you attributed to which have led us to this godless society?
Speaker 1: So it's a really good question. And the sex scandals
Speaker 1: do matter tremendously, even though there's an ancient heresy that
Speaker 1: says the bread is good even if the giver is not.
Speaker 1: Just because the priest is a bastard doesn't mean religion
Speaker 1: is wrong. It's important, very important, and it's been well
Speaker 1: thought out for centuries. But that being said, I think
Speaker 1: I think the evangelicals have given God a very bad name,
Speaker 1: and it's it's the way they are to call it punishmentalism,
Speaker 1: and it's the punishing God. So they've got God wrong
Speaker 1: in a very fundamental way. And so people just they're
Speaker 1: getting blamed and shamed enough and at work, at school,
Speaker 1: they don't need to God who's like that. So the
Speaker 1: good news is God isn't like that. Um I just
Speaker 1: did a sermon out in Orient last weekend about the
Speaker 1: difference between sweet braid and sage. So sage is this
Speaker 1: thing that's lots of people have in their houses, and
Speaker 1: it's an ancient native custom of dispelling the bad spirits.
Speaker 1: So people will move into a new house, so they'll
Speaker 1: go to a a and they'll dispel the bad spirits
Speaker 1: that are driving them crazy. Sweet braid isn't also an
Speaker 1: ancient ritual, simple household ritual of bringing in good energy.
Speaker 1: I'm on the side of religion that calls up positive energy,
Speaker 1: not the kind that dispels the bad energy. So no
Speaker 1: stage all sweet bread for me. Do all the organized
Speaker 1: religions in the world have something that you admire and respect? Well?
Speaker 1: When I pray in public, which I often do, I say, God,
Speaker 1: you whom some call Jesus, another called Christ, you whom
Speaker 1: some call Allah, and others called breath You beyond the
Speaker 1: captivity of any human name or force, draw near and
Speaker 1: bless us on our way to finding some piece of
Speaker 1: You today. And I really mean that prayer. Uh. We're
Speaker 1: struggling for our lives as movements. UM. I have founded
Speaker 1: this little organization in New York called bricks and mortals,
Speaker 1: which is about changing up the sacred sites so that
Speaker 1: they can be more useful. And it means remove the
Speaker 1: pews from your head, your spiritual head first, and get
Speaker 1: get over being right about God. So I'm married to
Speaker 1: a Jew. I have three kids who practice Judayoism. Your
Speaker 1: children are Jewish? Yes, my son is married to a rabbi.
Speaker 1: He walks around Brooklyn wearing a t shirt that he
Speaker 1: had made and it says, my mother as a minister,
Speaker 1: My wife's a rabbi. Get over it. There was never
Speaker 1: any discussion of them coming to your side of the aisle,
Speaker 1: so to speak. Warren and I decided that the first
Speaker 1: seven years they'd get immersed in Christianity and the next
Speaker 1: seven years they get immersed in Judaism. So they were
Speaker 1: Actually when my mother left my father we were talking
Speaker 1: about her before. It was at my twins bar Mitzvahs
Speaker 1: bar in bat Mitzvah, and my father went into one
Speaker 1: of his fits and said, I don't want to be
Speaker 1: around all those rich Jews. And she said I don't
Speaker 1: want to be married to a bigot anymore, and she
Speaker 1: walked and she never went back. Now, I said that
Speaker 1: when I went through the darkest parts of my child
Speaker 1: custody with my daughter, I said, I'm just gonna go
Speaker 1: into the woods and message I'm gonna drive up to
Speaker 1: the Birchers and Mike into the woods and just blow
Speaker 1: my brains out. And I said, nobody will find me
Speaker 1: for at least a couple of weeks. And I wanted
Speaker 1: to come back from this horrible depression that I had,
Speaker 1: and um, I will sit with my priest, who is
Speaker 1: a dear friend of mine, older men. He's ninety three now,
Speaker 1: and he's one of three or four men over the
Speaker 1: years who's kept me coming back to pray and to
Speaker 1: ask for the strength to deal with this. And this
Speaker 1: because going back to church, going back to sit with
Speaker 1: these men and talk to them privately, we'd have meals.
Speaker 1: I bring food over to the place and we'd sit
Speaker 1: down and have lunch out here. And all of them
Speaker 1: don't see the change that I see coming for the church,
Speaker 1: a dying Catholic church, and I don't want to focus
Speaker 1: only a Catholicism here. I said to them, you do
Speaker 1: see married clergy coming, And they said, oh, yes, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not you know what christ wantity, wanted celibacy,
Speaker 1: but we're realizing, you know, whatever their words were about
Speaker 1: the impracticality of that. Then I said, and if you
Speaker 1: saw like a gunshot their reaction to this, I said,
Speaker 1: now what about women? Clear before I even finished the phrase,
Speaker 1: they went no, no, no, no no no no no
Speaker 1: no no, and they shot that down so fast. Why
Speaker 1: do you think that is why? It's just so? I
Speaker 1: wrote a book about this called I Heart You Francis
Speaker 1: Love Letters from a Reluctant Admirer, and I got I
Speaker 1: got a letter back from him, and in the book,
Speaker 1: I argued, because I was totally Twitter painted with this
Speaker 1: guy when he first came in, I just fell in
Speaker 1: love with him. So I decided to write him love letters,
Speaker 1: and and I said, your own beautiful internal logic about
Speaker 1: mother Earth and ecology. I think he's the smartest ecological
Speaker 1: environmental thinker we have. And his entire thing is, let's
Speaker 1: re sacrilize all of the earth, and when we re
Speaker 1: sacrilize it, we won't be able to pollute it the
Speaker 1: way we do. And I think that's true, I really do.
Speaker 1: So I said, your own internal arguments are certainly going
Speaker 1: to lead you to ordain women have married priests, ordain
Speaker 1: gay people, and be so much less punishing and rigid
Speaker 1: in your point of view. And none of that happened.
Speaker 1: And all my Catholic friends said, Donna, that's the craziest
Speaker 1: book you've ever written. It's really really naive. What happened
Speaker 1: to you? You stupid or something? And I said, no,
Speaker 1: I actually believe it. And I still believe it. So
Speaker 1: as long as the Catholics think no, no, no about
Speaker 1: ordaining women, I think they have missed the Jesus boat
Speaker 1: so far that they're just not going to make sense
Speaker 1: to people. And that's a real shame. United Church of
Speaker 1: Christ Minister Donna Scopper another, here's the thing, guests who
Speaker 1: wrestles with questions of faith is Lawrence Right. He writes
Speaker 1: about the darker side of religion for The New Yorker
Speaker 1: magazine and in his book Going Clear, in which he
Speaker 1: documents the Church of Scientology's efforts to convert young actors
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. Your friends are going off, they're going to
Speaker 1: get law degrees and stuff like that, and you are
Speaker 1: out in you know, Hollywood, eating dog food, hoping to
Speaker 1: be a movie star. There's a sense of inadequacy alongcome scientologists,
Speaker 1: which says you will learn the secrets of the universe
Speaker 1: and you'll acquire superhuman powers. And if you're a young
Speaker 1: actor standing out in central casting, they'll be passing out
Speaker 1: brochure saying how to get an agent, how to get
Speaker 1: ahead in the business, Come to the Celebrity Center. Lawrence
Speaker 1: Right discusses his other stories in our archive at Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing dot Org. Donna Scopper returns in a moment.
Speaker 1: The Reverend Donna Scopper of Judson Memorial Church in New
Speaker 1: York comes by her radical activism. Honestly, she studied with
Speaker 1: the great rabble rouser Saul Alinsky, who got wind of
Speaker 1: Scopper while she was sort of attending the University of
Speaker 1: Chicago Divinity School. The first day we went to class,
Speaker 1: we all just said it was bs and went on strike.
Speaker 1: So we came up with this song that to Alice's
Speaker 1: restaurant and camped out in the chapel and that you
Speaker 1: can bullshit any time you feel. Let the smell don't
Speaker 1: make you reel. And Saul was right around the corner,
Speaker 1: came and helped us organize it, and there was a
Speaker 1: mass graduate student sort of walk out. It was really
Speaker 1: really interesting and kind of adolescence and embarrassing. UM and
Speaker 1: Saul started teaching us, and I was really excited about
Speaker 1: organizing and really cut my teeth on the South side
Speaker 1: of Chicago with him for about a year, and then
Speaker 1: I realized that he was really sexist in his understanding
Speaker 1: of power. Today we would call it instrumental. You know,
Speaker 1: hurt those guys, make an enemy, kill them. How do
Speaker 1: you get power? You you wait for the people in power,
Speaker 1: all of whom are bad and evil, to make a mistake,
Speaker 1: and then you, JOm, I got them. And so it's
Speaker 1: just masculine. So I wrote this paper in which I
Speaker 1: pointed out that I don't think women would organize that way.
Speaker 1: H nor did I think Christians would organize that way.
Speaker 1: Jesus is the one who he refused to have an enemy,
Speaker 1: even though he called out power all the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's a beautifully hard dance, you know, because you can
Speaker 1: make more change if you can declare an enemy, you
Speaker 1: can really get very far. But when you're there and
Speaker 1: you're ministering, how do you get them to refuse to
Speaker 1: make an enemy? Because when you drop your guard, you
Speaker 1: feel like a chump. I'm in a lot of trouble
Speaker 1: right now for saying to the Me Too movement that
Speaker 1: I just don't think we can demonize people. People just
Speaker 1: get angry about it and will tell you the victim regardless.
Speaker 1: Just believe the victims. Start with that, and I can
Speaker 1: even believe the victim. But I still want to know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to the person over there, you
Speaker 1: know what happens to the rest of your life. You
Speaker 1: can't say that you're for decarceration and then throw the
Speaker 1: book at other people. You just can't do it that way.
Speaker 1: And I'm totally opposed to decarceration except for that group
Speaker 1: of It just drives me crazy. But the larger way
Speaker 1: I do it in Greenwich Village is so we got
Speaker 1: a lot of funerals and a lot of weddings. Fewer
Speaker 1: baptisms these days, but a lot of funerals. In some
Speaker 1: stranger will walk in the door of Judson twice a
Speaker 1: week and say, my downstairs neighbor died. I called everybody
Speaker 1: in her address book. I don't know nobody's answering. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of people like that still in the village,
Speaker 1: and we say, of course, we'll do a service and
Speaker 1: then ten people from the buildings show up, and the
Speaker 1: doorman and the housekeeper, you know. But usually the person
Speaker 1: who is the chief owner will say, by the way,
Speaker 1: no mention of God. And I'll get a big fat
Speaker 1: smile on my face and say I'll try, right, and
Speaker 1: because I have to agree to the terms, you know.
Speaker 1: But then when we get into the service, I'll say, now,
Speaker 1: I've been asked not to mention God, so I'm not
Speaker 1: going to overdo it. But um, Suzanne is in the
Speaker 1: hands of whatever is almighty, whatever is good, whatever is beautiful,
Speaker 1: whatever is true, and her life mattered. In other words,
Speaker 1: try to reinsert God language or Jesus has been so
Speaker 1: polluted by the evangelicals that it's hard to go Christ.
Speaker 1: I'll say Jesus all the time, but I probably won't
Speaker 1: say Christ because Christ has a kind of imperial feel
Speaker 1: to people, and in fact, that's what it means biblically.
Speaker 1: It's a way to be invitational. I want to be
Speaker 1: as invitational as possible, and I want to make people
Speaker 1: as spiritually comfortable as possible so that they don't have
Speaker 1: to be apologetic about being a Christian. So I'm so
Speaker 1: tired of people at Judson and elsewhere saying well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a Christian, but I'm not that kind of Christian.
Speaker 1: I don't want to have to say that anymore. I
Speaker 1: want to create a world in which people who are
Speaker 1: full of hate and bile are not Christians period. They
Speaker 1: have nothing to do with Jesus. So let's say the
Speaker 1: sex workers come and have their service. Do you find
Speaker 1: that people who are going to these whatever, the congregants,
Speaker 1: whatever their d NA, do they have that kind of
Speaker 1: self examination? Is that a part of what they're doing. Yes,
Speaker 1: they do for the most part, and that's because they're
Speaker 1: really human. And the safer the human is, the more
Speaker 1: likely the human is to confess his or her sin.
Speaker 1: And sin is miss the mark of our true humanity.
Speaker 1: It's missing, it's not being close to the ultimate to God. Um,
Speaker 1: it's distance from God. Sin is not specific things so
Speaker 1: much as your whole attitude, in your whole way of being,
Speaker 1: and whether you're making yourself stronger to be more loving
Speaker 1: because love is very hard. Is it becoming harder to
Speaker 1: love in the world we live in? Well, of course
Speaker 1: it is because we've banned God. Is this great article
Speaker 1: not to get off the sex workers? I think they
Speaker 1: are as accountable as any other group of human being.
Speaker 1: I really do on us. They get what they're doing.
Speaker 1: I mean, some people who work at Walmart are really
Speaker 1: worried about selling guns. Some people who work in a
Speaker 1: fast food place, Thank my god. I'm a great singer
Speaker 1: and I'm working in a fast food place. What is
Speaker 1: it with me? A lot of my preaching friends. So
Speaker 1: I gave another crappy sermon on Sunday, what's with me?
Speaker 1: You know why? I am? Why not doing my best?
Speaker 1: But it's not It's not the act, the habitual act
Speaker 1: of this or that, or the crummy job. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of people with crummy jobs. And there's a
Speaker 1: Korean notion of sin, which is the word is han
Speaker 1: h a and and it actually comes through Reinhold neighbor
Speaker 1: to who thought the big sin was pride. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: The big sin is what he calls um indifference. I
Speaker 1: can't believe you just said that. I said to my priest,
Speaker 1: my former priest who died from the bell Rose Queen's School,
Speaker 1: the old Catholic boys from Queens. You know, we had
Speaker 1: this a very heavy New York accent like this, And
Speaker 1: I said, I want to sit down with you and
Speaker 1: do reconciliation. I'm wanna do the modern Catholic confession. He goes,
Speaker 1: what I said, Yeah, I want to sit down with you.
Speaker 1: I got a lot of things I want to talk
Speaker 1: about that are really eating at me. And I feel
Speaker 1: bad because you want to sit down and do all
Speaker 1: of that in the room and tell me every horrible
Speaker 1: thing you've been doing. Well, please, because are you sorry?
Speaker 1: Are you sorry for what you did? Alright, the name
Speaker 1: of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit,
Speaker 1: You're absolved, Okay, Please go. I can't stand that listening
Speaker 1: to those stories. And then we had lunch and I
Speaker 1: said to him, people come to He goes, well, he is.
Speaker 1: Everything is about sex. The man is having an affair
Speaker 1: with his secretary and it's just sex. He's just fooling around.
Speaker 1: And the woman is having sex with a tennis pro
Speaker 1: or her trainer. But she's fallen in love. She's in love.
Speaker 1: And he says, and I don't care about that. He goes,
Speaker 1: I'm from the Thomas Aquinas school, the sins of the Flesh,
Speaker 1: of the least of our concerns. He said, I want
Speaker 1: someone to come into this room and say, bless me Father,
Speaker 1: for I have sinned. I have an abundance of pride indifference.
Speaker 1: People have been told stop caring carrying his old care.
Speaker 1: It's too expensive. And this is why we get climate deniers,
Speaker 1: school shooters, ridiculous forms of government. I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: believe the Congress sits around every day all day long
Speaker 1: and does nothing about people whose medical bills are skyrocketing,
Speaker 1: and they're going, I mean, it's just insane. So it's
Speaker 1: what you don't do. St. Paul said, um uh, the
Speaker 1: good that I do not and the evil that I
Speaker 1: would not do, I do. And it's in that place
Speaker 1: the Korean word han. It's not just indifference, it's also
Speaker 1: folly lust and they apply it to people who died
Speaker 1: in the Holocaust. This is very uncomfortable, but they'll say,
Speaker 1: why did the Jews who outnumbered the guards not rise
Speaker 1: up and die fighting and die fighting as opposed to
Speaker 1: the way they died. Now, I don't know how I
Speaker 1: really think about that, because, okay, because I have a mother.
Speaker 1: I have a mother who stayed with an abusive man
Speaker 1: for thirty years and when I finally got said to her,
Speaker 1: why why why why why why? She said, Donna, because
Speaker 1: we would have been in the poorhouse. I did it
Speaker 1: for you, Now shut up and get it. I get it.
Speaker 1: So it's not like we have all these choices to
Speaker 1: rebel or to foment revolution on a daily basis, But
Speaker 1: we do have responsibility when we don't, when we settle,
Speaker 1: and that I think is a form of sin too.
Speaker 1: And you know, one of the things that's going on
Speaker 1: with clergy right now. We used to call it rent
Speaker 1: a caller, and now with all these mass shootings, it's
Speaker 1: like rent a caller at the vigil getting really hard
Speaker 1: these Saturday events. You have to change up everything you're
Speaker 1: gonna do, and then the mayor, of course us wants
Speaker 1: you to stand there and look like you're praying. And
Speaker 1: these are all people who haven't been religiously prepared. I
Speaker 1: think it takes a whole life to become a Christian,
Speaker 1: and I hope I get there before I go. You
Speaker 1: don't just do it a little bit. You guide a
Speaker 1: lot of people through their final moments. Correct. Yes, mostly
Speaker 1: I do old fashioned ministry, hatching, matching and dispatching weddings, funerals, baptisms,
Speaker 1: despatching exactly. You have never heard that, Well, always said
Speaker 1: that to me. That was my prec said, oh, he goes.
Speaker 1: I love it you come here, he said, I thought
Speaker 1: you'd be one of those A and P Catholics. I said,
Speaker 1: what they say as ashes and palms hatching, matching, dispatching.
Speaker 1: But when's when a congregant you're told is gonna is
Speaker 1: gonna cross over and you go there. I'm assuming that
Speaker 1: many times they're not lucid, they're not conscious, know, but
Speaker 1: the people around them are. What do you want them
Speaker 1: to know that they're going to be okay, that the
Speaker 1: survivors are going to be okay. Even if it's a
Speaker 1: husband or a wife or a partner, they're going to
Speaker 1: be okay. Even without the role of the church over
Speaker 1: throughout time to let people have a place to go,
Speaker 1: it still matters a lot, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: have a beautiful woman in my congregation. Um. She was
Speaker 1: the first chair of the board when I got to Judson,
Speaker 1: and she and her husband were so close, just the
Speaker 1: two of them. They were just happy together, didn't have children.
Speaker 1: She has a beautiful garden in Brooklyn. They were redoing
Speaker 1: this brown stone, these great New Yorkers. Anyway, he died,
Speaker 1: and his whole dying was Mary going to be okay,
Speaker 1: what is what's going to happen to Mary? What's gonna
Speaker 1: happen to Mary? And she was just lost without him.
Speaker 1: It's like this guy that was killed in the shooting
Speaker 1: who held his father in his arms, and the father
Speaker 1: right it was kept asking if he was okay. That
Speaker 1: last impulse, that last breath of life is an outwardly
Speaker 1: directed breath and then a miracle it is, And it
Speaker 1: is a miracle because you really are less self obsessed
Speaker 1: than than ever people know they're dying. You know, my
Speaker 1: mom just died this year and she were you there
Speaker 1: for her to minister to her. No, my sister was,
Speaker 1: and I wasn't. She died in her sleep at peacefully.
Speaker 1: But she's been saying for two years you know I'm ready, Donna,
Speaker 1: don't get all uptight, you know. I said, well, you
Speaker 1: can be ready, but maybe I'm not ready, you know,
Speaker 1: So that's the difference. What do you think happens to
Speaker 1: us when we die? Oh? I think we all go
Speaker 1: to heaven. I think that's fantastic. What do you think
Speaker 1: happens when you die? Oh? I got it down, fascinating. Yes, Um,
Speaker 1: the my last question for you, you've been a minister
Speaker 1: in several different congregations. Seven. If I'm mistaken, give me
Speaker 1: one or two of the most fundamental changes for you
Speaker 1: over time. Boy, I wish I could say I had
Speaker 1: changed more. I it's all pretty basic. Um. I think
Speaker 1: probably social media and the internet has changed some of
Speaker 1: the way we do pastoral care. I used to always
Speaker 1: visit in people's homes and uh, you know, and kind
Speaker 1: of a circuit, you know, you go this and you
Speaker 1: do that, you go there and you and so I
Speaker 1: got to know lots and lots of old ladies, uh
Speaker 1: really well, which was wonderful, Um, people who are not
Speaker 1: afraid of dying. And then now we just had a
Speaker 1: baby born at Judson and I said, emailed, said, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna come over, you know, say hi and see how
Speaker 1: you're doing, because I'm concerned about the mother. And the
Speaker 1: baby will be fine, but I know what happens to mothers.
Speaker 1: And she said, oh my god, couldn't we just talk
Speaker 1: on the phone. And I thought, hmm, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: so I missed the face to face. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think that the world is more dangerous right now,
Speaker 1: and people are experiencing it as very dangerous. And I
Speaker 1: attribute that to the lack of acculturation of meaning religion
Speaker 1: in the best sense of the word. You know, not
Speaker 1: crappy religion, but being raised with a common set of
Speaker 1: values that are broad enough to include people and narrow
Speaker 1: enough to say this matters. You know, you just don't.
Speaker 1: You don't go shooting people, you know, you don't. My
Speaker 1: rabbi friend in Miami, uh, we did a Good Friday
Speaker 1: and pass Over together once when that guy came out
Speaker 1: with the Jesus Blood movie. What's his name, Mel Gibson,
Speaker 1: Mel Gibson. When Mel Gibson did his movie, I called
Speaker 1: Rabbi Mitch Cheffer's my dear friend now and he said,
Speaker 1: we have to do something about this movie together. Coral
Speaker 1: Gables Congregational Church and temple is real. He said no.
Speaker 1: He was like, well, thanks Mitch, you know. And then
Speaker 1: a week later he called me back and he said,
Speaker 1: we have to do something. So let's worship together on
Speaker 1: opening night of Passover and on Good Friday. You bring
Speaker 1: your cross into the temple, take it out, do exactly
Speaker 1: your service, and then we'll do exactly our service and
Speaker 1: we'll show what religions mean. And it was beautiful because
Speaker 1: we were able to not turn Mel Gibson into uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a demon, but to do what we do
Speaker 1: and and respect it. It's certainly there are fewer people
Speaker 1: coming to church or synagogue, but those who do are
Speaker 1: getting a really interesting experience. That's what I would say.
Speaker 1: It's not automatic. You choose it. Because So there was
Speaker 1: this guy on the subway two days ago, and it's
Speaker 1: eight o'clock in the morning and he walks in with
Speaker 1: a giant Carvel ice cream cake you know what they are,
Speaker 1: and it's melting, and he's got spin asked me what
Speaker 1: carvel cake is. Come on, he's got tats all over,
Speaker 1: he's got a backpack. He looks like a strange hipster.
Speaker 1: It's at Fort Street. He gets on with the cake
Speaker 1: and he yells out to the whole car it's my
Speaker 1: birthday and does anybody want to have some cake with me?
Speaker 1: And everybody looks like no. Then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: a couple of people say what the hell start eating.
Speaker 1: So then people all gathered around the cake, eating this cake,
Speaker 1: and he's laughing his head off and he says, this
Speaker 1: is how I wanted to celebrate my birthday. I wanted
Speaker 1: to have a Eucharist with you, and this is my body.
Speaker 1: This is my body, Fugie Whale, It's my body, Fuggie
Speaker 1: the Whale. Donna's scopper on social justice, salvation and carvel.
Speaker 1: You can find her delivering the good news at eleven
Speaker 1: every Sunday morning at Judson Memorial Church in New York
Speaker 1: City or at a protest near you. I'm Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Two two