Diversity

can be a bad word for conservatives while it can be a favorite buzzword for progressives. For the Church (often seen as a conservative institution), diversity is a beautiful thing.

Diversity in the Church is not a quota system nor is it a diversity of doctrine (although the Church enjoys a diversity of theologies), it is a diversity, a richness, a wealth of people and languages and cultures and backgrounds.

Raise your eyes and look about;
they all gather and come to you:
your sons come from afar,
and your daughters in the arms of their nurses.

Then you shall be radiant at what you see,
your heart shall throb and overflow,
for the riches of the sea shall be emptied out before you,
the wealth of nations shall be brought to you.

Anyone who has been to celebrations in Rome, or an international conference, or even a church in an area with many immigrants or foreign tourists can appreciate the sentiments expressed in today’s first reading, spoken then of the ancient city of Jerusalem but understood by Christians as referring also to the Body of Christ, the People of God, the Church.

Sometimes we forget these riches of diversity within the Church. We get so caught up in the preferences and habits of our own communities or our own personal comfort zones that we do not welcome things or people that are strange to us and yet are part of the same communion.

The comfort zones of many conservatives can certainly be extremely narrow, to be sure. Yet even those who see themselves as progressive and who adore diversity as a buzzword or as a banner to wave in the face of the status quo may sometimes be terribly narrow-minded, eschewing the orthodox devotions of other cultures or the richness of the patrimony of Christendom while locked into mediocre imitations of the theological and musical styles of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

As this new year begins, perhaps it is a good time for us to stretch the boundaries of our personal comfort zones and to reach out and appreciate the richness and the glory that is the legitimate diversity of the Universal Church.