The YMCA & The Pope Meet Eye to Eye!
An epic experience of historical significance in the 21st century for the Y and the Holy See - our YMCA of the USA CEO and the Board Chair connect with Pope Francis in Rome to share a vision of hope.
Truly remarkable. This could not have happened a hundred years ago, not fifty years ago, and that it could happen here in the first quarter of the 21st century is a miracle. Not an out-of-the-blue miracle, but rather an answer-to-prayer kind of miracle, a grace accompanied by much prayer, ecumenical work, multicultural collaborations, genuine friendships, and love in and through the YMCA.
Suzanne McCormick, the 15th CEO and President of the YMCA of the USA described the experience on a LinkedIn post:
It’s easy for a YMCA member to take for granted that Catholic Christians can participate in the Y as a member, but a few remember when this was not permitted.
The Young Men’s Christian Association originated as a Protestant movement focused on factory workers, improving their lives morally, spiritually, physically, and socially. With its grimy humble start in 1844 industrial London, it swept the world, becoming a factor in every major country of the world. As recently as the 1960’s in the USA Catholic bishops and priests discouraged and even forbade their young people from getting involved with the YMCA for fear of proselytization and corrosion of values.
Many significant leaders and religious movements have been involved in the change embodied by Suzanne and Francis being present to each other with warm smiles and genuine care.
A tutorial of global and national Protestant-Catholic Christian bridge-building would be required, as well as the vast inner work of the Y to be for all Christians, and then for all people of faith, and then for all people.
Rather than downplay the significance of this, or to judge the prior “bigotry” of the former exclusionary realities, focus on those leaders who from within their very different faith traditions worked diligently and faith-fully to build genuine ecumenical bridges focused on collaborative community work.
What role does the YMCA play in global Christianity? What factor can it be in the vitality of religion in communities around the world? What business does the Y have with popes, bishops, ministers and clergy from across multiple faith traditions?
The Y continues to innovate and meet the spirit-mind-body needs of the community, and this leads us into very diverse but vital areas of opportunities and challenges. To learn more about the enormous and compelling scope of the YMCA, click here to read what I think is a cheeky and brilliant overview by the Montecito Journal of the genius of the Young Men’s Christian Association.
The article ends with these thoughtful and inspiring paragraphs:
Bottom line? The YMCA is the beating heart of any community that hosts it; not the metaphorical beating heart, the other one; the hard-working pump that assures all the precincts of the body are oxygenated. Yeah, the Y will always be a place to make broken, gasping conversation with your neighbor as you try to avoid being hurled off your treadmill. But the Y has always been, and remains, something else again.
“The fact that we’re all members of the Y,” Leis says, “that connection cuts through politics, it cuts through religion, it stands for something. No matter where the YMCA is in the world, you can count on it serving the community in a way that the community absolutely needs.” McCormick concurs. The YMCA does turn up in unexpected places.
“There is a beautiful Y called the Jerusalem International YMCA,” McCormick says. “It’s right outside the holy city of Jerusalem, across the street from the King David Hotel. There are scriptures from the Bible, the Quran, and the Torah on the building, and there is a child development center there where they have children of all faiths…” Suzanne McCormick pauses. Some wonders defy articulation. “It’s an extraordinary thing.”
On this day of Passover, as we pray for peace, as we pray for liberation, as we pray for the deliverance from the messengers of death, as we pray for atonement of sins, as we pray for justice, as we pray for freedom, join the YMCA and the Pope and all the people of the Holy Land and around the world that we can continue to find ways to participate in some wonders that defy articulation, bridgebuilding that crosses rivers and oceans of discontent and bondage, of misunderstanding and injustice, of oppression and prejudice, of hopeless and meaninglessness.
It’s almost like we are praying for a miracle. “It’s an extraordinary thing.”