Spokespeople for Christ
Peter Buckley and Mark O'Donnell take a White House press-spokesperson shakeup as a lesson in how a Christian speaks for Christ: with truth, patience, and a willingness to listen. They then turn to Paul McCartney on the danger of surrounded agreement, to confession and the Gospel as ways back to the truth, and to St. Teresa of Avila, whose feast fell this week, on contemplation overflowing into action.
Notes
- A late-week shakeup around a White House press spokesperson drew less interest for the story itself than for what people said makes a spokesperson succeed or fail.
- Peter warns against the sycophant who sells a narrative instead of the truth, and against the combative style that treats every question as a fight.
- The Christian charge is St. Peter's: always be ready to give a reason for the hope you have, with gentleness and respect, not by lording it over people.
- Mark had hoped the proposed spokesperson's patience and kindness might balance a harder-edged team, and calls the choice a missed chance and shares a story from his days at Allied Signal: when angry salespeople disputed their commissions, calling them back by the promised Friday, even with no answer yet, turned opponents into allies.
- Peter recalls Edith Stein stopped by an anonymous woman who set down her shopping bags and prayed before the tabernacle in a Frankfurt church. Mark says the night that decided her was reading the life of St. Teresa of Avila.
- Paul McCartney's warning: when success makes everyone around you afraid to disagree, you can no longer tell whether the work is actually good.
- Confession is not a loop of the same sins. It is a repeated realignment with the truth, and the grace to live charity and chastity comes slowly to the person who keeps asking.
- For people who want truth-tellers nearby: regular spiritual direction, and praying the Gospel until it cuts. Peter notes Opus Dei's push, toward the 2028 centenary, to be contemplatives in the middle of the world.
- St. Josemaría loved St. Teresa of Avila, whose feast was this past week. Peter's oldest granddaughter is named Teresa. Mark's close: the apostolate is an overflow of the interior life. Without knowing Christ, there is nothing to say.