Welcome to Every Day Catholic! Offer your reactions to our Scripture column, “God In Our Midst.” Respond to Judith Dunlap's “Family Corner” column. Critique Frank Frost's film review in “Media Watch.”

CONVERSATION CORNERS

Read about the real lessons in the parable of the prodigal son.
Discuss: How do you feel and act when you believe someone has gotten away with something?

Read about the positive impact of family Christmas traditions.
Discuss: what new Christmas tradition you and your family can add this year.

Read three Chrismas films now available on DVD.
Discuss: What values did you find in each film?

Currier and Ives always gives me the creeps. It's not that I don't have my sentimental streak. I save the wire caps from champagne bottles and old Christmas cards, like everyone else. And my heart quivers at the sight of Rudolph being spurned by the other reindeer every year.

But I find myself in resistance mode each year about this time, when the Currier-and-Ives-style holiday season seems jammed down my throat. Sleigh scenes and chubby Santas aside, not every Christmas season has been a memory of roaring fires, hot chocolate and close-knit family.

Some Christmases in my memory were three-alarm disasters that still wake me up in a cold sweat upon recall. I can't be the only person who has this problem.

Part of the usual trouble with the holidays is that it's homecoming season, which is also at times paradoxically the good part. Traveling can be a bear, but it's not only navigating airports and highways in bad weather that bugs me. It's what I might have to navigate when I get to my destination that's the real worry.

My family is fairly well behaved, as families go. There are no serial killers or serious deviants among us, and much of the time we can be counted on to be normal about festive gatherings and their religious and cultural significance.

But we do have our prodigal members, those who have gone certifiably astray by the usual markers and whose presence or absence at every holiday is an issue. I don't know which I mind more: the years when a disruptive arrival leads to shouting, tears and headaches, or the times when a quiet boycott makes us retell the sorry old stories about what went wrong and why someone is no longer welcome. I anticipate the scenes of conflict with dread, but the unspoken ache of missing part of ourselves can be much worse.

Universal Message

The fact that this story is not at all unusual is probably why Jesus included a prodigal parable in his repertoire. A son turns out to be a disappointment to his father and a source of shame to his brother. (Raise your hands if you can relate!) The son who does everything wrong disappears for years. The son who plays it by the book remains at home and works in the family business. Then one day, guess who shows up looking for a welcome? And guess what the anxious parent and furious stay-at-home sibling do next?

The point of this parable—variously called the parable of the prodigal son or the story of the forgiving father—is aimed at neither the son who was lost nor the father who finds it in his heart to embrace him again. It's the third party in this tale, the obedient brother, who ends up on the receiving end of the moral lesson. Jesus, remember, is addressing the Pharisees, who tend to be self-righteous about how obedient they are, like the older brother in the story. The parable affirms that sinners will sin and that God, who is absolute mercy, will forgive. That much is not in question.

But how do average Christians react to this news? Does knowledge of the mercy of God comfort or offend us?

God's Justice

Most of us are not notorious villains but law-abiding people with a few peccadilloes thrown in for the sake of personal charm. Our wrongdoing is minor and run-of-the mill, the kind of thing easily swept under the carpet of our consciousness. And because we basically toe the line, we would greatly appreciate it if others did too. If they don't, we would prefer that they pay some kind of fine in terms of consequences. But what if God lets them off scot-free? Where's the justice in that?

Divine compassion often offends our sense of justice. After all, people shouldn't be able to do anything they want, at the cost of the rest of us! That's certainly true—but God's mercy doesn't imply that they can. Sin is still a bad idea, and it leads to all kinds of heartache. But God chooses to respond to the wayward child with open arms, and not a door slammed in the face. If we're part of this family, we'd better make room for that notion.

Alice Camille writes a monthly series, “Exploring the Sunday Readings,” as well as the “Testaments” feature in U.S. Catholic magazine, which was awarded Best Column by the Catholic Press Association. She is the author of Invitation to Catholicism: Beliefs & Teachings & Practices and The Rosary: Mysteries of Joy, Light, Sorrow and Glory (both by ACTA Publications).

Next: In 2004, Every Day Catholic will explore the theme of Catholic identity.

Outrage can have its positive side, spurring change and sparking creativity. That's what it did for Kevin (better known as Seamus) Hasson two decades ago.

Then a graduate student in theology at the University of Notre Dame, Mr. Hasson was appalled by "the radical secularism that had taken root in America." He finished his master's work and entered Notre Dame law school, graduating in 1985.

After moving to Washington, D.C., and working on religious liberty issues in private practice and in government, he founded the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Now almost 10 years old, it is devoted to the conviction that the religious impulse and religious expression are natural to human beings.

Mr. Hasson is proud of the successes his firm has had: 45-0 in final judgments and settlements. These are no ordinary cases, he told Every Day Catholic. Rather, they are ones that will establish precedents that further the cause of religious freedom. They include the right of cities to erect holiday manger scenes and menorahs, of Muslim police officers to grow beards, of public school teachers to wear crucifixes and of military chaplains to preach without censorship by the administration in power.

Mr. Hasson, 46, who lives in suburban Virginia with his wife and seven children, is heartened by the openness to religious expression evident these days in Washington and beyond. The notion that "religion is bad for you, like secondhand smoke" is being challenged, he believes. Meanwhile, he and his firm are guided by Thomas Becket, "a great hero of religious liberty who gave his life for the principle that the state may not interfere in the workings of the Church."