By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
Can envy ever be good? It is one of the seven deadly sins. The Ten Commandments tell us not to covet. And in Othello, Shakespeare’s Iago called jealousy “the green-eyed monster which doth mock.” Yet, I saw another side of envy just over 25 years ago.
Some friends and clients—both devout members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—asked me to take them and their young sons through Salt Lake City’s restored Cathedral of the Madeleine. The century-old Catholic Cathedral is a Utah landmark.
Workers started building it in 1900 and finished in 1909. The Cathedral, with its unique Romanesque exterior and Gothic interior, is listed on the Utah Register of Historic Sites and the National Register of Historic Places. My wife Vicki and I got married there in 1989, and all three of our children eventually celebrated their end-of-high-school baccalaureate Mass there too.
In 1993, shortly before our friends Gerald and Marlene asked for a tour, workers had completed the most detailed restoration of the edifice in the Cathedral’s century long history. The interior was renovated extensively, while the exterior remains much the same as when the building was first dedicated.
I led the requested tour. I am no expert on the building, but I did study theology at the University of Notre Dame. Moreover, my old friend Father Francis Mannion had spearheaded the restoration effort. I got a sneak peek while the work was in progress. Thus, I knew enough not to sound too stupid.
Gerald, Marlene and their sons were respectful tourists. They listened patiently, admired the lovely artwork, and asked polite questions. Their boys were fascinated with the large wooden confessional booths, and asked “what happens in there?” I told them they were too young to have to worry about that place just yet.
They also wanted to know about the little wafers they had seen distributed at Mass. I skipped the talk about transubstantiation and instead we had a nice little chat about God being part of our daily lives, such as in Catholic communion and Latter-day Saint sacrament meetings. They nodded with great interest, still curious about the wafers.
The Cathedral is just a few steps from the small garden that includes the final resting place of Brigham Young, so we stopped by there too. The man who brought the Saints to Utah is buried in the simple Mormon Pioneer Memorial Monument, which also is dedicated to some 6,000 pioneers who died during the long westward journey.
Afterwards, we had soup and sandwiches at our house. During dinner, I asked my friend Gerald about his hard but important work as the bishop at his local ward. (The Latter-day Saints do not have professional clergy.) I told him to keep up the good work, so he could move up the ecclesiastical ranks and someday I could say I knew one of the Church’s Twelve Apostles.
He laughed, and said I’d probably have to make that connection with someone else. He was right (see: A Latter-day apostolic blessing for a Catholic man). I also mentioned we had never seen the inside of a Latter-day Saint temple. They promised to take us through the one being built in their hometown.
A few years later, Marlene and Gerald called and invited us to attend the open house for the new Mount Timpanogos Temple in American Fork, Utah. Church President Gordon B. Hinckley dedicated it in October 1996 in front of thousands of Saints. Before then, our friends gave us (me, my wife and two young daughters) a personal tour.
The Temple is a lovely, single spire, classic modern building. Its exterior finish consists of Sierra white granite, art glass windows, and bronze doors. Our friends explained the names and purposes of each of the various sections. My favorite was the beautiful apex called the Celestial Room, one of the most sacred places in the Temple.
At one stop along the way, Gerald playfully threatened to toss me into the baptismal font, a large basin that is supported by huge stone oxen. I told him to go ahead, because I needed all the help I could get.
Outside the Temple after the tour, some zealous missionaries correctly sensed we were non-members. They gently but persistently asked us if we wanted to know more about their church. I told them I was from Salt Lake City and that Gerald, from American Fork, was my bishop.
As they puzzled over the massive boundaries of the unusual ward I had described, Gerald smiled and led us away from the well-intentioned proselytizers. We then enjoyed a delicious barbecue dinner Marlene prepared and served at their house.
Krister Stendahl, a Swedish theologian and the former Dean of the Harvard Divinity School, articulated three rules for effective interfaith dialogue: (1) let the other define himself/herself; (2) compare equal to equal, not my positive qualities to the negative ones of the other; and (3) find beauty in the other so as to develop what he called “holy envy.”
So many of us fail to respect, appreciate, or even experience the beauty of religious diversity, of the many different paths people walk in search of God and/or the meaning of life. I am eternally grateful that with just a couple of lovely tours and two simple shared meals, our friends taught me all about the right kind of envy.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
