c. 2004 Religion News Service

(Eugene Cullen Kennedy, a longtime observer of the Roman Catholic Church, is professor emeritus of psychology at Loyola University in Chicago and author of “Cardinal Bernardin’s Stations of the Cross,” published by St. Martin’s Press.)

(UNDATED) The proper study of mankind, poet Alexander Pope observed long ago, is man. Noting that, of course, he meant man and woman, we ask where this investigation can be best carried out?

Do we find men and women real enough for such study in the popular magazines that tell people true love follows the development of the kind of abdominal muscles that make their fronts resemble the grille work on a Humvee?

Yes, we say, not in spite of, but because these journals, in promising so much and delivering so little, are profoundly, if not endearingly, human in themselves. They claim, for example, to reveal the secrets of successful lifelong sex but, just in case they don’t work, advertise a full counter of drugs to bolster the weary and the waning. These journals do not exploit perfection-seeking men and women but rather document poignantly just how human and how imperfect, in different guises and in different ages, we all are.

That is not Ponce de Leon’s staring face reflected in the waters asking `Is this the Fountain of Youth?’ That’s you and me, for who among us has not taken cards occasionally from the vanity deck, somewhat as we buy lottery tickets? Maybe this will give me a movie star smile, maybe this will start my hair growing again, maybe I will be a winner and this card will be the ace of hearts instead of the two of diamonds I usually pick.

Do we find men and women real enough for our study in movie and rock stars? Of course, for, more like us than like their gaudy images, they parallel our efforts to grow up as they struggle to break out of their childhood.

They raise a sign as big as that proclaiming HOLLYWOOD on the hills above Los Angeles, revealing how childish even the most grown up of us can be at times, of how we can be spoiled or how we can mistakenly spoil others. Even the sign, harshly weathered and in need of regular paint and repair, reminds us of ourselves.

Are the men and women in politics real enough to serve as subjects for our study of mankind? Let us accept Tom Wicker’s title for his book on Richard Nixon, “All Too Human,” to assure us that, yes, if only in their wins and their losses, politicians bear the stigmata of hope and disappointment that we all carry with us.

Perhaps the best study of mankind can be carried out in church during those moments when the priest reveals his humanity in being unprepared.

Spread around us unselfconsciously are the men and women who keep the world going. On the one hand they are the target audience for the sleight of hand cosmetic surgery and other tricks of our times. Botox may not make the heart grow fonder but it makes the face gleam smoother. Face lifts, eye lifts and breast lifts to make you look younger are now joined by voice lifts to make you sound younger.

But these men and women in church all have wrinkles, as if they had not heard or, far more likely, are too busy living and caring for the next generation to worry much about how they look themselves. But, in fact, they look just the way they should _ like people who have lived truly and deeply and who exhibit every variation on the wrinkle seen in all of history.

They prove, in their faces inscribed by time with isobars and grand canyons, badlands and monument valleys, that the notion of a “new wrinkle” is the quintessential oxymoron. Indeed, they wear their wrinkles for what they are, the battle ribbons earned in sacrificing themselves completely for their children, working their hardest at their jobs, and living their faith to the full in their everyday lives.

These faces and necks, these hands and arms are the sacraments of life, the signs of the changes in their body and blood that re-enacts the Eucharist change of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord. Their wrinkles are the bar code of their goodness, the religious revelation of what self-forgetfulness looks like.

These people all around us enter the great mystery of life, wrinkles and all, every day. They do not fool themselves about its risks or dangers. They enter the mystery with eyes wide open _ well, maybe not as wide open as people who have had too much eye surgery, but open as only the eyes of the pure of heart can be.

DEA/JL END KENNEDY